Point

Attack advertising benefits the public in the short term and in the long term by engaging more people, opening voters up to things they have never seen and encouraging them to research the important issues in a campaign.

It is interesting that most would say that negative campaigning is a bad thing when it isn't. Negative campaigning engages people who see the ads and discuss them. In the past several weeks, I don't know how many times I have been asked if I saw the mud-slinging ads that state senators Andrew Harris and E.J. Pipkin have been lobbing at each other. Both ads accuse the other of doing the same thing—namely, supporting a tax hike by Gov. Martin O'Malley. Which attack ad is true?

Which candidate is being truthful doesn't really matter. These ads work because they expose the candidates' names to the public, muddy their opponents and get people talking to each other about the ads. In the end, people are actually talking about the candidates.

Voters talk about the advertisements to people who may have never seen the ads or even heard of the candidates. Not only are voters more engaged for the election but, also, they are sharing their knowledge. Much of the time, people on either side of the aisle will research the issues being discussed in negative campaigning—many want to know who really is telling the truth.

During the 2006 mid-term elections in Maryland, I saw one negative advertisement after another. When those ads presented something I felt should be discussed or I felt that the candidate's version of the truth wasn't exactly true, I would write a letter to the editor of the local newsletters.

I did this on more than one occasion when there were negative commercials that said untrue things regarding both U.S. Senate candidate Michael Steele and gubernatorial candidate Robert Ehrlich. It is necessary to watch all advertising and to read the facts surrounding them.

I encourage you to watch some attack advertisements in the coming months; you'll notice more people talking about the issues and getting involved.

Victor Henderson, graduate student, can be reached at victor.henderson@ubalt.edu.

CounterPoint

Long ago and far away, pro-wrestling was my life. My schedule revolved around WWE Saturday Night's Main Event, WCW Monday Nitro, WWE Friday Night SmackDown, and everything in between. Eventually, I began to notice a trend emerge. Gone were the days when Frank Gotch (look him up) and Lou Thesz (look him up too) would come to the ring, beat an opponent and wordlessly move on to the next victim. Nowadays, in order to make any impact in wrestling, you must first get an "A" in Trash Talk 101.

That's what I learned to expect and love when I turned on USA on a Monday night. Since then, my tastes have changed and my viewing has matured. I still hear trash talk, but instead of hearing it on TNT, I hear it on CNN.

I am not interested in seeing Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani strip down to their skivvies and put down their opponents' mothers. In fact, I am not interested in seeing them in their skivvies for any purpose. I am interested in better education for my children and better health care for my grandmother. I am interested in reasonable gas prices so that I can get to my barely-above-minimum-wage job so that I can support the rising gas and electric costs that are somehow tied to a war no one wants.

I turn on my television to my favorite reruns of "I Love Lucy" on TV Land and find that my downtime is polluted with negative campaign ads that aim simplistic messages at potential voters who rarely bother to get all of the facts. Viewers can only react viscerally to the clever words, slow-motion video, ominous voices and juxtaposed images on the screen.

Negative, truth-distorting ads are to democracy what pornography is to free speech. The worst part is that the ads work—a monument to the sick power of win-at-all-costs politics. I'm not impressed. No hitting below the belt, no foreign objects, let's have a clean fight.

Briana CaBell, English major and staff writer for The UB Post, can be reached at briana.cabell@ubalt.edu.

Article Tools