The NRA is taking aim at Mayor Bloomberg, New Yorkers, and apparently the mafia (who one would think would be some of the gun rights group’s biggest supporters) in new television ads airing in Virginia.
In the commercial supporting GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, an actor whose “mob” accent sounds closer to Hugh Grant in Mickey Blue Eyes (if you haven’t seen the film, it’s about as good as you imagine) than a local wiseguy, explains to Virginia voters that it would be in their best interest not to vote for McDonnell if they “know what’s good” for them.
No, this doesn’t have to do with black people, per se. But as I’ve said in past episodes of the Just Curious series, what effects one community of color effects ALL communities of color. So let’s just take a moment and absorb the latest hit: it’s wrong on multiple levels.
1: The NRA is supporting a Republican gubernatorial candidate. While this isn’t much of a surprise, it should sound off alarms for Black people everywhere. Considering the recent rash of youth violence across the country, loose gun control is really not going to benefit this community. But when has the NRA ever cared about Black people? And by way of their official sponsorship of Bob McDonnell, when has the GOP ever cared about Black people?
2: This poor caricature of what New Yorkers sound like basically assumes some very uneducated stereotypes about the cultural make-up of this city: we are not all (I’m guessing here) Italian “mobster” types. First of all, to even depict Italian-Americans this way is ignorant and ineffective and Italian-Americans should probably be pissed since it’s meant to mock them. Secondly, it implies that gun control is an issue that only matters to Italians, (because they’re all mobsters?) which is simply untrue.
3: It’s just a lame-ass ad. Honestly, I tried to make this semi-intelligent, but you just can’t avoid the facts: It’s stupid.
Just throwin’ that out there. What do you guys think?
