“Controversial” Campaign Ads- Free Bang For The Buck

Lately I’ve gotten the impression -and maybe this is just me- that the McCain camp’s ads are getting a lot more attention than Obama’s lately.  There’s more and more talk that McCain is taking the “low road“, but I’m beginning to wonder if this should really be considered the smart road.  After all, as NewsBusters noticed, the latest McCain ad appeared to get a ton of air time on the blogs and CBS, NBC, ABC, etc. in the last 24 hrs., because someone decided that the ads themselves, along the accompanying reaction, was deemed newsworthy.  As I read, I couldn’t help but think that McCain’s team had gotten a lot more exposure for their spots with all that than it actually paid for through regular time slots. 

As it turns out, I’m not the only one to come to this conclusion, as memeorandum also has this up from the NYT: With Commercial, McCain Gets Much More Than His Money’s Worth

WASHINGTON — The number of times Senator John McCain’s new advertisement attacking Senator Barack Obama for canceling a visit with wounded troops in Germany last week has been shown fully or partly on local, national and cable newscasts: well into the hundreds.

The number of times that spot actually, truly ran as a paid commercial: roughly a dozen.

One has to wonder -or possibly even assume- that the media may be the unwitting participant in an a clever strategy.  A plan that centers around churning out campaign ads that create a buzz not as a mistake made by a marketing team that is out of touch with what might cross lines, but as a critical part of the design.  With such a concept, I suppose the balancing act involves crafting the ads in such a way that they don’t turn too many people off, while simultaneously creating the appropriate stir that results in all the free air time.  Another possible danger would be that, once it gets to a certain point, there will be considerable debate between the camps and pundits alike over whether the whole fracas can be taken up with the FCC.   After all, the networks were so worried about the “equal time” provisions that NBC actually considered make-up time for other GOP candidates to compensate for Fred Thompson’s appearance in Law and Order reruns.  That dynamic would expose the transparency of the tactic to a wider audience than a single NYT post (and certainly this blog), and could work against McCain…assuming the Katie Couric’s out there can refrain from replaying the ads in question hundreds of times in the process.

WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance

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Did Someone Hack The Fred! Site?

I’m not sure there’s any other explanation, other than perhaps Fred! has a strange sense of humor.

Google search Fred Thompson, and you see this:

Click on the link, and you see this:

So, knowing full well that Fred! withdrew from the GOP race back in January, I thought I’d look something else up, just to make sure that I hadn’t gone crazy:

Phew! 

OK.  Still sane. 

(h/t Wonkette)

Goodbye Rudy, Tuesday

Well, the Florida results are in, and Rudy’s out. 

The question that is undoubtedly on many people’s minds:  What the heck happened to Giuliani?  I think we’ve just witnessed a campaign roll off a hill, and I’m not quite sure what caused it.  According to most polls, Rudy was the frontrunner for most of 2007, and as late as early December still had double-digit leads over most of the other candidates, including John McCain. 

		1/15-17/08	12/3-5/07	11/5-7/07
		%	%	%
	John McCain	22	13	13
	Mike Huckabee	16	18	10
	Mitt Romney	16	12	12
	Rudy Giuliani	14	26	29
	Fred Thompson	9	11	19
	Ron Paul	4	3	n/a
	Other (vol.)	1	1	2
	None (vol.)	8	7	7
	Unsure	10	9	8
	Newt Gingrich	n/a	n/a	n/a
	Sam Brownback	n/a	n/a	n/a

Was it “World Wavered, History Hesitated“, or did people simply forget about 9/11?  ‘Cause he was there on 9/11.

9/11.

He was there, and he didn’t waver, remember?

Oh  what the heck, one more time… for Rudy…

9/11.

WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance

How Tall Is Fred Thompson?

If you see enough pictures of Fred standing next to people, it doesn’t take too long to notice that he’s always the tallest one in the group.  But how tall is he?

I did some searching, and according to Blogs For Fred Thompson, the former Senator stands 6’5″, and if elected president he would be the tallest in our nation’s history.  Does it mean anything, though?  Probably not, outside of having to raise the shower head in the White House bathroom.

Exit question:  Can he dunk?

Fred Thompson Movie Quote Of The Week

“Stack ’em, pack ’em, and rack ’em.  Move!”

I just put this on here because it sounds so slick, so authoritative, so…presidential.  Ya know, something George Bush might say!

Anyway, your blog gets a link if you can guess the movie.  If you don’t have a blog, well, you get some pride points.

Update:  Damn, I thought this would have been harder, but John got it: Die Hard 2

Here’s A Headline You Don’t See Everyday

Ya know, for a guy who isn’t running (wink wink), Fred Thompson has been in the news quite a bit lately:  Contemplating a Run for Office Can Complicate Television Reruns

Hoping to avoid violating a Federal Communications Commission provision that would force the network to provide equal time to other candidates running for president, NBC chief lobbyist Robert Okun has reached out to the GOP presidential campaigns of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, among others, to inquire whether they would make a major issue out of Thompson being featured in reruns this summer.

