A fight to the death — and we are the casualties

Rebecca AsoulinStaff WriterI have long held a guilty pleasure: I enjoy advertisements nearly as much as the actual television programs. They can be extraordinarily entertaining and they occasionally border on complete lunacy. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure, and the misfortune, of seeing such an advertisement. No, it wasn’t a classically cheesy taco ad (pun intended).  It was a political ad that attempted to convince me that Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO and previous Republican candidate for California governor, is a liar.  Instead, this advertisement only succeeded in making me laugh. I sat there dumbfounded as Meg Whitman’s nose grew to larger and larger proportions, and I smiled to myself; the final leg of the 2010 California governor race had begun.Whitman wasted little time after her win in the GOP primary, and ran her first ad in her general election battle with current California Governor Jerry Brown in early June. Like other wealthy former California candidates, Whitman bombarded the airwaves. She ran more than 1,300 television spots a day, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising. It is the most expensive campaign ever for a non-presidential election, according to The Washington Post. Whitman has poured $139 million of her personal fortune into the race, outspending her Democratic opponent, Jerry Brown, by more than 10 to 1.Brown only started running his ads very close to election day, but his campaign was in full force. A recent ad sponsored by Whitman attacks Brown’s long career as a politician. The ad is filled with inaccuracies and contains nine separate attacks. According to a non-partisan organization, FactCheck.org, that checks the factuality of political ads, one inaccurate statement in the ad is that crime soared during Brown’s tenure as Mayor of Oakland when in reality it went down 13 percent. Furthermore, some of Whitman’s claims, while technically true, become distorted by the way she presented them.Brown responded with a child-like ad calling Whitman a liar and featuring her as a Pinnochio-like figure whose nose gets progressively larger with every lie she tells. Brown continued this system of name calling when he aired a Spanish language ad calling Whitman “two-faced.” The ad exploited the recent immigration scandal surrounding Whitman over her former housekeeper.  Investigators got the housekeeper to admit she was an undocumented worker employed by Whitman and at a teary eyed press conference she claimed that Whitman had bullied her.  Meanwhile, someone in Brown’s campaign was recorded calling his opponent Whitman a “whore.” Whitman’s spokesman called it “an appalling and unforgivable smear.” Brown’s name calling was an immature move that causes us, the citizens, to laugh instead of take him and his ideas seriously.This election is not the first political race to use these smear tactics, nor will it be the last. However, our new age of media has catapulted them to astronomical levels. The accessibility to the public that viral ads offer to candidates has incredible potential, and if used properly could be an invaluable way of educating the public. Instead, candidates like Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman use the airwaves to distort the image and character of their opponent instead of expounding upon their own political opinions, ideas and plans.Perhaps we can take twisted comfort in the fact that some things never change, despite the fact that California is currently in one of the worst fiscal situations in its history. Our candidates are still spending ludicrous amounts of money on vapid smear ads. Political critics have been calling the campaigning leading up to this election one of the dirtiest campaigns in history.  Even though this election has not been a clean one by any accounts, it has undoubtedly been an entertaining one.rasoulin@thesamohi.com