Politics in the modern age

[rhitroadkill]

Oh my God. There is still a month til elections, and I am already SO SICK of the damn political ads. If the fools running for office took half the money they are spending on their stupid and annoying ads that say basically nothing about what they are standing for (though manage to attack the other candidate) and donated that money to a charity or

Comments

[harmony_bites]

I found this by googling "Abraham Lincoln" and "dirty politics"

Wilentz begins by recounting a crude remark about “mulatters” (i.e. mulattos) that Lincoln made while stumping for Gen. Winfield Scott, his party’s presidential candidate in 1952. Wilentz explains

[rhitroadkill]

Okay, so maybe politics has always been dirty, but at lest in the past you only had to hear about it in the morning paper and maybe at the barbershop in the afternoon, not five times in half an hour. And if the ads at least said something different each time, I'd be forgiving, but it is the same two or three over and over and over. And then the sister versions for the radio.

[harmony_bites]

Oh, I know.

I actually think politics in the past, particularly in the 19th century was much dirtier. I gave you an example of Lincoln not being too pristine, but the stories about the smears he took are legendary. And there's the case of Andrew Jackson--there was something irregular in his marriage and people called his wife Rachel a whore in the campaign--Jackson believed the grief and stress it caused was responsible for her death--she never did live to become first lady. Let alone the out and out corruption of the famous Tammany Hall.

Which doesn't mean the political adds aren't a huge irritant.