A few items down, Mark Steyn had a crack about actors and guns. And it reminded me of one of the most despicable television ads in American political history. It’s 1966, and Gov. Pat Brown is running against the Republican upstart, Ronald Reagan, in California. He has a little black girl on his lap, and he says, “You know, it was an actor who shot Lincoln.”

That might be the most despicable ad: but it has serious challengers in LBJ’s “daisy” ad (basically saying that Goldwater and the Republicans would incinerate the world, particularly the little girls in it) and the NAACP’s anti-Bush ad.

You remember: The once-venerable organization ran an ad basically accusing George W. Bush of lynching. A man named James Byrd had, in fact, been lynched. This was in Texas. Two of the three killers were sentenced to death; the third was given a life sentence. But Bush was against “hate crimes” legislation. Stupid him, he thought murder was murder — a hateful enough crime as it was. He also thought that executing the killers was rather a tough response.

But the NAACP called him a racist and a co-lyncher. Have you respected the NAACP since? If so, you may know something I don’t . . .

P.S. The ad against Ward Connerly and the Civil Rights Initiative in California was pretty bad too. Connerly had copied the language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And, working against the initiative, the Left (broadly speaking) ran an ad showing the Klansman David Duke and a burning cross. That ad was made by Bob Shrum, the Democratic guru. When Connerly confronted him about this later, Shrum explained that his side did not have much money, hence had to get “the most bang for the buck.” So he decided to call Ward a Klansman, basically. Nice.

P.P.S. I’m just full of good cheer tonight, huh? Sorry. I just wanted to mention Pat Brown . . .