last week i spoke about the news. you probably thought it was a welcome change after my constant babbling about the election election election election. well this week i'm back on my election kick, but at least i won't be talking about the presidential race (probably) or third parties (well... if you're lucky).

there's a race for governor in indiana this year so even though i'm watching less tv than ever i still have to see the gubernatorial campaign ads. this republican wacko david mcintosh started advertising eons ago (seems like last year), while the incumbent frank o'bannon (who was lt gov for 8 years under indiana politics' favorite dreamboat, evan bayh) didn't need to much until recently. o'bannon's ads were mostly fluff pieces, old folks saying they liked the guy, little kids saying they liked the guy, pokemon saying they liked the guy, & some little girl saying she wanted to bE frank o'bannon (i didn't even know o'bannon supported transsexuals!). recently, mcintosh's ads got dirty.

i was at a friend's last week when one of those ads came on. as i told her, the commercial disgusted me so much i had to turn up the volume. i knew it was vile, horrible, & was going to make me furious. so i wanted to be sure it was loud enough that i could make it all out clearly. i wanted to hear every word, to squeeze out every drop of bile it could inspire in me.

i don't know who started the attack ads (mcintosh would say it was o'bannon), but mcintosh is clearly the one who's being the worst about it. he's got at least 3 attack ads on the air, & they're all in that cliched attack ad style. you know what they're like: grainy photographs, out-of-context newspaper quotations (often with little graphics made up to look like photocopies of the newspaper page), & a condescending tabloid-esque announcer talking either about a candidate's integrity (how well do we really know frank o'bannon? last year frank o'bannon declared chemical warfare & personallly massacred an entire colony of defenseless carpenter ants near his home. look at this picture: he's got a real shifty look in his eye. frank o'bannon took your teenage daughter's virginity during that field trip to the governor's office.) or voting record (frank o'bannon voted against giving your kids a good education. frank o'bannon voted against giving you that promotion & instead voted to give it to that guy at the office who's always trying to bring you down. frank o'bannon voted against the emancipation proclamation [or i guess in south carolina, they'd accuse of voting fOR the emancipation proclamation].)

the first of them (the first i remember anyway) circled around a big fish kill that happened last year when some company dumped a bunch of poison in the white river & refused to take responsibility for it (fish kill, a great name for an ecological tragedy). the ad effectively blamed the fish kill on o'bannon & alleged he hadn't done enough/anything after the fact. well for one i remember reading about him doing stuff about it in the paper back when this was happening. & how the hell is he responsible? unless frankie strolled down to the white river & personally injected poison into thousands of fish individually...

attack ads are the lowest form of politics there is. they are a perversion of the political process. perhaps what they say is true, but even if it's not it gets lodged in the public's memory (RATS! RATS!) & the stain is still there. even worse is that these ads often don't come from the politicians themselves, but from corporate sponsors who make the ads as campaign donations (or soft money, to use a buzzword... now i feel like a real pundit), so you never know what could creep in. totally unauthorized ads could make the air, turning both sides smear as a kneejerk reaction, ruining entire campaigns.

the dumbest part is that they really aren't necessary. if a politician is truly incompetent, there's no need for attack ads because the news becomes an attack ad. look at gwb (sorry, i knew i said i wouldn't mention the prez race): every day he makes himself look like an idiot on camera. he's being accused of subliminal advertising & he can't even pronounce the word subliminal. so you can almost bet that the ones who use a lot of attack ads have something to hide, their own personal scandal worthy of its own tv spot.