Osakatomebaby

MoveOn.org's bid for a Super Bowl ad was nixed yesterday by CBS. It's not a shock, considering the controversies (1, 2) around the contest that produced the ad.

(For the record it was a liberal-in-group awards show, not a political debate. So yes there were a lot of entertainers going overboard. It was-gasp-funny, in part because Margaret Cho is so obnoxious and anyway, you can hardly get a sense of a comedy routine from the transcript. The wierdest part is how Michael Moore finally got upstaged).

CBS chalked their response up to a policy against running political issue ads. Fair enough, it's their network and they have to deal with conflicts with other advertisers as well as viewer response so I guess in they can reject it on whatever grounds they like and it's nice that they have a policy to justify it.

Salon.com observes that it's likely MoveOn.org expected the rejection, but knew they'd get some press out of it anyway--exactly what PETA did intentionally on behalf of their unmoving, cheap-shot of an ad. If you ask me, MoveOn.org just played it smart. They probably really wanted to get the Super Bowl slot, but they had a back-up plan.

Unlike the PETA ad, the MoveOn.org ad is classy. Yes it fails to capture their primary issue, opposition to the War in Iraq, but so what? It's not their most effective issue. MoveOn recognized that anti-war rhetoric only preaches to the choir. Instead they went for mainstream appeal. The budget deficit isn't as edgy as opposition to the war or calling Bush being a "big fat liar", or dead soldiers, but the ad is an emotionally compelling story well executed.

I have to disagree that the message is unclear or that the appearance is too polished--contradicting the original aim of the contest which was, in part, to demonstrate grassroots power. For one thing, having an ad on par with a Fortune 500 branding piece does do that. Apart from that, all I can do is quote from verse 17 of the Tao Te Ching (which you might remember is largely a manual on how to maintain and use political power), "When you do not trust the people, you make them untrustworthy." In other words, stop insulting our intelligence.

Ah well, it really is too bad that CBS sees the deficit as too controversial and has decided to run an anti-smoking spot and a commercial from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy instead. At least people won't have to watch that nasty PETA ad.