June 27, 2004

WE DIDN'T MEAN TO COMPARE THAT NAZI TO HITLER...:

And It’s Only June…: Bush and Kerry camps spar over whose Hitler images are more offensive (Michael Hastings, June 25, 2004, Newsweek)

On Friday, Democrats and Republicans went to war over a new Bush reelection campaign ad that uses images of Adolph Hitler in bashing Democrat John Kerry.

The Web video, e-mailed to 6 million Bush supporters Thursday evening, splices together clips of Al Gore, Howard Dean, Rep. Dick Gephardt, film director Michael Moore and Kerry. On two occasions in the 87-second-long “Webmercial,” Hitler is shown, speaking loudly in German. The fuhrer footage is overlaid with the words “sponsored by MoveOn.org” while the ad’s opening screen says “The Faces of John Kerry’s Democratic Party.”

MoveOn.org, a left-wing political fundraising group, immediately objected. “We never sponsored those [Hitler] ads, we didn’t condone them,” says Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn PAC. He says the Hitler clips originally appeared on the group’s Web site in January...

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 27, 2004 12:03 AM
Comments

Just once I would like to see someone compare their political opponent to Tojo.

Posted by: Carter at June 27, 2004 1:24 AM

The chutzpah (spelling?) of the Dems is simply astounding.

Posted by: AWW at June 27, 2004 1:29 AM

MoveOn didn't 'condone' them, but neither did they dump them (until protested), nor did they pre-emptively deal with it. Too late to cry now.

In the vernacular, they've been PUNK'D!

Posted by: jim hamlen at June 27, 2004 9:43 AM

I just heard thie story spun on local news radio (KNX in LA) - that the Hitler image in the commercial was comparing all the Democrats featured in the ad to Hitler. That's a total misrepresentation of the Bush ad! It's a compilation of Democratic criticism from various sources, ads, live speeches, etc. The Hitler image came from Move On's web ad contest.

My mouth was hanging open listening to this so-called news story.

Posted by: Kay at June 27, 2004 2:03 PM

Nope, MoveOn didn't condone the ads, just made the ads available on their website for Gawd knows how long. And snickered, and sniggered ("ain't we cool, we really took it to the MAN!"), and laughed at the outrage the ads caused. Now the ads are biting them in the behind, and they find that isn't so comfortable.

Posted by: Steve White at June 27, 2004 9:33 PM
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