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This site is a member of WebRing. To browse visit here. Tuesday, July 13, 2004 Life in the political Twilight Zone The political advertising around here just keeps getting more bizarre. Vernon Robinson, a Winston-Salem alderman running for Congress in North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District, has already been condemned for his use of negative, often outright dishonest, advertising. Jack Kemp, whom Robinson claimed was his campaign chairman, publicly disassociated himself from Robinson, and the gossip mill says that President Bush is also shying away from any connection with him. Robinson’s virulent anti-immigration invective, in an area with a large Hispanic population, would have been enough to make anyone wonder about him, but he has gone off the deep end with his newest television ad, entitled "The Twilight Zone vs. Leave it to Beaver." When I saw the spot this morning, my first reaction was that it was a parody put out by some malicious prankster. I nearly called the station (WXII, in Winston-Salem) and demanded to know how they could have aired it. But it’s for real. You can watch it on Robinson's website. The ad begins, “If you’re a conservative Republican, watching the news these days can make you feel as though you’re in . . . The Twilight Zone!” with the signature “Doo-dee doo-dah” melody from the television show in the background, and The Twilight Zone’s title frame on the screen of a fifties vintage television set. The ad goes through Robinson’s laundry list of complaints:We’re under attack from Islamic extremists in every corner of the world.Homosexuals are mocking holy matrimony, and lesbians and feminists are attacking everything sacred.Liberal judges have completely rewritten the constitution. You can burn the American flag and kill a million babies a year, but you can’t post the Ten Commandments, or say God in public schoolsSeven out of every ten children are born out of wedlock, and Jackson and Sharpton claim the answer is . . . racial quotas.And the aliens are here, but they didn’t come in alien spaceships. They came across our unguarded Mexican border by the millions.It ends, “I’m Vernon Robinson. If you elect me to Congress, I’ll send that back to the Twilight Zone. I approve of this message, and of traditional American values.” And then . . . and then! I stood there watching with my jaw on the floor while the spot concluded with a clip from "Leave It to Beaver," complete with a few bars of the theme music. Is this man completely round the bend? To begin with, Vernon Robinson is black, yet the only black faces in the entire spot were the images of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton—Jackson represented as though in a mug shot. The children covering their faces when they came to "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance were all white. Everyone in the "Leave It to Beaver" segment was certainly white. Who is Vernon Robinson sucking up to here? The best that could be said is that he can’t be accused to nepotism. He also can’t be accused of wanting to represent everyone in his district. And what can you make of his use of the "Leave It to Beaver" material? Does Robinson not remember what life was like for African-Americans in 1957, when the show first aired? Well, maybe not. I don’t know how old Robinson is—he may not even have been around yet then. Somebody needs to tell him. I sure as hell remember. I remember grown men stepping off the sidewalk to allow me, a twelve year old white kid, to go by. I remember the couple who cleaned my school carrying paper cups around with them so they could drink out of the water fountain. I remember the white teachers referring to blacks as "niggers" and "coons." And that’s the tip of the iceberg. To use "Leave It to Beaver" as representative of "American values" may be a supreme touch of unintentional irony, but it can’t truly be what Vernon Robinson wants this country to return to. If it is, then he richly deserves whatever he gets. Last, but possibly not least in these litigious days, I wonder whether Robinson obtained the rights to use images and music from the two television shows. Hollywood tends to be rather proprietary about such things. I also wonder whether the stations on which this spot is aired should be concerned about their own liability. I called WXII three times today and left messages with multiple people in the advertising department (whose voice mail messages assured me that they were there, but "on another line or temporarily out of the office"). No one returned my calls. By the way, on his endorsements page, Robinson cites Bob Barr (yes, the same Bob Barr who addressed a white supremacist convention, paid for his second wife to have an abortion even though he calls himself a pro-lifer, and while married to his third wife, was photographed licking whipped cream off the bare chests of two other women). Robinson also includes Randall Terry in his list of supporters, the Randall Terry of Operation Rescue fame, who said, "Let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good." [The News Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Aug 15, 1993] Vernon Robinson is the one in the Twilight Zone. I don’t know whether to thank God I live in Virginia, or to be sorry I don’t live in North Carolina so I could vote against him. posted by Liz @ 11:31 PM | The template is set to display 10 posts. To see all the posts for this month, click on the month name in the Archive section RSS Feed PERSONAL Send email toliz at life-as-a-spectator-sport.com Home I'm a mother, grandmother, a computer professional, Democrat, Christian. I welcome politely worded comments and email, my spam filter throws the rest away, so don't bother to flame me WHY 'LIFE AS A SPECTATOR SPORT' "If you're lucky not to live in the gutters of a slum, but still can't afford to take vacations in the Alps, you're part of that enormous middle class who lives life through the medium of the television, further separated from "real" life by air conditioner, by automobile, by dishwasher, microwave and ice-in-the-door refrigerator, by automatic washer and dryer, and all the other appliances and conveniences that make it possible for America to live life at second hand. I'm not sure why Americans decided that televised drama was better than the real thing, that cardboard microwave food containers were an adequate substitute for real dishes, and their contents for real food, or that cooking, dishwashing and face-to-face conversation wasn't worth the effort and time it required. Someone fed this nation a plastic crate of out-of-season tomatoes and told us it was life and we took them at their word, and we're so much the poorer for it that it's hard to know where to start to list the shortcomings." I wrote this a couple of years ago, but I have to admit it's much less amusing than I thought it would be to see the artifical construct falling apart. 