Here’s an ooga-booga campaign ad that dropped today from Florida Speaker of the House Richard Corcoran, who is widely expected to announce a run for governor:
The ad warns that “any family, anywhere” could be targeted by “illegal” immigrants. It exploits the killing of a young woman in San Francisco (for which the accused was recently acquitted), but it distorts the facts of that case to make it seem like dark-haired, hoodie-wearing, undocumented immigrant men are hunting white girls for sport right here in Cockroach Acres!
The ad also makes it sound as if “sanctuary cities” are criminal-empowerment zones rather than districts in which municipal leaders decline to use the local police as a federal deportation force — and ignores the fact that they do so for good reason, since that practice tends to increase rather than reduce crime.
It’s a despicable, fear-mongering ad that is designed to gin up hate against a group of people with a lower crime rate than their US-born counterparts. And it says something awful about the state of our politics right now that this turd Corcoran feels emboldened to run such an ad in a diverse state like Florida.
What we’re seeing here is decades of Republican race-baiting and xenophobia extended to its twisted yet logical conclusion. I don’t think Corcoran will win the nomination. But regardless, one of the most powerful politicians in the state went all-in on demonizing immigrants. That’s not normal, not for someone running for a statewide office in Florida in the 21st century.
But Corcoran is taking his cues from the bigot in the White House, and he can count on Fox News to keep up the immigrant demonization drumbeat with daily segments like this:
Angel Mom Laura Wilkerson: "We don't have to give them anything. The ones that are marching and demanding in the streets – we don't owe them anything. So we don't have to give an inch. I don't like the fact that they're demanding something like it's owed to them. It is not." pic.twitter.com/O7rj9Id0Ta
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 28, 2018
“Angel Moms” is what Fox News calls mothers whose children have been murdered by immigrants — it became a thing during Trump’s campaign. The goal is to hang onto power by keeping the Republican base crapping their pants even though crime is at its lowest levels in decades. It’s shameful, and the only cure is a good ass-whupping for Corcoran’s party come November.
schrodingers_cat
I am afraid to ask, but what is an Angel mom? Because she doesn’t sound angelic.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: It’s what Fox News calls mothers whose children were murdered by immigrants. It sounds like something Goebbels cooked up.
aimai
Angel mom?Holy crap–they’ve taken the language of mothers of stillborn babies or miscarriages and repurposed it to attack immigrants.
geg6
So what are the moms of the Sandy Hook victims called by FOX? I don’t think they’ve ever called them “angel moms.” All I’ve ever heard them called is “actors.” Maybe this crazy “mom” is an actor, too?
Boy, that would make their heads explode, wouldn’t it? Whataboutism turned on it’s head!
OT, but my friend’s kid’s band, Code Orange, was nominated for the Grammy in heavy metal last night. They didn’t win but how cool is that?
schrodingers_cat
@geg6: Crisis actors.
LAO
@Betty Cracker: Wow — is there a chance he’d win?
germy
the Texas Tribune reports:
LAO
@geg6: My brother was a first responder at Sandy Hook and there are entire websites devoted to claiming he and his teams mates are actors. It’s sick and bizarre.
Major Major Major Major
They had to come up with the term “angel mom” because trump was so busy shitting on gold-star moms.
RP
Is there a special term for parents whose children were killed by gun humpers?
How about “parent whose kid helped water the tree of liberty”?
Ridnik Chrome
@Betty Cracker: Rupert Murdoch is hands-down the worst public figure to come down the pike since Richard Nixon. Nobody else has done more damage to democracy in the past forty years. Not even Ronald Reagan or Jerry Falwell. And I’m starting to think the fucker will never die, either.
donnah
I’d like for some of the money I’ve donated to the Democratic party to go for some of our own ads. Something cutting-edge and clear, something that says Republicans are racists and there are still honest and decent people who care what happens to this country.
Betty Cracker
@LAO: Probably not, but he is the speaker of the FL House; he already has a lot of power to drive policy.
