« French Analogy Podcasting | Main | More Praise for HITS » The Really Weird Case for John McCain11 Apr 2008 01:12 pm It came to my attention the other day that there are political junkies in this country who have not yet seen this bizarre John McCain ad: To be clear, this is not a joke. It's an actual product of the McCain campaign. Ted Williams! A rock star with no head! Smoke! Ratting out your friends! Comments (50)
that smoke is looking for asses to blow up 
I didn't notice the first time I saw this--and, granted, this is nit picky--but the narrator fails to quote accurately the very honor code visible on the screen as he is quoting. The phrases on the written posting begin "I will not" and the narrator uses the formulation "I shall not." No big deal, but it raises the "who the heck does he have in ad development" question.
OK. I agree. That was just ... odd.
If you figure that the narrator is the one who's smoking, it makes perfect sense. The headless rock star is just weird, though.
Maybe I'm paranoid (and I haven't followed McCain's campaign propaganda closely), but I was struck by the ad's use of McC's middle name ("Sidney") near the end. I wonder whether they're setting the table for later attack ads that will use Obama's middle name, which use they'll defend by reference to this ad ("Our own commercials use our own candidate's middle name!"). Or maybe just tacitly prompting the question in the viewer's mind ("Hmmm... 'Sidney.' I wonder what the other candidate's middle .... OH MY GOD!"). Or does that sound crazy?
Seventeen Schools Newly Designated as Persistently Dangerous for 2007-08 School
Ward, I'm very worried about the Beaver.
Not only does that ad make Episcopal High School look far more like a refuge for the children of a forgotten Southern ruling class than it actually is, but the lighting in the commercial makes the place look really, really creepy. By normal daylight, it's really kinda pretty.
Everything about this ad is absolutely baffling. The writing, the visuals, the concept itself, everything. I have no idea what they were trying to achieve. I get that they're showing Teddy Roosevelt and Ted Williams to appeal to 100-year-olds, but then why alienate them with the electric guitar? Vote McCain! He had this teacher once, it was like during the Civil War or something!
And once again I ask: what are they smoking?
What office is this Mr Ravenal running for again?
Ana Marie Cox ended a brand new post on McCain and torture over at Swampland like this: "To be sure, McCain's self-scrutiny is withering. (And the estimation of others can be wrong.) If McCain is not always his own worst critic, he is still a vicious and constant one. The level of achievement, honesty and duty to his country that he sets for himself is incredibly high -- higher than most people's, perhaps even "towering." And I am sympathetic to his aides' point that he shouldn't be punished every time his actions meet "normal" standards but fail his own. (This is the obverse of Clinton's claim that since she didn't promise to, for instance, conduct a clean campaign, you can't blame her if she plays dirty.) The problem lies not in the standards themselves, but in his certainty about them, a conviction that may sometimes blind him to even the question of whether he has, even by accident or mistake, blurred them in order to meet them." She is assigned by Time to cover McCain. Remarkable.
Is that ad supposed to go on tv? It's like three times longer than any ad should ever be.
And they are all, all honorable men...
And, there's more... In the add we have an honor code that says turn in your friends who violate the honor code. Then we have the teacher--the one who supposedly sparked McCain's eternal flame of ethics. In the story outlined by the narrator, Student X cheats and admits to it and McCain's original ethics guru decides "honor code, schmonor code" and lets him off scot free. And this was McCain's seminal ethics moment. Pretty much sums up the Republican cycle of ethics--cheat, get caught, authority figure helps you out of a jam. Maybe this add has it right after all...
In the narrator I detected notes of smug portentousness, mixed with strong traces of self-righteousness. Sam Waterston, perhaps?
I'm wondering if there was an earlier version of the ad that was a bit hipper and included Tiger Woods among the Great Men photos. Overtaken by events, you might say.
Does anyone else find the little Tom Tomorrow-esque figures remind them of "It's Raining McCain?"
What's with all the smoke? Was he inhaling too back in the 60's? And they need to cut out the lights at the 45 second mark. It obscures the Honor Code(I think) thing.
I'm pretty sure that's the same narrator that Jesse Helms used in his campaigns against Jim Hunt and Harvey Gantt. I can easily recall those dulcet tones saying "Jim Hunt--a Mondale liberal" and "Harvey Gantt--extremely liberal."
