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Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Happy 52nd Birthday, Daisy!

What's perhaps still known as the most notorious political campaign attack ad on TV aired just once before being pulled--fifty-two years ago tomorrow.  We are speaking, of course, of the 1964 ad for LBJ that pictured a little girl pulling a daisy about to be obliterated by a nuclear attack--thanks to GOP candidate Barry Goldwater.   It became known as The Daisy Ad.  But as my book The Campaign of the Century makes clear--the first use of the screen to destroy a candidate happened 80 years ago, with fake newsreels produced by none other than Irving Thalberg hitting the radical and frontrunning candidate for governor of California, Upton Sinclair.

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