Polispeak - the Presidential campaign ad prerequisite

Sometime listening to the polispeak would make me laugh if it were not for the blatant nature of the spin involved. Some of the best examples of this have been in the political ads released by each Party. The most recent example is from the Obama camp.

Senator Obama’s campaign released an interesting video the other day on the web.



This is a blatant and absolutely false statement. False because the video clip cuts off 24 seconds of the full comment. The result is exactly the same kind of attack that Obama complained about when the loop of five 10 second bits of Reverend Wright were being played. The argument was that the context was corrupted, the message changed. And that is true.

But how is this any better? The full comment is as follows.



It’s one thing to quote a comment, like



or



If Senator Obama wants to try to make Gov. Palin or Sen. McCain look bad the least he can do is use the actual comments that exist out there. Chopping up statements, especially those that are no more complimentary to him than any other candidate only makes me wonder why he is trying so hard. I mean what is he afraid of? Or is it he can’t handle the heat?

But considering that he is supposed to be the candidate of change (with a VP that firmly disagrees with many of his views, and firmly believed he does not deserve the nomination, and who has been one of the longest entrenched Washington DC politicians) his political ads seem oddly familiar. I guess the change is who is trying to manipulate the public, and which comments are to be looped.