Attack Ads

Obamaville: An Attack Ad by the Rick Santorum Campaign



    Attack ads are always carried out in political campaigns by each candidate against the other. Obamaville is particularly interesting because it contains two types of attacks: blunt, and subliminal. Before My analysis of Obamaville, I would recommend you watch the minute long ad below.

    Firstly, the narrator in the video states the class of people the video is addressing. the "small American town" represents probably the majority of the Republican party's base; so the video starts off by saying that these small towns are in danger if President Obama remains in office. The video also puts a time frame of two years. Why? Well this deadline is completely random and has no factual basis whatsoever.
     Suddenly, they show a glimpse of Main Street, cold and quiet with no population around it. Which is an odd thing for Republicans to be doing, seeing how they tend to make Wall Street a priority.
     The next few moments are extremely dramatic and unrealistic. It is something one would expect to see in a horror film; all intended of course. If anyone can be described as fear mongers, it is the Republican party.
     Suddenly, there's a flash of many images at once! What are they? Well, the first one is an eye, then a group of men who seem to be mobsters smoking cigars, then a man in prison. These are more subliminal than blunt messages really, which is probably why the producer of this video made those pictures so fast. But the message had to be delivered, so they just added a person's lips saying "Shhhh." Attacking Obama for surveillance is quite odd for Republicans, considering the most horrific and illegal law that was passed called "the patriot act" was passed by Republicans. Right.. Spying on American citizens is OK as long as one of your own is in office, huh?
     The video goes on to talk about businesses shutting down, but the Republicans have been talking about that since the beginning of the recession, which they virtually blamed it on Obama before he was President! And they seem to neglect the fact that unemployment went from over 10 % to 8.3 %.
     Another quick attack on Obama was his views on health care, by saying "the wait to see a doctor is ever increasing." of course in my personal opinion, I think Americans are ridiculous for not already having free health care for all its citizens, but they have started picking up the habit of being behind; and health care seems to be something they still need to debate for a while.
     I cannot explain how hard I laughed when I saw the image of the man holding the gas nozzle to his head! But back to the point, Obama is being blamed for high gas prices; again the prices were going up under the Bush administration, and Obama was being blamed by some Republicans since then! It is a free market, and in a free market, gas prices go up. If you want to defend the free market so much, deal with the consequences,
     "Freedom of religion under attack." Coming from the party that has called Islam a cult, Atheism a sign of the devil, and science witchcraft; attacking Obama on restrictions on religious freedom is not such a good idea.
     While the video was showing Iran and Ahmedinijad, there was a quick clip showing the Iranian President's face transform into Obama's face. What are they trying to say? Are they implying that Obama is a secret agent for Iran? Are they implying that Obama supports Iran "attacking the US and its allies"? Ridiculous!
     Then there's another quick subliminal meaning showing the men in suits marching, then it quickly switches to Wall Street; implying that President Obama wants to introduce Socialism and take over businesses. The video even ended with a red colored filter to say that Obama and his government are left wing socialists! Believe me, I would love a Socialist president in the United States, but I don't thing that will happen any time soon.