GOP Senate Hopeful Totally Not Sorry For Despicable Ad Exploiting James Foley's Execution

Let's say you are a Republican running for Senate in New Mexico against the current and quite popular Democratic Sen. Tom Udall, and your chances of winning are slightly better than a snowstorm in hell. What do you do? If you are Allen Weh, you run the most disgusting ad your campaign brain trust can imagine because YOLO, apparently.

The ad, if you cannot bring yourself to watch it and we don't blame you, is your fairly standard grasping-at-straws Republican ad. Ooooh scary music. Ooooh scary images of Barack Obama golfing and dancing and laughing and smiling (IMPEACH!), juxtaposed with ooooh scary clips of riots and explosions and Generic Muslims With Guns. The super nuanced implication, of course, is that Obummer is busy golfing -- which we know no president has ever done before -- and shaking his groove thang while the world racing down the fast lane to hell. And of course this all somehow Sen. Udall's fault, because there's a little-known codicil in the Constitution that empowers one of the senators from New Mexico to stop the president from leaving his desk in the Oval Office until he has fixed ALL the problems. Ergo, elect Weh because "to change Washington, you must change your senator."

The ad does have one neat twist though. At the 31-second mark, there is a shot of the masked killer of photojournalist James Foley, whose gruesome beheading went viral, despite pretty darned explicit pleas from his family to NOT DO THAT:

Please honor James Foley and respect my family’s privacy. Don't watch the video. Don't share it. That's not how life should be.

But because the world is terrible, that was ignored because it was a can't-miss opportunity for terrible people to get their fix of tragedy porn, and also, of course, an opportunity for the usual suspects to blame Obama, who could have saved Foley his own self if he hadn't been so busy vacationing and DESTROYING AMERICA. Presumably, Never Gonna Be Sen. Weh wants us to believe that not only is Foley's murder Obama's fault, but it is also Udall's fault too.

Now, you might think Weh is pissing directly in the faces of Foley's family by using a clip of the video that the family specifically asked people to not even watch or share, which, a person with half a brain cell might conclude also means not using it in a goddamned political ad. But nah, Weh's campaign has the perfect response to that:

Asked if the Weh campaign considered the Foleys' request before deciding to use the footage, a spokeswoman told The Huffington Post that the ad did not defy the family's wishes because it only showed Foley's executioner -- an as-yet-unidentified man with a British accent -- and not Foley himself.

"It's not Foley, it's the man who killed him," the spokeswoman said.

Oh. Well, then. Since it is not a picture of Foley, but rather, a picture of his killer, never mind. You are not a totally classless piece of scum, Allen Weh, and Foley's family will no doubt appreciate that distinction. Heck, they are probably writing up an endorsement of your campaign right now!

As far as disgusting political ads go, this one is probably not theveryworst. That honor still goes to retiring Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who in 2002 ran an ad against then-Sen. Max Cleland for siding with The Terrorists instead of President Dubya and notreallycaring about national security and Amurika, which is obvious because Cleland only gave some but not all of his limbs in service to his country. Yeah, we're pretty sure that one still wins Worst Ad Ever. But congratulations, Mr. Weh, you definitely make the top five.

[ HuffPo ]