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Smiling Obama
SMILING OBAMA....Fred Davis III, John McCain's advertising guy, tells Time's Michael Scherer that he felt handcuffed in several ways during the campaign:
Davis says that concern about race played a major role in the entire aesthetic of McCain's ads. The photographs of Obama that the ads used, for instance, which often showed Obama elongated and smiling, were carefully selected, he recalls.
"We chose them with only one thing in mind, and that is to not make them bad pictures because bad pictures would be seen as racist," Davis says.
I'm disappointed to hear this. I had assumed all along that his use of a smiling Barack Obama was a masterstroke. Instead of the tired old schtick of using awkward or glowering photos in grainy black-and-white, he was instead trying to portray Obama as slick and shallow, a beaming tent preacher trying to sell you a bill of goods. Not only did it play up the stereotype they were trying to sell, but it made them impervious to criticism. How can you complain that your opponents are making you look too good, after all?
But no. That wasn't it at all. They were just trying to avoid charges of racism. How banal.
I assume you are kidding. "Obama as slick and shallow, a beaming tent preacher." Slick and shallow preachers make up the majority of the GOP
There is a difference between coded speech and dogwhistles.
Coded speech is observable by everyone. The dogwhistles you and others heard were not. Don't be surprised that when you claim to hear voices that no one else can hear, people treat you bedbug crazy.
I'd rather we fight real world monsters than the monsters of our Id.
So, if you are a Repulicon, acting like a decent human being is the same thing as being handcuffed. Kind of confirms what we knew all along.
Damn. Google first, post once.
I'd rather we fight real world monsters than monsters from your Id.
Perfect.
(Of course, expect to be called by Fox to defend your viewpoint.)
But... Perfect.
milo, perhaps you should read the article. That's a very unfair characterization, and to the extent you claim to be a progressive, speaks very ill of what we will do to intentionally twist what other people are saying.
Hint: the article speaks ill of advertisers, which, I am shocked, shocked to find out, don't always play nice. This particular advertiser was reined in by the McCain Republicans. The thrust of the article, which you are free not to believe, is precisely the opposite of your twisted claim.
Look, they lost, we won. If you can't have any integrity now, you need to look at yourself and ask why that is.
Hm. So they say. And now they are presumptively excused from any more nefarious intent.
It could be that.
Or they could be lying.
We parse; you decide.
What about the kindergarten-sex ad? He looked pretty damn shifty in that one.
I dunno, I seem to recall a banner ad in Washington Monthly featuring a well-photographed McCain and a rather lupine-looking Obama, but I can't seem to fine it...hold on, let me try one more thing...Nope.
another victory for the 'they darkened Obama' screaming horde
So Inhofe's nephew was the victim of white guilt and stolen McCain signs?
Tragic! Cry me a river, jerry.
Coded speech is observable by everyone. The dogwhistles you and others heard were not.
Of course, this distorts the very purpose of a dog whistle -- it's *designed* to appeal to a specific frequency while bypassing every other. And it ain't designed by the dog. As Davis, himself, notes in the article, the McCain campaign never followed up on those Paris Hilton & Britney Spears ads with the Donald Trump or Ellen DeGeneres "celebrity" ads. They stuck with young & highly sexualized white women instead.
I'm open to the idea that it might be difficult for a Republican candidate to run against a black opponent without being perceived, at least by some, as exploiting racial stereotypes. However, a good place for that Republican candidate to begin would be with the issues, which, alas, the McCain folks pretty much studiously avoided throughout their campaign, and the fact that celebrities & guilt-by-association are the subjects on which Davis dwells in this particular article shows just how fundamentally unserious McCain as a candidate was.
I always thought they were trying to make him look like the dorks in those Aquafresh commercials...
As Kyle and godoggo point out, Davis' claim is simply another lie. He's trying to revise history here, just like virtually all conservatives have been busy doing since the election. Don't fall for it so easily.
"They were just trying to avoid charges of racism."
One wonders why they bothered, given the storm of fake accusations they inevitably weathered.
