In the conclusion of All the President's Spin, we predicted that liberal organizations would increasingly adopt the PR tactics of conservatives. Sadly, what we predicted has come true over and over again during the last few years.
A perfect example of this is a new Web video from Campaign for America's Future, which has adapted the "John Kerry is French"/"freedom fries" nativism of the 2003-2004 era into an attack on John McCain for supporting an Air Force contract with Airbus, which is based in France. The entire video is devoted to mocking McCain using a series of crude stereotypes of the French:
From a policy point of view, the video is just misguided protectionism. As Matthew Yglesias notes, "the idea that Boeing should have a permanent monopoly on Air Force contracts because to work with rival firms would be 'shipping jobs to France' is absurd."
More importantly, CAF's appeal to nativism is repulsive. Imagine the outrage if it were an ad about outsourcing to Mexico featuring caricatured Mexicans and a narrator with an exaggerated accent. The same standard should apply here.
(For more on CAF, see what we wrote about them at Spinsanity.)
Couldn't they at least find someone with a proper French accent? Couldn't they at least have run the text by a French teacher?
This is as badly made a video as it is a dumb video.
Posted by: Marie | March 27, 2008 at 06:26 PM