28 October 2005 - 9:14am
More on Blogads, Gilliard, outrage and hot air
Well, it seems that the Gilliard advertising spat made The Washington Post ... sort of.
While the Kaine campaign's pulling of an ad from Gilliard's site is mentioned, the article focuses more on the huge overreaction by Republican Michael S. Steele to the politically satirical image of him that prompted the Kaine ad withdrawl:
The doctored photo of Steele (R) as a minstrel, and accompanying slurs, prompted Virginia gubernatorial candidate Timothy M. Kaine (D) to pull an ad from the site, stevegilliard.blogspot.com ....
Not surprisingly, the strongest reaction came from Steele, who recently announced a bid for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D).
"The Democratic Party has finally reached a new low with the worst kind of racist gutter politics, and it's the kind of racism that people in Maryland reject, regardless of their political party," said Leonardo Alcivar, the campaign spokesman.
Of course the Steele campaign is being disingenuous and opportunistic. I'm sure thanks to his "outrage" Steve is enjoying a modest spike in traffic (though probably more from Kos' front-page story -- web traffic gets the biggest bump from web referrals, in my experience). To say Steve represents the Democrats is quite ridiculous, although that's not stopped Republicans before -- these days they seem to excel at the ridiculous.
The Steele depiction was "extremely offensive and distasteful and has no place in politics or in any other aspect of public discourse," said Derek Walker of the Maryland Democratic Party.
Let me reiterate my position: Steve Gilliard is entitled to free speech as protected by the Constitution. I just think it was bad form to criticize the Kaine campaign for pulling the ad. That was their right.
As for the minstrel image Steve posted, well, it's his take on a campaign I've not been following. But political satire in images is a tried and true political tradition. I can't say I agree with his sentiments -- to be honest, I stopped reading his site months ago -- but the First Amendment exists for just this kind of thing. If the speech weren't offensive, then it wouldn't need the Constitution to be protected.
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Comments
Michael Steele is a native of, and lives in, Prince George's County, Maryland.
EVERY elected official in Prince George's County is a Democrat.
The majority of them are Black.
Half of the non-Black minority are Hispanic.
Top school adminsitrators are predominately Black.
If you believe the Democrat's rhetoric, you would expect Prince George's County to be a paradise, especially for "minorities."
You would be wrong.
Prince George's County's rapidly increasing murder rate is second highest in Maryland and the highest in the Washington, DC, suburbs.
Prince George's County's schools are the second worst in Maryland and the worst in the Washington, DC, suburbs. The Black school chief recently resigned while being
investigated by the FBI; one of his top assistants ($130,000 per year) has just been
convicted on federal drug laundering charges and has been indicted on witness tampering charges.
Prince George's County has more car thefts and violent carjackings than all the rest of Maryland and the DC suburbs put together.
Attacking Michael Steele is a good way for the Democrats to distract the public and the press from their ongoing abysmal failure to either protect or educate the people of Prince George's County.
My take on Steve's posting is that he is supporting the pro-crime, anti-education record of the Democrats running Prince George's County.
...of Ann Coulter, because your rhetoric and logic are about on the same level.
I'm not a fan of Gilliard, but to call him "pro-crime, anti-education" is rather ridiculous, don't you think?
i know this area very well. truly sad. seems like people escape the southeast part of the city, but then the problems just follow them out. maybe the influx of new residents to pg county is changing and blacks comes from elsewhere. but usually, at least when blacks first started coming in large numbers, it was from dc. anyway, its truly a sad situation. at the same time its the most interesting place in many ways. it has the largest black middle class population anywhere. one thing is really weird though, churches are everywhere. i mean everywhere. in old 7-elevens, in old strip malls, little shacks and increasingly in stadium sized mega churches. like enormous churches, like the ones the evangelicals have in the heartland and elsewhere. anyhow with all these churches and money around, we still have all these murders. i have direct knowledge of the barbarity. truly sad. dont know what else to say. theres jobs here too. its not an easy problem to fix, and i can tell you that as bad as politicians can be, no local politician i can think of has ever been pro-crime. if by pro-crime you mean the violent type. i think its a lot of wrecked homes, abandoned families where the father leaves, and a lot, alot of depressed young black men. im very liberal about a lot of things, but ill never believe that in the case of these young men, that they wouldnt all benefit from a caring dad in the home, or at least some mentor. i think these moms are burnt out. anyways enough. its a really really complex problem, thats just one persons idea.