Can anyone stop the madness?
As depicted on the award-winning AMC show, people in the advertising industry in the 1960s are utterly despicable. So are McCain’s ad team. To go by their latest ad, they are willing to say and do anything to win.
Notwithstanding its mixed messages — what do celebrity starlets have to do with offshore drilling? — this ad is beyond despicable. McCain supports higher prices for coal and natural gas — assuming he is not abandoning his cap and trade system as everyone else in his campaign alredy has. And, of course, coastal drilling will do nothing to lower energy prices even in 2030.
But the media has been letting McCain just make stuff up on oil drilling. So why not on everything else, too?
One more question — exactly who is this “John McCain” guy who would approve such a message? Somebody, strictly Rove Bush league, I’m afraid.
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Who the heck are they testing these ads on?
In my opinion, albeit from north of the border, they are out of touch with the populace. I think this kind of ad is going to work in the Dem’s favour.
I think that David Robert’s at Grist was onto something in his “messaging/framing” in this post:
We prefer to treat Americans like adults and tell them the truth. Gas prices, like all fossil fuel prices, are only going to keep rising, drilling or no drilling. We will offer immediate financial relief for working and middle class Americans, but most of all we must accelerate the transition to clean, reliable, domestic sources of renewable energy. With more choices — in how we get around, how we heat and cool our homes, how we power our factories — we free Americans from their dependence on expensive gasoline and free America from its addiction to expensive fossil fuels. That is how we rescue and revive our economy.
These ads are not about content. They are sinister and anti-democratic. Fascistic. They are about image and feel and attitude. They are directed toward white men and women who identify with white men. This ad is designed to make viewers feel that Obama is arrogant; elitist; impractical, not American and lusting after white women. Similar messages were used to defeat Harold Ford for Senate in Tennessee. The presidency is the only office for which most voters vote based on how they feel about the candidate, and not policies. It is a huge mistake to believe they can be countered with policy arguments.