Tennessee RNC Attack Ad Pulled: Blame Canada?

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What got that racist anti Harold Ford attack ad pulled off the air? Was it complaints from NAACP? The DNC? Or was it our neighbors to the north? This, from a Canadian news station:

It’s not often Canadians care about who’s running for the U.S. Senate. But when we figure prominently in one of those quintessential American-style attack ads, nearly everyone on this side of the border sits up and takes notice.

A fierce fight between a Tennessee Republican candidate and his Democratic opponent has gotten personal – and Canada is right in the middle of it.

The controversial commercial from right wing candidate Bob Corker attacks a man named Harold Ford. It features supposedly ordinary citizens commenting on the Democrat, indicating he’ll increase taxes and take guns out of the hands of residents, two huge issues in the south. There’s also a shot of a rather questionable young woman who claims she’s spent time with Ford at “The Playboy Club”. But it’s the next statement that seems to have rankled many. It comes from a comment made about some recent controversial nuclear tests.

“Canada can take care of North Korea,” a man who resembles a young Wilfrid Brimley jokes. “They’re not busy.” The suggestion that we aren’t pulling our weight in the world – and the fact that we’ve lost 42 soldiers in Afghanistan – is never mentioned.

The commercial, which has already been part of an equally nasty campaign between Ford and Corker, has been the subject of a protest by Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S. And that complaint has apparently led to action.

Officials in Tennessee have agreed to pull the offending advertisement. But the U.S. Ambassador to this country has a response to our anger. He notes Canadian ads during the last election treated U.S. President George Bush with far more contempt and no one really issued any major complaints about those.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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