MoveOn.org seeks to disassociate itself with controversial ads
 |
President Bush
Story Tools
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS
|
Follow the news that matters to you. Create your own alert to be notified on topics you're interested in.
Or, visit Popular Alerts for suggestions.
|
|
From the "Wolf Blitzer Reports" staff in Washington:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It's an extreme image, even in an era of nasty political attack-ads.
Two ads comparing President Bush to Adolph Hitler were made public recently, and at least one of these was posted on the Web site MoveOn.org.
MoveOn.org is an online public interest group, founded in 1998 by two private citizens who advocated for the censure of President Clinton, so the country could "move on" from the impeachment scandal.
"MoveOn" produces political commercials and even sponsors speeches, including two last year, by former Vice President Al Gore.
It often produces ads that are left-leaning, including some anti-war commercials that aired last year.
But today, MoveOn.org is moving as far away as it possibly can from the images in question.
In fact, these ads were not produced by MoveOn and MoveOn says it does not know who produced them.
MoveOn.org held an online contest last month, called "Bush in 30 seconds," asking for the most creative entry that, according to the Web site, "Tells the truth about George W. Bush and his policies."
Most entries were anti-Bush.
Two of them, provided to CNN by the Republican National Committee, are chilling.
MoveOn.org officials acknowledge that at least one of these ads was posted on its site between December 17 and December 31. But they say the ad has since been pulled off. And when we asked for a copy of it, we were told MoveOn no longer had it.
MoveOn officials say no ad featuring images of Hitler even came close to making its list of 15 finalists, announced today.
And in a statement, MoveOn officials say:
"This is a baseless story generated entirely by the RNC. The ad was one of 1,512 submissions from around the country. No one on the MoveOn staff can remember seeing it... It is not a MoveOn ad and it was never distributed, promoted, nor paid for by MoveOn."
As for those ads MoveOn is associating itself with -- the group plans to air the winning entry on television the week of the president's state-of-the-union address later this month.
