All right, Internet, give me your opinion. I saw this ad over at Talking Points Memo and I have a question:
Aren’t the chances just as good that this ad will, as an after-effect, leave people feeling positively towards Obama?
I mean, I get that for people who are annoyed by him, this ad does a good job of reminding them why they’re annoyed by the kind of cult of Obama which has sprung up around him. But when 80% of the ad is filled with people having a positive reaction to Obama, doesn’t the ad, at some level, leave you with a positive impression of Obama?
I mean, yes, many of the people in the ad are silly, but they’re excited and seem like they feel good about Obama, and I just cannot help but wonder whether ads like this help McCain or Obama in the end.
Here’s my question put this way. If you were watching, say, football and this ad came on and you took that as your moment to turn to your buddy and make some Bret Favre comment or to go grab a beer or to glance back down at the paper–so you’re half paying attention to the ad–do you remember it as pro-Obama or not?
I don’t know. I’m sure they research the hell out of whether this stuff works before they go to the expense of making the ads, but this one has me scratching my head.
Filed under: America how can I write a holy litany in your silly moo, Politics and Other Nonsense
McCain would do well to remember that name recognition counts for alot more than any of would like to believe. Why do you think yard signs are so popular? Simply repeating one’s name over and over and over again can give a pretty major boost. With Obama already having the “celebrity status” McCain is criticizing him for, McCain might be much better served trying to drum up some enthusiasm for himself instead of continuing to put more and more attention on Obama.
Do not underestimate the power of the Dog Whistle.
I can’t speak to the effectiveness of McCain’s ads, but I have no illusions about their purpose. The strategy and tactics are Nixonian to the core. The assumption is that the target audience has every reason to loathe and fear not only Obama, but his ostensible supporters. Call it the Dirty Fucking Hippie Effect, if you want. To a reasonable person who just dropped in from another planet, the McCain ads might have the effect of directing positive curiosity toward Obama. But the Republican base (along with the rest of the target audience) is expected to be steeped in fear and loathing of all that Obama is being cast as representing: liberalism, non-whiteness, etc. So depicting Obama’s popularity as being nothing but superficial fawning (as the ad does) works on this level. Liberals are stupid, so anyone or anything of which they are so fond must be horrid.
Also, what Rick Perlstein wrote.
Once again, ignore the substance (not difficult, as there isn’t any) and look at the imagery. If you don’t get it, it wasn’t written for you.
[...] Aunt B. is not sure these sarcastic ads the McCain camp is coming up with will truly help him in the end: I mean, yes, many of the people in the ad are silly, but they’re excited and seem like they feel good about Obama, and I just cannot help but wonder whether ads like this help McCain or Obama in the end. [...]
Uh, I watch these with the sound off. It’s really hard for me to tell that it’s not an Obama ad. If the strongest plank in your platform is “people really really like my opponent,” aren’t you sort of fucked? And if that’s not the strongest plank, why the hell are you spending 6 million telling me how much people like Obama?
I get what you’re saying about the ad agency’s presumptions about the Republican base, but I know a lot of people who are that base and I don’t think they are hearing the dog whistle either.
Church Secretary is right about the dog whistle thing. After all, McCain unequivocally (and undeniably) called Obama the Anti-Christ with code imagery in his internet ad “The One.” But I tend to agree with bridgett that the dog whistle isn’t going to be as loud to it’s audience as I think McCain might think it will be.
For one who would never vote for McCain and will for Obama out of necessity, like going to church at Christmas with your parents, it all seems distant and odd. Like I dropped down into another reality which has no emotional or substantive relation to me and my life experience.
As someone who is going to vote McCain, first let me say I’m pretty bleh about the ads. Whatever.
But please oh please oh please oh please keep up with the racial stuff. I’m serious. There is nothing that America loves more than hyper-sensitive liberals damned determined to find racism (and in the case of Bob Herbert, penises) in the most ludicrous of places. And potentially for the next four or eight years too. Oh goodie.
But I believe that the noted right-wing satirist Jon Stewart says it much better than I canM.
Wow. I know I’ll rarely have to say this about the Daily Show, but that was a long, obtuse, and boring segment.
