Thursday, June 17, 2010

Political Rhetoric in Alabama

Question 1: Are these commercials representative of how Alabamians see themselves? Why or why not?
Question 2: According to these commercials, who are Alabamians? What race, age, and gender are Alabamians? Where do Alabamians live? What do they do to earn money?
Question 3: According to these commercials, what do Alabamians fear? What makes them angry?
Question 4: What social or political problems are they most concerned about?
Question 5: According to these commercials, where is God in the life of Alabamians? What does God value?
Question 6: After viewing all these campaign commercials, would you prefer to hang, immolate, or shoot yourself?

I don’t even know where to start with all this crap. I have to edit political spots as part of my job; I’m just thankful I didn’t have to edit any of these.

I’ll just take a line from Mr. Peterson: Who on earth would support such dummies?

peterson’s back!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GabMEHfCjT0

OMG. I mean, you can’t even parody that!

Ah!  The REAL reason I moved to North Carolina!  I couldn’t stand Alabama politics.  Alabama religion was too much for me, too - like that billboard on I-65N between Montgomery and Birmingham that had a picture of the devil with pitchfork on the left and flames across the bottom, warning simply, “Go to church or the devil will get you.”  Weekly church attendance is very important to the average Alabamian.

I think the conservative subset of Alabamians (a whopping lot of them) tend to take the Bible literally - which is very difficult if you have read a chunk of it and try to understand it in context.  Never mind the 2 creation stories in Genesis.  [For the less studied: Gen 1:11-13 has plants coming on the third day and Gen 1:29-31 has man coming on the sixth day.  Gen 2:4-8 says man came before any plants!  Which literal interpretation wins?]  That set of folks also seems to think you can legislate morality, but I tend to believe that those sorts of decisions are on an individual level because denying a difficult decision is denying an opportunity to come closer to God. 

Gambling is good, abortion is bad, stealing signs is bad, you’d better speak English, and you SURE better not be a liberal!

Dale’s new ad indicated we don’t put up with yard sign vandalism. Lethal force?  Ummmmm…..

on immigration, What is the ratio of imprisoned employers of illegal immigrants to the number of deported and imprisoned illegal immigrants?  ummmmmmmmm….

we believe every word of the Bible except that love your enemy stuff and that welcome the foreigner stuff and that don’t love money stuff and that fidelity in marriage stuff and that honor the king stuff and that ummmmmmmmmm…..

I own 4 guns, I go to church each Sunday.  Right next to each other, fantastic.  Evidently putting a gun in your campaign ad is a guarantee to up your numbers.  More so if you shoot it.

It reminds me a bit of the movie Head of State where the president is always saying God Bless America and No Place Else.  Evidently God really loves old white conservative males and no one else.

It’s kind of funny to watch an ad campaign and it make you want to vote for the other person, whoever that may be.  BTW I noticed Peter Rollins tweeting about the awkwardness of the Tim James campaign.  Pretty darn akward for someone from the Ireland to be tweeting about an Alabama campaign ad.

I think it’s really interesting to watch those videos after watching the trailer I posted for Open Secret. I watched them all together and thought, “man, has anything changed since 1901?”