Via Dave Weigel at Slate, news that the man responsible for the ‘Hoekstrokia‘ is trying for a new personal depth record:
__
Reactions are just exactly what you’d expect, per the Washington Post:
… “Really, really dumb,” Republican strategist Mike Murphy said over Twitter. “I mean really.”
__
The Michigan chapter of Asian & Pacific Islander American Vote, a nonpartisan group, called the ad “very disturbing” in a statement. A member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called the ad “blatantly racist.” A group of Detroit black ministers joined in, arguing that the spot is “no different than him having a black person speaking in slave dialect.”…
__
The ad never actually mentions China by name; it was filmed in California with a Chinese-American actress. (In a conference call, Hoekstra told reporters that the actress’s parents are “100 percent Chinese.”)
__
“It’s not a stereotype at all. Through the creative, this is a young woman in China who’s speaking English,” Hoekstra added on Fox News Monday afternoon, referring to the fictional environment of the ad. “That’s quite an achievement.” On WJR radio Monday morning, Hoekstra called it “probably the best ad of the political season.”
__
Republican consultant John Weaver, who worked for now-Gov. Rick Snyder in 2010, defended the ad, saying it was “not racially charged or over the edge in any regard, other than perhaps harming the sensibility of the political correctness class in Washington.”
“Really, really dumb” seems to be a pretty fair assessment of Hoekstra in general. Just the sort of mean, loose-lipped dumb that appeals to the GOP “base”. As Weigel adds:
[T]he stupidity is the point: This is lizard brain stuff, meant to remind the hard-luck Michigan voter why he’s so afraid of China. Hint, hint: It’s DIFFERENT. It’s not even that it’s Communist, or in the words of Rush Limbaugh, “Chi-Coms.” They are foreign and scary — and hell, that’s redundant… So I’m not surprised at all to see Hoekstra’s campaign fundraisinging off the backlash in an e-mail to supporters…
__
Here’s where Hoekstra loses me — the poor-little-candidate act. He’s not a racist, and only the slowest critics are saying he is. He’s a Senate candidate looking for a way to stir up voter anger about the debt (which, according to exit polling in GOP primaries, is fading somewhat as an issue), and doing so with… an ad in which a smug Chinese lady brags about how she’s going to bury us. (Is this going to happen before or after her ride on a hastily-built high-speed train?) He knows that a lot of Americans worry about this, possibly unreasonably so. And he’s taking advantage of that.
It’s all about the public victimization — the man who claimed “Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House” is being abused, again, by minions of the freedom-hating Democrat party. C.R.E.A.M.!
If you find Hoekstra’s broken-winged-bird cries inspirational, here is Senator Stabenow’s website. Full disclosure: I happily voted for Debbie Stabenow, back when she was starting her career as a Michigan State representative and then senator, and I was living in Ingham County.
gnomedad
Me take your job long time, Joe.
hildebrand
Two-bits says that it isn’t the actress’ real voice.
Walker
Read your own blog.
Bobby Thomson
But Snyder’s not an extremist or anything.
Mark S.
There’s no better judge of racism in this country than Dave Weigel. He also didn’t think Rand Paul’s views of the Civil Rights Act were racist at all.
numfar
Has anyone been to the website?
Clearly designed by someone from geocities.
Rawk Chawk
Debbie “spenditnow?”
My god, the creative in these political ads has hit rock bottom.
Bruce S
The GOP does NOT have a problem with racism.
It’s a feature, not a flaw…
Warren Terra
Limbaugh still refers to “Chi-Coms”? What’s next, a demand that we unleash Chiang Kai Shek?
dmsilev
I think we’ve had this discussion before, but the functional distance between “willingly runs racist ads but really truly is not a racist at heart” and “is a racist at heart” is pretty damn small.
dmsilev
@Warren Terra: Well, as we all remember, Limbaugh speaks fluent Chinese.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Bobby Thomson: pathetic. IIRC Weaver was the brains behind John McCain’s reasonable maverick incarnation. Welgel, too, is cordially invited to jump up his own ass. Maybe he’ll find his head.
Mark S.
@Warren Terra:
Zombie Douglas MacArthur stands ready to drive them back to the Great Wall.
Steve
@Bobby Thomson: Obviously he’s an extremist, as proven by that quote from a consultant who used to work for him. Congratulations on declaring yourself the winner of that particular argument – keep it up!
Citizen_X
D-O-U-B-L-E D-O-W-N
D-O-U-B-L-E F-U-C-K-I-N-G D-O-W-N
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
I would say like the distance between an electron and the nucleus small.
