Aug 11 2006
The Darcy Burner Trilemna (now with video link)
Updated to add a link to the video.
I have made no particular secret of my recent disappointment with Sen Maria Cantwell, and her actions revolving around the minimum wage bill.
But she is not the only race in town, so it behooves me to be concerned about some of the other candidates.
One of the races that has been discussed a lot is the 8th Congressional District where the incumbent is first term Dave Reichert, who has been challenged by Darcy Burner.
Darcy is somewhat of an enigma. She has gotten a lot of negative press from local bloggers, and rabid unwavering support from others. In the partisan world of Seattle politics this is not a shock, I suppose.
So I have tried to keep a fairly open mind about her.
Today her first TV ad aired, and Goldy at Horsesass had it up for display on his page.
See it at Darcy’s site: http://www.darcyburner.com/video/burnerbio.wmv
I watched it earlier and was a but concerned by one section of it.
Let me preface this by saying that my military roots are showing her, because the military is at the core of my disgruntlement.
Having said that, let’s look at what made the grumpy blogger grumpy.
Her commercial opens with a biographical montage, with a voice over describe the essential elements. It also has captions that display a reference to the voice over. To demonstrate, I have some screen caps:
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Here is one where the voice over is talking No problem. |
Another section mentions her putting |
So the ad seems clear enough, voice over with captions to punctuate the main points.
So when the video opens with the this image:
Would you not expect to find out she is a veteran? Nope. The clip actually says her dad was a Veteran.
So I sat back and considered the implications. Was this a deliberate distortion intended to subliminally get military sympathy?
Was this just sloppy editing? Or was I just being over sensitive to something unintended.
Borrowing a phrase from evangelicals, I had a trilemna.
So I wrote Darcy’s campaign to ask, and to express my disappointment.
Her campaign manager Zach quickly wrote me back and in a series of emails denied that it was intentional, or sloppy editing. He did concede that they had not considered that angle, but insisted it was still accurate.
I wonder…
I mean how can it be? All of the other captions accurately describe their respective sections of the video, so why would this one have to be shortcutted? Was it a subliminal way to say one thing and generate another, deeper connection? I would hope not.
And considering the rest of the military content, it seems unnecessary to do so deliberately to gain the military support. She was the daughter of a vet, is married to one, has a brother who has served in Iraq…all good, and more then enough to show she has an appreciation of the military. If it was deliberate it was pointless.
But, I dont see how it could just be an oops either. There is a substantial difference between Veteran and daughter of a Veteran.
So maybe it is just me being nit picky, but to me it is important not to mislead in your biographical information.
As I noted above, this is a sensitive issue to me, and this could be all my own perception. I can freely admit I am biased to the Military.
And at the same time I am very cynical about politicians and their tactics.
I will say this, the ad is the kind I prefer, where we see information about the person and their ideas, not a laundry list of grievances about their opponent.
So, while Zach talks this over with his production staff, and they determine if a change is necessary, I told him I would for now assume this was unintentional.
Personally, I hope they will opt to edit the caption to be a bit more accurate.
But regardless of what they do, it still makes me wonder…
16 Responses to “The Darcy Burner Trilemna (now with video link)”
I was furious when I saw this. It jumps right out at <I>anyone</I> who has been following this candidate but. we already know the truth. As this is directed to the marginally engaged voter-to-be, it is a LIE, pure and simple.
Pay attention Dave… your candidacy has been handed a gift.
Unfortunately, we apparently live in a world of "relative" truth as it relates to political spin. Jim McDermott, for example, helped to define the difference between Viet Nam era Vets and Southeast Asia Vets in the development of the Washington Southeast Asia Veterans benefits act. In my opinion this was little more than a ploy to appear supportive of Veterans while minimizing the actual benefits given. He later called himself a Viet Nam Vet, claiming there is no difference. (Tell that to the Viet Nam era Vets that you screwed out of the benefits, Jim) Why is it these people want to dress themselves up in phony patriotic costumes just before election time?
now i know what i was having issues with in that ad… it did indeed leave me thinking SHE had been in the military… Darcy is actually a lovely woman, though I’m on the other side of the aisle from her, politically speaking, but she is getting bad advice from somewhere.. She has already been summarily spanked for saying she was an "executive" at Microsoft, when she wasnt.. she was a Manager, which is a long way from being an exec. I said weeks ago, that her campaigne was a bit hard to watch, and this sort of stuff is why… she just isnt saavy enough to swim with the sharks.
In this case as well as Cantwell’s:
I think you want to find something so you can justify supporting Republicans while still claiming to be open minded. For myself, I have nothing else to say about someone else’s Congressional race.
As for Cantwell, I voted for Slade - it is stupid to vote out an incumbent Senator without great need because of the way the Senate works - but I will not vote for a fat cat insurance exec who accepted the obscene compensation he received . As for our geek refugee from the dotcom bust, I was disgusted with her financial mess, too, but at least that was an honest, open market…
As far as I’m concerned, we need two new laws:
1) An absolute cap on executive compensation which also bans stock packages in any industry with a "captive market" like insurance. And I’d put the cap under half a million a year.
