Wow

[Trigger warning for racism; misogyny; ableism; violence.]

I have seen some despicable political ads in my life, many of which we've discussed in this space over the last seven years, but nothing that even approaches this attack ad against Democratic Congressional candidate from California Janice Hahn, created by Republican operative Ladd Ehlinger, Jr. and his new political action committee Turn Right USA.

TPM's Evan McMorris-Santoro aptly describes the ad as "Willie Horton on steroids. The 90-second clip accuses Hahn of being too cozy with gang criminals in the past, a charge she's faced for a while and her campaign says has been thoroughly debunked."

Although the ad features black actors as the gang members with whom Hahn, represented as a stripper offering cash out of her panties to gangters, is supposedly too cozy, McMorris-Santoro also notes: "2005 statistics from the LAPD reported that the vast majority of L.A.'s gang population is made up of predominately Latino gangs."

These fucking racists can't even do their racism right.

And though the racism and misogyny in this video is extreme, it's the implied violence at its end which is even more chilling.


As words in a vampiric red font litter the screen around a picture of Hahn, highlighting words from the voiceover, a male voiceover says, "In an insane effort to reduce gang violence, Janice Hahn hired hardcore gang members with taxpayer money to be 'gang intervention specialists.' She even helped them get out of jail, so they could rape and kill again." Hahn's eyes go red. Across the bottom of the screen, a line of text reads: "Visit http://HahnsHomeboyz.org for more info!"

A grainy piece of footage from what looks to be a police interrogation video shows a black man saying, "I started working with Janice Hahn, ya know what I'm saying."

A white woman with short blonde hair (like Hahn) wearing a black bikini walks onscreen with her back to the camera and grabs a stripper pole, as two black men holding rifles start to rap-sing, "Give me your cash, bitch, so we can shoot up the streets." Cut to a close-up of the stripper's butt, on which is emblazoned a mugshot of a tattooed man; in the background "Janice Hahn Hates Guns [Hearts] Gangs" is "graffitied" onto a cinderblock wall.

The men rap-sing "Give me your cash, bitch, so we can shoot up the streets / Give me your cash, ho, so we can buy some more heat" over and over, while mugshots of men we are meant to assume are gang members are superimposed over the butt of the woman dancing at the stripper pole, and black-and-white images of white gangsters like Al Capone and famous criminals like Charles Manson float around the screen.

The stripper waves her ass in the air, and the rappers pull dollars out of her waistband. A video of Hahn is superimposed over the stripper's genital area, implying Hahn is a cunt, in which Hahn is saying, "It does take a different kind of person to be able to speak the language."

"Congress has enough gangsters," says the male voiceover, as the same bloody words appear on the screen, surrounded by a Photoshopped image of Nancy Pelosi appearing to get a facelift, an image of Harry Reid, an image of Charlie Rangel sleeping on the beach, an image of Anthony Weiner, an image of Chuck Shumer, and finally Weiner's infamous grey-briefs crotch shot.

The stripper spins around and a headshot of Janice Hahn has been superimposed over her head. "Janice Hahn: Bad for Los Angeles. Bad for America," says the male voiceover, as the camera zooms in on the reddened devil eyes of Hahn's image.

The image then switches to a semi-automatic rifle, accompanied by the sound of a rifle shooting. The image lights up, implying the pictured rifle is firing. "Let's keep her out of Congress, homies," says the voiceover, which, coupled with the image, clearly exhorts violence against Hahn, even as the voiceover continues, "Donate now!"

On the final screen, as the rifle continues to "fire," words onscreen read: "Paid for by Turn Right USA. Definitely NOT authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. So suck it, McCain-Feingold."