TV Spot on Deficit Wins MoveOn’s Bush-Bashing Contest

A spot featuring children toiling as dishwashers, maids and factory workers that asks: “Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1-trillion deficit?” took top honors Monday night in MoveOn.org’s national contest to create a television ad that best bashes administration policies.

With soft guitar background music, the winning ad has a low-key tone. The party and fundraiser that MoveOn, an Internet-based political action group, held to announce the winner was anything but low-key.

Recording artist Moby, hip-hop performer Chuck D and comedian Margaret Cho, among others, entertained a crowd of almost 2,000 at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, using the opportunity to criticize the Bush administration.

Contest organizers said the winning ad, chosen from about 1,500 entries, is scheduled to air about 30 times on CNN from Jan. 17 to Jan. 21. It is designed to present an alternative message to Bush’s Jan. 20 State of the Union address.

MoveOn also would like to air the ad during the Super Bowl, said MoveOn’s Eli Pariser, who directed the “Bush in 30 Seconds” contest. He told the crowd of that possibility and asked, “Should we do it?” The response was a roar of approval.

A source said that to pay for broadcasting the ad during what is traditionally the most watched show of the year, MoveOn would have to raise about $1.6 million.

The contest was cast as a chance for amateurs to bring a fresh approach to the world of political advertising with spots that were “less slick, less canned,” said Al Franken, the award presenter and soon-to-be liberal radio talk show host. But the winning entry came from a professional advertising executive, Charlie Fisher, a 38-year-old from Denver who was a registered Republican until 1992.

Plenty of the amateurs came “very close,” Pariser said, adding that Fisher’s spot “falls outside the usual look and feel of political ads; it’s more like a short movie.”

Pariser said the panel of celebrity judges found the ad, called “Child’s Pay,” “beautiful and moving, on an issue that is pretty hard to get people excited about. The [federal budget] deficit isn’t an emotional issue, and this ad made it emotional.”

“Child’s Pay” also was the favorite of the more than 110,000 people who cast votes on the contest’s website.

Three other ads were given special awards and may air on television, Pariser said. The ad voted the funniest was “If Parents Acted Like Bush,” produced by Christopher Fink, 39, of Sherman Oaks, with help from his wife, sister and niece. Its tagline: “Be a good role model. Say no to bad behavior. Oppose the Bush agenda.”

A MoveOn statement said Fink’s group spent about $50 to create the ad, “mostly on doughnuts and hamburgers.”

The best animation award went to “What I Been Up To ... “ by two men from Columbus, Ohio. It is a cartoon of Bush reciting “accomplishments,” including, “I turned the biggest economy in history into the biggest deficit in history.”

Selected as best youth market ad was a spot produced by residents of Englewood, Colo., in which a fast-talking man parodies various comments by Bush. The lines include: “And you say bring it on to people who accessorize with dynamite?”

The ceremony’s entertainment included a bracing guitar version of the “Star Spangled Banner” by Moby and Vernon Reid of “Living Colour,” and a mostly unprintable monologue by Cho.

Cho offered her list of attacks on Bush as Ten Commandments for the president which included “Thou shalt not steal votes,” and “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s country.”

She drew loud laughter and applause with an attack on the armed forces’ “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy toward homosexuals. “How dare they ask you to die for your country and not be who you are,” she said. “As if you could win a war without lesbians.”

Emcee Janeane Garofalo criticized “corporate media disinformation” and kidded cable news channel MSNBC for a recent poll in which it asked viewers, “Is [singer] Britney Spears out of control?”