From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield. As we charge toward the midterm election, political candidates around the country are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into TV advertising.

Much of it, as always, horrifying to behold. We checked in with Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News,

for a preview of how his network will be handling election night. He's also been following the

campaign ads and has a couple of abominations to share, starting with a spot produced for

incumbent Senator Max Baucus of Montana.

It's an ad produced by the Democratic Committee in Washington.

Both major parties have campaign arms in Washington that work on Senate and House races,

and they tend to be the ones who are sort of the henchmen expected to do more of the dirty work.

This ad in Montana was done on behalf of the incumbent Democratic Senator, Max Baucus,

attacking his opponent, a state legislator named Mike Taylor,

who'd worked many years ago as a hairdresser and as the owner of beauty parlors around the state of Montana and elsewhere.

He had done a television show in which he'd sort of demonstrated the techniques of his trade

and the ad itself showed Mr. Taylor in a mod garb from a bygone era working on the face and hair of a gentleman sitting in a barber's chair.

And the Taylor campaign felt the ad suggested that he was gay.

And there's such a devastating effect on him,

that Mr. Taylor, who was pretty far behind before the ad went on the ear,

suspended his campaign for a time and said he simply couldn't campaign under the cloud he felt that that ad caused.

Now, the clothing these men were wearing was a sin against God and man.

It was the 70s, but can never, can I remember, the issue of

someone's sexuality in a race for the United States Senate being an issue, however, however

obliquely it may have been suggested. Well, of course, the beauty of the ad from the point of view

...