@Bobby Thomson:
There’s the tell that Weaver is a stone racist; the attempt to deflect it with a claim of “political correctnees”.
SectarianSofa
I love that there’s an ad for a Thai dating site in the sidebar as I’m reading this.
AA+ Bonds
If this hasn’t gotten FP yet here, could some FPer make it happen? Thanks.
Meet Karl Rove’s Sheldon Adelson:
Texas billionaire Harold Simmons has given $7 million to a Rove-affiliated outside group
Ken
To be honest, I have worries about China. However all of mine come from Newt Gingrich talking approvingly about how they don’t let workplace safety regulations stifle industry, or how great it is they have no capital gains taxes.
Vixen Strangely
Just came here after seeing this at TPM: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/02/just_gets_better.php?ref=fpblg
Um, okay. o_O I’m just going to go ahead and say “racist.”
AA+ Bonds
@Rawk Chawk:
See, I think that works fine strategically in the context of American political history; it’s this “pee pee in your Coke” business that hasn’t been kosher for decades
Steve
@Ken: The only way we can counteract their strategy of broad public investment is to refuse to spend anything.
Cacti
I’m surprised she doesn’t say “Me love you long time”.
AA+ Bonds
@Vixen Strangely:
HAHAHA WHOOPS
Man that is one of those huge Web fuckups that you just can’t take back, it’s why you don’t let programmers name that shit on their own
GregB
I am hoping that Hookah, or Hoekstra, whatever the fuck and the rest of the GOP keep on keeping on with the Chinese, Mexican, Gay, Black and woman bashing, to a point. The party of Jan Brewer, Rick Scott, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh are setting the little tent on fire.
They are making Scotty Rasmussen have a sad.
Link.
jrg
I wonder if that Chinese chick’s high school Biology teacher ever told her “Jeebus did id” is a scientific theory.
SectarianSofa
@Vixen Strangely:
Nice. Sheesh. I hadn’t realized they had also dressed her in yellow. Great Horned Beelzebub. Where did they dig out the creative people for this? A leftover WWII bomb shelter?
AA+ Bonds
@Ken:
The wave of the future is this “opportunity zone” business that Herman Cain was offering: a plan where Congress offers tax breaks to cities that carve out blocks where minimum wage, workplace safety, etc. laws don’t apply.
Comes straight out of Wall Street finance, and it will keep on coming. I can’t imagine the firestorm it would cause in the courts, but the idea will be mainstreamed slowly but surely over the next decade if the Right can manage it.
SectarianSofa
@AA+ Bonds:
Well, see *is* totally wearing yellow. Honest mistake.
Steve
@Vixen Strangely: I’m not interested in defending this racist ad, but if you look at the HTML it’s pretty obvious that “yellowgirl” refers to her yellow shirt.
AA+ Bonds
AND THAT HISPANIC GUY IS WEARING A BROWN SHIRT AND THAT BLACK GUY IS IN A BLACK TUXEDO, IN SPANISH THAT’S “NEGRO”, AND MAN DOES THAT GAY GUY LOVE EATING THAT ORANGE. . . .”fruitguy” we’ll call him
fucking pay attention to your objects and tags because people will be reading them
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@dmsilev:
that would make sense if you still believed the politicians are running to represent the people who are voting for them. if you have given up on the notion of represantative government entirely, then it makes perfect sense that the elected official is not representative of the voters they are appealing to.
SectarianSofa
@Steve:
HA! Wait, are you not snarking?
The prophet Nostradumbass
The video was also, rather obviously, recorded in California.
SectarianSofa
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Yes, but only you and the OP have told me this, so I don’t know what to believe.
Arclite
It’s obvious he’s sacrificing the Asian vote for the disgruntled-older-white-voter-who-remembers-Vietnam vote. Yes, the girl is speaking with a (one of the worst I’ve ever heard) fake Chinese accent, but look at the imagery: rice fields, peasants working them, coolie hats, dirt roads. You expect some Hueys to come chopping into frame, and the workers to rip off their peasant clothes to reveal black VC uniforms and grab their AK-47s.
lamh35
Lawrence O just did a segment on this ad. I would really love to know what the actress who starred in this ad thought when she read the script for this ad.
Seriously, when she read it, did she cringe inside, or did they pay her so much that she just said “oh well”.
I know she’s probably a struggling actress and so a job is a job, but man, I’ve been unemployed before and I’ve had jobs I hated, but I’ve never in all my unemployed years ever thought about I don’t , doing porn or selling my body to make ends meet.
I know it’s not the same, but it was just on my mind. I know that first time actor are really proud of their first jobs and such, but I just can’t imagine her sitting down in front of her family and friends and being proud of that ad??
