Immediately after the ad aired I looked across the room at my friend who was also waiting to watch the ad and said after a short pause to stop blinking and close my mouth, “That’s it? That is what all the hype was about?” If you missed it you can watch it by clicking here.
If the intent of the ad was to get billions of dollars of free PR on the pro-life side of the abortion issue then mission accomplished. If the intent was to get the country talking about the issue then mission accomplish. Frankly, the way the ad campaign was handled was either a stroke of genius or Focus on the Family stumbled into a fresh, out-of-the-box way to use their public platform. The pro-choice side of the debate were so certain that the ad was going to take the form of the typical pro-life rhetoric that they blindly cranked up their media engine in laud and swarthy protest of what was sure to be the most intolerant ad of the century. When it turned out to be the benign if not quirky ad you see above about a mother anxious for her son’s health and then being the brunt of Looney-tunes type violence you had to stop and think. This is not what anyone expected. If it is not what I expected I can only imagine the surprise that the abortion agenda felt. They may have even missed it the first time around, it was just that understated.
What do you think will be the outcome short and long term?