During the 2010 midterm-election campaign, I said that the "Chinese Professor" ad was the bit of political persuasion/propaganda most likely to be remembered long after the campaign. Of course, that was before I knew about "I'm Not a Witch."

I considered the "Chinese professor" ad skillfully done. It was ominous but just short of race-baiting (since the "villains" were not Chinese but Americans collectively, and its triumphalism was incidental, as an ending touch, rather than central); and it was in the long-standing American tradition of using external threat as a vehicle for addressing internal concerns. If you'd like to see how the same approach looks when carried out by people who don't worry for a second about what lines they cross, consider one that lucky viewers in Michigan will see later today.

It's for this year's campaign for the U.S. Senate seat in Michigan, now held by Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat. Her Republican challenger, former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, works a "clever" play on her name to show how she's actually advancing the interests of the wily Chinese.





Let's not even get into the logic of the ad -- eg, the fact that China's formula for creating jobs has involved more public spending and more public "guidance" of industry than America's. Let's skip to the bonus points for racial imagery in the ad, apart from the obvious.



1) The "Chinese" woman speaks in American-accented English, and I would bet she is actually an Asian-American. But the script has her make pidgin grammar errors, "Me likee!!"-style.