It's been a while...

...since political candidates' ads made me laugh out loud. By "it's been a while," I actually mean, of course, that I don't actually remember this occurring in the past. Normally they stick to the categories of "so cheesily patriotic as to be completely meaningless," "incoherent mud-slinging," or "vague claims of supporting universal values that no candidate would ever claim to be against."

But in recent months, I have discovered an entirely new category of campaign ad, the sort which makes me laugh out loud at it's utter ludicrousness... and it's absolute back-firing. I categorize these as the "gasp! look what the other candidate supports! ...oh, wait, $!#%, that's what you actually want?" ads. (Except that, in reality, that last part never occurs. I keep seeing these ads over and over, as apparently no one in these campaigns finds them as ridiculously humorous as I do.)

This category includes the ads that hold Barack Obama single-handedly responsible for high gas prices. But then, oops, they mention that it's because he-- HORRORS!-- doesn't support drilling for more oil. Huh. Score: campaign 0, Obama 1. Just in case anyone was holding out voting for him because they mistakenly thought he wanted to drill all over, thanks, dear campaign, for clearing this point up.

Actually, a lot of the ads in this new category fall under the "how dare they wish for alternative fuels!" umbrella. And it's by no means just on the presidential level, as many similar ads have popped up for more local candidates. I think one, aghast, even accused their opponent of the mortal sin of supporting wind energy. Or maybe I just made that one up.

If I stop laughing long enough, I have to think about the fact that these ads are on TV because they actual fool some people. There are people in this country who actually believe that the choice is either between off-shore drilling, or high gas prices (and that there actually even is a choice between those two, as if the former were even an option for combatting the latter).

But that would be too depressing. I hear enough ridiculous things on a daily basis, from people on the bus or the street or clients at work. Just horrifyingly ignorant things. (And I mean that literally: I really think these folks just don't know any better.)

So in the meantime, I will sit in my living room and chuckle to myself at the silly campaign writers. I will try to give Americans more credit for intelligence than the ad writers clearly do. I will try to have a little bit of faith in my fellow country-folk to not act quite so stupid as the ad writers think we all are, this time around. (Even I won't ignore the sad track record that American voters... or, eh, courts, anyway... have had over the past decade or so.) So I will be optimistic. And I will laugh at the things my TV is telling me. And I hope that most Americans are seeing through it all enough to laugh with me, too.