Ross: Halloween horror trailers aren’t the only ads trying to scare you

This is why it’s completely logical that Halloween is timed to come right before Election Day. The attack ads, I think, blend very nicely with the trailers for the Halloween sequel:

“I was certain that I saw him watching me…”

More from Dave Ross: Why are there no speedo barista stands?

Relax lady! That’s just a patriotic Arizona poll watcher with a gun. Give him a Snickers bar and he’ll come to his senses.

By now, we should be used to these ads and what they’re designed to do.

Most candidates appear pretty normal when you see them at a debate or a town hall. But because it takes a sense of fear to get people to vote, these ads are designed to convince you that candidates lead a secret life in which they encourage shoplifting, looting, riots, inflation, fentanyl addiction, six-dollar gas, category-5 hurricanes, COVID-19, falling test scores, homelessness, and wildfires.

The idea is not just to make you vote against the targeted candidates but to hate them, to see them as subhuman.

And you may ask, Dave, why does your station run these ads?

Because we want to stay on the air.

Under chapter 47, section 312 of the U.S. Code, the Federal Communications Commission may revoke any station license “for willful or repeated failure to allow reasonable access to or to permit purchase of reasonable amounts of time … by a legally qualified candidate for Federal elective office on behalf of his candidacy.”

And ads purchased by candidates cannot be censored.

When you run for public office, you sign up to be slandered and have no recourse except to slander back.

I remind you of this because there are clearly some people who think that because these ads are being broadcast on the air, they must have an element of truth to them. But it’s just the opposite, broadcast ads paid for by candidates are actually immune from being edited.

Politicians are free to sue their attackers, but they almost never do, because there’s almost no chance the case would settle before the elections.

So all they can do is return fire.

And all you can do…is teach yourself to ignore any ad that sounds like a movie trailer.

Unless, of course, it is a movie trailer.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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