The latest ad from Stand For Marriage Maine is a political attack in the classic tradition of Lee Atwater's Willie Horton ad for the first George Bush, and California Governor Pete Wilson's infamous smear showing immigrants flooding across the border with a narrator intoning, "They keep coming."
Both of those predecessors worked. And both of the men they helped elect have lived to see the consequences of their appeals to prejudice eat away at the credibility of their party.
There is no candidate in Maine, though, nor is there technically any party. But there is a group of people whose lives and reputations are being dragged through the mud again, and who are being lied about.
That is the central irony of the ad. It claims to be about deception, but it is the ad, itself, which deceives.
It opens, over agitated music, with the narrator saying, "In the 2005 campaign, they said they weren't pushing for homosexual marriage, but now we know they were." Pat Peard is quoted, from 2005 saying, "It has nothing to do with marriage," followed by a video of Monique Hoeflinger in 2009 saying, "Literally, we launched this campaign back in 2005." The narrator then says, "Now they say they won't push teaching homosexual marriage to children in Maine schools," with a quote from Jesse Connolly, campaign manager for No on 1, "yet they are already pushing gay-friendly books in preschools, and hiring paid gay advisors in public schools. Last time, they deceived us [with a screen-covering graphic of the word "DECEPTION"], now it's our kids who will suffer. Vote Yes on Question 1 to prevent homosexual marriage from being pushed on Maine children."
The rhetorical device in the ad is the oldest in the book: the vague, undifferentiated they. This is the fundamental element of which prejudice is made. All of them have a connection which others are not privy to, and (of course) they have an agenda.
I don't know Pat Peard, or Monique Hoeflinger, or Jesse Connolly. Perhaps they have, in fact, all coordinated their comments. But if so, that circumstance, which is central to understanding the slur in this ad, is never documented. Rather, because all of them are supportive of gay equality (Connolly is not even gay), the ad's dark tones invoking what "they have been telling us imply the connection as necessarily existing.
That paves the way for the central claim of "DECEPTION." Normally, it is individuals who deceive, saying one thing and meaning something else. Proving that takes substantiation, but it is something well within the realm of human behavior. The burden of proof is just about short-circuited when you are claiming a group of people have been involved in deception. Different people in different contexts say a multitude of different things. That is exactly what happened here, as GoodAsYou explains. Once you've taken the first step of assuming they have a unified agenda, then it's ludicrously easy to find documentable statements from different individuals in different contexts that can be woven together to demonstrate - conclusively, to people who want to believe it -- a lie.
That unitary vision of a minority group is practically the definition of prejudice. Members of minority groups have to fight to establish their identity against that sweeping, reductionist thinking. Whatever legitimate differences there are in the struggle of African-Americans and homosexuals for their equality, it is this damaged notion that makes both struggles necessary.
Ads like this invoke - rely on - the subliminal provocation of such convictions.
Frank Schubert, who is running the campaign responsible for this ad, swears he will not engage in gay-bashing, and will, in fact, do everything he can to make sure it doesn't happen. If the premise at the heart of this ad is not actual gay-bashing, it is certainly indistinguishable from a straightforward appeal to people's worst instincts. That has precedent in recent American politics, and a tainted history of success.
it is a stark contrast with the No on 1 campaign, which has avoided these low-road tactics with uniformly positive, decent and honest ads. The people of Maine will have to determine which of these courses in most consistent with their vision of civic life in their state.
3 Comments for “Anatomy of a Slur (Part 1)”
posted by Will Urquhart on
This ad, They Said, used footage that we, Sum of Change Productions, filmed, edited, and distributed. I am referring to the clip from Netroots Nation. Permission was never given for this use. The Stand for Marriage Maine campaign not only neglected to cite us as the source of the material, they went so far as to cut out our logo (which was embedded at the bottom right of the video).
I’ll be arriving in Maine on Monday to consult with lawyers and examine all the legal options available to us.
posted by Jorge on
I don’t even understand the ad.
Okay, so I guess the point is that “they’re lying and they’re gonna teach gay marriage in public schools.”
With the Willie Horton and the California ad (never heard of the latter), there may be racial undertones, but everyone gets the point: the opponent is weak or dangerous, the candidate is strong and just.
I just don’t get it.
posted by randy on
The point is that some people are afraid of gays and want to turn us back to the 60s when gays were totally closeted and ashamed of themselves. The whole point of the ad is that the gays won’t stop until they have full recognition in our society. Can’t let that happen! Gotta put them gays in their place, which is in the closet. Which is why we CAN’T let our children know that gays exist — we must shield them from the horrors of gayhood. If our kids realize that gays are a normal part of life, why, the next think you know, gay might actually get married! So to stop all these nonsense about gay rights, we have to make sure our kids grow up with the proper prejudices.
That’s what this ad is about.