I am sure you have heard about the Super Bowl advertisement by U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra. Much ha been written about how idiotic this ad was on his part. I wanted to address two key thoughts as someone who has done business in China for over 16 years.
The first thing that came to mind when I heard about the ad was that there had to be a better way to highlight his disagreement with Senator Stabenow. After watching the ad I initially felt bad for the actress involved; she has to face her family and friends. However, the next day when I read this Washington Post article I was stunned by two quotes: from Hoekstra’s Facebook page “trying to make this an issue of race demonstrates their total ignorance of job creation policies” and from Hoekstra campaign spokesman Paul Ciaramitaro “Democrats talk about race when they can’t defend their records”.
These quotes brought me back to my original thought, there has to be a better way for candidate Hoekstra to draw a comparison between himself and Senator Stabenow. His ad says nothing about his stances on trade, or his “job creation policies.” Thus the responses of the Hoekstra campaign make no sense in light of the content of the actual advertisement. Instead, the advertisement does evoke racial stereotypes, effectively black face for Asians, in trying to smear his opponent. We all dislike smear campaigns in politics (except those running them) and would like to see them less prevalent. This advertisement is the worst sort of smear tactic, and if I were in Michigan it would make me extremely unlikely to vote for candidate Hoekstra.
My two thoughts:
1) IF he cannot find a better way to elucidate his campaign stances and his “job creation policies” than this advertisement, Pete Hoekstra has no place in the US Senate.
2) The Chinese DO pay attention to these ads, and they will remember who was responsible for them. On the off chance that the people of Michigan overlook the sheer stupidity and racism of the Hoekstra campaign and elect him as their Senator, you can believe the Chinese will remember.
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