Episode 133: "Political Ads"

Ok...I'm a little tardy with this post. But I was trying to cool out and enjoy my shortened holiday work week last week, and long weekend. So now that it's back to business, I can catch up on my blog. So this episode is a pair of old school Presidential campaign ads, the few that I could find in the vaults that feature some black people (actually speaking) in them. It's well known that this is a historic year for presidential politics. But as these ads show, black people have used their influence in the past by publicly participating in presidential campaigns (and in both parties I might add). So maybe this will offer some "shut the heck up" to the people on the web who seem to think that black people have just begun to support a specific candidate this election year. I even offer one more piece of evidence here:

But I digress...episode 133 includes first, an ad from the 1960 Presidential campaign of Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy in which he sits down with Harry Belafonte for a sound bite snippet of all the great things he stands for. Belafonte urges us to cast our vote for JFK, as he plans to do. Pretty standard campaign stuff. The second ad however, doesn't include the actual candidate at all. It is for Republican Gerald Ford's 1976 re-election bid, and stars Pearl Bailey. In this ad she too urges us to cast our vote for Ford, but doesn't seem to offer any specific reasons for doing so. This one was a little strange to me, and seemed to be a pretty blatant advertisement proclaiming, "I'm black and I support Ford...maybe you should too" with little substance to it. At least Kennedy appeared in his ad, and made it a minute long to make his case. Ford on the other hand just offers 30 seconds of Ms. Bailey talking vaguely about how she likes Gerald Ford. This just reminds me of something that Republicans would still try and do (like in the 2004 GWB ad above). Put a black face on the screen to say, "hey, there are some black people who vote for us...why not you?" But that's just my interpretation. Enjoy these ads, and remember to vote (regardless of which candidate you support). Peace.