Chyron HR
@LAO:
Nah, Jethro Tull had a real barnburner of a heavy metal album out this year.
condorcet runner-up
These assholes will clearly keep cutting these types of ads until they pay an electoral price for it.
By the way, you can cut the same exact ad but replace the boogeyman of “illegal immigrant” with a regular old citizen who, because of a history of DV and prior restraining orders, or because of a history of specific mental health issues, shouldn’t have had access to a gun, but somehow got one anyway and proceeded to murder people in cold blood. Those moms and dads don’t get the “Angel” moniker? The parents of the Sandy Hook kids don’t get the “Angel” moniker? What about Tamir Rice’s mom? She doesn’t get the “Angel” moniker?
That Fox clip really just … I cannot with these people. They’re ghouls.
ETA: I see commenter RP had the same questions I did.
different-church-lady
Conclusion? Hardly — we’re only just now getting really started.
DissidentFish
@condorcet runner-up: Well they did pay a price — the immigrant-baiting ads almost certainly did hurt Gillespie in his loss to Ralph Northam in Virginia. But that was a general election. In an R primary this crap is gold.
John Revolta
@Ridnik Chrome: I gotta go along with you here.
Fucker wasn’t even born in this country but he made his goddamn mark all right.
Where’s the anti-immigrant crowd when you need ’em?
Brachiator
This is normal in the Age of Trump. This is explicit policy in the Age of Trump. It has been part of his agenda since the beginning. And every Republican has signed on. Or retired and sneaked off the floor in shame.
Don’t act surprised.
And Stephen Miller slipped in the new phrase during the spectacularly catastrophic Jake Tapper interview. He referred to (white) people who were besieged by “communities of crime,” an all-purpose slur designating anywhere nonwhite people live as in effect American shit-holes.
I fully expect Trump to hit on this theme in his SOTU address. And I expect the GOP to give him standing ovations. Hell, Trump might even have people stand up in the audience, and call in ICE to deport them on live TV. That would be better spectacle than a Roman circus.
And of course, all the people that Corcoran is promising to protect are white. I guess there are no Latinos or people of color in Florida.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
Yup.
Roger Moore
@LAO:
I think the key thing with Sandy Hook truthers is that gun nuts see mass shootings very differently from the rest of us. To us, a mass shooting is scary because it’s a result of forces outside our control. We naturally see ourselves in the victims and want to do something to protect others from being in the same situation.
A mass shooting is much scarier to a gun nut, because they naturally see themselves in the perpetrator rather than the victims. As long as they are like the perpetrator, the shooting is a terribly real possibility in their lives, so they have a deep need to separate themselves from the murderer. In most cases that isn’t too hard because there’s something about the killer that they can point to: he’s a different race, or he had obvious psychological problems, or something. In the case of Sandy Hook, though, they can’t do it, so the only way they can separate themselves from the killer is to believe the whole thing is a hoax.
The Moar You Know
The exact same words were spoken by me and everyone I knew when the Willie Horton ad came out regarding Bush’s chances of winning the election.
We all know how that turned out.
Mike in NC
Every election for at least the past 30 years has included lots of “white women in danger” ads by Republican PR firms. Must be a winning formula.
Jager
Friends of ours bought a condo in 50 plus only complex in suburban Phoenix (they lasted a year and moved) Arpaio would come out and campaign by scaring the shit out of old ladies about Mexican rapists, etc. Their old lady neighbor said, “I lock my doors when those Mexican gardeners are around, they’re rapists you know.” My pal said to her “Why would they be interested in you, his girlfriend probably looks like Selena Gomez.”
Roger Moore
Can we please stop rebooting every lame idea from the 80’s and 90’s?
...now I try to be amused
@Betty Cracker:
Or Frank Luntz.
cain
@Ridnik Chrome:
That would be Roger Ailes. That is the guy who came up with this bullshit after working with the Nixon campaign. It is unbelievable how much harm that single administration has done to conservatives since.
