David Weigel | August 31, 2006
Yes, it's hilarious that Joe Lieberman's high-powered campaign team meant to portray "a rising sun" in their new TV ad and instead used footage of a sun setting in California. But I'm amazed no one has spotted the Bob Roberts connection. If you recall, in his 1992 film about a hollow, venal right-wing Senate candidate played by director Tim Robbins, there's a scene where the candidate's aides are screening a new TV ad. It's a mishmash of pretty images - flowers unfolding, the sun shining, grass blowing gently in the wind. After 30 seconds of this the message comes onscreen: "For a new day, vote Bob." It runs like a slightly less maudlin version of the film Edward G. Robinson watches in the suicide room in Soylent Green. The ad's a failure, and Bob doesn't start moving in the polls until he runs brutal attack ads against the incumbent Democrat, played by Gore Vidal.
Yes, Lieberman's team is cribbing plays from a fictional U.S. Senate campaign. I wonder, why do liberals have such low opinions of Democratic consultants?
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As Debussy (``German influence never had any ill effect on
anyone except those people easily impressed'') wrote of Wagner in
1903 : ``Wagner, if one may be permitted a little of the
grandiloquence that suits the man, was a beautiful sunset that has
been mistaken for a sunrise.''
Debussy on Music, p.83
Who in the hell has the time (or the interest) to search out and find a specific image from the Getty photo archives and connect it to a Connecticut political campaign commercial??
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