What? I just ... what?
Jun. 29th, 2010 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eruthrosSo I was following various feedreeder links and I ended up at a post that was talking about a Rick Barber for Congress ad that's so awful that I can't get past ".. what?" Warning for images of American slavery, the Holocaust, other situations involving slavery, and amazingly offensive and insensitive comparisons of those to taxation.
Transcript:
The first half of the ad involves Rick Barber doing some historical reenactment. He's sitting at a table with a "don't tread on me" flag, various papers, a gun, and a bible. Across from him is someone in a uniform, who is presumably supposed to be George Washington, though when we see him later in the ad he looks more like a wax-mannequin version of GW.
Rick Barber: Mr President, some argue that you would have been in favor of this tyrannical health care bill, because you enforced the whiskey act of 1791. But that was an excise tax, levied to service the military debt incurred by the revolutionary war: a legitimate function of government, correct?
George Washington nods
RB turns to an Abraham Lincoln reenactor in a stovepipe
RB: Hey Abe, if someone's forced to work for months to pay taxes so that a total stranger can get a free meal, medical procedure, or a bailout, what's that called?
Abraham Lincoln looks stern
RB: What's it called when one man is forced to work for another? (apparently Lincoln needed a more leading question?)
Abraham Lincoln: Slavery.
["slavery" echoes a couple times to still images of slavery in the USA, an arbeit macht frei sign from a Holocaust work camp, and other stills that I can't recognize at this speed]
RB: We shed a lot of blood to stop that in the past, didn't we? Now look at us. We are all becoming slaves to our government.
RB gets up and walks towards camera, and is eventually joined by a crowd of people walking towards camera, including the Lincoln and Washington reenactors.
RB: We live in perilous times, but we can't be afraid to speak out. Many good men and women have died for freedom, and I can't betray those sacrifices like so many Democrats and RINOs have. Don't be afraid! Fight for freedom so we can having morning in America again. Join our army of voters on July 13th.
[there's some this message approved by stuff, and then the ad zooms in on an older white man in the crowd, who begins singing one of the later verses of the Star Spangled Banner]
Singer:
O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
[background images for this section start out as war memorials and statues, and then transition to video war footage, and then closes on a cgi flag]
[a Glen Beck clip that involves a dollhouse airs]
RB: And Glen makes fun of my theatrics.
It's the sort of thing that I wouldn't have found out about in the days before the internet -- he's a Tea Party republican running for representative in Alabama, so not a giant name, before blogs I probably wouldn't have heard of him until after the election. But, just, seriously? Seriously taxation is slavery? Seriously comparable to the Holocaust? I mean, I know the tea party has pulled that comparison before, and will again, but there's something about the smugness of this ad, the defense of excise taxes while calling income taxes slavery, and the use of Abraham Lincoln as an anti-government mouthpiece that make me particularly "... what?" and it.
Transcript:
The first half of the ad involves Rick Barber doing some historical reenactment. He's sitting at a table with a "don't tread on me" flag, various papers, a gun, and a bible. Across from him is someone in a uniform, who is presumably supposed to be George Washington, though when we see him later in the ad he looks more like a wax-mannequin version of GW.
Rick Barber: Mr President, some argue that you would have been in favor of this tyrannical health care bill, because you enforced the whiskey act of 1791. But that was an excise tax, levied to service the military debt incurred by the revolutionary war: a legitimate function of government, correct?
George Washington nods
RB turns to an Abraham Lincoln reenactor in a stovepipe
RB: Hey Abe, if someone's forced to work for months to pay taxes so that a total stranger can get a free meal, medical procedure, or a bailout, what's that called?
Abraham Lincoln looks stern
RB: What's it called when one man is forced to work for another? (apparently Lincoln needed a more leading question?)
Abraham Lincoln: Slavery.
["slavery" echoes a couple times to still images of slavery in the USA, an arbeit macht frei sign from a Holocaust work camp, and other stills that I can't recognize at this speed]
RB: We shed a lot of blood to stop that in the past, didn't we? Now look at us. We are all becoming slaves to our government.
RB gets up and walks towards camera, and is eventually joined by a crowd of people walking towards camera, including the Lincoln and Washington reenactors.
RB: We live in perilous times, but we can't be afraid to speak out. Many good men and women have died for freedom, and I can't betray those sacrifices like so many Democrats and RINOs have. Don't be afraid! Fight for freedom so we can having morning in America again. Join our army of voters on July 13th.
[there's some this message approved by stuff, and then the ad zooms in on an older white man in the crowd, who begins singing one of the later verses of the Star Spangled Banner]
Singer:
O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
[background images for this section start out as war memorials and statues, and then transition to video war footage, and then closes on a cgi flag]
[a Glen Beck clip that involves a dollhouse airs]
RB: And Glen makes fun of my theatrics.
It's the sort of thing that I wouldn't have found out about in the days before the internet -- he's a Tea Party republican running for representative in Alabama, so not a giant name, before blogs I probably wouldn't have heard of him until after the election. But, just, seriously? Seriously taxation is slavery? Seriously comparable to the Holocaust? I mean, I know the tea party has pulled that comparison before, and will again, but there's something about the smugness of this ad, the defense of excise taxes while calling income taxes slavery, and the use of Abraham Lincoln as an anti-government mouthpiece that make me particularly "... what?" and it.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-29 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-04 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-29 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-30 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-30 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-04 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-01 03:34 pm (UTC)b) our National Anthem is fucked up and we should change it, even if we never sing more than the first verse, because "conquer we must when our cause is just" is not a healthy thing
Also, I feel pretty sure that white Christian dudes have more often been the perpetrators rather than the victims of genocide, so that little "Arbeit Macht Frei" reference was completely unnecessary.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-04 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-04 01:55 pm (UTC)a total stranger can get a free meal, medical procedure, or a bailouttheir country has money to do things like make roads, build schools and hospitals, run a justice system, maintain their army, and pay their politicians, what's that called?"Or is he not planning to draw a salary if he's elected?
no subject
Date: 2010-07-04 06:41 pm (UTC)