Decius wrote:
] ] Not to mention, i think this entire milti-page thread proves
] directly
] ] that emotional appeals can produce an awful lot of reason,
] thought
] ] and discourse. -k]
]
] Sorry man, I can't reconcile those comments with this one:
]
] ] showing imagery of a casket being pulled from the wreckage
] is the
] ] lowest sort of emotion grabbing politics i can imagine.
] Despicable

[ That's a very fair comment. I've had to refine my thinking in this area. I think there's still a diference between a the candidate himself widely running TV spots like this, and individual people expressing themselves. As I said, if this had come out of the Kerry campaign, I would be just as displeased about it as about the 9/11 ad (or I hope I would). It's a profit motive thing i guess. Perhaps it's naive of me, but the source really matters. I don't deny that the creator of the image had an agenda... it's just not as offensive to me if that person isn't trying to profit directly from it.

And also, no, I don't think I would have reacted as harshly had the Bush ad used pictures of people. I'm far from perfect and I've been faced with self-contradiction before, which I hope I've learned and grown from. Nevertheless, as we've seen in the past week, there's a distinction between hearing about the dead, and seeing an old picture of them, and seeing bodies. There's a continuum of emotive content. I still think the 9/11 ad crossed the line, given it's source. So yeah, I guess it's a double standard... I hold the president to a higher one than just about anyone else. -k]

RE: Bush photomosaic of American dead in Iraq