DC's 'reservoir dogs' attack Chuck Hagel with oxymoronic ads

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/24/chuck-hagel-attack-ads

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Who

There is a famous scene in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs in which a policeman has his ear sliced off while his torturer dances to the Stealers Wheel classic "Stuck in the Middle with You". I am not saying that President Barack Obama's nominee for defence chief, former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, feels exactly like Tarantino's doomed cop, but as the radio belts out "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right", Hagel must have an inkling of what it feels like to get whacked at from all sides.

For Hagel has been the subject of two hyper-aggressive attack ads this week, aimed at thwarting his nomination. One paints him as an anti-gay woman-hater who loves assault weapons. The other sees him as a weak-willed peacenik ready to cave to Iran and North Korea, and whose best friends are in the Kremlin. To put it mildly, it's a bit baffling and contradictory. But then, so is the current state of American politics.

Can Hagel really be a rifle-toting, anti-gay sexist from the hard right <em>and</em> a lily-livered hippie taking orders from Moscow? As the song goes:

"Yes, I'm stuck in the middle with you, and I'm wondering what it is I should do."

What

The first ad is called "No on Hagel" and comes from a group calling itself Use Your Mandate. It focuses mainly on past statements Hagel has made about social policy. (It does also, somewhat incongruously, mentions Israel. Hmm. Could that be a clue?) Use Your Mandate is funded by a bunch of mysterious donors, whom the Huffington Post has reported are mostly Democrats and Independents.

The second ad is from a group called Americans for a Strong Defense, which is, likewise, mostly in the shadows, thanks to America's rather opaque campaign finance laws. Two of its three public board members are former aides from Mitt Romney's failed 2012 presidential bid.

When

Use Your Mandate is reportedly set to air this Sunday, during the morning talk shows that, in Washington, DC, are the chattering classes' equivalent of doing brunch. The ASD spot is going up now, but in local markets, aimed at specific politicians.

Where

Use Your Mandate will be national and the ASD ad is airing in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Colorado, where its backers believe Democratic senators might be vulnerable in 2014.

How

Both these ads take their cue from Reservoir Dogs' knife-wielding psycho: neither is subtle about tearing strips off Hagel's credentials for taking over the top job at the Pentagon.

Use Your Mandate was first up. The ad is deceptively cheerful (just like Mr Blonde!). A perky female voice pops up over cartoonish pictures, and explains that Hagel was nominated by Obama with the "best of intentions". But then – slice! "Hagel is anti-woman," the lady insists, without saying why or what exactly that means. "Hagel is anti-choice," the voice adds; also, "anti-Israel, anti-gay, and pro-assault weapon". Wow. Hagel sounds like a reactionary jerk.

"Chuck Hagel doesn't share our values," the ad explains. "Why do we need someone like that? We don't."

And so it concludes, urging people to contact their elected representatives and get them to vote against Hagel's nomination.

The ad never explains why Hagel is such a monster, though, of course, like any politician whose career spans several decades of ongoing social change, he has made statements that, these days, appear a little Neanderthal (such as once calling an ambassadorial nominee "aggressively gay"). So, that's Hagel: a primitive rightwing caveman unfit to head the world's largest military, in which women and gays can now serve openly and equally.

But wait. Here comes the ASD ad. This time, the other side of Mr Blonde's personality comes out: the not-so-cheerful one (though ear-slicing happens just the same). The chirpy lady is replaced by the more familiar voiceover out of a Hollywood thriller's trailer. Satellite imagery pops up as the man announces balefully: "We live in a dangerous world." Missiles fire into the sky. "Iran!" the man announces, by way of explanation. "North Korea!" he adds, over more missile shots and snippets of journalists explaining why America is a target for attack. "Even Russia!" the ad says, showing Vladimir Putin and an aerial snapshot of buildings that look no more threatening than a strip mall in New Jersey.

But then it goes for Hagel, explaining that he "wants America to back down", as if walking away from a fight was the moral equivalent of child molestation. It details Hagel's support for getting rid of nuclear weapons and backing defence cuts, which it insists will make for "a weaker country". It, too, urges people to contact politicians and demand that they oppose Hagel. Which sounds reasonable, as the ad has made Hagel's views comparable to those of a pre-Fox News-contracted Dennis Kucinich (who, it should be remembered, once wanted to rename the Pentagon the "department of peace").

Yet, obviously, Hagel cannot be both these things. There are some who would say this blind assault from all over is a Good Thing. After all, their mushy argument goes, if you annoy both sides, surely you are just doing your job right. This is not true: there is no automatic moral superiority on the centre-ground. The awfulness of these ads lies simply in their knee-jerk idiocy and stupefying simplicity.

Their creators do not care about reality, so they ignore it. One makes a modern centrist into a rightwing culture warrior. The other turns a Republican Vietnam vet into a new Abbie Hoffman, simply because he has a healthy scepticism about the political value of shooting your enemies. Both ads sum up everything that's wrong with American politics.

In the end, it's not Hagel's ears they're cutting off – it's ours.