Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!
I WISH OUR WARS were as nasty, brutish and short as our election campaigns. It's been barely a week since the slime faucet was turned off and our TV and radio commercials returned to flame broiling beef patties instead of human beings. But it takes at least a week for the odor of roasting candidates flesh to leave the nostrils. It's one of those smells -- like napalm in the morning -- you never forget. And no, it doesn't smell like victory as much as roadkill being poked with a stick. The corpse of decency stinks as it decomposes. And in American election campaigns decency is the first casualty.
The worst part is that in the stunning silence that follows the elections, when so-called normalcy returns to the airwaves, in the absence of the common din of attack ads ten times an hour, a quiet doubt nags the voter who has been paying attention. No matter who won, even if it's your guy, that man or woman has been labeled "WRONG" for Pennsylvania. Or New Jersey. Or Bucks County. Or America. Maybe, just maybe, we elected the WRONG candidate.
I couldn't tell you the names of everybody running in this past election who was WRONG about Iraq, about stem cell research, about tax cuts, about the minimum wage, about pay raises, about our schools, about crime, about property tax reform, about immigration, about senior citizens, about big business, about George Bush, about guns, about the enviornment, about nepotism, about the Bill of Rights, about lobbyists, about just about anything under the sun, including, quite possibly, sunlight. What I am sure about is that whoever got elected to whatever office is WRONG about something. And that's just not right.
There was an hilarious interview on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" last Tuesday about the unseen people who are the familiar voices of those negative political campaign ads we can recite in our sleep by election day. NPR host Melissa Block introduced Philadelphia voiceover artist Scott Sanders as the undisputed "king of the attack ads." You'd recognize Sander's voice immediately. It has all the menacing authority of the Grim Reaper or an IRS auditor on a social visit. It is a voice that says, "I am not here to kill you. But you are going to die."
Every election cycle Sanders' disappointed baritone growl can be heard on campaign ads attacking candidates from Kutztown to Tucumcari. He demonstrated the technique he has mastered by reading copy attacking nursery rhyme characters. "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. He said he could put himself together again. . . But after wasting thousands of our tax dollars, all the king's horses and all the king's men. . . he failed us. Humpty Dumpty. . . WRONG for wall sitting."
Listening to Sanders being interviewed, I realized that he sounds like a neighborhood guy (he lives in Fairmount) who is just doing his job, even if his job is telling voters which candidate is "wrong on jobs." He followed Humpty Dumpty by reading ad copy for another well-known flawed candidate. "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. His name is my name too. Whenever we go out, the people always shout. . . 'Hey, what about Iraq?' There goes John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. . .He's NOT on our side."
I don't know about you, but I don't need a political consultant to tell me the truth about Hansel and Gretel: "WRONG on house eating."
