John McCain Continues To Make A Mockery Of Civility & A Fool Of Himself

While John McCain's latest TV commercial comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears may be playing well in Peoria and his very own Uriah Heep, that Joe Lieberman, suggests that we "should just relax and enjoy it" like a quickie on YouPorn, the ad has been an unmitigated disaster among virtually all pundits of all stripes because it is being talked about more for its utter childishness and racial undertones rather than whether it makes a valid point.

Writes Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse:

"I saw the ad and wondered, wtf? What does Brittney Spears have to do with presidential politics? The ad seemed petulant, as if the candidate were complaining that it was unfair that Obama was more popular than McCain.

"Childish indeed.

"I'm sorry, but there's just no other way to put it; McCain's campaign is still foundering, sinking slowly beneath the waves as the Good Ship Obama’s wake continues to slosh over the gunnwales on its way by."

Sticking his shovel in the muck from somewhere toward the middle, Daniel Larison opines at Eunomia that:

"Besides being paranoid, the idea that McCain’s genuinely weak 'Celeb' ad draws from Triumph of the Will is remarkable for something else: its implicit contempt for modern Germans. It is not much better than the pro-war German-bashing that took place during 2002-03 when war supporters frequently complained that the Germans had lost their former enthusiasm for conflict. Both treat Germans in an essentialist way and try to reduce them to the most cartoonish stereotypes, as if a cheering throng of Germans in Berlin, c. 2008, must necessarily conjure up associations with Nazi rallies."

From the left of center, Dick Polman at American Debate wants to make a deal:

"I'll stop writing about how John McCain is embarrassing himself when he stops embarrassing himself.

"His latest, most personal, assault on Barack Obama is further proof that the so-called 'maverick' has trashed his own promise of high-minded discourse, and instead embraced the gut-kicking Bush political template of the past eight years. Indeed, you don't have to be an Obama fan to conclude that the latest assault is juvenile. I say this because a fair number of Republicans - some speaking anonymously to the press, with others, including former McCain aides, speaking on the record - have already judged the assault to be juvenile. Or, as ex-McCain intimate John Weaver prefers to call it, 'childish'."

And notes Time magazine's James Poniewozik:

"You can make Obama into Britney Spears, or John Kerry, or Malcolm X. I'm not sure you can make him into all three at the same time. (Is there a template in American culture for an Ivy-league-snob, black-militant, out-of-control former Mouseketeer?) Sure there is some overlap between one aspect of one attack and another, but overall, it's a scattershot way of attacking."

Which begs a question: What possessed attack adman Steve Schmidt to use two celebrity has beens?

The answer: They're identified not just as vacuuous preeners, which is how the ad attempts to portray Obama, but also sexually available white women, which to a small-appendaged and tiny-minded attack dog like Schmidt gives targeting a handsome black man some extra bounce with McCain's base.

Does this make the ad racist?

That has become the ultimate adjustable wrench of a word in this campaign, but the answer has to be "yes." It is hard to argue otherwise since sexual relations between black men and white women remains one of the great social taboos among conservative sorts, and Schmidt's intentions were nothing if overtly mean spirited. Which makes McCain's incessant countercharging that Obama is playing "the race card" so hilariously disingenuous.

The late Lee Atwater, the godfather of modern Republican dirty politics, had a term for what his jackbooted disciples are doing for McCain: It's called "stripping the bark" off a candidate.

Meanwhile, in a not surprising coda to my post yesterday on John McCain's Metamorphosis From Smear Politics To Perpetrator, David Kiley at Business Week reveals that:

"What the McCain campaign doesn’t want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with . . . is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was . . . wait for it . . . using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch. I guess that’s political hardball. But another word for it is the one word that most politicians are loathe to use about their opponents—a lie."

By the way, as desperate as Paris Hilton may be for attention as her career slides ever deeper into B-movie oblivion, even she doesn't approve of the ad.