Below is our press release we just issued today. Dying to hear what you guys think of the ads :-) You'll note our "still" ad at left on this blog - the moving ads can be seen on DearMary.com at the top of the page.
INTERNET ADS TARGET VP's OPENLY LESBIAN DAUGHTER AS CONGRESS DEBATES GAY MARRIAGE
- Bush campaign charged with sexism over treatment of Mary Cheney
- Apology to gay community demanded from Cheney daughter
WASHINGTON, DC - Millions of ads targeting Vice President Cheney's openly lesbian daughter Mary will blitzkrieg the Internet this week as Congress debates gay marriage in two separate hearings on Capitol Hill, the gay advocacy group DearMary.com announced today.
An example of the ads can be seen online at www.DearMary.com
The cartoon-like ads will run on news sites across the Internet, including the Washington Post, humor sites such as The Onion, and top liberal political blogs. The ads accuse Ms. Cheney of "selling out" by earning $100,000 a year as the head of the vice president's re-election campaign at a time when the Bush administration is pushing for an amendment to the US Constitution that would ban same-sex marriage. Such an amendment would make Ms. Cheney and her life partner, and millions of other gay and lesbian Americans, second-class citizens.
"Mary Cheney used her 'lesbian celebrity' status in 2000 and 2002 to woo gay votes and gay money for the Republican party," said John Aravosis, the creator of both DearMary.com and the new ad campaign. "Now that Mary Cheney's promise of a 'compassionate conservative' Bush administration has fallen flat, she owes an apology to the one million gay Republicans who voted for Bush-Cheney in 2000."
The DearMary.com ads ran into controversy even before they launched when one of Washington, DC's most-respected political publications found them too hot to handle. CongressDaily, a daily staple for lobbyists, members of Congress and their staff, and administration officials, refused to run a print version of the ad, claiming the campaign attacked a politician's child.
DearMary.com circumvented this censorship by running the ads online, and by creatively targeting the ad buy. A portion of the ads will only pop up if the Web visitor is using a US government computer to surf the Internet, thus guaranteeing that a number of Ms. Cheney's colleagues in the Bush administration see the ads. The ad campaign also includes the purchase of a number of key words on the Google.com search engine.
The Bush campaign responded to the DearMary.com ads this weekend by echoing CongressDaily, telling the Associated press that Mary Cheney was simply a child, and therefore off-limits to political criticism. Robin Tyler, co-founder of The Equality Campaign, Inc., the parent organization of both DearMary.com and DontAmend.com, charged the Bush campaign with sexism.
"It is sexist for the Bush campaign to refer to a 35-year-old woman who makes $100,000 a year running a national election campaign as a child," said Ms. Tyler. "And it is simply bizarre to suggest that Mary Cheney is now an off-limits private citizen when less than two years ago she was selling her photo for $500 a pop at Republican fundraisers. Either she's out or she's in, the Bush campaign can't have it both ways."
According to the Los Angeles Times, Ms. Cheney was to be the special guest at a gay Republican fundraiser in Los Angeles on September 5, 2002. The Times reports that "guests were to pay $500 for photos with [then-gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon] and Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney." - Source:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-gov4sep04.story
The DearMary.com ad campaign comprises an over $21,000 online ad buy - all the money collected via online donations - a number of print ads donated by magazines and newspapers across the country, and an additional $50,000 in in-kind donations from an ad agency and a Web advocacy firm, Advocacy Inc., for production and dissemination of the ads. The ad campaign begins Monday, June 21 and will run at least one week.
Read more about the DearMary.com ad campaign in this recent Associated Press story:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-cheney20.html
