perfidy

... would have been Janet Reno.

Just watched, somewhat belatedly, the Zucker political ad. Have to say, it's funny. It's a shame more political ads aren't like this. People go on about negative campaigning, but this isn't it. Negative campaigning is calling your opponent's wife a whore, or claiming (absent any chat records or the like) that your opponent is gay, or a criminal, or the like. Making fun of actual policies and actions isn't what I call negative campaigning. I mean, what's the voter going to go by, except the record of an incumbant? Pointing at that record and saying, "This sucks" is entirely reasonable. Especially if it's funny. Now there is an entirely different argument to be made on aesthetic grounds - whether something is tasteless, or such. But this ad wasn't really that.

The beauty of the internets is that Zucker gets his ad viewed - it's on Drudge now - without having to go through the wusses in the political parties or through the filter of the major media. It's a new world, baby.

[wik] It is also the nature of this new world to be ruthlessly fact checked into the boards. My confrere Patton notes that the correct spelling of our illustrious ex-Sec'y State is Albright, not Albrecht. In my defense, I offer only that five years of German sometimes causes bizarre transliteration errors. I still think, though, that Janet Reno is scarier than any foot smeller, and indeed scarier than just about anything.