McCain's Latest Ad: Absolutely Childish With A Side Of Race-Baiting

McCain is a gambling man. When he throws down a spread of childish attack ads, he sees them, and raises himself another. McCain's latest undoubtedly takes the cake in juvenile idiocy, and possibly even race-baiting. Let's check it out:



It starts out with the typical jealousy of how well Obama was received on his trip to Europe (oddly no mention of how well he was received by the troops and our allies in the Middle East). McCain, you may recall, has also made trips to Europe during his campaign, but crowds didn't turn out for him, thus, the childish jealousy that comes screaming through in ad after ad.

He then continues to go after Obama for being popular at home, because once again, huge crowds of 75,000 don't turn out for him (in fact even with popular bands playing McCain still can't break triple digits), people aren't inspired by him, his base isn't energized, and people certainly don't tear up.

Then, in keeping with the McCain attack ad formula, he inserts a blatant lie. In this instance the lie is one he has used before, and it is shamelessly repeated here even though it has already been debunked in the media (although apparently the media didn't do it loud enough). The lie is that Obama voted to raise taxes on people making more than $42,000, which is unequivocally untrue (a big fat lie). Read more detail about this lie here.

Now here is where it gets special, at about the 30 second mark (you can tell the typical McCain childish attack ad formula only allows for 30 seconds, after that they have to improvise, and it isn't pretty). Now it starts to get reminiscent of the infamous "Harold, Call Me" race-baiting attack ad from 2006. It turns out that white women love them some Obama. The rest of the ad is basically different white girls heaping praise on Obama for his appearance and aura (never his intelligence or abilities, only his sex appeal--in broad terms), with words like "dreamy" interspersed. White Girl #1 says he is up there with Bono. White Girl #2 says the "aura around him is just really nice." And White Girl #3 says what she loves about him most is that "he has very soft eyes." And in case the point that this ad is about white girls liking Obama for "superficial" reasons wasn't clear, it finishes up with some guy yelling that "hot chicks dig Obama."

So of course it is a straw dog to say that the only reason people (apparently only white girls, since only one Obama supporter in the entire ad wasn't a white girl/woman) support Obama is because of his "rockstar" appearance (See, it's ok for blacks to be entertainers, we love to use them for sports and music, think Ray Charles or Jimi Hendrix, but politicians? Never!). And what are rockstars known for? Their crazy lifestyle of promiscuous sex and drugs of course. And this just happens to be a black rockstar "idolized" by a bunch of white girl groupies. Hmmm..

You are obviously free to draw your own conclusions on the racial aspect but keep a few things in mind. First, these kinds of "artistic" decisions in advertising are NOT done accidentally. Nothing gets in the final version of an add without being meticulously picked apart for its symbolism and message. It is no accident that this ad was loaded with women, and it is no accident that these women were all white. Think of all of those ads you've seen for colleges or occupations or whatever, and you'll likely find a diverse group, a fairly equal mix of genders, at least one black person, one white person, and one Asian. Maybe you'll even find a person with ambiguous ethnicity to serve as a catchall of racial harmony. Again, marketers are acutely aware of race and gender in their ads, this stuff is Marketing 101.

Also, if you come to this from the perspective of a white person from the North, especially of more recent generations, you may not appreciate the cultural significance of the "black man violating young white girls" racial demonization. Trust me, the "code" here isn't lost on anyone from south of the Mason-Dixon. Almost all of major media outlets come from the Northeast or the West, so if questions arise about the race-baiting implications McCain has plausible deniability to fall back on, while the ad obviously gives an implicit wink to conservatives and moderates in the South who certainly know what is going on, as conservatives and bigots have been using this racial fear card for centuries (again, as recently as Harold Ford in 2006). And that brings me to another obvious point of this ad: the baiting. McCain desperately wants to make race an issue in this campaign, and his attacks last week were a prime example. He can't bring up race overtly, so he throws out racially charged crap like this, hoping that he can provoke Obama to say something, anything even hinting of accusing McCain of racism. Then, McCain can start screaming about Obama injecting race into the campaign. Thus the apt nomenclature: race-baiting.

But of course Obama won't fall for this, because he isn't a fool. He is also a veteran of the game of not taking the bait. The Clintons notoriously employed quite a bit of race-baiting during the primaries, both subtly and not so subtly (see Geraldine Ferraro for some late-primary examples of habitual race-baiting). To Obama's great credit, he never took the bait (although the Clinton campaign accused him of doing so anyway, because they couldn't let all that baiting effort go to waste). Anyway, expect Obama not to say a word about race, and then for McCain to do some asinine distortion of reality to somehow accuse him of bringing race into the campaign--which the media will dutifully echo.

Some examples of the black man/white woman propaganda in history (I'm sure I've seen more examples, however I haven't had much luck locating them on the internet):




In response to McCain's juvenile "celebrity" attack ads in general, Obama's campaign has connected the dots and identified who is really being attacked by McCain: The tens of millions of people who support Obama. This statement was emailed to Obama's supporters earlier today:

John McCain and the Republican National Committee are trying to convince you that you've been swept up and tricked into wanting change.

They want you to believe that everything is just fine -- that we need to stay the course and elect someone who's voted with George Bush 95% of the time.

To sell this ridiculous idea, McCain and the RNC are using huge checks from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs to run negative ads attacking Barack Obama and the millions of volunteers and donors who have joined this campaign for change.

While supporters like you are out knocking on doors, registering new voters, and organizing in your local communities, our opponents are not even trying to match your efforts. Instead, they're spending millions to spread the smear that Barack is just a "celebrity" and that our grassroots movement is just a bunch of mindless fans.

So who is John McCain really attacking? Real people like Brandon, a carpenter from McCall, ID. Stephanie, a registered nurse from Phoenix, AZ. And Pamela, a retired teacher from Franklin, WV.

These are actual people who have made donations to our campaign this week.

I think he should make a point of highlighting this, because McCain really is essentially disparaging the competence of millions of Americans by painting them as nothing but mindless groupies who are all somehow fooled by this "rockstar". Yeah, who cares if Obama is smarter, has better judgment, has better policies and ideas, and can actually inspire people? Apparently none of that matters, because we are all just fixated on his smile and weak-kneed as a result. That is apparently what McCain thinks millions of Americans are.

Update: Here is a short and sweet push back against McCain's attempts to attack voter enthusiasm and participation that is so rare in American politics. McCain's message: Go back to sleep, America.