Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Move-On has a Winning Ad


An extensive digest from Salon.com News | A simple, poetic indictment

The commercial that triumphed over more than 1,000 other entries -- and that will run 30 times on CNN during the week of Bush's State of the Union address, and possibly during the Super Bowl as well -- was a subtle, elegiac and nearly wordless indictment of the burden Bush is shunting onto future generations with his deficits. It was made by Charlie Fisher, a 38-year-old advertising executive and father of two from Denver, a fiscal conservative who was a registered Republican until 1992.

Over a minor-key acoustic guitar tune, Fisher's "Child's Pay" spot shows a series of stoic, worn-looking American children laboring at low-wage adult jobs -- a boy washes dishes, a girl in a baggy pink maid's uniform cleans a hallway, another works in a factory. It ends with white words on a black screen: "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?"

Outrage, or at least a campaign-season facsimile of it, erupted when it emerged that two of the more than 1,000 entries that MoveOn posted compared Bush to Hitler, prompting a round of GOP fulminations and talk show bloviations.

CNN's Wolf Blitzer introduced a segment on the incident by calling it a "huge, huge controversy." The Drudge Report ran breathless headlines about each new development.

The winning animated spot, "What I've Been Up To," features a cartoon Bush giving a rundown of his achievements. "For starters," he says, "I turned the strongest economy in history into the biggest deficit in history ... I invaded two countries, made a joke of the United Nations ... and still managed to take the most vacations of any president in history!"

Al Franken presented the awards for funniest ad to Christopher Fink, who made "If Parents Acted Like Bush," in which the father, "George," leaves his daughter behind when she needs a ride to school, barges in on her in the bathroom, charges a motorcycle to her and cheats on her mother ("I know it's not Mom, but it's OK! She's rich!").

When a French TV reporter introduced himself to Al Franken, who just returned from visiting troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, the comedian replied with real sincerity, "Thank you for your help in Afghanistan. I was just in Afghanistan. The commander there said the French paratroopers are the best he's ever seen."

Before the show Moore insisted, "The people do not support George Bush." He enjoys decent approval ratings in Middle America, Moore said, because people don't like to criticize the commander in chief when their sons and daughters are at war, "but that doesn't mean people like him or his policies."

If that's true, then progressives don't have much to worry about. Yet they are worried, and the anxiety encompasses their fellow citizens as well as their government. One ad finalist featured a man in bed pulling the cover over his eyes and hitting the snooze alarm every time his clock radio woke him with news of Bush's depredations. Ewy, winner of the best youth ad award, acknowledged that there was much enthusiastic support for Bush where he comes from, caused by "misunderstanding due to disinformation."

Given that, it's a relief that MoveOn's judges and members both chose "Child's Pay." It doesn't capture the anger and outrage of urbanites made to feel like exiles in their own country, and it doesn't attack Bush personally, no matter how richly earned such attacks may be. Its tone is one of deep disappointment and fear that tomorrow's Americans will find their options dramatically diminished. It seems like it could resonate even among people who think "sushi-eating" is an insult and Bush a decent man.

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