Political Blood Sport

Campaigns for public office have always been contentious. They have sometimes turned vicious, after all to borrow from a greater wit, "politics ain't beanbag". So it should be no surprise that in an era of such tumult, some campaigns have turned angry. The best example of a candidate venting his ire in this cycle may well involve sitting Florida Democrat US Representative Alan Grayson. Grayson or the team concocting his advertising thought of a way to eviscerate his Republican opponent Daniel Webster by heavily editing remarks Webster had made about Biblical views that were empowering to women and gave out of context excerpts that conveyed the opposite meaning. The ad went so far as to have a woman doing a voice over say "Taliban Dan keep your hands off of our bodies". In earlier times, before the alternative conservative media sphere of FOX, right wing radio hosts, and bloggers existed, the main stream dinosaur media might have let the ad stand, but under the New Media spotlight even the dinosaur press had to come out with reports that the Grayson TV spot twisted Daniel Webster's words to distort their plain meaning into something sinister that was never spoken by the GOP standard bearer. In this particular race, Grayson's wrath has come back to bite him with a dip in the polls after the unfounded negative ad came under national scrutiny. In this case, the raging Grayson seems to have been hoisted by his own petard.