Wow. It's every terrible soft-sell ad by a de-facto monopoly that's ever aired. That said, the voice made me think of the various Civil War and WWII documentaries. Definitely trying to set up the ad as "a documentary of McCain's life." I don't think it's that bad as politics, though. The Dems are tearing each other apart. McCain can't really jump in that battle, but they're really too busy with each other to go after him, either. He's better off working to define himself before they get a chance to. Since he's trying to define himself as a Big Damn Hero, how else to do it?
It was actually a really good ad. What Americans perceive themselves to be and what they actually actually are, is different, but remember, you market to what Americans believe themselves to be, not to what the actual reality is.
I saw this ad on another blog last week, and what I noticed, beside the smoke, the nameless rockstar idol, and the general goofiness of the ad, was the fact that there was no voice-over by McCain, stating that he "approved this message". I thought that was required for all candidate-made ads. Did anyone else notice the absence of the voice-over and if so, know what it indicates that there is no voice-over? TIA
If anyone has some video editing skills, I think we could tell a different story, a story about an America of hope, change, and toddler daycare:
We know them well. Inventors, athletes, headless rock stars, even Presidents. They inspire us to dream. To make the right choices. Live up to their example. But it's not always the famous that inspire us. Sometimes our heroes were there from the beginning. For Barack Obama, one of his heroes was in his childcare daycare. Mrs. Wilson was that hero. She was the daycare supervisor that inspired her toddler group to behave according to the honor rules. “I shall share toys with the other kids. I shall not bite or hit. I shall not throw my food. I should always wipe front to back.” The daycare provider that believed in community and nonviolence. When a three year old boy wiped front to back, and admitted it, it was Barack Obama who declared forgiveness, and another wipe, would be the best remedy. Mrs. Wilson was the sitter that taught Barack Obama about sharing and backdoor hygiene. In his days as a toddler, Barack Obama realized that daycare is among the most honored professions. The honor rules he learned in daycare is much the same that Barack Obama's life has taught him. For Barack Hussein Obama, the honor rules he learned in daycare were just the beginning.
Hmm, I think that was supposed to be a three year old who wiped back to front. Should have read through it before I hit post comment, eh?
What a goddamn phoney.
In a previous Yglesias thread, a commenter (dunno who) threw out the one word that really captured this ad for me: daguerrotypes I mean, those faded pixelated black-and-white pictures of people in formal dress look really old. My thought through all the treacle was "and after this golden summer, they all died at the Somme".
The last shot of McCain smiling looks just Joe Lieberman!
Wow that was weird. I hadn't seen that. So was the rainbow colored smoke supposed to represent the weed smoke wafting throughout the boarding school? Wacky.
JJ, I maintain it's more likely to be opium smoke, to avoid anachronism.
This kind of ad made Mike Gravel the juggernaught that he's become, so it makes perfect sense to me. I'm puzzled by the puzzlement.
"In the narrator I detected notes of smug portentousness, mixed with strong traces of self-righteousness. Sam Waterston, perhaps?" Sorry, I don't know who it is, but it is clearly NOT Sam Waterson. Not only doesn't it sound like him, but I'd be very suprised if McCain hired to voice from The Nation ads. Mr Ravenal, huh? English teacher and football coach? I have know idea what time period we're talking here for Mr Ravenal's age (frankly, I don't care), but the overall effect of the ad for me is that of ratting out "commies" between "tearoom" visits. Kind of a closeted, conservative Republican's version of Dead Poet's Society. Well done!
Repeat from Douthat's place: this is the worst political ad I have ever seen.
Notice that the John McCain in the football uniform is sitting on the lower letterboxing. The editor for this ad is probably the staffer who's in the tank for Obama. "Sam Waterston, perhaps?" Are you kidding? Sam Watterson is a liberal. You don't do sarcastic ads for the Nation and then voice over McCain spots. I don't think that Watterson would agree to read lines this dumb, either.
Waterston isn't actually a liberal. A civil ibertarian, perhaps; but while he does support the Nation he also was one of the people representing Unity '08, which is High Broderist, not Liberal; and Unity '08 was closely affiliated to the usual media portrayal of McCain.
At some level I guess they were going for a soft sell subliminal approach- McCain first appears after the word hero, the teacher was a soldier like McCain, McCain is like a teacher because teachers are good and honorable- don't think about it too much, just let Grandpa take care of it.
Sam Waterston was good in The Great Gatsby, but I don't really care for him otherwise. His is one of the least likeable characters in the Law & Order franchise.
How did the High School honor code of ratting out your friends go over in the military? Isn't the military's code of honor protecting your friends? No wonder McCain's a flip flopper.
