Friday’s Asshat of the Day

Nasty ads have become the norm in our political campaigns over the past 20 years, and it seems that with each election cycle, the ads become nastier. And this is on both sides. Hell, we can go back to 1950 when Tricky Dick Nixon referred to Helen Gahagan Douglas as the “Pink Lady” and told his followers that some of her friends were “thespians.”

But sometimes, we have candidates who cross the line, and today’s Asshat, Sean Bielat, has done so with what I believe to be a homophobic commercial.

You’ll see why when you watch it. Bielat’s running against Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). Frank chairs the House Financial Services committee and is the most famous openly gay member of Congress. Bielat combines those two themes in the video to lay the responsibility for the financial crisis at Frank’s feet… while portraying him as a hip-swerving disco queen in a rumpled suit.

And our very own Witchiepooh did the same thing when she told Mike Castle to put on his “man-pants” and didn’t distance herself from the pseudo-news report that insinuated that Castle was gay.

Bielat even shows his disdain for campaign law with his mandatory disclosure which he calls the “obligatory McCain-Feingold-incumbent-protection-mandated-message loved by anti-liberty forces everywhere.” A real piece of work.

I long for the day when we adopt the same restrictions on campaign advertising on television that currently exist in the UK. But that will never happen as long as we let the oligarchs buy our elections.