Bobby Thomson
@lamh35 37:
Check out Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle sometime.
RossInDetroit
She spoke to my middle school civics class back in the early ’70s when she was a county commissioner. It was memorable.
This ad is really bad, but I predict that worse is to come. Oh, it’s going to get much worse.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Bobby Thomson: “We give Dirty Larry ‘the finger'”
SectarianSofa
@lamh35:
Dunno. Maybe her daughter needed an expensive medical procedure. I’d probably sell out for that, to the extent that this crap ad actually sells one out. I’m more concerned that some fucking racist dumbasses can actually come up with this shit, and think of supporting a political campaign with it.
pseudonymous in nc
In case you were wondering, these people are responsible for the website — and possibly the ad itself. Ironically, the lead web developer (twatting on the Twitter here) lists Bruce Lee as his childhood hero.
Vixen Strangely
I think this “but her shirt is yellow” thing is where the “political correctness” line gets drawn. Maybe that argument can be made, but the racial sensitivity answer goes something like “And this didn’t ring any bells? ‘Yellow peril’ anyone?” This might also be why conservatives say liberals are the “real racists” for always calling out dog whistles–just possessing a functioning dog-whistle decoder ring is considered suspect. The point with political correctness doesn’t seem so much to me to be about going out of one’s way to avoid offense, but to actually think about what message is put out there. If it’s on the line, maybe it’s better not to make that message–
But in this case, I don’t think, with the gong and the broken English and all, that any thought about “Is this offensive?” went down, or if anything, it seems like it was supposed to outrage the viewer against “foreigners”. That Hoekstra thinks it’s brilliant means it is effective as propaganda (and for what it’s worth, we are re-playing it and giving it more airtime on progressive blogs to unpack all the crap in it)–but it also means: “intended message–sent.” At which point, I can only assume that any message the ad conveys, overt or subliminal, is a part of the ad as a whole and thus, cleared with the campaign and reflective of their sensibilities.
jl
The girl in the ad is cute and does a good job, so that is a plus.
The message is stupid, and full of false implications, but that is the work of the hack writers.
A dumb ad. Saddest thing is not that it was shown but that anyone would take it seriously for one second.
Edit: let’s hope this is part of Hoekstra’s last political ad campaign, but I have no idea how realistic that hope is.
Dick Move
People who haven’t yet decided who they’re going to vote for in an election at Hoekstra’s level are the dumbest fucking people among us. They’re the ones who need to be targeted by candidates, and they need to be reached on their own level, ’cause that’s the only level they’re on speaking terms with. It’s the level where folks are still hoping someone will promise them Domino’s instead of nuked frozen pizza in the cafeteria, so they can breathe a sigh of relief and pull that lever with a ‘clear conscience’.
Hoekstra is smart. He came up with an ad that pisses off all the right people, from the point of view of his base and his near-base. When the pissed-off people voice their objections, they sound pathetic to the kind of voters he’s trying to woo. Double win. Ultimately, he gets away with it, which makes him appear strong and in charge. Triple win. There’s really no down side to this–for him.
Jay in Oregon
@Cacti:
I heard they tried to get this young woman for the ad, but she was unavailable.
Jibeaux
I’m guessing they tried to get Mickey Rooney to do his Breakfast at Tiffany’s thing, and were sad to learn he’d passed. He *has* passed, hasn’t he?
SectarianSofa
@Vixen Strangely:
Not sure if it was clear, but I agree that probably the dumb fucking fuckers thought they were being clever and cutting edge Pavlovian supergeniuses with their fake subliminal/not subliminal dog-whistle/klaxon, in putting the girl in the yellow shirt. Ha! Ha! Swell.
That this bled over into the html tags is just icing on the cake.
pseudonymous in nc
@Vixen Strangely:
That shade of yellow is also the traditional colour of Vietnam, which I think chimes in with Arclite’s point that it’s going for the “remember the VC” crowd. (A crowd that doesn’t include Hoekstra, since his year for the draft lottery was 1972.)
RossInDetroit
Hoekstra’s probably safe in his seat. The left side of the state is pretty red* and they like him there.
He’ll probably continue to serve until he has a stroke on the golf course at age 88.
*excepting Saugatuck and parts of Grand Rapids, which are rainbow colored ifyouknowwhatimean.
nellcote
Remember the Demon Sheep ad for Carly Fiorina? Remember the I Am Not A Witch ad from Christine O’Donell? Same guy made this ad.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Isn’t Hoekstra also the clown who repeatedly revealed the location of a secret congressional trip to Iraq through his repeated tweeting on his cell phone?
