August 2, 2008

McCain's spooky ads

One lesson that the GOP has learned and applied for many years now is that for an ad to work, it must tap into the subconscious and strike fear. Thus came the Willie Horton ad, Jesse Helms' "Hands" ad, the RNC's "Call me" spot attacking Harold Ford, etc. John McCain is dutifully fulfilling this tradition with a commerical of his own, the now infamous "Celeb" ad. Rick Perlstein notes the similarity of the chanting, German crowds for Obama in McCain's ad to an old Nazi propoganda film -- with still frames to back him up. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

A less talked-about and probably little-noticed McCain advertisement I found online while looking at an article on The New York Sun's website has some interesting features, too:

Appearance of a random opinion poll? Check.

Strongly loaded language in "question"? Check.

Visual association of Obama with despot? Check.

Clicking on ad takes you to www.johnmccain.com? Unfortunately, I can't verify it at this point, but it's probably a pretty safe guess.