Playing Dumb and Dirty

I used to be ashamed to be from California, land of the celebrity-politician --Reagan, the current Govenator.

But now, having seen one of the most infuriating smear commercials for Massachusett's governorship, I have finally found a state's politician I esteem less than California's.

One of the worst ads I have ever seen on TV is run by Republican candidate, Kerry Healey, against her opponent, Democrat, Patrick Deval.

In the ad, Healey implies that her opponent would make a bad governor because he's soft on crime. Classic Republican tactic (because admittedly, most Dems are too soft on crime).

But the way Healey does it is such an insult to the viewers. She manipulates totally irrelevant data to mislead people to draw a completely nonsequitur conclusion! Argh. I hate illogical arguments. I'm foaming at the mouth just thinking about it!!!

How does Healey start her ruse? The commercial begins like a scene from Cops, a dark highway and raw footage. Then a narrator, who sounds like the same guy who announces for America's Most Wanted, says something like:

"A young Florida state trooper came up to a stranded motorist and tried to help him. The driver shot and killed the trooper and was sentenced to death. Deval Patrick was his lawyer and got his sentence reduced. Now the killer is up for parole...

A lawyer is supposed to defend his client, but do we really want someone like that for our governor?"

Whoooooah there Healey! Back it up! There are so many holes in the "logic" of this ad it can't even float in a bathtub.

First of all, why wouldn't I want a great criminal defense attorney as my governor? The fact that he's a great lawyer probably means he's smart as a whip and knows how to get the job done.

Second, just because a defense attorney does his job well defending criminals DOES NOT NECESSARILY mean he is soft on crime. The man is just doing his job. Without further knowledge, one can not know anything about Deval's real views on crime just based on the bare facts of the commercial alone. Too little information!

Third, did you feel scared that the killer is now on parole? Well, don't be. "Parole" sounds like this guy is almost going to get out, but more likely than not, this guy will rot in jail for the rest of his life. Sure he's up for "parole", but he probably won't get it, ever.

And fourth, the commercial makes a big deal about Deval getting the killer a reduced sentence. But do they mention what that sentence was reduced from? Nope. It could've been reduced from 80 years to 75. Big whoop. That would make no practical difference at all.

Bottomline is: This ad is just plain stupid! A lot of things can go wrong in a criminal investigation. There are so many mitigating circumstances that you can't make a value judgment about whether the sentence was too lenient or not just based on the few sensational details the commercial selectively chose to reveal.

The criminal could have been mentally retarded or psychotic or convicted only on circumstantial evidence, or even misidentified!!! The ad wants you to think this guy deserved to fry, but we really don't know enough about the case to make any kind of judgment on that at all!

And suggesting that Deval would be soft on crime just because he once defended this convicted cop killer is such a horrible leap of logic. Who knows how little the reduction was? Who knows what Deval really thought about all this? Even if we grant Healey the most generous assumption, that Deval really was too sympathetic to the criminal, WHO CARES? His views could've totally changed by now!!!

If you want to say that Deval is too soft on crime, you'll need more than this flimsy commercial and the authoritative voice of the "America's Most Wanted" guy.

Maybe Deval really is soft on crime. But all this commercial shows is that Kerry Healey is soft on logic, which means she's either really soft in the head, or soft on integrity!

You can watch the nauseous commercial for yourself here.

***Addendum -- I finally realized what got me so riled up about this commercial. I mean, what's the big deal since, after all, ALL political commercials are full of crappalicious spins. But usually, they spin crap and make illogical leaps about POLITICAL ISSUES, like raising taxes and cutting funding for schools. THIS commercial totally steps over the line and hits below the belt by spinning completely irrelevant, non-political crap. It's the closest thing you can get to an ad hominem attack these days, like, X-Candidate will be a bad Govenor because his eyes are green. Stupid, stupid, stupid!