The Election Story 2014

It is again time for all of those political ads that we really love. They are even better when they repeat the same ad several times during one advertising block on the same program. I have spent too much time turning off the volume to try to make them much more palatable because then I can ignore them while I type this post.

It seems that they are written to the same template and have a basic formula that has become very annoying to me this election cycle. A couple of the proposals on the ballet have become very annoying and in fact I think that these ads have pressured me to vote the opposite of the way the ad is telling me to vote.

The way advertising agencies are writing the ads I think that they may think that the public is stupid and that we don’t see how they are trying to use not so subtle use of the English language to shape our opinions. I will try not to name a specific candidate or ballot proposition mainly because the same things are obvious in any election in any political constituency. Some of the uses of key words or phrased are obvious.

1. A “politician” is someone you don’t want to give authority on an issue but if you want them to do something then they are a “public servant”.
2. What is the difference between a “lifelong politician’ and a “lifelong public servant”? It may just be who has paid for the ad.
3. A “lobbying” group is obviously one that you can’t trust and that is usually used to define the groups that are financing the ads for opposite point of view. How do you name the groups that are paying for the ad you are watching aren’t they also a “lobbying” group?
4. The opposition candidate is always “a tool of some faction” that opposes the candidate who is running the ad.
5. The opposition has a “political agenda”, and of course the people paying for the ad don’t.

I know that the use of language is not always precise and that sometimes we use an expression that means something different then the words we say, but if you are trying to influence people don’t you think that they might want to be precise, accurate and maybe even honest in their advertising?