Political smears of yesteryear caught on tape
Where are the political smears of yesteryear? They’re right at hand in a graphic archive for voters who can’t wait for the election cycle to descend to maximum attack mode.
The nation’s neatly cataloged television ads are available for a nostalgic laugh or wince at the Museum of the Moving Image. The museum is worth a trip to Astoria, Queens, but the graphic history of presidential commercials is also just a mouse click away (livingroomcandidate.org). Once a modern visitor finally views that notorious black-and-white TV ad that most 1964 voters never saw — the “Daisy Girl” mushroom cloud assault on Barry Goldwater as a nuclear war monger — the ads become as addictive as junk food.
The Daisy Girl, with the child’s sweet petal countdown morphing into a booming mushroom cloud, points perfectly to the modern tactic by which strategists float a slashing, artfully underhanded attack in just a few smaller outlets and thereby ignite reams of “free media” repetition as cable, bloggers and mainline news organizations blanket the subsequent controversy. (The ubiquitous Swift Boat ad of 2004 actually ran 739 times in just three states; Daisy Girl ran just once.)
Read entire article at NYT
The nation’s neatly cataloged television ads are available for a nostalgic laugh or wince at the Museum of the Moving Image. The museum is worth a trip to Astoria, Queens, but the graphic history of presidential commercials is also just a mouse click away (livingroomcandidate.org). Once a modern visitor finally views that notorious black-and-white TV ad that most 1964 voters never saw — the “Daisy Girl” mushroom cloud assault on Barry Goldwater as a nuclear war monger — the ads become as addictive as junk food.
The Daisy Girl, with the child’s sweet petal countdown morphing into a booming mushroom cloud, points perfectly to the modern tactic by which strategists float a slashing, artfully underhanded attack in just a few smaller outlets and thereby ignite reams of “free media” repetition as cable, bloggers and mainline news organizations blanket the subsequent controversy. (The ubiquitous Swift Boat ad of 2004 actually ran 739 times in just three states; Daisy Girl ran just once.)