Under the equal-time rule, if a network gives time to one political candidate, it is required to provide the same amount of airtime to his or her opponents. In other words, if Thompson appeared on a “Law & Order” episode for 10 minutes during prime time, NBC would have to give Thompson’s rivals for the Republican nomination 10 minutes of prime time each.

If Thompson waits until fall to announce, however, he’ll essentially have NBC putting his Arthur Branch persona on prime-time TV for free (or, better yet, residuals?).  Considering that Republicans aren’t really liking any of the current GOP front runners right now, I think Thompson is safe to wait it out a bit.

Yee-Haw! Hannity Kicks Off His Freedom Concerts In Atlanta

I had the opportunity to listen to Sean Hannity’s show today* as he broadcasts live from Atlanta ahead of the big show tonight.  Here’s the info:

Atlanta, Georgia on July 10, 2007
The Arena at Gwinnett Center
Doors Open: 5:30 pm
Concert Begins: 7:00 pm

Join Sean Hannity, WSB Radio and
LtCol Oliver North, USMC (Ret.) on July 10, 2007 at The Arena at Gwinnett Center for the one of the 2007 Hannity Freedom Concerts.

Headlining this year’s star-studded Atlanta concert will be one of America’s hottest country sensations, Montgomery Gentry as well as America’s country music legend, Lee Greenwood.

The Hannity Freedom Concerts benefit the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund for the children of America’s Military Heroes who have been killed or permanently disabled (100% VA Rating) in the line of duty.

As usual, Hannity spent a good portion of his show today bashing Democrats in Washington (and liberals in general) for wanting to “cut and run” from Iraq and not wanting to “stay on the offensive” in the war on terror.   I can see why he’s so vocal about this, since bringing the troops home kinda negates the need for the charity that these concerts are benefiting.  The way I see it, at this point, “staying on the offensive” appears to be little more than insisting that the troops drive around in Humvees waiting to get blasted by an IED, at least as far as Iraq is concerned.  On the other hand, it would appear to be a worthy cause.  There are plenty of troops who have been killed or permanently disabled already.

As for the musical juggernauts (sorry, “star-studded”) on the ticket….well… maybe I’m not a country fan.  I’d never heard of these guys before.  Maybe Hannity could have gotten some more popular acts to participate, maybe not.  Perhaps there simply aren’t that many out there that would get his stamp of approval.  As I eluded to a little while ago, the number of “Great Americans” seems to be dwindling.  One thing worth mentioning, I suppose, is the fact that Troy Gentry pleaded guilty last year for killing “Cubby” the bear right here in Minnesota.  Nothing says “Great American” like buying a bear, shooting it, then pretending that you’re some sort of master of the wild.  Dick Cheney would be proud.

*Hannity spent some time interviewing Fred Thompson, where Sean managed to get him about as close to saying that he’s running without actually saying it as one can get.  He said his mind is made up, then said he didn’t want to sound “coy” (gimme a break).  Hot Air has the audio.

About That “Trophy Wife” Thing…

This is a response to TMV’s post that calls into question the NYT’s journalistic integrity in their piece on Fred Thompson’s wife. The Times’ Susan Saulny writes:

Now, with the possible candidacy of Fred D. Thompson, the grandfatherly actor and former Republican senator from Tennessee, whose second wife is almost a quarter-century his junior, comes a less palatable inquiry that is spurring debate in Internet chat rooms, on cable television and on talk radio: Is America ready for a president with a trophy wife?

The question may seem sexist, even crass, but serious people — as well as Mr. Thompson’s supporters — have been wrestling with the public reaction to Jeri Kehn Thompson, whose youthfulness, permanent tan and bleached blond hair present a contrast to the 64-year-old man who hopes to win the hearts of the conservative core of the Republican party. Will the so-called values voters accept this union?

I’d have to say that I have a problem with this as well.  It’s not the use of the term ‘trophy wife’ so much as it’s the inherent assumption that she is one (at least in Susan’s eyes, presumably).  However, a simple rewording of the question would fix everything for me:

Will Americans view Mrs. Thompson as a trophy wife, and are they ready to have one in the White House?

Or something along those lines.  Better?

WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance

I had an idea (strange, huh?). Originally I thought it would be neat to add political WordPress.com blogs in a special section of my blogroll, and create my own little community of amateur pundits that use the service. In a way, ALL WP.com bloggers are part of a community already, but I thought I’d start a club just for those who like to talk politics.

Most political bloggers will have blogs from other services in their blogroll.  Not everyone uses WP, after all.  There are advantages to staying within the community, however. One advantage would be ease of commenting. Once you’re logged in, you can hop from blog to blog without having to enter in tedious email info and quickly drop a comment (nice to have avatars too), and all discussions can easily be kept track of through the “my comments” section of our dashboards.  Another advantage: you don’t have to do a lot of work to ping these blogs.  All you have to do is link to a post, and it pings them immediately (leaving a pingback in the comments section).  With other blogs (or blog services), you may have to copy/paste trackback urls, and that can be a bit of a crap shoot.  It can work real slick for some blogs and not work at all for others (or at least I’ve discovered). Yet another advantage is how easy it is to search for tags within the community, but that is less special because services like technorati seem to be dialed into it as well. Anyway, you get the idea….

