If for absolutely nothing else, Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign ought to be given credit for the innovative ads it’s run this cycle, from a Hillary Clinton look-a-like destroying an email server á la Office Space to a Donald Trump action figure — “He pretends to be a Republican!”
Recently, the Cruz camp put out another gem — a “support group” for voters who had been lied to by politicians. Towards the end, a man with a Marco Rubio t-shirt asks if he can join. Clever.
The pitfalls of using popular culture to support conservative campaigns are pretty obvious: many of the artists behind the parodied work aren’t exactly ideologically compatible with the messages their work is employed to support.
But it’s not often the case that the… ahem, talent in these ads obscure the very message they’ve been hired to promote.
Until last night, when Buzzfeed reported that Cruz’s support group ad featured none other than Amy Lindsay, a softcore film actress who managed to make it past Cruz’s campaign people and into the ad, urging voters to look for “more than a pretty face.”
In an interview with the Washington Post, Lindsay lamented the negative attention the ad might bring the Cruz campaign, and said pointing out her role in it is attempt by the left to shame her:
“It’s a very interesting attack and a different kind of war on women from the left,” she said, comparing her plight to that of Donald Trump’s wife, former model Melania Trump. “… You’re the first folks to condemn me because I showed my boob on the Internet. Are you flipping kidding me?”
It should be noted, though, that no one on the left urged Cruz’s camp to take down the ad — they did as soon as they learned of her involvement in it.
For now, The National Memo‘s staff editor raises a good point:
All this talk about the Ted Cruz ad with a porn actress totally misses key point: Some rival campaign’s oppo guy had to *recognize* her.
— Eric Kleefeld (@EricKleefeld) February 12, 2016
