Daisy (television advertisement) 511882 222140937 2008-06-27T19:22:39Z Zylox 4561428 rv - check your links before you make them {{Unreferenced|date=May 2008}} "'''Daisy'''," sometimes known as "'''Daisy Girl'''" or "'''Peace, Little Girl'''," was a controversial [[political campaign|campaign]] [[television advertisement]]. Though aired only once (by the campaign), during a [[September 7]], [[1964]], telecast of ''[[David and Bathsheba]]'' on ''[[The NBC Monday Movie]]'', it was a factor in [[Lyndon B. Johnson|President Lyndon B. Johnson's]] landslide defeat of [[Barry Goldwater]] in the [[U.S. presidential election, 1964|1964 presidential election]] and an important turning point in [[Politics of the United States|political]] and [[advertising]] history. Its creator was [[Tony Schwartz]] of [[DDB Worldwide|Doyle Dane Bernbach]]. It remains one of the most controversial political advertisements ever made. The advertisement begins with a little girl (Birgitte Olsen) standing in a meadow with chirping birds, picking the petals of a [[daisy]] while counting each petal slowly. (Because she does not know her numbers perfectly, she repeats some and says others in the wrong order, all of which adds to her childlike appeal.) When she reaches "nine", an ominous-sounding male voice is then heard [[countdown|counting down]] a missile launch, and as the girl's eyes turn toward something she sees in the sky, the camera [[zoom]]s in until her pupil fills the screen, blacking it out. When the countdown reaches zero, the blackness is replaced by the flash and [[mushroom cloud]] from a [[nuclear explosion]]. As the firestorm rages, a voiceover from Johnson states, "These are the stakes! To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die." Another voiceover (sportscaster [[Chris Schenkel]]) then says, "Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home." As soon as the ad aired, Johnson's campaign was widely criticized for using the prospect of [[Nuclear warfare|nuclear war]], as well as the implication that Goldwater would start one, to frighten voters. The ad was immediately pulled, but the point was made, appearing on the nightly news and on conversation programs in its entirety. Johnson's line "We must either love each other, or we must die" echoes [[W. H. Auden]]'s poem "[[September 1, 1939]]" in which line 88 reads "We must love one another or die". The words "children" and "the dark" also occur in Auden's poem. "These are the stakes" was also used at the end of advertisements for the [[United States Republican Party|Republicans]] in the [[United States general elections, 2006]], advertisements claiming that the Democrats would be soft on [[terrorism]] and expose the country to danger and featured [[Al Qaeda]] members and a threat of a nuclear bomb. In 1984, [[Walter Mondale]]'s presidential campaign used ads with a similar theme to the Daisy ad. Mondale's advertisements cut between footage of children and footage of ballistic missiles and nuclear explosions, over a soundtrack of the song "[[Teach Your Children]]" by [[Crosby Stills Nash and Young]]. ==Popular culture== * In 2000, it was used in a [[music video]] for [[Fatboy Slim]]'s "[[Sunset (Bird of Prey)]]". * In 2003, the [[left-wing]] group [[MoveOn|MoveOn.org]] attempted to revive the 'Daisy' ad campaign. The updated version was intended to denounce the imminent [[2003 invasion of Iraq|invasion of Iraq]]. * The ad was parodied in 1995 on ''[[The Simpsons]]'' on the episode "[[Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming]]." One of the scenes before a supposed nuclear blast shows [[Maggie Simpson|Maggie]] picking flowers in a field, with the camera zooming into her eye, and then a mushroom cloud appears on screen — only for the camera to zoom out, showing a minuscule puff of smoke coming out of the bomb, which turned out to be a dud. ==External links== * [http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/media/daisyspot/ Video] of the ad at the [[Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum]] * [http://conelrad.com/daisy/index.php Production history of "Daisy" with source documents] at Conelrad.com [[Category:Television commercials]] [[Category:Election campaigning]] [[Category:United States presidential campaigns]] [[Category:1964 in the United States]] [[Category:Lyndon B. Johnson]] [[he:תשדיר החרציות]]