Mild puzzlement

[jhetley]

We've been screening calls through the answering machine, this political season.  And just got one that has me scratching my head.

Very aggressive, harsh voice.  The message was the basic Obama = terrorist thing, pounding on the Ayers connection.  But the volume and tone of voice weren't professional-actor grade, the "this message authorized and paid" tag was in the same voice/tone, and other things just seemed a bit off and over-the-top.

Almost suspect a Joe Job . . .

Comments

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

Huh. We're getting an insane number of calls from various "Unknown" numbers ourselves, but none of the creeps can be bothered to leave a message. We're never home during the day and we don't watch television...so this was what the world was like before televised debates and attack ads.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

A lot of the calls drop after the answering machine comes on, but this one didn't. That's another anomaly.

[edschweppe.livejournal.com]

McCain's apparently got multiple robocalls going out to battleground states - you're in the non-Portland congressional district, right? That makes you a battleground. My condolences.

One of the robocalls, which sounds to me like what you're describing, had this for a script:

Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayres, whose organization bombed the U.S. capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202-863-8500.

I grabbed this from Ben Smith's Politico.com blog, which also has a link to a QuickTime recording of the call.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we're a battleground. That's why we got Governor Caribou.

Your transcript sounds about right. Guess that means it was legit? The whole tone and content sounded likely to lose votes rather than gain them . . .

Was it this one?

[anahata56.livejournal.com]

Yeah, apparently it's all over the place.

Re: Was it this one?

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

That's the message, but not the voice. Maybe our version had the computer playback volume set too high? Overdriving the audio?

Hey, I'm half-deaf, and the message was too loud for *me* . . .