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Your reaction to this banjo-plucked tribute to Southern trash culture may just depend on whether you ever lived there — or ever intend to. Maybe, with misty eyes, it’ll make you want to pour BBQ sauce on your veggie burger and Google that mysterious kid in 8th grade whose mullet had such a vexing, singular appeal. Or maybe it’ll make you throw up in your mouth and donate a quick $100 to the DNC. Hey, who are we to judge? (Thanks to reader Joe Rivera for the link.)

Open Salon interview.

A struggling Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., went nuclear Wednesday, with an ad that tries to ally challenger Bob Casey with North Korea and China. Ah, the acrid smell of desperation in the weeks before a congressional election! Be prepared for even more of these terror-filled spots in these glorious final days of Campaign 2006, all of which carry a little DNA from the mother of all scare ads: The 1964 Lyndon Johnson “Daisy Girl” ad against Barry Goldwater (bottom ad, below).

From Michael Scherer’s piece today: “The GOP seems to believe that Ford’s appeal to its most reliable voters is working. In recent days, the Republican National Committee has attempted to reverse the troubling polls in Tennessee with a television ad that both attacks Ford’s religious credentials and invokes that old standby of American politics, racial fear.”

This National Republican Senatorial Committee ad against Harold Ford sports an early mention of a Playboy connection that the party hopes will rile Christians against Ford.

Salon’s piece on Rep. Harold Ford Jr.’s senate campaign spotlights his appeal to churchgoers, as in the TV spot below.