I still come across people from time to time who haven't seen the McCain campaign's hilarious headless rockstar web ad:
Always worth revisiting for a laugh or two.
« Except for Disagreements, They Agree | Main | Land 'O Dudes »
Headless Rockstar Redux
09 Jun 2008 09:06 am
Comments (28)
Is that one of those "talkies" that I keep hearin' about?
It's funny that they patronize us about how some of us look up to rock stars-- and it's indicative of that patronization that McCain's people won't, you know, pick one out...
Three points:
1) Obviously, the headless rockstar is smoking a doobie.
2) I can't wait to see John McCain start wearing a "Stop Snitchin'" t-shirt on the campaign trail.
3) John "Sydney" McCain? Wha...?
McCain's folks don't, of course, really believe that rock stars are heroes, unless maybe it's NRA-loving, misogynistic Ted Nugent, I'll wager.
Hey, rock stars are heroes BECAUSE THEY GET LAID!!
Nya ha ha ha!
I'm sure Cindy would agree with me about that one!
Let's see... It can't be John Lennon... Can't be Bob Marley... Can't be Springsteen... Can't be Bob Dylan... Can't be Pete Seeger...
Is it Dee Snyder, maybe? Or James Hetfield? Or Elvis?
Remember LiveAid and all those kinds of concerts? Although it's too bad those have all been replaced by all the Lolapalooza and Ozzfest-like festivals in the regard of the public--
--I'd still like to see a John McCain or Lindsay Graham spend a day putting out that much effort and going through that much hassle to help people who are poverty stricken, or who have a debilitating disease.
What's with the flowing cigarette smoke as a returning image? Or, is that an illusion to the smoking gun being a mushroom cloud?
Ah yes, I remember well how John McCain blew the whistle on the Keating Four.
Where did John finish ranked in his class again? I've forgotten.
The theme of this ad seems to be "Blowing smoke."
What's with the flowing cigarette smoke as a returning image?
That's what I want to know. Someone's got some awesome lung power to be puffing all that smoke out, and in technicolor, too.
All the "heroes" are white guys, too. What a surprise.
Sneakily self-aggrandizing (a spot about Heros made by...john McCain...hmmm, 'hero'...'McCain'..hmm; but no, the spot is really about a teacher and other ordinary heros).
And the headless 'rockstar' is just comedy gold. I didn't know Terry Gilliam was directing political spots. I hear that there was another version that they decided not to run which had a headless pornstar.
Wasn't Mr. Ravenel the same guy that also taught John McCain the 5 "D"s of dodgeball?
Anyone else notice the McCain-camp strategy of dealing with his age by using a lot of pictures of him when he was young?
Seems dishonest, in a way. Just sell us who he is, not on how he looked 40 or 60 years ago. And so what if he looked like some kid from the Brady Bunch once? Everyone's got a kid or a relative, neighbor, etc., who looks like that- it doesn't insure the kid's not Dennis the Menace, and it doesn't make McCain a good man to be president as an adult.
I think of it as the "spooky Episcopal High School" ad. It really looks a lot less weird than that.
Those pictures make it look like a fancy private prep academy where he went to HS. I wonder if he learned Latin, because I hear the people really relate to people who know Latin.
I don't think it was terribly fancy, but it was private, yes. McCain's hero was originally a teacher at a coed school, but teaching girls made the guy so uncomforatable that he switched to this all male school. A grown man unable to handle teaching girls. Nice.
If this were The Corner, there would now be insinuations of homoeroticism or something else 'creepy'. But it's not.
I'll say it again: Worst. Ad. Ever.
Ah yes, I remember well how John McCain blew the whistle on the Keating Four.
We have ourselves a winner.
Ah yes, I remember well how John McCain blew the whistle on the Keating Four.
We have ourselves a winner.
If this is the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., (and I think it is) then it was not terribly fancy in the era that McCain was there. It was all male when McCain went there, and became co-ed in 1991. It was and is a private school, but not in the same echelon as the truly fancy prep schools in the D.C. area, such as Sidwell Friends (Chelsea Clinton), St. Albans (Al Gore, both sons of Sen. Edward Kennedy, Brit Hume), or the National Cathedral School.
Why stop at the Keating Four?
Didn't Giap and others collect all sort of collaborative material on videotape during his stay at the Hilton or something?
About the only thing I can come up with to say about this travesty is that it will appeal to a lot of old guys like McCain.
I really liked the part about "snitch on your fellows". McCain would do well in Federal prison where just about everybody is a snitch.
Hope he gets there some day along with Bush and Cheney and the neocons.
I particularly like how the narrator "reads" the honor code and replaces the simple "will" with the more Biblical "shall". Makes it a kind of 4 Commandments. And then, of course, they put the text, with "will" up on the screen.
Comments closed June 23, 2008.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Headless rockstar + Pleasantville style photos + crappy dogma about ratting out your peers = a very poor campaign ad.
Posted by CHoward | June 9, 2008 9:19 AM