By John Brummett

Why is Gilbert Baker ranting in front of a group of people standing in the middle of a field?

How did all those people happen to be there? Are they cow-chip collecting hobbyists?

In more ways than one, I mean.

What kind of person is it who says I think I’ll go stand in the middle of a pasture because Gilbert Baker needs to scream at me about what no-good rascals they are in Washington?

And why did Gilbert decide to do his screaming there? And where did the microphone and camera come from?

Why does Robbie Wills have on that hard hat? Is he a construction foreman on the side, beyond lawyering and being speaker of the House?

I understand that he built that little brick building with his own hands, or so he says. But then he’s walking through what looks like a major contracting site, flanked by two other guys also in hard hats, and he’s talking a mile a minute, though we can’t hear what he’s saying.

We never get to hear what these politicians are saying in individual conversation with people in their commercials, although, when you really think about it, that’s what we need more than anything else — to hear what they’re saying conversationally to people.

Blanche Lincoln is talking to farmers in one of her commercials. Then she has on her own hard hat and she’s talking to a couple of ol’ boys. But we don’t know what she’s saying because we’re getting a narrator doing some voice-over that we don’t care about, maybe about how Bill Halter has a prescription drug problem or is hauling your job to India.

All we know is that Blanche apparently is doing some interesting talking because, like Wills, she’s gesturing, as if to instruct, and the ol’ boys are rapt.

The listeners are always rapt. Have you noticed that?

Halter, meanwhile, is over here in his TV spot smiling sweetly, or as sweetly as he is able, as he greets a senior woman to whom he is saying … well, we don’t know. We only see; we cannot hear.

For all we know he’s telling her he’s getting ready to privatize her Social Security.

Really: If he won’t let us hear, then we’re free to speculate.

Some candidate apparently named Pat O’Brien would have been better-served if unheard. He has brought in George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Ben Franklin, who apparently gets struck by lightning in this spot, to talk about the Pat O’Brien who is a sportscaster and the other Pat O’Brien that is a joint in New Orleans.

This is straight out of the Charlie Daniels Public Policy Institute. It teaches that you get elected to public office by having a name that people know, even if by borrowing the fame someone else has earned with a name that you only so happen also to have.

So to select your next secretary of state, think of a TV sportscaster and a drink called a hurricane served at a bar in New Orleans.

Thank goodness secretary of state isn’t important. We survived Charlie Daniels, for heaven’s sake.

You’re thinking I’m watching too much TV, and the sad truth is that I am. But I don’t have to watch TV to see these spots.

The new political culture is for the campaigns to e-mail these spots to media people. That way, they might get some free media exposure from what is otherwise paid media.

This I’m writing here may not be the kind of free media they had in mind, though.

I’d lament the evolution of politics away from personal debate and into concocted video narrative except that I’ve had the misfortune of observing a few personal debates lately.

Sit through a couple of those and you’ll understand why so many candidates are muting themselves in their TV commercials.

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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.