Scott S.
Giving Republicans an ass-whupping in November is a good start, but the only way we can fix the country is to start putting Republican politicians and pundits in prison. All of them, if possible.
gvg
@Mike in NC: So you are saying we need a bunch of white woman in danger from gun nuts ads? Works for me as a white woman. Could mention that I have twice a year active shooter drills at my job.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: just wait, soon they’ll be rebooting lame ideas from the ‘00s, like the Iraq war and the patriot act.
gvg
@cain: I don’t see how the guy who hired him and protected him isn’t responsible. Murdoch wanted Ailes views. He would have found someone else just like him, if Ailes hadn’t existed.
Obdurodon
Well, I’m not sure who angel moms are, but I’m pretty sure I have a fix on devil mom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anne_MacLeod_Trump
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Demagogues are gonna demagogue.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator:
That’s why it’s a bizarre strategy in Florida — it might play to the base, but an ad that inflammatory will get a ton of attention should Corcoran win the nomination. There are plenty of pro-Trump Republican politicians in Florida — the current governor, for one. But the governor and other politicians who have to run for office statewide downplay the anti-immigrant rhetoric. That’s why it’s remarkable that Corcoran isn’t. Here’s hoping they Californicate themselves right out of a majority.
Citizen Alan
@The Moar You Know:
Do we? My recollection is that the Willie Horton ad was actually a bit of a scandal which damaged Bush in some ways. You could just as easily point to how Dukakis handled that awful debate question about the death penalty Or any one of several other things. I was 18 at the time and in my youthful ignorance I was probably more influenced by that picture of Dukakis in a tank then by the Willie Horton ad.
Miss Bianca
Sort of on-topic…I am reading Helen Thorpe’s new book, “The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom”. It’s about a group of refugee students in a Denver high school ESL class. HT is a Colorado-based journalist who “embeds” with her source group and writes their story. I had been utterly fascinated and frustrated by her description of the socio-political limbo that Mexican-American DREAMers were going thru’ in her book, “Just Like Us”. I got to interview her for Colorado Central Magazine when that book came out, and had been thinking of trying to do a repeat interview on the subject of this book.
There’s just one problem. I am finding it so goddamned depressing to read about refugees and immigrants, in the post-Trumpian hellscape that our body politic has become, that I am not even sure I can finish the book.
Major Major Major Major
@cain: yeah, Murdoch is more of a talented lowbrow shit-stirrer, and it turns out most of that money is in conservative propaganda.
piratedan
whereas for everyone else, they’re SOL Mom’s, because if Faux can’t make political hay out of that death, we’ll you’re just Shit Outta Luck as far as they’re concerned.
cope
And, as if on cue, Florida is chosen (by one source) as worst state in the Union.
https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/ranking-the-united-states-of-america-from-best-to-worst
The Moar You Know
@Citizen Alan: Not with Republicans, and he won the general by a landslide, mostly by the concerted efforts of a Reagan-besotted media who, like this last election, were convinced that the election of a Democratic president would be the end of civilization.
geg6
@…now I try to be amused:
Same thing.
Ridnik Chrome
@Citizen Alan: The Willie Horton spot was by no means the only political ad of its era to play on racial fear and/or resentment. Look up the “white hands” ad. A lot of people think that one is the only thing that kept Jesse Helms from losing his Senate seat in 1990.
trollhattan
I wonder about the reaction if Heather D. Heyer’s mom did an ad about Nazis killing her daughter (“Some on both sides are very fine people”) or the Emanuel Baptist Church family members sharing their thoughts on 21st century klansmen?
Aleta
This is related to the negative stories about immigrants and Muslims (and about the economy … and on and on).
The Wa Post story about J. Toobin that SC54HI, LAO and germy mentioned below kills me. Two years too late, J Toobin bravely (not) steps forward to get praised and get headlines, for admitting he was “somewhat responsible” for false equivalence.
