McAuliffe, Moran Cite False Education-Prison Complex Conspiracy

Prison architects do not, in fact, closely monitor third-graders' report cards

By JIM NEWELL

Updated 2:30 PM EST, Thu, Jun 4, 2009

Print Email Share TWITTER FACEBOOK

McAuliffe for Governor

We can't write about all of the sappy Terry McAuliffe for Virginia governor ads, regrettably, as there's a new one each and every day. Guy's got a lot of cash to burn before losing next Tuesday, after all.

But one week-old ad, buried amid the debris of millions of cookie-cutter, JFK-quoting McAuliffe video riff raff, still deserves the spotlight. This brilliant manifestation of focus group ADHD depicts our candidate embedded deep within that half-bleak, half-sunny dreamworld that is the Virginia Third-Grade Classroom. But why? What is Terry doing there?

Giving you troubling reports from the future, of course, about your current third-grader's adult life in Hell!

Hear that, kiddies? Best do well on your social studies test because the students who score lower than 60 percent will take a "field trip," to prison, to make lodging reservations for the future.

"Pre-k now, or prison later!" McAuliffe literally says, knowingly, with a smile that can only mean, "That clever alliterative flourish there? All me, baby."

The other brilliant aspect of this ad is that the hilarious central claim -- as Terry says, "Did you know we use the failure rates of third-graders to help predict how many prison spots Virginia will need in 15 years?" -- is 100 percent factually incorrect. "We" do not "use failure rates" like that.

As the Washington Post notes, it's an "urban legend" talking point that's spread virally in recent years among politicians, who love nothing more than a snappy means of threatening impressionable voters' young children in order to advance their own careers.

To be fair, however, fellow candidate Brian Moran has also referenced the falsehood during the campaign. But at least he had the good sense to only mention it off-handedly in a radio interview, unlike McAuliffe, who bloated it into this insane Orwellian one-act of earnest scaremongering, shot live from the mausoleum itself.

Jim Newell writes for Wonkette and IvyGate.