Stewart scuttles his own sketch by assuming (perhaps taking the lead of the very corporate media he is lambasting) that Obama’s comments about racist GOP campaign tactics were referring specifically to the ‘celebrity’ ad. Were that the case, then one might be able to say that Obama is overreacting. If one were to believe what Stewart is saying, too, McCain’s campaign efforts are confined to his corporate TV ads. That isn’t how politics in this country works, and it isn’t how the Right Wing Noise Machine works. As Glenn Greenwald says, it works
So Stewart can go for the easy laugh by singling out the apparently overwrought analysis of Bob Herbert, but he overlooks the perennially vile racism of the right wing blogosphere (e.g. Little Green Footballs and Free Republic) and the corporate-sponsored racism of right-wing talk radio and cable ‘news’ (e.g. Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Glen Beck). These and other organs of the right wing have been dutifully stirring the pot of racism, nativism, and every other vaguely protofascist ‘ism’ for the last few decades.
Obama didn’t ‘play the race card’ by doing anything other than showing his brown face on the teevee. He didn’t ‘play the race card’ by pointing out that his opponents will use bigotry to try and drum up support for their substance-lite campaign.
Just for clarification, I’m saying this as someone who is not going to vote for Obama. And Lee, there’s good news for you if Obama wins. If liberals pointing out racism makes you happy, then the upsurge of pseudo-Christian, anti-choice, anti-liberal, and racist right-wing violence that will almost certainly accompany an Obama presidency ought to make you piss your pants with glee.
But the Republican base (along with the rest of the target audience) is expected to be steeped in fear and loathing of all that Obama is being cast as representing: liberalism, non-whiteness,
By showing, with the exception of the newscaster, a commercial full of white people.
Huh?
But Obama is not white. Furthermore, the fear and loathing is not intended to be created by any ad; it is expected to already exist.
C’mon, Exador. I’ve seen you using logic quite handily. You’ll have to try harder than that if you want to convince me that you are stupid.
This is the political consultants equivalent of the Superbowl. These ads are designed to bring attention to themselves, I believe. Sure, there is plenty of intended imagery, and Herbert was spot on. (but the phallic images weren’t intended as a dogwhistle for fearful whites, who, as B points out, won’t even get it on a subconscious level, but for pundits and political peers to marvel about as they dissect.)
Theatre, all of it.
I guess I’m not conservative enough to pick up on the frequency of this whistle.
From where I sit, it looks like some people see the world through a racial prism.
it isn’t. the strongest plank in the Republican platform seems to be, “our opponent has the same middle name as a bunch of scary brown people”.
really. ask SayUncle over in the blogroll.
That’s okay, Exador. As Mack says, there’s a lot that goes into these ads. There’s something in them for everyone.
Yes, Exador, even though centuries of racially oriented genocide, exclusion, and oppression are all behind us now with no hard feelings and no lingering effects, I’m sure some people do still see the world through a racial prism. The GOP is counting on them to show up at the polls in November*.
Those of us who are trying to get past all that without pretending that it no longer exists will most likely be voting either Democratic or Green.
*If I may borrow from John Stuart Mill: while it is not true that all conservatives are racist, it is true that most racists are conservative. And pointing out racism does not make one racist any more than pointing out freshly cut grass makes one into a lawn mower.
Yeah, that Cynthia McKinney sure has moved on.
Swing through Atlanta; I’ll show you some racists, although their pigmentation might be a little darker than you’re expecting.
Excellent…..
(Lee, hunched over, rubbing hands together gleefully, as hyper-sensitive ‘race-conscious’ liberals self-destructively continue to seek for racism where it does not exist.)
I tell you, next you folks will be talking about the racism inherent in the term black hole.
I’ve been to Atlanta many times, Exador, and I know quite a few people there of several different pigmentations. I doubt if any of them would have any idea what you’re talking about.
And need I remind you that outside of Atlanta is the rest of the state of Georgia? An historic bastion of civil rights, that.
Lee, Lee, Lee; didn’t we just go over this?
Learn from John Stewart’s rare error. The joke will be funnier to others if you don’t have to waste time building your own target from straw.
Well, no fair. Now you’re including Aunt B’s relatives. That skews the whole demographic.
Heck CS, next you’ll probably be seeing some sort of strange sexual connotation implied concerning the black African American male in this too. *wink*
In all fairness, the Klan members are–at least until my nephew is old enough to join–not my relatives, but just relatives of my relatives.
But carry on.