In the weeks leading up to this year’s Mid-Term election, a senate seat for Kentucky became intense. Democrat Jack Conway released an ad targeting Republican opponent Rand Paul. The ad questioned Paul’s affiliation with a secret society. According to the ad, this secret society called the Bible “a hoax” and also in this society he allegedly tied a woman up and told her to bow down before a false idol and say his god was “Aqua Buddha.” The article also cites a piece from GQ in which says that Paul and another member of the society blindfolded a women took her to an apartment and forced her to take bong hits. Paul was quick to respond to the ad, strongly denying the accusations. Paul stated, “No, I never was involved with kidnapping, no I was never involved with forcibly drugging people. Do we live in an era where people can come forward anonymously and accuse you of things and then all of a sudden I am supposed to spend the rest of the campaign defending myself against anonymous accusers who say I kidnapped them? The story just borders on ridiculous.” This attack ad uses enthymemes, which are abbreviated arguments. In this ad, the audience is invited to complete them. And once the audience becomes the co-creator of the arguments it makes it more compelling (176). This ad also reminded me of the controversial ad released against 2006 Tennessee Democrat Harold Ford. The ad suggested that Ford was a “party animal” who slept with white women and parties at the Playboy mansion (177). The ad against Rand Paul suggested that he was a psychotic “cult” figure who practiced odd rituals and engaged himself in hazing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/17/rand-paul-attacked-over-s_n_765674.html
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Dan this was a cool article. Attack ads can be very cruel. The ad questiond Paul afiliation with a secret society, which was interesting because a lot of young voters are now interested in figuring things out about The "illuminati" and a lot of people have much questions about its intents. Comparing him to a secret soceity in atack ads alllows him to gain extra votes because some people are unsure if they want people like that to lead them (even though they are all apart of the same society). placing the quote about them kidnapping a female to take bong hits allows a young adult crowd to shy away from voting for him as well.
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