April 08, 2008

DNC complains about John McCain Google ad running on anti-illegal immigration site (BVBL)

Various Democrats have said and done some surreal things, but certainly a contender for their Top 100 list is this press release from the Democratic National Committee (via this) complaining about a Google ad John McCain is running.

Well, actually, they aren't complaining about the ad itself, only the fact that the ad was running on "Black Velvet Bruce Li" (bvbl.net; picture of the ad: democrats.org/page/-/images/mccain-web-ad.PNG), which they falsely claim is a "hate site". The specifics of Google ads make this all the more surreal [1].

Based on my occasional visits to the site, I haven't seen any "hate". I have, however, seen a somewhat successful effort to oppose illegal activity in the Virginia area. Obviously, opposing illegal activity would cost the Democrats power, so they have to use every means at their disposal - no matter how idiotic - to oppose it. The release doesn't seem to have been posted to democrats.org, so perhaps they realized (too late) how stupid they were being. It also puts "illegal aliens" in quotes, implying that they'd prefer a euphemism or perhaps even that they don't see anything illegal in coming here... illegally.

And, they kick it up a notch by comparing support for illegal activity with support for the Civil Rights Movement:

"John McCain can't apologize for one mistake while making another of the same ilk. As recently as 1994 John McCain voted to cut off funding for the Commission promoting Dr. King's holiday, but today says he made 'a mistake.' If McCain is truly regretful of those past actions, how can he justify advertising on a website that promotes the same type of hate and division Dr. King gave his life to end?"

Those involved in the release were: DNC Hispanic Caucus Chair Ramona Martinez, Black Caucus Chair Virgie Rollins, and APIA Caucus Chair Bel Leong-Hong.

[1] For those unfamiliar with how those ads work, you can target your Google ads to appear on specific sites, or you can just let Google choose which sites to show them on. I can block ads from certain sites from appearing on this site (so BVBL could block McCain campaign ads), but I don't recall whether someone can block their ads from appearing on certain sites when Google is the one that choose where the sites appear.

Posted to Politics at April 8, 2008 04:06 PM