We’ve reported on Angle’s vicious attack ads, criticized for demonizing Latino immigrants both on TV and in mailers. Now, the Nevada Senate candidate is going on offense again, claiming these attacks have been “misinterpreted.” The Hispanic Student Union at Rancho High School in Las Vegas invited Angle to meet with them to explain her approach. When confronted with a question regarding her campaign’s tactic of race-baiting, Angle had this to say (via the Washington Post):
“I’m not sure that those are Latinos in that commercial. What it is, is a fence and there are people coming across that fence. What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through.”
Wait, what? The commercial with the recycled stock photo of scary Latinos was calling for more enforcement at the northern border? The Post reports:
Teacher Isaac Barron said his students organized the meeting with Angle Friday because they felt the ads stereotyped young Hispanics. Barron said Angle’s explanation was met with incredulous stares. “Some of the kids, they couldn’t help but chuckle at that,” he said. “To deny they are anti-Hispanic when those are the only people shown in her ads, it doesn’t add up.”
We went to take another look at that ad, but it had vanished (see image at right).
As Think Progress reports, both the Angle and the Vitter campaigns have removed the ads with the duplicate stock photo, replacing them with slightly edited ads with the same messages. Angle’s ad was pulled from YouTube “due to a copyright claim by Getty Images, Inc.,” and Vitter’s ad is now marked as “Private.” According to Think Progress, the Getty photographer even argues:
I think this is a question of principle. The only legal place they could’ve obtained that image [on the Getty Images website] clearly printed out that the people in the photo were not illegal aliens, but Mexicans in Mexico. That means they either purposefully deceived their audience or they stole the photo from somewhere else.
While the disputed image has been pulled, Angle is not changing her overall race-baiting tactics, and she clearly failed to win over the students at Rancho High School. Jon Ralston at the Las Vegas Sun remarks that Angle told the students:
“I don’t know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me.“
Watch the uncomfortable shuffling after that one:
