I haven’t paid much attention to the New Jersey governor’s race. Oh, it looks kind of close, and that might be marginally interesting, but the choice for residents of the Garden State appears to be the classic one between the evil of two lessers. Fighting from the blue corner is the incumbent Democrat, Gov. Jon Corzine, who is the kind of stalwart progressive one would expect the former head of Goldman Sachs to be. His challenger in the red corner, Chris Christie, is a former Rove bobo and U.S. Attorney who has the kind of ethics one would expect from a guy with that resumé. It’s a classic battle between the movable object and the resistible force, and while I suppose I’m predisposed to hope the Democrat wins, I certainly wouldn’t be dancing merrily to the polls to pull the lever for four more years of Corzine.
Now, as noted, the race between Corzine and Christie is close, and the campaign has turned relentlessly negative. And Corzine has launched a brand-new add hitting Christie on his driving record. And, unfortunately, something else:
Did you catch it? Maybe not. Frankly, it isn’t surprising if you didn’t; the message is so culturally ingrained that you’ve probably saw similar images a dozen times today. Still, think about what you just saw, and consider the words that the Corzine campaign used in the ad. Need a hint? They said Christie “threw his weight around” to get out of a ticket.
Interesting choice of words, that.
Interesting choice of video, too. Yes, we’re all aware that negative ads try to use unflattering images of opponents. But this was something else — not just a weird picture, but a classic fat-guy image, the guy slowly, awkwardly getting out of the car.
Yes, Jon Corzine has gone after Chris Christie because Chris Christie is fat.
Now, it wasn’t an overt smear. It wasn’t Corzine standing up and saying, “My opponent mainlines chocolate shakes and eats 23 Big Macs a day.” It was a dog-whistle. But it was a pretty freakin’ loud one. And pretty blindingly obvious to anyone not wanting to will away that fact, or excuse the behavior. Heck, the New York Times clued right in to meaning of the ad, and their description is pretty accurate for those without YouTube:
It is about as subtle as a playground taunt: a television ad for Gov. Jon S. Corzine shows his challenger, Christopher J. Christie, stepping out of an S.U.V. in extreme slow motion, his extra girth moving, just as slowly, in several different directions at once.
In case viewers missed the point, a narrator snidely intones that Mr. Christie “threw his weight around” to avoid getting traffic tickets.
In the ugly New Jersey contest for governor, Mr. Corzine and Mr. Christie have traded all sorts of shots, over mothers and mammograms, loans and lying. But now, Mr. Corzine’s campaign is calling attention to his rival’s corpulence in increasingly overt ways.
Mr. Corzine’s television commercials and Web videos feature unattractive images of Mr. Christie, sometimes shot from the side or backside, highlighting his heft, jowls and double chin.
Meanwhile, Mr. Corzine, 62, is conspicuously running in 5- and 10-kilometer races almost every weekend, as he did last Saturday and Sunday, underscoring his athleticism and readiness for the physical demands of another term — and raising doubts about Mr. Christie’s.
Next, he and a fellow fitness buff, Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark, will run through the streets of that city together next Tuesday.
Yes, Corzine is super-fit. Why, I hear he might swim in the Yangtze River next week, he’s so fit. Not like that fat Chris Christie, who probably has to use a Segway to go to the bathroom, the fat fatty.
But as much as I want to lampoon this, let’s face it, it probably will work, because it plays on the sort of ingrained stereotypes about fat people that already exist among the electorate:
In a recent survey conducted by Monmouth University, voters were asked to say the first thing that came to mind about Mr. Christie. “Fat” was one of the most frequent responses, said Patrick Murray, the director of the poll, who attributed the results to the Corzine ads.
And in focus group sessions conducted for the governor’s campaign over the summer, voters called attention to Mr. Christie’s size without being prompted, and those who were themselves overweight expressed the same concerns, said a Democrat who was briefed on the sessions.
I’m not surprised. Nobody hates a fat person like a fat person. We can never get away from fat — it’s covering us. If we’re lucky, we at some point stumbled on Shapely Prose and started to figure out that we weren’t horrible people, but even then the sense of personal shame remains, because it’s overwhelming in our society.
Now, some on the left have tried to preempt any complaining about these tactics by noting the old standby that “politics ain’t beanbag.” Big Tent Democrat over at TalkLeft makes the basic argument:
For some wonks, Republicans, who have called Dems, traitors, godless, gay, race baited, lied, stolen and cheated in elections, are to be treated with kid gloves. But NJ Dems don’t play that sh*t. Corzine has ripped the bark off of Chris Christie and now is in position to maybe win this thing. Matt Yglesias thinks the Corzine campaign is too mean and there will be a “backlash.” Yeah, right. The GOP is going to whine about Corzine picking on Christie? Really? Yeah, that’ll work. The good news is I am confident that Corzine’s people know what to do down the stretch – continue to rip Christie a new one right up to election day. The political arena is not for the meek. Look at Creigh Deeds.
Look, politics isn’t for the meek. But that doesn’t mean that anything goes. And it especially doesn’t mean it for Democrats.
In 1988, the Republicans ran an ad hitting Michael Dukakis on his furlough of William Horton, a criminal who while out of jail committed armed robbery, assault, and rape. Not a nice guy, Horton, and the program perhaps could be criticized. That said, you don’t know Horton as William, which was the name he used; you know him as Willie. Why? Because Republicans weren’t concerned about making a point on furlough programs, they were arguing that Dukakis wouldn’t keep African-American criminals from hurting good, God-fearing white folk. And William Horton doesn’t sound as scary as “Willie,” the hypothetical black criminal that GOP consultant Larry McCarthy called “every suburban mother’s greatest fear.”
The ad worked. Why? Because it fit into the GOP narrative. Minorities aren’t true Americans, they’re criminals who want to rape your white daughters and steal jobs from hard-working white American men. Who cares if an ad reinforces that idea? That only benefits the Republicans, only reinforces the Southern Strategy-approved message that all black men, everywhere are criminals, leeching off good white people.
Democrats do not believe in marginalizing people. We do not believe in creating an “us against them” America. When Democrats use appeals to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or other bigotry to win elections, we undermine the very principles our party is founded on, and do long-term damage to our party in the long run. Every argument that a woman is unqualified because she’s a woman hurts women, and hurts the Democratic message that women and men should be equal. Every argument that an African-American is unqualified hurts African-Americans, and hurts the Democratic message that people of all racial backgrounds should be equal. Every argument against any person’s qualifications simply because of who they are undermine the bedrock principle of civil rights, that one’s genetic code and familial heritage is not a basis for judgment — one’s actions and principles are.
So yes, politics is messy and tough, and by all means, Corzine can pip Christie for any one of a zillion offenses. But when Corzine argues, even obliquely, that Christie’s weight disqualifies him from serving as a governor, he’s saying by that argument that everyone who carries extra weight is ipso facto incompetent. There’s a word for that: bigotry. And Democrats should not countenance it for a second, even if it originates on our own side of the aisle.
Great post, Jeff.
I’d say especially if.
—Myca
Democrats do not believe in marginalizing people. We do not believe in creating an “us against them” America.
Sure they do. It’s “oppressed” people against white men, all day every day. I can’t think of anyway to marginalize people better than to tell them that their fate is a function of what they are (black/female/etc.) and is independent of their own effort, and that they have to surrender money and power to government to succeed.
I’m sorry, but I’ve been watching Democratic politics dominate my home State and county and one of the major cities of this country from close up for years. For example, it was Democrats who decided that the way to solve poor people’s housing problems was to stuff them in high-rise warehouses surrounded by expressways to isolate them from the rest of the city and confine their children to horrid “schools” and let them breed gangs and thugs and victimize each other rather than give them a chance to participate in society and raise themselves up. Republicans at the national level may have funded this, but it was Democrats who came up with the idea, built the pot, dumped the black and poor in and then slammed the lid on and sat on it. Democrats are only too happy to marginalize people to the point of disease, death and destruction if they think it’ll keep them in office.
It’s “oppressed” people against white men, all day every day.
Funny how many white men still end up getting elected as Democrats — including in Chicago, Cook County and Illinois generally. I would have thought RonF’s version of Democratic ideology would prevent that from occurring.
rather than give them a chance to participate in society and raise themselves up.
