All is lost now…
The Obama campaign’s new creation is a 30-second spot that opens with shots of Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay and other business villains. “Criminals. Gluttons of greed,” intones the ad’s solemn narrator. “And the evil genius who towered over them? One man has the guts to speak his name.” Then the ad cuts to Mitt Romney, pulling two words out of his debate comments (the words that came before them were, “I love..”), saying “Big Bird….Big Bird…Big Bird”
B.B. then appears in a montage of Sesame Street clips, as the narrator says, “Yellow. A menace to our economy. Mitt Romney knows it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about. It’s Sesame Street. Mitt Romney, taking on our enemies no matter where they nest.”
It’s an epically stupid ad, if for no other reason that it recruits a non-profit organization’s symbol into a partisan political attack ad, without that organization’s permission. The Children’s Television Workshop has officially “requested” that the Obama campaign remove it. The ad is far worse than that, however:
- It is dishonest. Mitt Romney never suggested that the Muppet character was “a menace,” nor did he imply that cutting funds for PBS would represent a major financial fix, and he certainly didn’t claim that the giant puppet was responsible for the acts of various white-collar criminals.
- It is factually misleading. Romney never threatened Big Bird. Big Bird, as the head of the Children’s Television Workshop made clear to CNN, is perfectly capable of supporting himself. From the Wall Street Journal: “According to financial statements for the year ended June 30, 2011, Sesame Workshop and its nonprofit and for-profit subsidiaries had total operating revenue of more than $134 million. They receive about $8 million a year in direct government grants and more indirectly via PBS subsidies. Big Bird and friends also receive corporate and foundation support, and donations amount to about a third of revenue. Distribution fees and royalties comprise another third and licensing revenue makes up the rest.” The point Romney was making is and was valid, and to ridicule it shows an abdication of seriousness and fairness. It is ridiculous for the Federal Government, in debt deeply and getting deeper, to give one penny to support Big Bird, his company, or anything they do.
- It is irresponsible. If the Obama Administration’s stance is that it will try to convince the public that even a small cut in a program with an enthusiastic constituency is unbearable, what chance is there that such a crew will be willing to make necessary cuts in entitlements and more extensive, expensive programs? I’d say none. The national pain of eliminating PBS is infinitesimal compared to the shared sacrifice that will be necessary to keep America from the fate of Greece and Spain, and this ad demonstrates that President Obama, or at least those who work for him, have no intention of getting serious about the debt crisis. From a WSJ editorial today:
“Mr. Obama is mocking a small effort to reduce federal spending, but it would be funnier if Mr. Obama hadn’t also rejected all the larger efforts too. From Congressional Republicans. From his own Simpson-Bowles deficit commission. From a bipartisan group in the Senate. At the San Francisco event, as at the debate, as at every other campaign event this year, Mr. Obama offered no plan to move the government’s spending into the same galaxy with its revenues”
- It is insulting. I know that the conventional wisdom is that undecided voters are morons, but the rest of us have to watch these ads too. For a President of a nation in the throes of the multitude of crises this one faces to suggest that anyone would or should decide who ought to lead us for the next for years based on the fate of an 8 foot tall, feathered millionaire is…what? Frightening? Shocking? Infuriating?
Whatever it is, I believe it should make rational and informed citizens wonder why they would trust such people, who would stoop so low, be so small, and have such little respect for both the real issues facing America, and the people whose very lives depend on them.
______________________________
Pointer: Instapundit
Source: Wall Street Journal
Graphic: Wow Cool
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
*sigh*
God I hate this ad. There are fair points to make on this topic, but this wasn’t a valid way to make them.
It didn’t make any real points, at all. Hell, I can make the argument for PBS—it’s not hard. Shockingly bad—“demon sheep” bad.
what??? excuse me.. it’s the other way around. Mitt Romney’s plan to save loopholes while NOT ending taxcuts for the super rich is what is absurd.
Does this post have some connection to the post? I can’t see where Romney’s bad policies when it comes to taxes have anything to do with this ad.
I second this. The response is a complete non-sequitur. No, Portugal’s policy toward Basque domino tournaments is really what’s absurd…
And this is part of the reason why I refuse to consider myself a Democrat, despite the fact that I’ll likely be voting for Obama a second time.
This ad…Jack, they got me; they’re geniuses – I am laughing and crying at the same time, with intensity and with emotions and sentiments all mixed-up like I haven’t felt since my wife first (FINALLY!) told me, “I love you, too.”
Less than 6% of the PBS budget is from the US Government (which, since donations are tax deductible, is hardly even the bulk of how much “support” the government gives then as a Non-Profit in terms of lost tax revenue). They can easily handle the lost support without turning into TLC or the Discover channel.
Btw: Big Bird’s compensation is $314K, Sesame Workshop CEO: $988K. PBS President $632K, NPR CEO $1.2Million….
Click to access 2011-132655731-085636f7-9.pdf
I agree that the ad was stupid.
That said, I disagree with you on two points.
First, you defend Romney by saying he didn’t “imply that cutting funds for PBS would represent a major financial fix.” This is pretty dubious. Lerher had just asked Romney “how you would go about tackling the deficit problem in this country?” Romney answered that question by saying (in part) that he’d cut out PBS.
