Neal Boortz: Barnes ad gives sleaze a bad name

You vote in three days.

What else happens in three days? We’ll see an end of these campaign commercials; and there is a reason to celebrate.

Some may rejoice in a Republican takeover of the U.S. House. Others may dance around the coffee table when their favorite candidate for governor is elected, but virtually everyone will be spinning around on their eyebrows and dancing jigs at the thought that we no longer will have to watch these insipid commercials on TV.

Here’s some bad news. It might not be over on Tuesday. Georgia is the only state in the nation that has general election runoffs. This could come into play in the battle between Republican Nathan Deal and Democrat Roy Barnes.

If either candidate fails to get 50 percent of the vote — plus one — then we will be suffering with a few more weeks of campaign ads. The good news might be that they couldn’t possibly be any more sleazy than they already are.

Deal’s ads are bad enough; but I don’t know if I can suffer through two more weeks of some of the sleaziest campaign advertising I’ve ever seen: Roy Barnes’ ads about Deal’s attempts to make Georgia’s rules of evidence reflect the federal rules.

You’ve seen the TV ad, I’m sure. But for those of you who somehow missed it, let me describe what Barnes put on our television screens.

The camera shows an empty parking lot at night. Empty except for one Volvo minivan with the door open, the lights flashing and the alarm blaring. You get a close-up of the door; the keys are hanging out of the lock and slightly swinging. There on the ground are groceries, including a stream of spilled milk.

The message is clear. Someone was attacked as they were walking back to their car with groceries for the family.

The narrator then starts talking about how the evil Nathan Deal tried to make it easier for “sleazy defense attorneys” to question rape victims. Now you know what happened to the person who dropped all those groceries. It’s an innocent woman, and right this moment someone is raping her. They’ll probably leave her body in the woods somewhere, and it’s all Nathan Deal’s fault.

OK, so what’s this all about? Many years ago Nathan Deal launched an effort in the Georgia Legislature to amend Georgia’s rules of evidence in criminal courts so as to make them more like the federal rules of evidence. In the process some elements of the Georgia rape shield law would have been changed.

A State Bar of Georgia panel weighed in on these changes and supported Deal’s efforts. Roy Barnes was serving on that panel, but conveniently can’t remember whether he sat in on any of those meetings or not. As it turned out, the women in Georgia fought back. Deal listened and made changes to his legislation.

There are some good debates to be had on rape shield laws. Some women’s rights activists would like to see a system where a man could be convicted of rape on the completely unsupported testimony of one woman.

On the other side we have people who believe that the victim’s sexual history is absolutely fair game at trial.

The fact is our Constitution gives a person charged with a crime the absolute right to confront his or her accuser. Protecting the victim from testifying at all is a non-starter. So, also, should be questions about a victim’s sexual past unrelated to the rape charge.

Barnes’ ad, though, flies right past these issues and plays directly to woman’s greatest fear: the fear of being raped. Ignore the words. Concentrate on the visual, and the message is clear: Vote for Deal, and you’re going to end up a rape victim. In the world of sleazy campaign advertising, this one gets the all-time prize.

Listen to Neal Boortz live from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays on AM 750 and now 95.5FM News/Talk WSB.