McCain's brilliant ad

Who would ever have expected the Republicans to be the ones attacking our celebrity-obsessed culture?  That was the major focus of the McCain ad, which, so far, is one of the more effective of the campaign.

Yes, they brought the two white girls in, and some have gotten worked up about that.  They say it reminds them of the white woman in the ad ran against Harold Ford two years ago in Tennessee--"Harold, call me."  That, indeed, was racist ad.   (The punishment for running racist ads is that you're likely to get elected to the U.S. Senate.)

The subtlety of the McCain ad is that, while it does evoke some of the same questions, you can't really pin anything down as being definitely racist.  You object to the two white girls?  The McCain campaign responds, oh so innocently, that they're simply decying celebrity culture and using Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as examples.

The critics have said that, if you were really going to attack celebrity culture, why not use examples that are more timely?  Paris and Britney are yesterday's news.  True enough, but when it comes to poster children for vacuity, Paris and Britney are toward the top of the list in the public consciousness.  (Paris is sharper, however, than a lot of people think.) 

Personally, I think the intent of the ad was racist, but they did it in such a way that their fingerprints aren't really on it.  Meanwhile, Obama, of all people, gets criticized for "playing the race card" simply for saying that he wouldn't look like all the other pictures of presidents on our money.  (They're all green.  He's black.)

To top it off, only 22% of the public saw the ad as racist, though 58% of African-Americans did.  61% of white voters, and a surprising 44% of blacks, said Obama's comment was racist.  Call me weird, but a black candidate saying he looks different from the other, all white, presidents is a statement of the obvious, not a statement of racism.

Comments

[redrabbit]

Could it be that the McCain campaign was calling Barack a popular dumb blonde? I think the racism charges are reaching, in both cases, although one could argue that "dumb blonde" is a racial slur. Now if McCain had used clips of Scarlett Johanssen, who breathlessly informed the world that she and Barack exchange emails...that would be a horse of a different color.

As for Barack's statement -- it wasn't racist, but boils down to saying, "McCain will try to scare you by reminding you that I'm a black man." Problematic but not racist.

It strikes me as odd and offensive that either campaign worries (or hopes?) that people will forget to see Barack as a black man.

[lillianjane]

I think Obama's comment wasn't "racist" but he was, as someone brilliantly put it, "attacking a hallucination". How can you get mad at something someone did not actually do? Of course, they decided that "fairy tale" was racist, and that Hillary was musing about Obama's assassination, so there is a history of tilting at windmills.

[John Petty]

Good observation, redrabbit. Gee, if nobody says anything about race, nobody will notice that Barack is black. Ha ha.

Lilianjane, it's interesting that McCain mentioned Clinton when he accused the Obama campaign of "playing the race card." That hampered the Obama camp's response.