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October 15, 2004/Tishri 30 5765, Vol. 57, No. 7
Web ad sparks complaints
RON KAMPEAS
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON - Just how persuasive is a Jewish grandmother armed with a lethal handbag?
And does "Bubbie," a cartoon Jewish Democrat who knocks Republicans into oblivion, cross a line in a campaign season that already has seen pitched advertisement battles in the Jewish community?
"I'm saddened, disappointed and offended," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "It pits Christians against Jews, it uses stereotypes we should know better about projecting."
The National Jewish Democratic Council, whose Victory Fund produced the ad, hopes Bubbie will get young Jewish voters into polling booths.
"It's aimed at an under-30 crowd," said Ira Forman, the NJDC's executive director. "Both campaigns have had a hard time reaching that crowd. This is a communication that works for them."
The NJDC hopes to spread word of the cartoon, launched Oct. 11 on its Web site, by e-mail. After the animation is finished, viewers are counseled to "give your friends a smile" and forward it on.
Republicans, hardly smiling, say the broadly satirical cartoon could backfire.
"I find this to be absolutely vile, offensive and repugnant," said Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. "The only positive thing that can come out of this effort is that it will now turn off far more people to their work and to their efforts than it would attract people."
The cartoon marks new fierceness in the battle for the Jewish vote just weeks before the presidential election, and culminates a flood of negative advertisements from both sides.
In the ad, Bubbie breaks into GOP headquarters and confronts a pantheon of Bush administration officials, including top political adviser Karl Rove, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney, with questions about rising Medicare costs, the Iraq war and alleged coddling of the Saudi royal family.
When they equivocate, out comes Bubbie's lethal handbag.
Rove is seen delivering orders to the faithful from a pulpit marked with a crucifix. All the Republicans are clad in red cassocks except for President Bush, who is wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt and reading "My Pet Goat."
Two Jewish Republicans, Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and top neo-conservative Richard Perle, tell Bubbie, "Hey, we're one of you," and break into what resembles a hora.
"I'm so ashamed," Bubbie replies in a strong Yiddish accent, before pounding them with the handbag.
Ken Goldstein, an academic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who monitors the Jewish vote, said the ad shocked him.
"This ad is disgusting - and you will never ever see me say that about a campaign," Goldstein said. Especially offensive, he said, is Cheney's decapitated head rolling into a bucket marked "Miami-Dade votes" and pleading, "I want a deferment."
Goldstein said that was inappropriate given recent beheadings in Iraq, though Forman countered that the point of the act is to reveal Cheney as a robot.
It's unclear in the animation whether Bubbie actually kills her enemies or just knocks them senseless.
Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of using negative, out-of-context images and statements, Goldstein said, citing NJDC ads this year featuring Bush shaking hands with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, and Republican use of a photo of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) embracing the wife of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.
"But this is beyond the pale," Goldstein said.
The Kerry-Edwards campaign withheld comment. It had no advance knowledge of the animation, in keeping with campaign laws setting up strict walls between campaigns and nonprofits like the NJDC.
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