As we spend the next few weeks getting bombarded with TV campaign advertising, we need to view them with a skeptical eye.
Take for example an ad for President Bush talking about health care. It blasts John Kerry’s plan as being “big government” and claims it will take control of health care out of the hands of the public and doctors.
That’s a ludicrous assertion. Under current health plans, people are not in control of what doctors, dentists or specialists they want to see. People have to go to a doctor, dentist or specialist who is aligned with that plan or else bear more of the costs themselves. Ditto if a patient wants a second opinion.
The modern health care system has stripped freedom of choice away from people. It has left access to health care in control of a legal entity (a corporation) that is beholden to shareholders, not the people. It’s another example of how America has evolved into a corporate feudal state.
A notorious example occurred in 1960s Las Vegas. According to investigative reporters Sally Denton and Roger Morris, Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters union ensured success of the then-new Sunrise Hospital, which a Teamster pension loan helped build, by requiring union casino workers to be treated at Sunrise or the county hospital, which Denton and Morris described as “grim.”
As for the notion of big government, that’s a laugher. Apparently the Patriot Act, with its potential for spying on any of us for any reason while the government can claim we have possible terrorist tendencies, is not big government. Neither, apparently, is the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the federal measure that orders local school districts to meet various goals but not give them the money to get there. So much for what’s supposed to be a key tenet of the traditional Republican platform: state’s rights.
Then there are ads judging candidates on voting records. While it may be true that a state or federal legislator voted for or against something that can be used to tug at people’s emotions, those ads don’t give you enough context.
For instance, was a provision that would be beneficial attached to a spending bill that on the whole was wasteful? In legislative circles, this is called a rider, and it’s a means by which many items are approved, some of which later are revealed as examples of wasteful spending.
Campaign advertising should be used by voters as a starting point for further research on a given topic, not the gospel. But alas, most voters would rather be spoon-fed misleading information. No wonder such deceptive advertising works.
John Santana is a writer and editor with The Enterprise Newspapers.
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