Republicans Have Trouble Getting Sex Smear Ads on TV

It's almost hard to believe that this ad is real, but Republican congressional candidate Paul R. Nelson has gone to the press because he can't get it aired, and it would seem that indeed, he is accusing the incumbent, democratic Rep. Ron Kind in this 60 second television ad of "paying for sex" because the democrat voted against interfering with the funding of five National Institute of Health studies that were already approved (by a scientific peer-review process) that dealt with sexuality.

The ad, which you have to see and hear to believe, plays on the worst racist, homophobic, and sexphobic prejudices, and is factually inaccurate, as reported in today's Chronicle of Higher Education. Some examples of misinformation in the ad include:

• The study about "Vietnamese prostitutes" was in fact a study out of the University of California at San Francisco which was looking at HIV/AIDS reduction in Asian American sex workers.
• The study supposedly about the "masturbation habits of old men" which was visually represented in the ad by mug-shot images of men who are clearly meant to read as sexually deviant was in fact a part of a larger study about sexual functioning and quality of life in an aging male population
• The study which was supposedly about "two-spirited Aleutian Eskimos" ("whoever they are" the offensive ad intones) was also part of a larger study
• And finally, the study that Nelson claims involved using teenage girls watching pornography for physiological sex research seems to be made up (there is no mention of teenage girls in the study description, only women) and it didn't actually receive funding in 2003.

The same ad (but without the snappy "Ron Kind=Wrong Kind" word play) did air in North Carolina on behalf of Republican House candidate Vernon Robinson who is trying to attack Democratic Rep. Brad Miller with the same falsehoods. The factual errors are detailed by the non-partisan and not-for-profit organization, Annenberg Political Fact Check, where you can also see the Robinson ad.

Read more - FactCheck.org: XXX Marks the Spot Where Campaign Ads Head South