Untruthful TV Ads and CRWXtians dropping support for Judge Roberts
I don't like being told what I should or should not believe by someone else. Especially when that "someone else" is a TV commercial paid for by some political group. They all disgust me, whether they're pro-Dem or pro-Repubo. The biggest issue I have with them is they are unregulated. They can say anything about anyone, true or not. They are directed at the true silent majority - the American sheep who are swayed by the bray of anything they see on the tube often enough, and take no responsibility to check facts for themselves.
An old friend of mine, a successful sales manager for many years, once told me that people need to see or hear something at least seven times before it sinks in. After that, whatever you're saying becomes part of their consciousness, acknowledged or not, and it makes the job of selling your point that much easier. Television certainly pulverizes the points of view of political quacks many more that seven times.
The most recent example comes from NARAL Pro-Choice America, who is spending half a million dollars on Fox and CNN to portray Judge Roberts as a pro-abortion clinic bombing supporter using highly dubious techniques of fades, voice-overs, and twisting of Judge Roberts' casework superimposed over scenes from a 1998 bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.
This is just plain wrong. It was wrong when the Swift Boat liars did it and it's wrong here. Ads like this should not be allowed to run. There should be some kind of agency to check the message for untruths and if it doesn't pass, it should not be allowed to be aired.
The whole Roberts nomination is becoming a circus amongst the different small-minded groups who what their political views impressed on Americans. Reacting to the news that Judge Roberts had the unmitigated gall to give pro bono help to a gays rights group fighting to strike down a totally bigoted Colorado law that would have allowed landlords and employers to discriminate against gays and ONLY gays.
The CRWXtian group, Public Advocate of the United States, dropped support for Judge Roberts nomination saying, "We can't take our limited resources and put it toward a candidate who is not a strict constructionist when we were told he is. Freedom is not embracing perversion." They will put the brakes on a planned mail campaign in support of Roberts.
In a recent Washington Post article, Richard Cohen took the White House to task for rushing to explain away Judge Roberts' seeming tolerance toward gays and lesbians, saying:
The White House and its allies, understandably alarmed at implications of moderation and enlightenment, were quick to suggest that Roberts was not, as some might slander him, a reasonable man. Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, pointed out that Roberts had spent less than 10 hours working on the gay rights case. She made it sound like a one-night stand, a youthful indiscretion for which no adult should be held accountable. Hell, we've all been young.
Jay Sekulow, a leader in the movement to make the high court intellectually indistinguishable from the Inquisition, rushed to explain Roberts to his constituency. This was something lawyers did. "A lot of people are commenting who don't know about Supreme Court practice," Sekulow said. "There's a high degree of collegiality." In other words, it meant nothing. Still, maybe Roberts could prove himself by beating up some gays. Sean Rushton, director of the Committee for Justice, a right-wing group, characterized the revelation about Roberts's inexplicable pro bono work as "a red herring meant to divide the right." What he meant by this is not entirely clear unless, of course, evidence surfaces to show that Roberts ingested a mushroom and temporarily lost his mind. That might explain why he awkwardly found himself on the side of human rights.
As for Focus on the Family, possibly the premier organization in such matters, it portrayed Roberts as a mindless puppet of his law firm. "That's what lawyers do -- represent their firm's clients, whether they agree with what those clients stand for or not," it said in a statement. Of course, that's not the case at all. " Anyone who didn't want to work on a case for whatever matter, they didn't have to," said Walter A. Smith Jr., the Hogan & Hartson partner who ran the pro bono program. Oh.
The spectacle of conservative groups and the White House rushing to assure their constituencies that Roberts is not -- really and truly -- a tolerant man is both repulsive and absurd. In the end, this tethering of conservatism to the lost cause of homophobia will earn the rebuke of history. In the meantime, though, it puts Roberts on the spot. He might assert that he has been cruelly mischaracterized and, for benefit of career, renounce the work he had once done. But more likely his pro bono work speaks for itself. Until he says otherwise, on gay rights, he's out of the closet.
This is just ludicrous. Isn't it absolutely horrid that Judge Roberts might have thought that landlords and employers in Colorado, who can NOT discriminate against blacks, Muslims, Asians, Jews, or whites, should also not be allowed to discriminate against American citizens who are gays or lesbians? Who would want a man like that on the Supreme Court?
Hopefully there are millions upon millions of hands waving in the air with voices shouting, "I WOULD!!"
