The Chosen Obama Narrative
Gosh, I Love The Liberal Media
China's Gold Medals Found To Have High Lead Content
The Party of Unity For One America
How Obama Changed Change
Women At Center Stage
Obama Is He Ready to be President
And If Obama Loses?
Martha's Big Adventure - Happy Labor Day
This Historic Candidacy
Crying Wolf On The Economy While Ignoring Real Perils
Kvetching and Convening
Major Media Decide -- Vote Obama
Obama Still Stumbling In Polls
The Senator
Convention(al) Reflections
Farewell To An American Hero
Economy of Words
Farewell, Nato
Findings
Hillary Can't Fix What Her Party Broke
Let's Get Cracking On America's Infrastructure
Mccains Vs. Biden: Not All 'Foreign Policy Experience' Is Created Equal
The Obama Moment
Kennedy's 'Right' Is Wrong
Rolling With The Punches
State of Denial
Obama Camp Claims Its 'Ground Game' Will Beat Bush's of '04
The Perfect Stranger
For Voters, It's A Matter of Trust
Michelle Obama: Family-Values Feminist -- Or Phony?
Game Show Politics
Biden Selection May Help Mccain Make Obama The Issue
Barack
The Quadrennial Whine Is Wrong
The Better Hillary Does, The Worse For Obama
'RomneyCare' Should Keep Mitt Off McCain Ticket
Be Not Cool
Report From A Forgotten War (4th in a Series)
Avoiding A Lieberman Disaster
Quality of Leadership Counts
Art Or Pornography? A Fine Line Indeed
On Shooting Taggers: Why Conservatives And Liberals Differ
New Day, New World, New Democratic Party
Grateful For A Do-Nothing Congress
A Gathering of Clowns Acrobats and Con Men
Win Or Lose, Obama Pioneers Interactive Convention
Obama Nomination Reframes Racial Issues
Democrats Talkin' Like The GOP
McCain Can Win Only As A War President
Young Feminists Shed Label
The Real "Big Tent" Party
Bill Clinton Mending Fences
Michelle Bernard Looks for the Right McCain -- Interview
Losing Faith Voters
Blind Defense of Koran Abrogates Reality
We've Come A Long Way, Baby
The Devils In His Details
The Clintons' Exit



Making The Pigs Squeal
Phil Brennan 8/5/2008
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Making the Pigs Squeal

By Phil Brennan

From the hysterical reaction it provoked you would have thought it was the kind of injury that makes pigs squeal - a TV commercial that used humor as a weapon to cut the high-flying Barack Obama down to size.

It's always been axiomatic in politics that you don't shoot arrows at dead tigers, meaning that attacks on a political stratagem are launched only when that tactic is working, not when it's failing.

Such is the case of the two TV commercials created by the McCain camp to more than suggest that Senator Obama is ... Well... Full of himself, a celebrity who is celebrated merely for being a celebrity.

In the first ad, Obama is by implication compared to the Misses Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, both world famous by virtue of merely being famous. It's an effective way of conveying the idea that in Obama's case, as in the cases of the two women, there's no there there, as Dorothy Parker would have put it.

The second ad is even more cutting, using a photo of the late Charlton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea to imply that Obama sees himself in that miraculous context.

Both ads are funny, and, for Obama, lethally so. They make people laugh, and in
both cases, the laughter is directed at Barack Obama. Nothing is more fatal to a candidate's aspirations for higher office that something that causes people to laugh at him. He is transposed into a figure of humor - more joke than candidate.

Nothing could be more illustrative of the deadly effects these ads are having than the near hysterical reaction of the Obama campaign and among his supporters.

The New York Times' Bob Herbert, an avid Obama supporter, shot this arrow at what he obviously understands is a very live tiger. As Pat Buchanan noted, Herbert accused McCain and the GOP of producing ads that are "slimy ... Foul, poisonous ... Designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women."

Wow!

Not to be outdone in hysteria was the Washington Post's Gene Robinson who said that McCain is "running a desperate, ugly campaign."

Translated: McCain is now running a very effective campaign and winning vast numbers of supporters with his inspired use of humor in reducing Obama's image to that of a mere mortal, and we don't like it one bit.

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By Gary McCoy - Cagle Cartoons * Posted 07/30/2008
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Posted By: Penny Dreadful  on Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Only in the world of movement conservatism could anyone claim that John McCain is running "an effective campaign."



The only squealing pigs are on Team McCain.

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