Yesterday afternoon the Rick Santorum campaign dropped the weirdest, most terrifying ad of the American political season thus far. They did it via YouTube, where, as noted at MSNBC.com, the video is unlisted: Only those with a link can see it. Seems like a silly way to disseminate an ad. Maybe it'll hit our televisions after the opinion makers weigh in.
Take a look. Entitled Obamaville, it presents a horror-show vision of America in the dread year 2014. In Obamaville the streets are empty, and scary-looking crows are everywhere. Children's shoes are discarded in the dirt — and where are the children? They're gone! Look at the abandoned playgrounds, the equipment therein manipulated by naught but the lonely wind. (Or is it something more sinister?) This is 28 Days Later, reimagined in the rustbelt. Lookit the little lonesome baby, squirming in what might be a bathtub. Lookit the psychotic smiling nurse wearing too much lipstick, saying "Shhhhhhh" — is she euthanizing us? Is that horrible nurse lady euthanizing the American Dream? And see the man who appears to be blowing his brains out with a gasoline pump.
And see, in particular, the television sitting on the floor in some dilapidated Obamavillian house, relaying pictures of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The narrator intones: "A rogue nation, and sworn American enemy, has become a nuclear threat." As the narrator says "sworn American enemy," Ahmadinejad's face is replaced for just an instant with Barack Obama's. They are one and the same, goes the implication; brother jihadis beneath the skin.
The ad's got no ideas, no arguments, no obvious references to the actual objective reality inhabited by actual citizens in the actual world. Whoever made it doesn't think the American people are smart enough to be swayed by such things. Rather, the ad's an appeal for the votes of idiots and paranoiacs — which, you'd think, would be galling to the potential Santorumites at whom it's aimed.
It may sometimes be difficult to discern who the good guys are in American politics, but the really bad guys are never hard to locate. They're the ones who make ads like this. Watch AFTER THE JUMP …