The Britney Spears one was especially choice.
elmo: I always thought they were trying to make him look like the dorks in those Aquafresh commercials...
Come on, let's face it, he's got a great smile. What I really want to know is, who's his dentist?
Kevin's initial reaction to the ads was correct. They were (obviously!) going for a "slick salesman" theme. But they chose this theme in part because it allowed them to make Obama look bad w/o using sinister (ie, dark, scary, and thus accusably racist) images.
Dear Jerry,
I have now read the first three sentences of the linked article. I see no reason to change my comment or revisit it. What are you talking about?
The man wanted to be indecent and couldn't. The man is indecent regardless of whether anyone restrained or handcuffed him.
What I really want to know is, who's his dentist?
No shit, good call alex! Who are these socialist dentists they are hiding from us? How come all our teethes can't be so bright!
milo,
You don't have to believe the article, but you should represent what it says correctly.
The guy wanted to be indecent because he's an advertising shit-for-brains.
The McCain Republicans, yeah, the guys none of us voted for, told him to knock it off.
He says he felt handicapped by the campaign. That's not your thesis or the other boneheads here that all Republicans are evil racist beasts.
Critique him? Fine. But represent him correctly.
Note to Juney: When claims of dogwhistles first came out, the context was "evil racist McCain, this is a sample of what we're going to get, but it's going to be even more racist." And soon, every last little twit like you was seeing dog whistles. But guess what, the campaign was negative, but there was no racism in it from McCain. Your so-called white women commercial had a much more logical and apparent message, confirmed even by this article: it was about celebrity, not the white women boogeyman that lives in your head.
Let's stick to the reality we claim to love. Coded speech is observable speech. That was George Bush mentioning Dred Scott in an abortion speech. And it took libs a while to realize what the actual spoken observable reference to Dred Scott meant. And then we saw it had been said over and over in rightwing contexts.
Dogwhistles is bullshit.
It's you, Juney, quite literally hearing voices that no one else can hear and telling us the sky is falling.
Cause you're f'n insane.
Check your own racism and up your lithium.
Your so-called white women commercial had a much more logical and apparent message, confirmed even by this article: it was about celebrity, not the white women boogeyman that lives in your head.
Right, right. It's now been confirmed that the Paris Hilton/Britney Spears ad was about the issue of celebrity and nothing else because -- wait for it -- the guy who came up with the ad says so in Time magazine. Oh, and because dogwhistles is bullshit. Anyone who says otherwise is a twit. Insane. And did I mention racist? The subtlety, the nuance, the sophistication... how do you manage to pull it all together & make it look so effortless?
I don't believe this for a second. That guy is just explaining away a poorly messaged campaign after the fact.
The celebrity ad campaign was widely critiqued as laden with dogwhistle racism but it represented one of the few moments where McCain got his polls to go up. The point being that if the campaign believed that opening the door to arguable accusations of racism was bad politics it did so in the face of evidence to the contrary. That's not racist or unracist. It's just stupid.
I have to admit, I thought they were being racist all along--especially using Fatuously Smiling Minstrel show imagery to elicit certain reactions in their base. I guess I was wrong.
Davis is lying.
I'm with Kyle--the pix of Obama in the sex-ed ad were obviously chosen to make him look creepy--they were obviously carefully chosen and unrepresentative. This kind of analysis/interpretation is always a dicey game, and I'm not particularly good at it, but my hypothesis is that those very strange pix were chosen to make Obama look mentally challenged. And one reason for this is that it plays into a stereotype--true or false--about one type of child molester. Now, like most hypotheses, especially about matters like this, that one's likely to be wrong. But there can be very little doubt that the pix in the ad were carefully chosen to make Obama look bad in some difficult-to-articulate way. Which, incidentally, shows that Davis is full of sh!t.
We can't take away money these executives have already earned,
Sure we can. We can sue them for negligence. It happens all the time.
Everything is very open and
Everything is very open and very clear explanation of issues.