CARLTON FLETCHER: Political ads … unavoidable must-see TV that no one wants to see

“Let ‘em rub my neck and I write ‘em a check, and they go their merry way.”

— Billy Joel

If you’ve been paying attention lately, you’ve noticed stories circulating about how much money Georgia candidates for state and national political offices have raised.

To call it astounding would be soft-sell. For positions that pay between $90,000 and $300,000, politicians are raising tens of millions of dollars, insisting to gullible people of means that they need all this money to “get their message across.”

In politic speak, what that means is they need millions of dollars to spend on inane TV commercials that people grow so sick of they quit watching them about the third time they play in a certain part of the state. In fact, a lot of people tell me they are so sickened by the never-ending ads, they vow to vote against some candidates out of anger.

That’s what it’s come to.

Oh, and the “message” that these now wealthy politicos are dying to get out? “The other guy is bad.” … “An election that everyone grew tired of two years ago was stolen.” … “We have to take our country back.” … “This is the most important election in the history of this state and/or this country.” … “If you don’t vote for me, we’re headed toward (socialism/totalitarianism … depending on which party the candidate represents).”

Candidate public relations specialists and media representatives are the ones who are making out like bandits in all of this. Their job is to, first, convince Candidate A that they have the juice and connections to get them in front of the right audience to beat Candidate B; get their paws on all that money that’s pouring in, and then just send out some ad featuring a combination of cliche A, cliche B and cliche F. And they rake in the loot.

If such “ad campaigns” weren’t such a nuisance and such an intrusion on our free time, they actually would be funny. Imagine trying to sell some bloated, dim-witted, egotistical do-nothing as the savior of this great state or even of democracy itself … as Larry the Cable Guy always said, “Now that’s funny, I don’t care what you say.”

What’s even sadder is that the actual hard-working people who care about their state and country, who only want someone in office that’s going to look out for their interests, not the politicians’ self-interest, keep writing the checks that pay for all this claptrap. You’ll hear some of them complaining about the saturation of meaningless, mind-numbing political ads they had to endure just to sit through an episode of “Chicago PD,” and, ironically, they don’t seem to get that it’s their money that paid for this drivel.

Of course, the Supreme Court paved the way for all of this new world political order by allowing politicians to, essentially, accept as much money as they can spend without a hint of oversight. Funny how so many politicians — the ones who lost, by the way, never the ones who won — say their opponents are now “employees” of deep-pocketed influencers who plied the candidates with their money with, of course, no strings attached.

If you believe that, let me tell you about this deal I have on a sweet igloo development I’m planning in TyTy.

The politicians are so beholden to these millionaires, they don’t even try to hide the fact that they’re carrying out the contributors’ marching orders from their seats in Congress. They do what they’re told to do, follow orders like the bought-and-paid-for are supposed to do, then they go out and spend that money without a trace of guilt.

Yeah, these politicians with their multimillion-dollar war chests are working hard to make America great again. Sadly, though, it’s for the donors who are “supplementing” their $100,000 job with wads of money used to make sure the ultra-rich stay that way.