Who is that man with the floating car?
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The second television ad produced by Steve Poizner, a Republican candidate for governor, shows a man -- purportedly Poizner -- pulling a car down off the edge of a cliff, as a metaphor for Poizner’s assertion that he can stop California from going over a cliff.
But in looking at the screen shot of the ad below, it seems that the car is actually floating. If the ad is not computerized, it appears that the car could be hooked up to some kind of an axle on the side not visible to the camera. Also, the man seems a bit bulkier than the slight-of-frame Poizner.
Poizner’s spokeman, Jarrod Agen, said everything about the ad is authentic. ‘I was there on the cliff ... as was Steve,’ he wrote by e-mail. ‘That is Steve pulling down the car. The man has a black belt … he’s just showing off some skills.’
[Updated at 4:30 p.m.: Poizner addressed the floating car issue in an interview: ‘I was in Southern California. We found a beautiful cliff. And that was the real me and a real car.’ Asked if there was any mechanical device on the other side of the car, he said, ‘Would George Lucas give away all of his secrets? I will say this. There was nothing computerized about it.’]
--Michael Rothfeld in Sacramento