Hey, I realize John McCain has a thing for young blondes, but this is ridiculous. To watch his ad campaign over the past week or so has been painful, whether or not you support Barack Obama. And this week takes the (cheese)cake. Or maybe we just call it cheesy and leave it at that.
Oh the humanity! Oh the pain. It’s been downright painful to hear the distortions, the attacks, the sheer nastiness. It curls the lip to see the images and the subliminal messages that the McCain campaign hoped to sneak through the little crack under the door. The most yuck-worthy of course was the Britney Spears/Paris Hilton commercial – a spot so ridiculous even Hilton’s mother Kathy felt compelled to speak out against it. And she’s a McCain campaign donor no less (well, maybe not anymore). And now, Paris Hilton’s own video response can well be expected to keep the story alive. click here
It’s even more cringe-worthy to watch Cindy McCain at the big biker fest in South Dakota. The woman’s worth at least 100-million dollars, runs up six-figure balances on her credit cards, and enjoys hassle-free travel on her own luxury plane. Yet there she was at the Sturgis Rally trying to be a good sport, with hubby parading her out there on stage and suggesting she should run for her own lofty position – as Miss Buffalo Chip – a beauty contest, as the L.A. Times puts it, “in which nudity is not uncommon.” click here
Her frozen smile-cum-grimace reeked of “wait til I get you home!” Ouch. I felt for her. Now there’s one first-class way to go after the women’s vote.
Maverick, shmaverick. I don’t care what kind of “high road” John McCain tries to take from here on, to recapture that image as the straight-talker, the guy above the fray, the rare honorable man in Washington who wouldn’t crawl down the gutter. He won’t ever convince me after these two tacky weeks. First, he aimed straight below the figurative belt (complete with longer-than-they-are-wide structures popping up here and there between glimpses of Britney and Paris). This week, he humiliated his thin blonde aristocratic wife in front of a honking hoard of rowdy bikers. What is this, anyway, some kind of twisted Venus Envy?
And it wasn’t just the Paris/Britney eruptions in his campaign commercials, either. There were the insinuations about race, there was the Moses commercial implying Obama has some sort of messiah complex. There was the utterly vile campaign slogan about how Obama supposedly would rather win a campaign than win a war. And there was also the flim-flam spot painting Obama as some scheming publicity-hound, passing up a visit with wounded troops only because his media entourage couldn’t come, too. That one stunk so badly even the otherwise-fawning mainstream media that helped inspire McCain’s nickname “Teflon John” couldn’t help but point out its numerous errors and misrepresentations.
It was just this past April that McCain said the American public deserved a campaign on the issues. Cindy McCain made similar statements in her own right, denouncing sleazy campaign tactics and, like her husband, assuring us there wouldn’t be any with the McCain brand on them. I would respectfully remind the presumptive GOP nominee and his friends that the decisions to use commercials like these, behave like this, and mislead like this, all constitute one heckuva judgment call, a testimony to character.
This is a character issue all by itself. What does it say about a campaign that will stoop to such lows? What does it say about a candidate who allows this to be done in his name by others, never mind how he behaves in front of a crowd of crazies? The commercials hint in one disturbing direction: if that’s what McCain allows of the people around him when he’s a candidate, Heaven help us if he makes it to the Oval Office. We’ve already seen more than enough of that over the last seven-plus years.
Then again, the embarrassment Cindy McCain had to endure in public is a whole different animal. This wasn’t a sleazy mud-slinging commercial crafted by handlers for his approval. This was John McCain appearing, at least, to wing it – although he was visibly working off notes from a lectern while offering his wife as a Miss Buffalo Chip contestant. If the shameless pandering he did at the expense of her dignity is any indication of his conduct in the future, imagine how we can expect him to behave if he wins and thus doesn’t need your approval anymore.
I could suggest that McCain show he means it about running a clean, above-board campaign. I might urge him to prove he really is a man of character. I’d invite him to call off the dogs – no more scorched-earth campaign ads or tactics. From ANYBODY on his side. Swear his smear-machinery to fairness and genuinely non-partisan accuracy. Work the issues instead of the tabloids. It would be a most disarming way for him to show America he really is different, and not just merely different from George W. Bush.
But I’m concerned that perhaps this is the real McCain we’re seeing. We discover the kind of person he is in his actions and his relationships, the kind of representation of him of which he formally approves, the recklessly casual attitude whether it’s toward facts or decorum, and the sloppiness on any number of topics and occasions. A president should have gravitas and dignity. Especially our next president. Especially since we’ve now seen what happens when America bets on a guy believed to be fun to go have a beer with. The 2008 version from the same party seems to be shaping up as the candidate gone wild.
Comment from Ratings: In addition: have you seen the Jon Stewart Daily Show for last Thursday? It was one of his most effective - brilliant! He had a series of sound bites of McCain promising the totally impossible, from ending the war "just like that"("I know how to win wars" - duh)to "I can find you a billion dollars tomorrow" (he wishes - and me too ... ha). He demolished McCain. McCain appeared like an old fool, close to dementia. Especially his braggadacio about finding bin Ladin ("I will follow him to the gates of hell - but not in Pakistan" - huh? - and his boast that "America will have had a robust economy for several years at the end of his first term." And after making these incongruous way over the line comments, he turns away with the stupidest hebephrenic self-satisfied - and frightening - grin I have ever seen. Enough - it makes me ill.) I hope you saw it - if you did, please write a column about it. I taped it - this Stewart segment is worthy of an award. The whole thing is scary beyond words. And also I am puzzled - just why/how did he get to marry this rich rich much younger woman?? Weird. Might not last if he keeps this kind of garbage toward her. Thanks for your article. I hope many people take heed. I do not understand the polls rising for McCain. WHAT is the matter with people - are they totally blind? Swayed by this man?? His horrible campaign? Oh - this got me also. He said, last week: "This is a commercial I am proud of. " "Commercial"? What a silly way to speak about his ads. Commercial indeed. Like everything else of his - inappropriate to the max. The commercial was the one with the two blondies.