I get how one person in a chorus can be “somewhat responsible” for the song, and that’s JT’s reason for saying he’s only “somewhat.” But imo a journalist is plain “responsible” for each biased cnn analysis or story s/he does.
The WaPo doesn’t ask Toobin why he waited two years to talk about the obvious. Also, when exactly he realized that his work was biased and damaging. (Answer: he’s no fool; he knew every time he did it.) That to me is the story.
Aleta
@Aleta:
2
Then the W Post story backs up gutsy truth-teller Toobin by telling us that a study by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy found that “in the campaign’s final months, the media’s aggregate coverage performed pretty much as Toobin described.”
It doesn’t mention that this study has been out since Dec 2016. Sure, the study and findings have been mentioned in a few stories and headlines before now. But from what I saw, not as part of a major coverage, detailed story that includes requests for comment from the journalists who did this.
Maybe we’re about to see more stories about the media fuck-ups, now that the time is right for the media and much too late for the country.
I bet they still won’t dare address why they waited two years to do these stories.
Aleta
@Aleta:
3
Some pieces of the Shorenstein Center’s 4th report on campaign media coverage:
Ruviana
@Roger Moore: Can we stop rebooting every lame idea from the 1930s?
trollhattan
@cope:
Michigan?!?
aimai
@Roger Moore: Interesting point, very interesting.
Yutsano
@Ruviana: They’re pretty much aiming for 1928 at this point. Economic crash and all.
Suzanne
@Jager:
Oh, fuck these people. I hire those Mexican landscapers (and house cleaners, and tree trimmers, etc.) and they are all incredibly hardworking. And I tip them a lot.
Seriously, in Phoenix, I don’t know if you could hire a white landscaper, even if you really wanted to. For some reason, the uneducated whites are not signing up to work in the sun in triple-digit temperatures with scorpions around.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
For the GOP, it’s ride or die. Day, by day, policy by policy, the Trump Administration is enacting explicitly racist and nativist policy.
And the national GOP has not balked or pushed back. Trump demands loyalty, and fealty to his policy, at the federal and the state and local level.
Has there been any reaction to Corcoran’s ad? Nobody needs to wait until he has the nomination.
California Republicans didn’t learn anything from their embrace of Proposition 187.
I suppose that Florida Republicans can say that they just oppose sanctuary cities and have nothing against “good Latinos.”
Has any local Republican in Florida spoken out against Trump’s blatantly racist policies? If not, this really tells you all you need to know.
KithKanan
@Brachiator: They don’t seem to have learned anything from the couple decades of losses since, either. Anyone who still calls themselves a Republican in this state at this time is basically unreachable and bugfuck nuts, at least where politics are concerned.
glory b
@geg6: OT, I saw a piece on them on the local (kdka) news last night! very cool!
By the way, in our long ago :) thread on sexual harassment, I didn’t mean to sound as if it was easy, it’s not. Bur there are resources out there, I thought that wasn’t emphasized enough.
Also, I can’t speak about what happens in other states, but in PA the Human Relations Commission is statutorily required to take every complaint and investigate each one. They must make a cause or no cause finding, or settle each. They also provide attorneys if you choose to go with the administrative hearing option.
If complaining parties want to go to court, they get a right to sue letter.
Also, retaliating against a complaining employee, even if they lose, is a separate cause of action.
Ruviana
@Yutsano: Or wandering into the 19th Century (or worse!).
Mnemosyne
I have a feeling this isn’t going to play well with the Puerto Rican voters currently settling in Florida. ?
Yutsano
@Ruviana: Let’s not give them ideas. We seem to be regressing terribly as it is.
Alain the site fixer
@Miss Bianca: I’d love to host a guest Q&A with you and her here on Balloon Juice if you’d like. Pre written or live, etc. Pop me an email, if you’re interested.
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
Corcoran is so fucking crazy he even out-crazies Rick Scott. Corcoran’s made a big name for himself by his attacking Scott from the right. Just think of what an abject nihilist you have to be to attack Rick Scott for doing too much.