So, every so often, I’ll click on the WP ‘politics’ tag and check out what people are posting.  If I stumble upon a blog that I haven’t seen before, I’d just add it to the blogroll.  I’ve been adding a couple a week since I started it.  I’m sure there are more, so as time goes on this list will grow in my sidebar (under “wordpress political blogs”)

Then I started thinking. What if we formed some semi-formal alliance? A ‘club’ made up exclusively of WP.com political bloggers (right, left, and center) who could regularly exchange ideas and comment on others’ posts. So far I haven’t seen anything like that. Maybe it’s worth a shot?

I whipped up a ‘club’ button that we can put in the sidebar. You’ll have to forgive my photoshopping skills, but here goes:

If you want to add the button to your blog (it links back to this post), here is the code (with border):

<a href="https://chenzhen.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/wordpress-political-blogger-alliance"><img src="https://chenzhen.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/wppoliblog1.jpg&quot; alt="WordPress Political Blogger" /></a>

…and without a border:

<a href="https://chenzhen.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/wordpress-political-blogger-alliance"><img border="0" src="https://chenzhen.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/wppoliblog1.jpg&quot; alt="WordPress Political Blogger" /></a>

Update 11/2:  The alliance has become interactive!  The lowdown:

What I’m attemping to create here is a tool that we can use to make our blogs more lively and entertaining.  I’m not really forcing any obligations on anyone, so I don’t want you to get the impression that going along with this means that there’s going to be a whole list of expectations (beyond etiquette).  You don’t have to respond to every ping.   Just so you know.  

If you want to participate, there are just a few details…

1. In order for this to work smoothly, everyone needs to create a page that can be pinged.  It took me about 2 min. to make mine: https://chenzhen.wordpress.com/wp-political-blogger-alliance/ .  And I need to know the link so that I can consolidate them, so just post it in that thread or respond in email once you’ve whipped it up.  That’s really the only requirement.  A handful of you already have done this, and the pings work beautifully.  The idea here is to compose a code that is easy to paste in your post that allows you to ping everyone in the alliance at the same time.*
2. I don’t really like the idea of any one blogger “abusing” the tool by using it to try to dominate the discussion.  In other words, if you’re calling out and pinging the alliance 3 times a day it might get a little annoying.  Sure, it’s easy enough to just ignore such a thing, but nevertheless I think it would be akin to blog whoring just for the sake of blog whoring.  It’s kind of a fine line, and we’ll probably tweak the guidelines as we go forward, but for now I’ll stick with a rule of 1 per day max.  No minimums, since some of you might prefer to comment only.  And, it probably goes without saying, but we don’t want to double up on a topic either, so try to make sure that a story or headline hasn’t already had pings sent by someone else first.  If it has, and you’ve got your own unique analysis that you just spent like 2 hrs on, just link to that thread in your post instead.  We’ll see it.  Make sense?
3. Be somewhat civilized.  This might be the hard part, ’cause a) there’s a very diverse crowd being pinged and b) it’s the internet.  In debate, you win by attacking the argument or idea, and you lose once you resort to attacking the person (there is a difference).  Keep that mindset, and we’ll be fine.  That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy a good blog war.  This will be a bit of a free-for-all, so I hope people are relatively thick-skinned when it comes to having  logic, facts, position, etc. challenged.  We’ll just have to see how this goes, cause I’m not sure if anyone has really tried anyting like this before. 
4. This is about “politics”, so use the “politics” tag/category when you post, and only send the pings when you post about “politics”.  You might have a cool car, for example, but please don’t ping the whole group to show off the latest pics you just posted.  Also, consistent use of the “politics” tag in general means more views from the wider wordpress.com audience.

Luckily, it’s pretty easy as individuals to block urls and IP’s if #2 or 3 becomes a problem for someone.

* The up-to-date code can always be found in my sidebar (——>): 

Founder of the WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance

Simply copy the “WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance” and paste it at the bottom of your post. Once your post is published, it will send a ping back to everyone in the alliance.  Easy!

Update 11/4: A tag (category) specifically for the alliance:

WordPress Political Blogs

Create the “WordPress Political Blogs” category and add it to your alliance-oriented posts.  In2thefray and I have already added the RSS feed for this tag in our sidebars, so we can see the latest offerings right on our blogs:

WP.com political blog alliance

Even better, if everyone uses the tag consistently, the above link will provide a great chronological record of the posts within the alliance. In addition, you will have a record of your own contributions to the alliance in your sidebar (assuming you have added the “categories” widget).  Remember to use “WordPress Political Blogs” exactly (alternate spellings and abbreviations will be a different tag, technically)