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The political advertising around here just keeps getting more bizarre. Vernon Robinson, a Winston-Salem alderman running for Congress in North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District, has already been condemned for his use of negative, often outright dishonest, advertising. Jack Kemp, whom Robinson claimed was his campaign chairman, publicly disassociated himself from Robinson, and the gossip mill says that President Bush is also shying away from any connection with him. Robinson’s virulent anti-immigration invective, in an area with a large Hispanic population, would have been enough to make anyone wonder about him, but he has gone off the deep end with his newest television ad, entitled "The Twilight Zone vs. Leave it to Beaver." When I saw the spot this morning, my first reaction was that it was a parody put out by some malicious prankster. I nearly called the station (WXII, in Winston-Salem) and demanded to know how they could have aired it. But it’s for real. You can watch it on Robinson's website. The ad begins, “If you’re a conservative Republican, watching the news these days can make you feel as though you’re in . . . The Twilight Zone!” with the signature “Doo-dee doo-dah” melody from the television show in the background, and The Twilight Zone’s title frame on the screen of a fifties vintage television set. The ad goes through Robinson’s laundry list of complaints:We’re under attack from Islamic extremists in every corner of the world.Homosexuals are mocking holy matrimony, and lesbians and feminists are attacking everything sacred.Liberal judges have completely rewritten the constitution. You can burn the American flag and kill a million babies a year, but you can’t post the Ten Commandments, or say God in public schoolsSeven out of every ten children are born out of wedlock, and Jackson and Sharpton claim the answer is . . . racial quotas.And the aliens are here, but they didn’t come in alien spaceships. They came across our unguarded Mexican border by the millions.It ends, “I’m Vernon Robinson. If you elect me to Congress, I’ll send that back to the Twilight Zone. I approve of this message, and of traditional American values.” And then . . . and then! I stood there watching with my jaw on the floor while the spot concluded with a clip from "Leave It to Beaver," complete with a few bars of the theme music. Is this man completely round the bend? To begin with, Vernon Robinson is black, yet the only black faces in the entire spot were the images of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton—Jackson represented as though in a mug shot. The children covering their faces when they came to "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance were all white. Everyone in the "Leave It to Beaver" segment was certainly white. Who is Vernon Robinson sucking up to here? The best that could be said is that he can’t be accused to nepotism. He also can’t be accused of wanting to represent everyone in his district. And what can you make of his use of the "Leave It to Beaver" material? Does Robinson not remember what life was like for African-Americans in 1957, when the show first aired? Well, maybe not. I don’t know how old Robinson is—he may not even have been around yet then. Somebody needs to tell him. I sure as hell remember. I remember grown men stepping off the sidewalk to allow me, a twelve year old white kid, to go by. I remember the couple who cleaned my school carrying paper cups around with them so they could drink out of the water fountain. I remember the white teachers referring to blacks as "niggers" and "coons." And that’s the tip of the iceberg. To use "Leave It to Beaver" as representative of "American values" may be a supreme touch of unintentional irony, but it can’t truly be what Vernon Robinson wants this country to return to. If it is, then he richly deserves whatever he gets. Last, but possibly not least in these litigious days, I wonder whether Robinson obtained the rights to use images and music from the two television shows. Hollywood tends to be rather proprietary about such things. I also wonder whether the stations on which this spot is aired should be concerned about their own liability. I called WXII three times today and left messages with multiple people in the advertising department (whose voice mail messages assured me that they were there, but "on another line or temporarily out of the office"). No one returned my calls. By the way, on his endorsements page, Robinson cites Bob Barr (yes, the same Bob Barr who addressed a white supremacist convention, paid for his second wife to have an abortion even though he calls himself a pro-lifer, and while married to his third wife, was photographed licking whipped cream off the bare chests of two other women). Robinson also includes Randall Terry in his list of supporters, the Randall Terry of Operation Rescue fame, who said, "Let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good." [The News Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Aug 15, 1993] Vernon Robinson is the one in the Twilight Zone. I don’t know whether to thank God I live in Virginia, or to be sorry I don’t live in North Carolina so I could vote against him.
The template is set to display 10 posts. To see all the posts for this month, click on the month name in the Archive section
RSS Feed
PERSONAL
WHY 'LIFE AS A SPECTATOR SPORT'
"If you're lucky not to live in the gutters of a slum, but still can't afford to take vacations in the Alps, you're part of that enormous middle class who lives life through the medium of the television, further separated from "real" life by air conditioner, by automobile, by dishwasher, microwave and ice-in-the-door refrigerator, by automatic washer and dryer, and all the other appliances and conveniences that make it possible for America to live life at second hand. I'm not sure why Americans decided that televised drama was better than the real thing, that cardboard microwave food containers were an adequate substitute for real dishes, and their contents for real food, or that cooking, dishwashing and face-to-face conversation wasn't worth the effort and time it required. Someone fed this nation a plastic crate of out-of-season tomatoes and told us it was life and we took them at their word, and we're so much the poorer for it that it's hard to know where to start to list the shortcomings." I wrote this a couple of years ago, but I have to admit it's much less amusing than I thought it would be to see the artifical construct falling apart.
THE NON-ELECTRIC HOME
Cleaning, 1 Cleaning, 2 Cleaning, 3
KNITTING BLOGS
Extravayarnza Knitting Heretic Mind of Winter Pie Knits Persistent Illusion See Eunny Knit The Keyboard Biologist Taleweaver's Ramblings TECHnitting Wendy Knits
FINISHED PROJECTS
SELF-RELIANCE AND THE FUTURE
POLITICAL BLOGS and SITES
BOOKS I'M READING
How to Grow More Vegetables, etc. Small Scale Grain Raising
ARCHIVES
February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 August 2008 July 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002
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