Steele of the Night

Remington Steele was a TV series in the 80s that used to have titles with the word "Steele" in it. I'm sure it became increasingly difficult to come up with episode names with such a huge limitation. In the title, I'm using "Steele" as "Still".

But I wanted to talk about a different Steele. Michael Steele. He's running for the US Senate as a Republican. I suppose Republicans must love a candidate of color. He's running against Democrat Ben Cardin, who, incidentally, is white.

I don't really want to talk about race in this case, but instead, Michael Steele's political commercials. Political commercials are pretty unimaginative. Most of them look like they're created by people who've never made a non-political commercial. After a while, these ads are sling mud because in politics, if you can't say good things about yourself (rare), you say bad things about the other opponent, often voiced by a woman, who sounds scolding, yet comforting.

Michael Steele's commercials have taken a different tack. They seem like Montel Williams commercials. Montel, yes, is African American, and he's bald (though likely shaved) where Steele apparently is simply losing hair. Still, this kind of imagery may send fear to non-African Americans, and so what's apparently needed is a way to soften the image.

In particular, Steele is in his entire ad, he's holding puppies, and trying to show he's a genuinely nice guy. This, I'm sure, has caused the Democrats to think about what strategy they want to use. Lately, I've seen them counter with "nice" attack ads. I must admit, this is a rather refreshing, if odd, set of commercials--the "nice" attack. Steele smiles. He laughs. What a nice guy!

Of course, if this proves successful, you're going to see more of these kinds of ads nationwide. Heck, for all I know, it is happening nationwide.

I want to give props to a political ad campaign that isn't retreading familiar ground. It may not be David Lynch different, but for a political ad, it's an intriguing step.