2) A law requiring the insurance industry to go "zero profit." I’m tired of getting ripped off. I have to buy insurance. The State forces the citizens - unless they’re filthy rich - to buy auto insurance. You can’t mortage a house withour property insurance. If you have kids, the State’s defacto policy requires that you provide them with health insurance. In short, you have no choice but to do business with those dirty sharks. Since they have a captive market, they should be forced to return every penny of profit to those they extracted it from.
And yes, I’d expand that to cover any similar industry. If you want to make a profit, get into something with an honest market where consumers can say "no thanks."
Back to "other people’s Congressional races. I have nothing else to say - except this:
I’d rather see a slate of Democrat chimps elected to a slate of Republicans after the lies and manipulations of the GWB administration. We have to hand the power back to the minority party so they can begin taking an honest look at GWB’s abuses. I’d be syaing that if the roles were reversed - a Democrat would have been just as abusive; the taste for dictatorial power is endemic in the ruling class.
The Presidency is out of control. It is imperitave to the future of America that we make an example of GWB now.
Do it for the kids…
Two new laws? Come on get real. An absolute cap? On a "captive market"? Insurance is not a captive market. If you do not like your insurance provider move on to another one……the yellow pages are FULL of them. A "captive market"? ha-ha-ha-ha get real.
Zero Profit? Again come on get real…. nobody does anything for ZERO PROFIT. If you want a zero profit insurance system move to Cuba.
The President is out of control? Get real. Liberal lunatics are out of control and your post is just more proof that liberals have no place running anything.
An obvious ploy. Nice work. the anti-war left always goes to great pains to not appear anti-war. They support the troops of course! Just not anything the troops do.
I would be more willing to give the Burner camp the benefit of the doubt if the audio and video matched up, not on the Father was an Air Force Vet but if the video also showed "School Teacher" in addition to "Air Force Vet". After all the audio also mentions her mother was a school teacher. So why does the video not show that in addition to the Air Force Vet?
This seems fairly clear to me an intentional effort to mislead.
HEY POINT OF FACT ALL POLITICANS LIE MOST OF THE TIME IF THEIR MOUTH IS OPEN START TO DOUBT WHAT YOU ARE HEARING.
Darcy WAS in the civil air patrol.
I watched the ad and was not confused. The style of the ad is the text onscreen is a very short summary of the voiceover.
Your post here amounts to a pile of nothing.
No offense intended, but her being CAP is hardly on par with her being a veteran.
Also, the fact this debate is even happening is proof the ad has an ambiguous element.
And thanks for being party of the pile.
As a former civil air patrol cadet myself, I am disappointed there were so many pictures included of the CAP uniform in the making of a deception. Integrity is a core value of both CAP and AF. Technically speaking, CAP is "the official auxiliary of the USAF" but I certainly don’t call myself a veteran even if I did achieve the General Billy Mitchell award (as depicted in one picture)–which thousands of other teenagers have done.
As a current Air Force member of over 30 years I found the ad to be deceptive; designed to portray her in a light that is not truthful. It is a shame that politicians today cannot be straight up with the public. Just skating by with the truth does not cut it with me. I think she needs to remove/change the ad immediately and issue a statement of clarification that she did not mean to mislead the voting public. To not do so will speak volumes of her integrity and the voters should take careful note.
I don’t know Darcy Burner, but read the local papers and websites. I do have an opinion about her, however. I don’t trust her at all. She finds the line of deceit and goes as close to it as possible. Why? What does she have to hide? What has she done to be ashamed of in her life? I have to ask these questions, because she was neither a Microsoft Executive, or a Veteran. Yet, in 2006, she (or her staff, which she is supposed to be in control of) have tried to feed these lies to her potential voting audience.
Why on earth would she do these things? Or worse yet, is she just some puppet manipulated by the King County Democrats?
I wouldn’t hire her to answer my telephones, because she has already proven multiple times to be manipulative and dishonest. I wouldn’t want someone like that near my family.
And I don’t know anything about her politics! I do know she doesn’t believe in being honest and truthful.
Good catch, LSU. This was mentioned over at Sound Politics, so I wandered over to take a peek. I’ve been onto Darcy’s campaign of deception from the beginning when Sound Politics starting exposing her lies. Keep up the good work.
Oh, sure, because seeing that picture of Darcy as a toddler makes it seem as if she’s claiming she’s the Air Force vet.
You are looking for ANY excuse to bash her — as are the folks at Sound Politics. Well, that’s your prerogative, but you’re the ones being dishonest. Darcy has yet to tell a lie; you all are perfectly happy to tell lies about her instead.
You know, Dave Reichert claimed he caught the Green River Killer. But he didn’t — he was just one of a team of people involved. He LIED! And his website claimed for awhile that he had a BA from Concordia when in fact he has only an AA. He LIED! He said he was voting against stem cells because he opposed the research morally, and then he voted to override the President’s veto. He LIED!
Why don’t you ‘fess up your real reason for disliking Burner: you don’t like her positions, and you’re scared she’s going to win, so you’re looking for ANYTHING you can twist into an excuse.
The picture of Darcy as a toddle is actually the second scene with the "Air Force Veteran" caption. The first is a low quality snapshot of two people. It is hard to even tell the sex of the two people, but I assume that one of the two is her father in uniform.