Posted on 03/14/2004 9:56:01 AM PST by veronica
Removal of unidentified photo urged
WASHINGTON -- An Arab-American group is calling on President Bush to remove a picture of an unidentified "Middle Eastern-looking" man from a campaign ad that focuses on terrorism.
"It runs counter to everything the president said after [Sept. 11] about not targeting, about not indicting, all Arab Americans," James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said Friday.
The complaint is the second in as many weeks from groups who object to the president's use of images from the war on terrorism in his re-election ads.
Zogby, who described himself as a Democrat but added that his group is nonpartisan, said the brief close-up of a swarthy man's face, just as the narrator mentions terrorism, is "a form of racial profiling."
Some Internet critics have gone so far as to dub it the "Muhammad Horton" ad, alluding to the "Willie Horton" spot used against Democrat Michael Dukakis by Bush's father in the 1988 presidential campaign. Willie Horton, a black inmate, committed a rape and murder while furloughed from a Massachusetts prison when Dukakis was governor.
Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel rejected the criticism of the new ad. "The images in our ads fairly represent the challenges and threats we face in these times of change," he said, adding that the campaign had not heard other objections about the photo.
Last week, another set of Bush ads that included brief scenes of the World Trade Center ruins met with protest from a firefighters union that has endorsed the president's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, as well as some relatives of victims of the attacks.
Presidential pollster Matthew Dowd defended the use of the images, citing the terrorist attacks and aftermath as a central issue in the election. He told reporters earlier this week that the ads have brought a "tremendous response" from viewers.
However, a report released Friday by Adam Clymer at the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey suggested otherwise.
Of the 1,265 respondents, some of whom had not seen the ads, 54 percent said using World Trade Center images in the Bush ads was "inappropriate."
In the dispute over the newest Bush ad, Zogby said the Bush campaign should replace the generic image with a recognizable terrorist, such as Osama bin Laden. Zogby said the president's campaign has informed a member of the Arab American Institute that the young man in the ad is actually an Italian actor.
That further highlights the danger of using stereotypes, Zogby said.
"When you rely on a simple look to create fear or target a group, you end up targeting a very much larger group."
In yet another skirmish in the early battle of the airwaves, the Kerry campaign Friday unveiled a TV ad charging that the president — in an ad launched one day earlier — "is misleading America" by accusing Kerry of having a plan to raise taxes by $900 billion.
"John Kerry has never called for a $900 billion tax increase," the Kerry response ad says. "He wants to cut taxes for the middle class."
For its part, the president's campaign refused to back down from its tax-hike charge.
"The [Kerry] ad is a futile attempt to obscure the fact that John Kerry's new spending proposals would result in a tax hike for all Americans," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt fired back. "The only mystery that remains is exactly how much every American will have to pay to cover the tab."
B.)They were all muslim, middle easterners
ergo....c.) Why is that profiling? ....isn't it just the TRUTH?
So even the critics equate it to another ad based on truth.
Sure! That's how it is. In idiot Liberal Land no one is allowed to surmise that anyone except whitey is at fault for anything.
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