And what was the Republican idea for achieving this? Because I’ve never heard that Republicans were particularly gung-ho about, say, busing kids from different neighborhoods to share the same schools, thereby giving the wealthier and more educated parents an incentive to care about all schools and not just the ones in their own neighborhoods.
MediaCurves.com conducted a study among 300 New Jersey residents on the recent anti Chris Christie ad that states Christie is “throwing his weight around.” The results showed that the majority of all political parties do not believe the “weight” reference in the ad was intended to reference Christie’s actual weight. Additionally, the majority of Democrats (59%) and Independents (62%) do not believe the reference to “weight” was inappropriate, while Republicans were split, with 44% of Republicans indicating that the reference was inappropriate and an equal amount (44%) reporting that it was appropriate.
More in depth results can be seen at:
http://www.mediacurves.com/Politics/J7588-AntiChristieAd/Index.cfm
Thanks,
Ben
PG, that just goes to show that what Democrats say and what they do are two different things. Stoke class war to get people to the polls, but get the same “go along/get along” group elected in the end.
And what was the Republican idea for achieving this?
For the record, the one elected official in Illinois who did the most to combat influence peddling and corruption in Illinois politics and government – which wastes enormous amounts of money and effort that would otherwise go to deal with some of these problems – was a Republican, Sen. Peter Fitzgerald. Democrats, plenty of whom are black, female or both, have been quite content to see it roll along.
Not that that makes them any different than most of the Republicans, but the issue at hand is not Democrats vs. Republicans, it’s Democrat actual practice vs. Democrat expressed ideals.
RonF,
Do you not understand the difference between your latest statement that Democrats stoke “class war” (which is not race or sex based), and your prior statement that “it’s ‘oppressed’ people against white men” (which is about race and sex, not about income/class)? Or are you deliberately changing your argument?
which is the chief waste of money that would otherwise go to deal with some of these problems
Ah, yes, whenever Republicans save some money from being wasted, they immediately devote it to solving the problems of poor people of color and not to providing tax cuts for the wealthy. I don’t know where I got the idea that their political ideology idolizes tax reduction and demonizes government spending, particularly if it can be characterized as “welfare.”
Looking at this, I can’t help but think that a woman with Christie’s weight wouldn’t even be in the race.
I used to be very skeptical of these subliminal bigotry claims because modern racial theory, which takes its cue from literary studies (think deconstruction and post-colonial studies) is, like poetry interpretation, highly subjective. for example, there’s a scholar who believes the great Gatsby was passing for black and a column in the NYTImes argued that the first Batman movie was anti-Semitic while the newest one a paean to GWBush. The symbolic evidence these interpreters gather is actually astounding but at the end of the day it’s hard to believe this the intention of the author.are those who mock obama’s skinny frame really entering into a “coded discussion of race” by triggering otherized depictions of the black physique made popular by “good times” and “happy days”, as timothy noah informs us?
But advertising is different I’ve learnt. its much more carefully constructed than regular spoken or written words, and even other forms of art. artists like bob Dylan may throw out symbols will nilly in a stream of consciousness getting inspiration from god knows where, but advertisers leave nothing to chance. in advertising, symbols are well thought out, edited, peer-reviewed, intentional. you have X amount of space to fill so the odds of something being a coincidence is low.
i thought the Paris Hilton Obama as celeb ad subliminally portraying miscegenation interpretation was loopy at first, but when i looked at it again, –especially the repeated use of phallic symbols juxtaposed with pics of Paris, Obama, Britney–i think the intent is fairly clear. i thought Orlando Patterson had finally lost it when he informed us the 3am ad harks back to birth of a nation, but upon reviewing the images, there is something weirdly sinister about it: children, house ot night, mother, somebody lurking in the bushes…what does that have to do with an international event? looks more like a burglary and who do “hard working white americans” in TX, OH, PA fear may commit a burglary?. the point is these things are rarely a coincidence.
so the argument here is that the word heavy is used and the last shot of Christie is slowed down, so you can see his fat jingle. advertisers shouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt. they are not mere artists.
Other example: “John McCain is soooooo old! He’ll probably die in office! And he’s jowelly and can’t raise his arms all the way!” Not saying I heard it in political ads, but boy was this view bandied about a lot.
That most certianly was the topic of one political ad.