Romney ruled out revenue increases as any part at all of deficit reduction (an extremist position that you’d criticize if you were a serious deficit hawk), said he’d move conveniently unnamed programs to the states, said he’d make unnamed programs more efficient. He named only two specific policies: cutting PBS, and cutting Obamacare.
Think of that – he has only two minutes to work with, and apparently he thought he had enough time to mention two specific policies. And one of those two policies was cutting PBS.
You really have to be bending over backwards to claim that Romney wasn’t implying that he was talking about significant actions to address the deficit. That was the question he was asked, and cutting PBS was one of only two specific policies he mentioned.
Romney’s answer was inane. As the CBO has said again and again, repealing Obamacare will raise the deficit. And PBS barely represents a decimal point in the deficit.
Either Romney was implying that cutting PBS was a significant part of a deficit plan, or he was simply refusing to answer the question in a real way. In either case, it’s legitimate to mock Romney’s answer for being both foolish and trivial.
(Which doesn’t alter my opinion that the Obama “Big Bird” ad is a stupid ad. But the problem was that the ad was stupid and hamhanded; not that Romney’s answer didn’t deserve mockery.)
You also approvingly quote a WSJ editorial claiming that Obama had rejected all large efforts “to reduce federal spending.” That’s simply a lie, and you shouldn’t endorse it. Like it or not – and I know you don’t like it — Obama has proposed a plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion through a combination of revenue increases and spending cuts. You’ve said that it’s not a serious plan (by which you mean, it’s not one that you agree with as a partisan Republican), but that’s not relevant. To claim it doesn’t exist at all is a flat-out lie.
Also, as Romney and Ryan have frequently pointed out, Obama has not refused to touch entitlements; he endorsed a major cut in Medicare spending. Unless you think Romney and Ryan are lying about that — and they’re not — you can’t reasonably imply that Obama opposes ever making a cut to entitlements.
By the way, Romney and Ryan have attacked Obama many times for reducing Medicare spending. If Obama is “irresponsible” for making fun of Romney’s ridiculous plan to address the deficit by cutting PBS, then surely Romney and Ryan are even more irresponsible for attacking the idea of reducing Medicare spending. Have you posted criticizing them for that?
Additionally, if ruling out entitlement cuts (something Obama has never done) is “irresponsible,” then why isn’t ruling out tax increases (as Romney did in this debate) also “irresponsible”? Just as we can’t really reduce the deficit without addressing entitlement spending, we can’t do it if we rule out raising revenues. Yet somehow, being “irresponsible” about the deficit is only criticized when it comes to entitlements, never when it comes to anti-tax extremism. Why?
Finally, I really have no respect for austerity economics (i.e., ” the shared sacrifice that will be necessary to keep America from the fate of Greece and Spain”). Austerity has been a failure almost every time it’s been tried, and the suffering caused by such policies aren’t ever “shared”; they’re disproportionately borne by the poor.
Not quite, Barry. Romney began by saying that his test for cuts would be, is this important enough to borrow money from China to keep funding? He was citing PBS as an example of what that approach would do, and properly so.That’s far from implying that cutting PBS is a major step to fixing the deficit. Being WILLING to cut PBS , and thus a whole lot more, IS a major step…and one that the Democrats refuse to make.
“Additionally, if ruling out entitlement cuts (something Obama has never done) is “irresponsible,” then why isn’t ruling out tax increases (as Romney did in this debate) also “irresponsible”? Just as we can’t really reduce the deficit without addressing entitlement spending, we can’t do it if we rule out raising revenues. Yet somehow, being “irresponsible” about the deficit is only criticized when it comes to entitlements, never when it comes to anti-tax extremism. Why?”
I agree with all of this, and have posted about it in the past. (But Pelosi and many other Democratic leaders HAVE said that cutting entitlements is “off the table.”)
Okay, but in that case, Romney only named two specific programs he’d be willing to cut – one that you seem to agree is trivially tiny, and one that would actually increase the deficit if he repeals it. And he seemed to rule out tax increases, ever. Other than that, he refused to give any specific examples of what he’d do.
How is that NOT a ridiculous, empty-suit answer to the question ““how you would go about tackling the deficit problem in this country?” How is that not an answer that deserves to be mocked?
By the way, China owns about 8% of our total debt (and that percent has been dropping). The vast majority of our debt is owned by Americans through one mechanism or another. I’m sure Romney, who is extremely smart, understands that – but he sure put it in a way guaranteed to lead ordinary Americans to misunderstand the debt situation.
Oh, and Pelosi – and virtually all other Democrats — very famously voted for a major reduction in Medicare spending, and they’ve been under fire for it ever since.
In general, though, I’m glad if Democrats hold the line against cutting entitlements in a crude way, or without getting any revenue increases in return. Virtually every first world country in the world does a much better job of keeping medical costs down than we do; that should be our first approach to cutting spending on medicare and medicaid. To just go after the programs with an axe (or a voucher with a ceiling) without doing anything about medical costs is just a guarantee that poor people, especially poor seniors, won’t be able to get needed care. That sort of approach should be off the table.
I mostly agree that it is dishonest and misleading. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s irresponsible. Does anyone REALLY deposit any honest faith in political ads? I think most people – intelligent or not – know better than to accept political ads as truth.
That’s a classic dishonest fallacy: a lie doesn’t matter if you think nobody will believe it. Why say it then? Obviously someone believes the ads, or there would be no point in prouducing them.