Tom
@Aleta: Dude, if you’re really that ashamed of what you did, may we recommend the solution employed during the classical era in Japan?
Mike in DC
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/amp/trump-s-gripes-against-mccabe-included-wife-s-politics-comey-n842161?__twitter_impression=true
While I was still married, they would have had to pull me off someone who said something like this to me about my wife.
Bobby Thomson
Need to get the Puerto Rican transplants registered ASAP.
Miss Bianca
@Alain the site fixer: Dang it, Alain, now I *have* to finish the book!
Gravenstone
@Roger Moore: So, latent projection. Nothing they’ve actually done, simply something they can imagine themselves doing.
Ruviana
@Yutsano: They do seem to be able to get there on their own, don’t they?
Brachiator
@KithKanan:
Yep.
Also, people forget that Prop 187 passed by a significant margin.
The pushback and decline of the California GOP came later.
Also note that Latinos are not a monolith, and a significant number desperately identify with being gabacho.
Trump is also trying to play immigrants against each other. Some support actions against illegal immigrants and some of Trump’s policies, based on the false idea that there are few slots for people who want to become citizens or residents. But the US is not really crowded, is not running out of room and can accommodate millions more. And it’s funny how some racists who think that there are too many people here have fantasies about white people having more children.
rikyrah
used to be that the Black man was coming for all your White women.
Now, it’s the illegal Brown man coming for you White women.
Dems need to do two things for November 2018:
1. Register all those Puerto Ricans that have moved to Florida.
2. Pass the statewide referendum restoring voting rights to ex-felons.
We are talking about 1.5 MILLION people.
Both are crucial.
1. for November 2018.
2. for Future voting 2020 and beyond.
gene108
@Major Major Major Major: @cain:
Murdoch has poisoned the politics of the English speaking world.
He did it in his native Australia, then moved onto screwing up the U.K. in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and then moved to fuck us over.
Ailes was just an off-shoot of the evil Murdoch has been spreading around the world. You’ve noticed not much has changed at Fox News, even with Ailes’ departure.
The Moar You Know
@Mike in DC: Wow. Well, I guess McCabe must be a diehard Republican, because my response would not have been “yes, sir”, pension be damned.
One of Trump’s real talents – and it is a talent, albeit a horrific one – is the way he gets everyone associated with him to just instantly forgo their dignity. I’ve never seen a more spineless group of folks in my life. Both his staff and his voters. No fucking dignity at all. Makes one think they were born on their knees, that crowd of his.
Brachiator
Looking at that Corcoran ad again, the creators must have put out a casting call for the actress that said “we are looking for someone whiter than a combination of Jessica Chastain, Bryce Dallas Howard and peak Nicole Kidman to portray the ultimate innocent victim.”
JoeyJoeJoe Junior Shabadoo
@trollhattan: in 2000, James Byrd’s family did something like that. As you might guess, media response was negative.
...now I try to be amused
@The Moar You Know:
It’s spelled Donald Trump, but it’s pronounced “Joffrey Baratheon”.
Ridnik Chrome
@gene108:
Exactly.
woodrowfan
@aimai: DISGUSTING. That happened to a young friend of our a couple years ago. The baby suddenly died without warning at the last minute. the mom went into labor expecting to have a healthy baby and suddenly she was giving birth to a corpse.
Paul W.
Why the fuck did we have this video linked? I clicked this trash thinking it would be informative and was immediately being beat over the head by this absurd shit. Please warn first, thanks!
chopper
@Betty Cracker:
so what does Fox News call the parents of, say, the kids killed at Sandy Hook? hmm..
ETA looks like I wasn’t the first to think of that by a long shot.
louc
@Betty Cracker: As a former Floridian, I don’t get the strategy of this ad. That’s something that could majorly blow up in his face, given the polyglot makeup of South Florida and Orlando. There’s a reason why Rick Scott split from Trump on immigration issues.
J R in WV
@cain:
Fix’d that for you…
;-)