NEWS

Today The Press Democrat and abcnews.com are running an article about a new Republican ad that smells of subliminal advertising. The word "rats" flashes on the screen for one-thirtieth of a second after a picture of Al Gore's face appears. The Republican maintain that rats is just the tail end of the word "bureaucrats" but since "rats" appears in huge white letters and bigger than any other word in the commercial, it can be assumed that the Republicans were trying to connect bureaucrats,Gore, and rats subliminally. Of course, Bush maintains that this analysis is "weird" but I say that the commercial is weirder than the analysis. This reminds me of an odd occurence on the night of George Bush Sr.'s nomination for president at the Republican Convention in 1988. I was watching CNN at the time and I heard the word Bush spoken in long drawn out hushed tones right after the nomination. It was not my imagination because the CNN commentators looked stunned immediately afterwards. I never heard any mention of it in the press in the following days.