Karl and Pete, this ad's for you
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When I heard that Karl Rove was offended by a TV ad that ran during the Super Bowl, there was a brief moment of dread when I thought we finally had something in common. I, too, was offended by an ad that ran during the holiest of American high holidays.
Alas, Mr. Rove and I were offended by two different ads. I was disgusted by a spot that ran statewide in Michigan featuring a young Asian woman bicycling through a rice paddy field. When the woman, who is wearing a pointed straw hat dangling from her neck, addresses the viewers, she does it in broken English with a strong Chinese accent:
"Thank you, Michigan Sen. Debbie 'Spend-it-now,' " the woman says, mispronouncing the name of state Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a two-term Democrat. "Debbie spends so much American money. You borrow more from us. Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good. We take your jobs. Thank you Debbie Spend-it-now."
The woman's taunt is accompanied by the sound of a gong accentuating the gravity of the "yellow menace" as painted by the paranoid, nativist, racist clowns who conceived and shot the ad. In fact, the only cliches missing from the spot are references to Confucius, egg rolls and dry cleaning.
Locked in a tough primary fight with two other Republicans for the right to face Ms. Stabenow in November, former U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra is too dumb to feel even a smidgen of shame when confronted about his campaign's ad. "It hits Debbie smack dab between the eyes where she is vulnerable," Mr. Hoekstra said the next day about his much buzzed-about commercial (which calls him "Pete Spend-it-NOT").
When Mr. Hoekstra was in the House, he was always one of those most concerned about wily Muslims sneaking Sharia law into mainstream American life. Mr. Hoekstra is best known for joining Sen. Rick Santorum at a news conference in 2006 to announce that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction had finally been located in Iraq. Alas, neither the Defense Department nor the Iraqis knew what they were talking about.
Mr. Hoekstra thinks that he can raise his profile in Michigan by tapping into a vein of residual Asia-bashing left over from the days when Japanese cars were ritually demolished by frustrated auto workers. It's such a revolting tactic that many of Mr. Hoekstra's fellow Republicans also denounced it as desperate, racist and xenophobic.
First Published February 10, 2012 12:00 am
