Ordinarily, I pay little attention to campaign ads during a presidential campaign. They’re all so embarrassing, what with the quick platitudes accompanied by sentimental music and the candidates smiling and shaking hands with workers at some fake steel plant or other. My mode of response is always, without exception, to switch channels as soon as they appear.
The uproar over John McCain’s most recent campaign ad, however, piqued my interest. Commentators of both parties were raising eyebrows, to say the least, many of them going further and chastising McCain for being “nasty.”
But what’s so nasty about it? The ad charges Barack Obama with being all surface and no substance. It’s a charge we’ve heard before. After all, Obama is young, he has little legislative record, and he’s had little “experience” in national politics or foreign affairs. The ad drives the point home by charging that the only qualification for president Obama possesses is the adoration of youthful fans. He’s nothing but a celebrity, in exactly the same way that Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are nothing but celebrities.
Perhaps it’s because I’m an artist, however, and am continuously and keenly attuned to the meaning of images, that I always think about the real message in an advertisement. We know McCain now employs disciples of Karl Rove. They know what they’re doing.
In the case of this particular ad, the real message is much more sinister that the surface message. The real message is the subliminal message: Voters, be wary of any black man seen in the company of blonde white women.
Nasty? No, not nasty. Ugly. Really, really ugly.
