Letters to the Editor
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20 years and still waiting
to understand just what is so "infamous" about the Willie Horton ad. He was freed under a permissive policy that a permissive governor didn't have the guts to go against. He killed while out on parole, just as so many other parolees commit murders and all manner of lesser crimes while paroled. Sorry, I saw nothing wrong with the ad 20 years ago and the only thing I see wrong with any of it now is that parolees continue to be released before their time only to commit more crime.
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Willie Horton
We have seen so many black hacks in major office that we are not going to be conned anymore. Obama is obviously just another product of Chicago politics, still ruled by the Boss's son. Anyway, why yell at the Republicans? The Horton ad was the work of the sainted Al Gore; the new ad is Hillary's doing.
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Why denounce Floyd Brown?
Will McCain denounce Floyd Brown? He apparently already has, by calling on the NC Republican Party to pull the ad which has caused "racial" consternation.
If McCain values the truth or has any political sense at all, he will shut up complaining about Ads critical of Obama and his campaign.
There is nothing wrong with the ad. Its factual, on target, and effective. Thank god for the NC GOP having the sense, initiative, and courage to put it before the public. If McCain wins the election, it apparently will be because some republicans have sense enough to run a real campaign. I'm sending money to the NC GOP to show my approval, and I'm not from North Carolina and I'm an independent.
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Right on
Deny access loudly and clearly and reject all who are behind Brown publicly.
Tell Hillary to stop sending him money under the table.
Karen
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I hope the DNC is organizing a boycott
I hope the DNC rapid-response team is keeping track of which North Carolina TV stations accept the smear ad for broadcast.
A lot of us will want to boycott the other businesses that advertise on those stations.
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Another idea
Already suggested, of course, is to run Hagee and McCain together and play Hagee's statements about Catholics in heavily industrial states. Play Hagee's connection to the Christian Zionist desire to see Jesus slaughter the Jews when he returns. Play Hagee morning to night until Hagee scares the living s**t out of any potential McCain voter. Ask, "Do you want this man to send your children to war?" when showing Hagee's rants.
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@llex, Archie Bunker or Willie Horton
Thank you, I think, for the compliment. However, I must not be a very effective writer if I did not convey my main point, which is this: when people in this forum think of and write about Willie Horton, they selectively suppress what he has done, choosing instead to echo platitudes about the perceived injustice of daring to speak what is actually a very plain truth, which, as you put it, is that "Democrats are weak in the knees and soft on crime."
Democrats ARE weak in the knees and soft on crime. This message isn't effective because it is propaganda, or because our schools are turning out idiots (I am a teacher, by the way, and I believe that even decades of poor teaching may be almost universally ameliorated with simple demands and standards): it is effective because it is true. It is effective because the liberal left, which is supposed to uplift the masses, has instead committed itself single-mindedly, from Alinsky, to Kunstler, to Ayers, to the criminal-simpering New York Times pressrooms present and past, Butterfield to Liptak, Mailer to Sarandon, to Boston's moral morons Sebastian Junger, Noam Chomsky, John Silber et. al. (lots of blood on those soft palms), all writhing in sympathy for predators and rolling over endlessly to the demands of truly sick enigmas like Al Sharpton while simultaneously denying the humanity of crime victims.
There is no other sustained, funded liberal activism in this country, and I speak as somebody who was raised by Carter Democrats and educated at the feet of extremely elderly, Rosa Luxemburg-quoting Women's International League for Peace and Freedom activists who were themselves sick to death of fearing for their purses and lives by the 1980's. This is why so many decent people have such a hard time voting Democrat. Why make it so hard? Here's the choice the thinking class has nastily and unnecessarily offered: "Archie Bunker or Willie Horton?" Those of us now over such tatty offense and hauled up on the fence must answer: which would you rather be? To whom would you rather live next door?
Maybe it's because I've been screening Dr. Strangelove all week for my (brilliant) community college students in an economically strangled town in central Florida, and pressing them to decide, "Who is responsible? Who is the real Macbeth here?", and being quite impressed by the answers, but I have to say that the place I find the most demoralizing hewing to propagandistic group-think is not among the self-improving, socially-conservative, military vets and McDonalds' employees I teach but here in the pages of Salon.
And, screed or no screed, we should know better, right? We have the cultural capital. We have the fancy liberal arts degrees and deconstructionist methods that are supposed to lead to special insight. But the conversation here seems more narrow than the average conversation I strike up at the 7-11.
And there, no personal offense intended, when somebody suggests that I'm slipping a knife in, I'd expect them to offer their real name before suggesting it.
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Denounce my arse
The dirtier the ad the better the republicans like it. Their faces,to the public are saying how terrible" don't do that. While behind our backs they're routing them on saying can we get nastier.
We know they get support from the likes of Limbo & Billo and the talking heads at Fox. Who also seem "shocked" that this would happen.
The nastier the better for the "Family Values" group. What hYpocrites.