"Disrespectful of the office of the president." No, the quote doesn't refer to George Bush, though no one could so thoroughly disrepect the Office of the President as George himself. That is what New York City's Channel 5 said of a campaign ad by Brian Ellner, Democratic candidate for president of the borough of Manhattan.

Jim Rutenberg reports in the NY Times that

The 30-second ad features Mr. Bush's face superimposed upon a middle-aged man's naked torso as Mr. Ellner says of the president that "the emperor has no clothes." Mr. Ellner also introduces his partner, Simon Holloway, in the spot - which the campaign says is the first time in city history that a gay candidate has introduced his or her partner in a campaign commercial.

It all sounds on the up-and-up to me.

Tim Arnold, a media adviser to Mr. Ellner, said the station had at first agreed to sell the campaign advertising time but then rejected the advertisement after seeing it. The campaign has already spent about $250,000 to put the ad on the air.

Mr. Arnold said that when he pushed for a more detailed explanation of the rejection, a station representative told him that the station believed the advertisement was "disrespectful of the office of the president."

Mr. Arnold said Channel 5 was the only local station to reject the advertisement out of roughly 15 network or cable affiliates - including NY1 News, WABC and WNBC - that the campaign said it approached. The campaign said it did not try to place the ad on WWOR, which like Channel 5 is part the Fox Television Stations group, a unit of News Corporation.

Theoretically, refusing to run the ad is illegal—

Broadcast channels, which are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, are allowed to reject so-called issue advertisements from interest groups based on their content. But they are prohibited from doing so with ads from candidates.

"There is part of the statute that says the station cannot censor the content of a political ad," said a communications commission official who spoke on condition of anonymity, following the commission's general practice of avoiding public comment upon matters in which it is not involved. (The F.C.C. generally only acts on complaints; Mr. Ellner said he would probably file one but had not done so.)

The commission official said that after a station agrees to sell time for a campaign commercial, "the station is required to put it on the air - they have no option."

But—

... the official said there was a way around the rules. While stations are required to accept all commercials for federal candidates, they can pick and choose the local races for which they will run commercials.

And stations in the past have cited that loophole after being accused of rejecting candidate spots based on their content.

There is a silver lining—

Mr. Ellner's team devised the spot in large part to appeal to gays and lesbians, and the borough's more liberal voters in general. Fox's refusal to run the ad is likely to help Mr. Ellner's aims.

The stations just came under the control of Roger Ailes, the Fox News Channel chairman, in August. A spokesman for Ailes said the decision was made by the local station. But you will note that even reporter Rutenberg speaks of "Fox's refusal."

A question raised neither by the Times nor the Ellner campaign is whether it was really the gay aspect of the commercial that the Fox station found "in poor taste."

Manhattan's Gawker says,

We admit we’ve been strongly considering voting for the cute gay guy running for Manhattan borough president. This is mostly because it’s a largely irrelevant job, so why not vote for the one who’s fun to look at?

You can watch the ad here. It's fun.