Character Assassin

by MAX BLUMENTHAL

[posted online on October 30, 2006]

If a political attack ad crosses boundaries of good taste, is emotionally manipulative, excessively ominous, twists facts, exploiting hot-button issues of race, sex and terror, and winds up being condemned by civil rights groups, the chances are that ad has been produced by Republican huckster Scott Howell.

His most recent creation strikes at the character of Tennessee Democratic senatorial candidate Harold Ford Jr., an African-American, by suggesting he solicits sex with white Playboy playmates. Along with 3,000 other people, Ford once attended a Super Bowl party held by Playboy magazine. At the end of the ad, a blond actress winks at the camera, makes her right hand into the shape of a phone and says in a sultry come-on, "Harold, Call me." The TV commercial has been condemned by the NAACP and described by former Secretary of Defense and Republican Senator William Cohen as a "very serious appeal to a racist sentiment." Even Ford's Republican opponent called the ad "distasteful" and said "it ought to come down." But he apparently lacks sufficient clout with its sponsor, the Republican National Committee, to get it off the air.