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This Day in Esoteric Political History

Godless Americans (2008)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6982 Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2021

⏱️ 16 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s October 27th. This day in 2008, an ad endorsed by Elizabeth Dole is running in North Carolina accusing Senate candidate Kay Hagan of being a “godless American.”

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss how the ad was deceptively edited, why it created such a backlash, and why the charge of “Godlessness” is so stick in American politics.

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Julie Shapiro, Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

0:08.0

My name is Jody Avergan.

0:10.0

This day, October 28th, 2008, an ad begins running in North Carolina as part of the very contentious

0:18.6

Senate race in that state.

0:21.6

This topic was suggested by a listener William from North Carolina, and I'm just going to read from their note because it really sets it up nicely. So William writes us, in an episode a few weeks ago, you mentioned dirty mudslinging elections. I live in North Carolina and boy do we throw mud.

0:35.2

Specifically in 2008 with Kay Hagen versus Elizabeth Dole for Senate.

0:39.8

Late October is when the quote Godless Americans ad first aired across North

0:44.6

Carolina the ad called State Senator Kayegan a godless American and made so many

0:49.8

wild accusations this is a practice many on the religious right like to

0:54.1

pull calling well-involved Christian politicians Godless instead of liberal. They did it

0:59.1

to Hagen and they did it to Carter in 1980. So that's a little bit of Williams note and a little bit of Williams

1:04.7

take there at the end about the larger dynamic. But the facts are, as William laid out, there was

1:09.8

a Senate election incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole runs this very

1:14.0

controversial ad against her opponent state Senator Kayegan. So let's talk

1:18.7

about that ad that race and the charge of godlessness in American politics here to do that as always are

1:25.2

Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley. Hello there

1:28.7

Hello Jody. Hey there. So since we're talking about an ad, we never do this, we play clips, but you know what,

1:37.0

this is about an ad and I think it's worth playing the clip here and so we'll, well, let's take a listen.

1:41.6

There was a longer version of this ad and then there was a

1:44.0

32nd version of this ad. So this is the 32nd version of the Godless Americans ad that

1:48.8

started running in 2008 in North Carolina right around this day.

1:52.3

I'm Elizabeth Dole and I appreciate that. in North Carolina right around this day.

...

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