I think this is a debate we should have as a community. I know blogs need money to survive, and that advertising provides a lot of that money.
I also know that newspapers and TV stations need advertiser dollars to survive, but they have standards re what they will and won’t run, no matter how much money is at stake.
I submit that it is harmful to our party to run attack ads from one Democrat against another.
More below the fold…
I think it makes sense to insist that BlogAds be about the candidate paying for the ad, and not about their opposition. If the ad gets people to click through to their site, then they can find out about the opposition.
Take the current attack ad on Cynthia McKinney prominently placed on orange’s front page. I was really sickened by that, because McKinney has a great record on progressive issues, has been outspoken against Diebold in particular and electronic voting in general, and has showed more balls than anyone else in the Congress on the issue of 9/11.
Her supposed “attack” on a Capitol Hill policeman? She said it started with “inappropriate touching.” Whatever that meant, the Grand Jury evidently believed her, because they refused to indict her for this.
Her alleged statement that Bush was behind 9/11? She never said it, as Greg Palast pointed out in his piece “The Screwing of Cynthia McKinney.”
Now the press is making a big deal of her being “missing in Congress” all week. But context is everything. She missed Monday and Tuesday because Tuesday was her primary! And she missed Wed-Fri because neither candidate won, and she’s in a tight-runoff against her challenger.
But I don’t want this to be a discussion of McKinney. I want this to be a discussion of whether or not the blogs we frequent should act as circular firing squads (when Dems attack Dems).
I’m all for runnning political ads, campaign ads, etc. But I’m NOT for running attack ads against our candidates. I think it only weakens our party, in the end.
What are your thoughts re this?