No One Vote for This Guy, Okay?

Of all the ludicrous political ads I've posted this year, this piece of work from Rudy Giuliani may be the most offensive and insane:



What's the selling point behind this advertisement? Rudy Giuliani's already been in charge of one place that got blown up! How many cities that have been placed under your immediate supervision were thereafter successful targets for international terrorist conspiraces, Fred Thompson? Oh, zero? How interesting!

I mean, just like the ad says, Giuliani was "tested." He had a chance to select any location in New York City for his command center. He chose the World Trade Center. He had a chance to ensure his fire crews had proper, working radios. He didn't. He had a chance to protect the health and safety of his rescue teams by determining and disseminating accurate information about the the risks of breathing Ground Zero air. He didn't. So, yeah, he's been tested, but it's not like he passed the test. This is like asking a stranger to have sex with you because you've been tested for STD's. I don't care that you took the test...what were the results? Cause if I were to extend the 9/11-STD metaphor, Rudy Giuliani would have, bare minimum, Stage 3 syphilis.

But even putting the logic of his argument aside for a moment, the ad's crude xenophobia is just sickening. If America survives its current economic, social, political, military and existential crises, and our history classes ever get around to studying the politics and culture of the mid-to-late Aughts, I'm convinced this ad would be shown as an example of our growing fear and hatred of Muslims, informed largely by a thoroughly corrupted media propagating a warped, completely counter-factual narrative about encroaching Caliphates and imminent threats to our way of life.

Though it's hard to top the intensely bizarre, maniacal Tom Tancredo ads in which Our Hero attempts to save us from the creeping Brown Menace, I think Giuliani wins the "Most Racist Political Ad of Our Times" award. That this is a serious piece of actual campaigning, airing on Iowa television as recently as today, is scary stuff, and not for the reasons intended. Giuliani, like Bush before him, wishes to terrorize the American public into submission. He aims to make Americans so horrifically, constantly afraid of terrorist threats, they will continue to blindly cede to him the same powers and privileges we have ceded to his predecessor for seven years. If you really like the way things are going for America at this particular moment in history, please, vote Giuliani. However, if you like things like not-torturing-people or being-spied-on, maybe go some other way...