Attack Ad Goes Gangsta in California

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Guy Benson called it "appalling... misogynistic… overtly racist, sexist, and generally despicable... totally beyond the pale." What inspired Benson to unload every pejorative in his vocabulary was an online video attack ad against Los Angeles City Council member Janice Hahn, the Democratic candidate for Congress in next month's special election in California's 36th District.

Liberals were up in arms about the obnoxious rap-themed video -- the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee used the word "immediately" twice in demanding that Republicans denounce the ad -- but Benson's condemnation was written for the conservative Townhall.com site. Benson was far from the only conservative repudiating the video, which was swiftly rejected by California GOP officials and by the campaign of Craig Huey, Hahn's Republican opponent in the July 12 election.

As the video's YouTube viewership skyrocketed on Wednesday morning, the man who directed it was laughing at the controversy the ad had provoked. "It will probably hit 100,000 [views] by the end of today," said Ladd Ehlinger Jr., an independent filmmaker who was hired by a new political action committee, Turn Right USA, to produce what he calls "take-no-prisoners" attacks on liberal politicians.

Most websites appended a NSFW ("Not Safe for Work") warning to the ad, which depicts Hahn as a pole-dancing stripper, with two black rappers shouting vulgar lyrics as they leer at dollar bills stuffed into her hot pants and demand money so they can "get back on the street" and "buy some more heat." This lurid booty-shaking has been almost universally condemned, with several bloggers calling it the most offensive political ad ever made, but it has inarguably attracted widespread attention to the charge made by a narrator in the video's opening segment: "In an insane effort to reduce gang violence, Janice Hahn hired hard-core gang members with taxpayer money to be 'gang intervention specialists.' She even helped them get out of jail, so they could rape and kill again."