"The homes of America are horrified and the intelligence of Americans is insulted by weird television advertising by which this administration threatens the end of the world unless all-wise Lyndon is given the nation for his very own."
— Senator Barry M. Goldwater referring to the Daisy girl ad
— Senator Barry M. Goldwater referring to the Daisy girl ad
DAISY GIRL:
I think this ad was originally sparked by a comment from Senator Barry Goldwater regarding Vietnam: "... he mentioned some possibilities, one of which was to defoliate Vietnamese forests with a "low yield atomic device." The remark was widely discussed and gave the impression that Goldwater had a casual attitude toward dropping atomic "devices"."
The ad starts off with a little girl picking petals off a flower, and counting in sequence. Then an adult voice comes on and starts counting down, followed by footage of a nuclear explosion and the words of Lyndon B. Johnson: "These are the stakes– to make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die."
According to Barnouw, the Doyle Dane Bernbach [Democratic advertising agency] strategy was to make Goldwater over-react. The first quote mentioned reveals their success in this. But, was it an overreaction? Is it really OK to use an innocent little girl to make a hard political statement about war and nuclear bombs? Obviously not, since their were orders to not play the ad again- howeveer, the attention it received was enough that replaying it would be useless.
Overall, I think this ad shows how low politics can really go. Exploiting young children for political reasons is just plain wrong, not to mention the context that the Daisy Girl ad was. Thank goodness for Obama stepping up and not falling into ridiculous political advertising like so many others with an agenda.
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