Thankfully, political ads sometimes go positive
Just a few odds and ends to go over this week:
• Last week, I blasted political action committees for the excessive negativism in the ads they place on radio and TV against the opponent, as opposed to for the candidate they support. Here’s an update on that, and it made me think. Perhaps it will make you think, too.
Late last Friday, I received an order to broadcast radio ads from the advertising agency for Friends of Raimondo 2018. The ad they asked me to air on our station was as positive and supportive of the incumbent governor as it could be. Not a negative word in the whole 60 seconds about her opponents. The script lauded the governor’s accomplishments and spoke of the plans she has to do more if re-elected. After reviewing the commercial, I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. It seems, then, that at least one candidate is happy enough to let the PACs buy the negative ads and throw the stones while the candidate herself chooses to throw only flowers. I don’t know if it’s all planned that way, but I can tell you I thank God for little favors. At least there are some ads out there which are not attacking the opponent. Good.
• Here in Woonsocket, I see no blatantly negative ads. Good. Although I find it interesting that after a news story in The Call which reported that Woonsocket mayoral candidate Al Brien had a very small campaign war chest compared to incumbent Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, a number of candidates seem to be supporting Al as they campaign for themselves. The most obvious of these is Woonsocket City Council candidate Roger Jalette, who actually uses a significant part of his advertising to ask voters to vote for Al Brien for mayor. It would appear that what candidate Al Brien lacks in finances is possibly made up for in friends and supporters. I don’t know, but I’ve never seen this before in local elections I’ve covered since 1972.
• There are a couple of interesting things on the newswire this week. An ambulance was rushing through an intersection in Connecticut, doing what ambulances do to save lives and to help people when it was broadsided by another car, speeding through the same intersection from the other direction. The ambulance was hit with so much force that it was tipped over on its side and the ambulance driver was trapped underneath it. Somehow, together bystanders and passers-by summoned super-human strength to lift the 10,000-pound vehicle and free the driver. Even the people who lifted the 5-ton truck can’t believe they did it.
• There’s word from Washington that President Trump wants to reverse another Obama-era policy of the federal government. This one recognizes that some people feel they were not meant to be in a body of the sex they were born with. It’s called “identifying” as a male or female regardless of the body type, or for example, “being a woman trapped in a man’s body.”
Okay, there have been jokes about this for what seems like forever. I have no idea myself how valid these claims are because I’m not them. All I can say is that I try to respect all people for the content of their character, not what sex they are or what sex they want to be. It’s beyond me to know. So I won’t judge when the claim seems seriously made.
As far as this goes, it is one of those few times I agreed with Mr. Obama. He ordered that “transgendered” people should be protected under federal civil codes. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, has announced he wants every human being to be recorded by the federal government as being of the gender their bodies were at the time they were born, and they shall remain that gender their entire lives.
I just don’t see the wisdom in being intolerant of people who are different but are not hurting anyone else. And I mean “hurting” someone as opposed to “annoying” someone. I can see the government stepping in if a guy just decides he “feels like a woman” today so he can go into a ladies’ bathroom and misbehave; nobody would support that. I’m just saying we should start out from a place of respect for others and, so long as no one is hurt, live and let live. I disagree with Mr. Trump on this one and wonder if he’s just reversing it because that’s what he likes to do with just about everything Mr. Obama did. But in doing so, Mr. President, I think we run the risk of hurting people with intolerance. That’s not the American way.