Fear, Loathing and Confusion in Political TV Ad Blitz

My wife is running for president of our homeowners’ association. So we put together a little ad campaign.

We’re all friends and neighbors here, God-fearing folks and good Americans living decent lives in Norman Rockwell country. We like and respect each other. We chat across the back fences, have cozy block parties, borrow eggs and sugar from the family next door and car pool together. So the ad campaign is nice and clean. It’s not much, really. Strictly small time. Hardly worth mentioning. A modest flier under every door. It begins like this:

MY OPPONENT IS A MURDERER!!!

It’s a bad dream, another nightmare from which I awaken in a sweat!

I’m having them regularly, the result of overexposure to the orgy of political ads threading TV in advance of Tuesday’s statewide election.

Take the Democratic gubernatorial chase, for example. Pretty please!

The other night, I watched Dianne Feinstein’s ad showing deputies carrying a covered body up a hillside, you know, the tasteful spot that stops just short of charging that Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp is personal friends with mass murderers. Then I watched Van de Kamp’s ad with Ralph Nader accusing Feinstein of being a “Republican in Democratic clothing.”

The ads produce back-to-back nightmares.

Dream 1: Not only was Van de Kamp soft on the Hillside Strangler case while district attorney of Los Angeles County in 1981, he and Nader are Hillside Stranglers.

Dream 2: The candidate on the screen attacking Van de Kamp is Bart Simpson in Feinstein’s clothing.

The weekend turns out to be especially painful, as candidates blitz the airwaves in a bold last-minute attempt to fuzz the issues and confuse voters.

As James Garner says in an ad opposing Props 118 and 119: “You’ve heard the campaign rhetoric.” Right, again and again.

After sorting through the weekend’s crush of commercials, I now have a clear idea of what Tuesday’s election is about:

For the third consecutive year, not only has Acura “outranked every other automobile in America,” but “since Elton Gallegly went to Washington, not a single federal dollar has trickled back for home-town projects” that support Calvin Klein’s political cronies who are “spending a million dollars of trial lawyer money on unfair negative advertising.”

What’s more, state Treasurer Tom Hayes has “the experience to do the job” because Ira Reiner and Charlton Heston wrote Prop 103 and Bill Press has totally mishandled the McMartin Case while Jack Lemmon was “busting our butts trying to get the insurance companies to obey the law” during which “politicians have taken millions in cash gifts, fancy meals and free trips” that are available in limited quantities as long as Arlo Smith is the “Democrat for attorney general.”

And, by the way, if you make a wrong choice Tuesday, don’t worry. Every candidate and proposition on the ballot comes with a 14-day guarantee.

Let’s get serious here! It’s time for heavy analysis.

“Think of your tax dollars as a stream of water,” says a spot for Republican congressional candidate Sang Korman showing water gushing from a hose--for 20 seconds! HASN’T THIS MAN HEARD ABOUT CALIFORNIA’S WATER SHORTAGE???

Then, too, why don’t other candidates look as divinely touched as Ira Reiner does in his commercials. Grab your hankies and just look at that angelic mug, the eyes gazing upward ever so subtly, as if in contact with some greater authority.

What about the weekend’s juxtaposition of ads?

* A Smith spot accuses Reiner of one heinous act after another, including personally “losing the battle against crime.” Zap! Suddenly it’s James Garner: “Can you believe this?” Although Garner’s spot addresses Props 118 and 119 and not the Democratic race for attorney general, his question applies to all of the weekend’s political spots, including his own.

* A Harvey Rosenfield spot supporting Conway Collis for insurance commissioner features a curiously small picture of candidate Collis followed by a shot of Rosenfield that brings him so close to the camera that I can almost see up his nose. Zap! The next voice I hear is a woman’s in a commercial for Calvin Klein’s well-known scent: “Between love and madness, lies Obsession.” Seconds later, she adds: “Ah, the smell of it.”

Meanwhile, Feinstein’s campaign to impale Van de Kamp on his past gets inadvertent help from NBC, which repeatedly runs promos for its Sunday movie about a “sex killer” who “terrorizes the women of Hawaii,” and a beautiful female D.A. who becomes a decoy to capture him. The movie’s title? “Revealing Evidence: Stalking the Honolulu Strangler.”

In effect, the oft-aired promo becomes an echo, giving shrill resonance to Feinstein’s own spot blasting Van de Kamp: “Do you know he tried to drop murder charges against the Hillside Stranger?”

Politics in California. Ah, the smell of it.