[lbo-talk] Context for 1984 Reagan campaign advertisement

Jim Devine jdevine03 at gmail.com
Fri Jun 2 14:49:39 PDT 2006


[from the web, edited a bit] The LAPD, The FBI, and the CIA are all trying to prove that they are the best at apprehending criminals. The President decides to give them a test.He releases a rabbit into a forest and each of them has to catch it.

The FBI goes in. They recruit animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations they conclude that rabbits do not exist.

The CIA goes in. After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and they make no apologies. The rabbit had it coming.

The LAPD goes in. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear. The bear is yelling: "Okay! Okay! I'm a rabbit! I'm a rabbit!"

On 6/2/06, Sean Johnson Andrews <inciteinsight at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Speaking of history, I need to draw on some of the collective wisdom of the
> list. As an option for a class I'm teaching this summer, I told my students
> they could review a set of TV advertisements for a presidential campaign on
> a web archive called "Living Room Candidate." I have had two students look
> at the Reagan/Mondale campaigns in 1984 and have wondered about the meaning
> of the Reagan advertisment called "Bear." Having watched all the ads in
> that campaign, and reviewed my history of the era, I can only come up with
> vague possibilities. The ad seems to assume it's audience knows what it is
> talking about.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Here is a link to the page of both campaigns:
> http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/election/index.php?nav_action=election&nav_subaction=overview&campaign_id=173
> Bear ad:
> http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/player/index.php?ad_id=923
> Transcript for Bear Ad:
> "ANNOUNCER: There is a bear in the woods. For some people the bear is easy
> to see. Others don't see it at all. Some people say the bear is tame. Others
> say it's vicious and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure who's right,
> isn't it smart to be as strong as the bear? If there is a bear?"
>
> [The obvious answer is that it is the USSR, but wouldn't the question at the
> time not be about the bear's existence but about whether it was balding,
> weak, toothless and crippled or the #1 threat facing America. (Makes me
> wonder if the ambiguity is what leads Stephen Colbert to make his rants
> about bears--just a big inside joke:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBuXz4ozJLc ]
>
> A similar ad ran during the 2004 Bush campaign, but at least it clarified
> what the wolves were:
> http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/player/index.php?ad_id=1204
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-- Jim Devine / "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." -- Oscar Wilde



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