According to the Washington Post political blog “The Fix,” the latest Muffy ad tops the vicious scale, and is the equivalent of a “Hail Mary” pass. We’re still ranked number 4 on the list of likely turnovers.
Less than three weeks away from the 2006 midterm elections, Democrats appear well positioned to add to their collection of governors’ mansions across the country. Four seats — New York, Ohio, Colorado and Massachusetts — are looking increasingly like sure things….
4. Massachusetts: Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey (R) is bringing out the heavy artillery in her underdog race against former Assistant U.S. Attorney General Deval Patrick (D). In a new ad that began running yesterday, a woman is shown walking alone in a parking garage. The camera follows the perspective of a potential assailant while a narrator intones: “Have you ever heard a woman compliment a rapist?” The ad goes on to quote Patrick calling a man convicted of rape “thoughtful” and “eloquent.” Patrick’s comments were part of a public campaign that forced a DNA test to determine the man’s guilt; the test later confirmed the conviction. The ad, as vicious as we’ve seen this cycle, is the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. (Previous ranking: 4)
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p>Not going to happen in Massachusetts!
I love that the sitting administration is apparently the “underdog” here.
Given the performance of the current administration, they deserve to be the underdog.
Kerry Healey’s television advertisements are transparently capitalizing on, and exploiting, the myth of the black rapist.
The truth, of course, is that women more often than not know their attackers. Department of Justice statistics in 1994 had indicated that 28% of victims are raped by husbands or boyfriends, 35% by acquaintances, and 5% by other relatives.
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Yet Healey hopes to reinforce in white women irrational fears of stranger rape by men of color – but the National Crime Victimization Survey noted that 92% of victims from 1992 to 1993 knew their assailant’s identity. Healey’s exploiting racist attitudes in these ads – and she knows it.
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Where’s her Klan robe?
That you moved over here from the boston.com forums. I think you’ll find the discourse here to be a vast improvement, even from our differently winged posters. Welcome!
The ads play on the fear of white men that “their women” will be raped. It is about re-inforcing the cultural sicknesses that perpetuate domestic violence, relationship abuse, oppression of women, children, homosexuals and those who have less physical and socio-economic power. It’s about power and control. She has single-handledly reversed decades of hard work by women to gain credibility and respectibility in the political arena. This isn’t about the women’s vote…it’s about the men’s vote.
So, for fun how about some clever Healey-o-ween images?
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Recent research indeed does suggest that women “tune out” these negative ads – and that they’re more likely to be discouraged from voting because of them. Perhaps this ad blitz is a “two -fer”: Suppress the women’s vote, while inciting the men?
I agree with John Silber’s statement (http://www.benlaguer…) made AFTER the DNA test that supposedly proved his guilt, that the case against LaGuer is seriously flawed. The DNA test was not performed using FBI-accepted procedures. Different samples, some of which may have been contaminated, were mixed, etc. For details, see the documents from DNA experts at http://www.benlaguer…
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If Kerry Healey had any interest in justice or the truth, she would not using Mr. LaGuer as a political football against Deval Patrick (who, by the way, has been endorsed by a record number of police and correctional officer unions).
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John Silber is not someone who is normally considered “soft on crime.”
Also, Healey keeps implying Deval is for the rapist/against the victim, but it is worthy to not that his support of LaGuer did not involve demonizing the victim. This was about the system, which, hello Scary Kerry, all criminalogists worth their salt know is flawed.
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Am I the only one to see the poetics of staging (perhaps accidental…) which here radiate and fairly glisten with comic irony?
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Dead historians (and historians alive today are making plans to) spin madly in there graves after the sight of Kerry Healey lecturing Deval Patrick flanked, on one side by a massive bust of John Adams, defender of British perpetrators of the Boston massacre and again flanked, on the opposite side, by an equally massive bust I believe to be that of John Quincy Adams, defender of the slave perpetrators of the Amistad massacre. Of course, as if to underline the point, behind her the serene countenance of Fredrick Douglass, waiting as patiently as ever, for rationality to re-emerge.