The Honor Code ... McCain and the Honor Code ... Cheating in tests - well, when you can, you do it --- IN GERMANY. We are not ashamed to do it, we were not ashamed to do it - quite the opposite: Parents love to tell how they once have cheated in school ... I've never heard of a German student who turned in a class mate for cheating. You must be quite mean to be capable of doing something like that! Cheating competence is an important quality to learn in school - very usefull in later life. Sure, teachers hate it, teachers try to get you - so you have to be GOOD (clever, courageous, circumspect) to do it successfully. And when you succeed and get a better grade this way that means you've passed a test in survival training. That is Germany. Now, are we an evil people? Do we lack morality, different to the virtuous people of the USA? - If you think so, please take into accout this fact: We have much less criminals than you in the USA ... The USA have about 10 times as many murders and about 8 times as many people in prison, per capita. Finally, where did John McCain learn to cheat? He is a cheater, as we can infer from his constant and deliberate meddling of Shiites and Sunnis, for example, or from his deceptively optimistic reports about the Iraq occupation. Politicians are cheaters. They have to be. Their voters would not want to hear ugly truths. And politics is a strategic game, in which deception is a constitutional part of the rule set.
they're using the same music as the fake bush auto-biography: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuPKoX6mnjw
It's supposed to be mist, kids, not smoke. As in "the mists of time": the era that McCain represents. When it wasn't uncommon for a Senator to have a son in harm's way when the country was at war; when teachers were men, and they were respected, etc. Before twenty-something girls like Matt's girlfriend were theorizing about public education, there was Boy's Town. The headless rock star is just for contrast: if he were a real hero, he'd have a head. The point is that McCain came of age when heroes were the three other guys:
McCain was Edison's assistant.
Not only is there a headless rock star, but the rock star is followed by giant mega-wisps of bong smoke. Reagan's ads were patriotic corn, but they were patriotic corn that had basic narrative coherence.
I can't tell you how many friends I have shared this with. It's a really amazing, amazing!, example of how out of touch they are. A group of 60 year old men trying to figure out how to sell a 70 year old man to a group of 20 year old connectors in a 10 year old medium. So funny.
Isaac, They're not trying to sell anything to you and your 20-year-old friends. You're not their target audience.
The comments regarding this ad speak to the unfortunate misunderstanding so many have of what honor is about and why it is important. Honor is not about ratting on your friends. It's about telling exactly what happened, without excuses, obfuscations, or deceptions. How important this is -- in actual life, not just kindergarten -- might not be evident to people who have never served a purpose higher than themselves, who have never had to trust their lives to others, who have never experienced a world in which one's actions had lethal or otherwise catastrophic ramifications. Some of you may scoff at this idea. Some of you may even be proud that you were never stooge enough to serve, in the military, the Peace Corps or as a missionary (no way you're doing that!). But in those endeavors, the truth is required, even when it means you're the one at fault, because decisions have to be taken and choices made, and without the truth about what actually happened, those decisions will be flawed, leading to further loss of life, further destruction, and/or additional obstacles to a safe and healthy community. Sadly, with only one-half of one percent of our country serving, honor is a remote concpet, and how important it is gets weakly diluted. Honor matters and is required for a functioning, progressive society. This is so even if you don't feel it -- plenty of people exist without honor -- because eventually somewhere people will be crushed from the effects of dishonorable behavior. For example, who at Enron didn't "rat out" their friends? How important was honor to that company's leadership? How do you think they'd feel about this ad? Nearly every calamity has somewhere had someone who didn't step up to the hard truth, and nearly every great move forward had someone who did. Read JFK's, "Profiles in Courage". As an aside one might, after reading it, ask who in politics today would have made that book....
As I said in the other thread, they might very well try to call Barack Obama "Barack Hussein Obama", but I think they would try to do it just before the election. So it might be good to remind people, now and then, of Barack's full name so that it won't come as a shock. Generally I think you should ignore anything negative from either candidate in the last week before the election. If they have negative dirt on their opponent they can say it earlier, so that the opponent has a chance to respond.
No matter what the reasoning, using McCain's middle name is a mistake. People over 35 think it sounds wussy, and those under 35 have only encountered it (spelled Sydney) as a girl's name.
Comments closed April 25, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH4p9BQ3V9o
"I'd take a flamethrower to this plaaace!"
Posted by southpaw | April 11, 2008 1:28 PM