Yutsano
@RossInDetroit: So does that mean he’s running for both? Does Michigan law allow that?
Vixen Strangely
@pseudonymous in nc: And which might explain why I didn’t respond to the “Nam” part until others pointed it out–1972 being the year I was born. Which definitely makes the ad seem tailored for an older crowd, meaning if people my age or younger turn off b/c of implied racism, it’s okay with the ad-makers: we weren’t the intended demographic. People who want to beat “Charlie” are.
RossInDetroit
@Yutsano:
I botched that comment. My bad & sorry for the confusion. I meant that a loss would not necessarily end his career, as he’s well liked and established.
I just Googled Hoekstra Campaign and the first 3 pages were 100% stories with the words ‘ad’ and ‘racist’ or variations. Whatever they thought they could achieve by this, it failed catastrophically.
AA+ Bonds
@Dick Move:
The downsides are shame and guilt and while those are not as powerful in America as they are in many other places, this is a specific kind that really could backfire on him
More than anything, the political and media professional classes are just groaning at the major industry fuckup here
And in a society where so few people vote, they carry a lot of weight
Mike Toreno
One part of the racism is that you can tell from her lack of an accent that she speaks perfect English, but they have her saying “your economy get very weak, ours get very good”. Nobody with pronunciation like that makes a grammatical mistake like that.
Cat Lady
@GregB:
Spooky.
lamh35
@Bobby Thomson: Seen Hollywood Shuffle more times than I can count.
As an African American, you ain’t gotta tell me roles good for minorities are hard to come by. IDK, in my mind there is a difference between making a film or movie or tv or whatever that is a work of fiction that may be stereotypical, but it is the audience of a film who can be the ultimate decider whether or not to reward stereotypes.
Observerinvancouver
@Mark S.: I’ve seen that line used a lot in defence of a Republican resorting to dog whistles or worse to gain electoral advantage. Most memorably, I can remember a David Brooks’ column from a few years ago using that same defence for Ronald Reagan and his speech at the Neshoba County Fair in 1980.
To me there is something more heinous about someone who “isn’t a racist” using those tactics than a “real” racist who does so.
John - A Motley Moose
@Dick Move:
Hahahaha ha! You win the thread prize for humor.
JasonF
If the Republicans want to make outsourcing an issue as they get ready to nominate Mr. Bain Capital to sit at the top of their ticket, they’re even dumber than I thought.
asiangrrlMN
The ad is fucking racist. I don’t give a fuck if Hoekstra is personally racist because the ad is flat-out racist. So, fuck you, too, Weigel. With a rusty pitchfork™. Hoekestra is trying to stir up anger BY BEING RACIST. Why is that so fucking hard to grasp.
And, I would bet money the actress isn’t Chinese. Not that it matters!
My two cents about the actress: I don’t blame her for taking the job, not really, because acting jobs for minorities, especially Asians are scarce. But, I do hope the backlash causes her to pause and think if it’s worth it.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: The double down by Hoekstra makes this even more classic. And this thing is gonna go viral in Michigan. And there will be a backlash. I’m making popcorn.
Hi hon. Her Eminence had a tough day.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: I know. What a jackhole and a half. It’s a good thing I have a local minion to take care of him, or I would be tromping to Michigan with my rusty pitchfork™.
Awwww. What happened to the Princess?
gwangung
@Mike Toreno:
I get stories all the time from friends in the biz about how their accents (which are linguistically correct, because, you know, they actually KNOW Asian people who speak with accents) get “corrected” all the time into some phony, made up crap.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@RossInDetroit:
Ross, he isn’t in Congress any longer. He ran for governor in 2010, not Congress.
And the funny thing is that Saugatuck is in his old district. G.R. isn’t.
And the funnier thing is that Hoekstra isn’t even 3/4 as bad as his Congressional predecessor, Guy VanderJagt.
gwangung
And, really…what self respecting Chinese wears YELLOW???
gex
I swear to God, on my birth certificate my father’s race is listed as “yellow.”
bob h
Asians constituting nearly 5% of the population, Republicans intent on pissing them off. Expect a lot of Yellow Peril in the Presidential race.
Lojasmo
@SectarianSofa:
I seriously am beginning to believe that anybody who uses “Steve” or “David” or “Dan” as theit Internet handle is dumb as a rock.
brantl
Stabenow is better than Hoekester, still not nearly as good as she should be. Better than any Republican by a hell of a lot, though.
A Humble Lurker
@asiangrrlMN:
Hi girl! Haven’t seen you here in a while. Sucks that it has to involve this though. Happy to see you.