March 28, 2007

Political ads.

Someone asked me to explain why I've got an ad for Rudy Giuliani over there. Same reason I have an ad for Widener Law School a little further down. The ad was submitted for my approval in the BlogAds system that I use, and like every other ad that has ever been submitted here, I approved it. I encourage all the candidates to put ads on my blog. I won't reject anyone. What would it take for me to reject an ad? Offhand, I can think of a few things: nudity, obscenity, an ugly personal attack. If there were an evil candidate, I'd reject the ad. And my standard for judging a candidate to be evil is very high -- that is, he'd have to be very low.

18 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

A Nazi. A racist.

Ann Althouse said...

I say in the post that I would accept ads from all the candidates. As long as they eschew nudity, curse words, etc.

In fact, I'd prefer to have a variety of candidates advertising here to avoid the appearance of endorsement.

Plus, I like getting more ads. I enjoy getting paid for writing.

Simon said...

An anecdote -
Over at SF, we use GoogleAds, over which we have no control of content; Google takes keywords from blog posts and figures out what ads to place. It drives me absolutely up the wall that if I write a post ripping into Barack Obama, we get a "support Obama in '08; give money today" advert for a week.

Simon said...

Ann - might Tancredo reach that theshold? Despite smears to the contrary, the overwhelming majority of Republicans who are concerned about illegal immigration are genuinely concerned only with illegal immigrants; it plays into traditional conservative beliefs about law and order. But there is a small minority -- and I think Tancredo may fall into this category -- who are genuinely opposed to immigrants.

Kevin Lomax said...

Simon...Simon...Simon.

We all know all Republicans are evil.

Fen said...

No worries. I'm sure some will see this as "proof" you're not a moderate Dem, but the Powerline boys were in a similar position when the Hillary camp ran ads on their site. They said they don't deny any content, as long as its not defamatory, pornographic, etc.

And I'm pretty sure they don't support Hillary ;)

Barringer said...


And my standard for judging a candidate to be evil is very high -- that is, he'd have to be very low.


He OR she would have to be very low...

Maxine Weiss said...

Ah, I see.

So if "Mary", or "Quxxo", or "Reality_Check" were running for President, (you never know)

...you'd reject their Ads ?

Makes sense.

Peace, Maxine

Roger J. said...

"Nazi, rascist." OK how about anarchist? trotskeyite? communist? (and without getting into what movement is which) any extreme left leaning candidate, say to to the left of a modern "progressive?"

hdhouse said...

fascist springs to mind

Fen said...

I think the word "fascist" has been rendered useless.

Simon said...

Fen - I agree, and I'd add "neoconservative" to that category (I'm pleased to see that BHTV is on the case this week, with Bob batting it around with Eli Lake). To the extent that term ever had a concrete meaning, it's been entirely drained of that meaning by the left's casual use of it as an epithet to describe anyone, any idea or anything they dislike. I was reading -- gosh, I can't even remember what blog it was now, maybe Atrios or SovietBlog, and a commenter there complained about neoconservatives like "Cheney, Rice and Pat Buchanan." I mean, you have to laugh at the point where Buchanan's being described as a neocon - at that moment forward, the term has no actual content in serious discourse.

Randy said...

Personally, I'd draw the line right above Sam Brownback's name, but that's just me, and I don't have ads on my blog anyway, so it is a moot point.

Matt said...

Why not just reject all ads? All they do is try to sell us something we don't need.

Simon said...

Matt-
I would have thought that at this point, we could all agree that we desparately need leadership in this country, which would seem to make the Guiliani ad quite apt.

Eli Blake said...

Matt:

Why not just reject all ads? All they do is try to sell us something we don't need.

Well, Matt, you absolutely can reject all ads. You have the right to not pay attention to them and not buy what they are selling.

But the fact is, advertising exists precisely because it's been proven that it does work. In other words, given any ad, there is a chance that some (or some number) of people who otherwise would not have purchased the product will now do so. So the advertisers pay to have their ads placed, which is why you can read blogs for free (though some like me would still blog), listen to radio for free , watch TV for free and still buy a newspaper for fifty cents. It also helps make everything from bus rides to sporting events more affordable.

Isn't capitalism grand?

Mortimer Brezny said...

Fascism has discernible content.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7870.html

hdhouse said...

Eli - Cogent point. Well said. And since there are always those who question advertising and the power thereof:

Half of all advertising is a complete waste of time and money. No one sees it or if they do, it means nothing.

The other half delivers the message and calls the recipient/viewer/impression to an action that they either engage in then or at some later date.

The problem is figuring out which half I just bought for my advertising dollar.