Tuesday, March 16, 2010

MGM Mirage Strikes Back at New Anti-Reid "Swift Boat Ad"

After news broke on Rethuglican smear master Floyd Brown's new "Swift Boat-Willie Horton" style ad trying to accuse Harry Reid and MGM Mirage of supporting "slave labor" in Dubai (HUH??!!), MGM Mirage is now striking back.

Nevada's largest private employer is lashing back at attack ads aimed at linking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to alleged exploitative labor practices in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Lawyers for resort giant MGM Mirage say claims in the ads are "false, offensive and defamatory" and called on the creators to retract the commercials, posted online at www.exposeharry.com and scheduled to run on television this week in Las Vegas.

Oh yes, and did I mention these "Expose Harry" California carpetbaggers (they're based in San Diego County, by the way) are also "birthers" who continue to claim that President Obama is supposedly "illegitimate" because he's supposedly not a "natural born citizen"? Oh yes, it gets crazier. No wonder why this ad stunk.

"This doesn't really stand up to tests of reason. It is a big stretch," said Joseph Valenzano, an associate professor in the communications department at University of Nevada, Las Vegas who specializes in political rhetoric.

Valenzano said the labor ad is a success in that it prompts voters to think of Harry Reid, slave labor and CityCenter as being associated.

But it fails for two reasons, he said.

First, it doesn't establish any clear connection between the concepts other than mentioning them in the same ad. Second, the issue of alleged labor abuses in Dubai has nothing to do with how voters in Nevada will decide who to support in the upcoming election.

"This ad is designed for shock treatment," Valenzano said.

As the ad percolates in the public discourse it will lose effectiveness as voters realize the implied connections between Reid and Dubai labor practices are suspect and that nearly every Democratic and Republican politician in Nevada supported CityCenter because it was credited with creating thousands of new jobs during the greatest recession in state history, he said.

So are all our elected officials, Democrats and Republicans, now guilty of supporting "slave labor" because they supported the completion of CityCenter? Would Nevada have been better off if CityCenter failed, Nevada's largest employer collapsed, and Nevada's economy slid into another Great Depression?

Obviously, these California carpetbaggers know nothing about Nevada and how our state works. They shouldn't attack Harry Reid like this, they shouldn't attack MGM Mirage like this, and they shouldn't bash all of Nevada like this. These "Swift Boaters" just don't know yet how this crap will come back to bite them (and help reelect Harry Reid this year).

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