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Vera da Vinci (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments)
on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 12:54:05 PM
You make good points in terms of Cindy's exposure on stage and in an awkward Kodak moment for a possible future first lady. Take it easy John. We all know you got stuck in North Vietnam for five long years. This "who would you have a beer with" gauge in Presidential contests is getting kicked up a few notches. Having a beer thing is going over the limit in South Dakota and merging with the old adage of the drunken sailor in port on leave. This election on one level seems to be getting crude and or vulgar when it comes to your wife. This is a who do you want to have a beer with moment turned into who do you want to go with on a visit to a Hong Kong brothel or who do you want to spent a night in a Singapore jail with?
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Mike McShea (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 12:55:57 PM
The country has suffered through almost 8 years with a young demented fool at the top now you want to try at least another 4 years with an old demented fool at the top. Wow you are weird!
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Archie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1336 comments)
on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 1:55:06 PM
In the Newspeak lexicon that he invented for his thoroughly depressing but awesomely prescient novel 1984, George Orwell included the word "Prolefeed"--a word for the means by which Big Brother (aka the corporate power elite) keeps the masses ignorant, distracted, and complacent.
Prolefeed consisted of 24/7 television broadcasts, on big screens in every public and private place (sound familiar?) that delude and distract the masses by appealing to their basest instincts--to greed, lust, prejudice, and hatred--through numbingly idiotic, vulgar, childish, and demented programming...the net effect of which is to distract their attention from the manifold ways in which they are being exploited, duped, impoverished, and controlled by the vast bureaucracy in power.
This is exactly what is happening today. In this latest example, McCain pimps his young blonde trophy-wife in front of a mob of horny bikers. Those few of us who have any sense of decency left are, of course, appalled. But the vast majority of the "proles"--those clueless, television-addicted Americans in the 'burbs, who only know what they hear on CNN or Fox, accept this as evidence that McCain is one of them--just another beer-swilling, pick-up driving "good ol' boy"--and so his poll ratings go up.
We now live in a nation where television--the most insidiously effective mechanism of social control ever invented--dominates the lives of most of its citizens at home and in public, provides the content of their knowledge of public life, and shapes their opinions and attitudes. Yet the networks themselves are controlled, of course, by a small coterie of media conglomerates and their advertisers, all of whom collectively control, and are controlled by, the government. So the public only sees or knows what this corporate power-elite wants them to.
Is it any wonder, therefore--to take only one glaring example--that the vast majority of Americans still believe the official lies about 9/11, even though this narrative violates the basic laws of physics in all sorts of ways? They believe it because the media and politicians--even the good ones--repeat it day and night, and never let a dissenting opinion see the light of day.
Here on the internet, of course, many of us know better--but we only talk to each other. This is why the Internet + Television is an even more insidious combination--it gives us all the illusion that we are free--that we can speak our minds freely and exercise the prerogative of free citizens in debating public issues.
In fact, every internet outlet is self-selecting--people only visit these sites if they are predisposed toward the views they find there. And of course the rabid, hate-mongering right has its own vast array of internet outlets peddling all sorts of lies--not to mention their almost total control of talk radio through Clear Channel, a right-wing conglomerate which now owns most of the radio stations nationwide, through which all those truck- and SUV drivers that crowd our freeways supplement their daily dosage of television news with the toxic spewings of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.
In short, folks, as Orwell predicted, the corporate power elite has colonized most of our minds with television "prolefeed," while allowing us to create "free speech zones" on the Internet (though also under 24 hour surveillance, as we now know) for those of us who wish to express our outrage. Like the "free speech zones" well away from the cameras at any Bush event, these allow us to express ourselves openly, but in a way that will never be seen or heard by the larger public.
This being the case, what can we do? I wish I knew. Mass protests? A waste of time, since the corporate media never cover them unless they turn violent, and then they only cover the violence, as a way of marginalizing us further. Mass boycotts of complicit corporations? Good luck--where would we even start?
Here is one idea, modest though it may seem. Join the Obama Campaign. I know, I know--the "hope" offered by Obama is largely illusory--but once you see the way the system works, you realize that this is inevitable. Nonetheless, to judge by the way they are now promoting McCain, the corporate elite are afraid of Obama and his supporters. But more importantly, once you join the Obama campaign, you can download tailored lists of your undecided neighbors from their website, and then go out and talk to them, one-to-one. It is our ONLY way to circumvent the all-powerful media bubble. If you do this wisely and mindfully--without flying into a rage if they start spouting the rubbish they have been brainwashed with--you can simply listen politely to them, engage them in a real conversation, and then share your feelings with them about where this country is going. In other words--make friends with your neighbors, whether they support Obama or not--and especially if they don't. Listen to them, and then bring them around gradually to your view. And if we thereby elect Obama, we have taken step one--a very small step, perhaps, but well-worth taking, toward a future more hopeful and less appalling than the present.
Imagine if millions of volunteers, in neighborhoods all over the country, started doing this. The Obama campaign has provided the means--it is now up to us to take up their invitation, get off our asses, and start talking to our neighbors. Even if we fail to elect Obama (God forbid) we will nevertheless have gotten away from our televisions and computers long enough to meet and talk to our neighbors, and even that is a small step in the right direction.
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Tom Ellis (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments)
on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 3:16:41 PM
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