Glenn Reynolds is tsk-tsking along with others, but how many people have seen the cartoon rather than read a lurid description?

I think the spin is more than a little misleading, particularly because the drawings, while bad, are fairly accurate caricatures, and also because the anti-christ line is given in quotes and referenced to 'Information Week, 01/09/2006.' You can read the article which the ad refers to, written by Paul McDougall.

You can see the flier archived at the blog Not Larry Sabato, which also features a side-by-side comparison of the cartoon and a photograph of Harris suggesting that the cartoon is a tracing. I don't think Gandelman's characterization is fair, i.e., that Webb depicted his opponenent 'with a big schnozz' in a manner consistent with Nazi propaganda. Considering its target audience, it's much more likely that the ad was inspired by traditional labor propaganda.

Having said that, the ad is tasteless, poorly done, and highly unprofessional. The footnotes are actually damaging because they reveal inaccuracy in the quote from Information Week: the flier indicates that the article called Harris the 'anti-Christ of outsourcing' and that that it quoted him as saying that outsourcing 'is good for the American economy.'

The use of quotes is dishonest, representing paraphrase as quotation. They took 'anti-Christ of outsourcing' from the following:

Harris Miller, aka the Antichrist if you're an unemployed IT worker, is gearing up for a Senate run as--a Democrat? "I think businesspeople can be good Democrats," Miller told me last week. "I'm proud to be a businessman; my father was a small businessman."

And as for Miller's quote about 'a good thing for the American economy?'

As for outsourcing, another bogeyman that trade unions, some legislators, and Lou Dobbs say will have all of us flipping burgers at McDonald's, Miller thinks it's a good thing. "Global sourcing continues to be a net positive for American workers and the U.S. economy," he said in an October release.

While some might defend this as 'accurate,' it's misleading, and as I said before dishonest, even if unintentional. That sort of thing would have serious repercussions in the academy.

But why do I say the ad is tasteless? Well, aside from the obvious aesthetic reasons, because of something I think most people have missed: (1) it repeatedly calls Miller a Killer (a very bad play on his name that will pass over most people's heads, as in the quote by Webb-as-cartoon-hero: 'Shut your mouth Killer!'; (2) they open with Miller saying 'Let them eat cake!', and here comes our first footnote: 'Attributed to Marie Antoinette shortly before she was beheaded in 1793.'

Now, any amount of research will tell you that the phrase pre-dates marie Antoinette by more than a century, that this was long a popular phrase to capture how out of touch the aristocracy was. It was a dark joke, and it still works. But the footnote reveals something ugly, especially when coupled with the repeated use of the word 'Killer,' and that is using tyrannicide as a metaphor for political victory.

It's bad enough to portray your opponent as a heartless, greedy, elitist, but do you have to resort to that sort of rhetoric?

So in conclusion, I don't think James Webb is an anti-semitic fascist, but he may be a little stupid.