September 28, 2012

VIDEO: Kentucky Congressional Ad Features Dismembered Fetuses, Hockey Hair

<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57520081/anti-abortion-ad-to-begin-airing">candidateandrew.com

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Viewer beware.

A long shot Kentucky House candidate with deep ties to a radical anti-abortion leader is broadcasting a campaign ad like no other: It purports to show images of dismembered fetuses and murdered Jews and Christians while comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and mass-murderer Ted Bundy. The ad touts the candidacy of the long-haired self-described tea partier Andrew Beacham, who is running as an independent against Republican Rep. Brett Guthrie in Kentucky’s 2nd District.

The New York Times reports:

[The ad] opens with images of Hitler and Bundy as the candidate narrates. “Would you vote for a murderer?” he asks. “Would you vote for a man who paid others to murder for him? Would you vote for a man who stole from others to pay for his murders?”
Then a picture of an aborted fetus appears on screen. The candidate continues, “Well, Obama gives your money to Planned Parenthood to murder babies, and to the Muslim Brotherhood, who murders Christians and Jews.”

Beacham is a longtime guerrilla-theater disciple of anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, whose strategy involves running for office and getting other people to run for office so that they can exploit loophole in the Federal Communications Commission’s indecency regulations. As my colleague Tim Murphy has reported, the loophole allows candidates to run graphic political ads that would otherwise be banned by the FCC.

Terry, who ran this year for president as a Democrat (and is still running as a no-chance independent for Congress in Florida’s 20th District), says the candidates he’s enlisted will spend between $250,000 and $1 million to run ads in seven races, according to the AP.

Possibly the weirdest part of Beacham’s ad—aside from the viscera and disregard for Godwin’s Law—is the candidate himself, wearing an undersized mesh cowboy hat and puffing on a cigar. “If you vote for Obama, the real question is what are you smoking?” he asks, before blowing smoke into the camera.

Full video (warning—contains extremely graphic images):

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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