Amy Sullivan puts up an interesting theory that the McCain ad calling out Obama as “The One” is dog whistle politics for some conservative Christians that Obama is the Anti-Christ.
It first caught the attention of Democrats familiar with the Left Behind series, a fictionalized account of the end-time that debuted in the 1990s and has sold nearly 70 million books worldwide. “The language in there is so similar to the language in the Left Behind books,” says Tony Campolo, a leading progressive Evangelical speaker and author.
It’s not hard to see how some Obama haters might be tempted to make the comparison. In the Left Behind books, Carpathia is a junior Senator who speaks several languages, is beloved by people around the world and fawned over by a press corps that cannot see his evil nature, and rises to absurd prominence after delivering just one major speech. Hmmh. But serious Antichrist theorists don’t stop there. Everything from Obama’s left-handedness to his positive rhetoric to his appearance on the cover of this magazine has been cited as evidence of his true identity. One chain e-mail claims that the Antichrist was prophesied to be “A man in his 40s of MUSLIM descent,” which would indeed sound ominous if not for the fact that the Book of Revelation was written at least 400 years before the birth of Islam.
Worth a read.
and I’ve never read the Left Behind books- just saw a History Channel program once on the Antichrist.
… heard the assertion, I wasn’t convinced. But after reading the article there does seem to be a decent amount of circumstantial evidence. Also, as the article said, if the goal was really to lampoon, there were better ways to do it.
First, if the “left Behind” movie is frickin’ hilarious, it’s on youtube should anyone want to watch it. This is one of my favorite scenes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
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p>Second, this could be very good news for Obama. I mean shouldn’t the “Left Behind” Christians be rooting for the anti-Christ to take power since it will hasten the arival of the Rapture, the day Jesus Christ is supposed to fly down from Heaven saving all “True ChristiansTM” and installing the Kingdom of God on Earth while expunging all evil once and for all? These people can’t wait for this to happen!
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p>Let’s get this Rapture Party started; vote Obama!
the ‘Left Behind’ Christians think they have a role to play. They need to resist the anti-christ and fight him, even in a losing effort. Suffice it to say, if the right-wing evangelical crowd can be convinced that Obama even could be the what Team McCain is clearly trying to hint at, they’ll work harder than ever in an election we thought half of them would stay home.
… what Lynne was saying to me conversationally right now. đŸ˜‰
How do you know if the “left behind” Christians need to resist or can help the coming of the anti-christ? Got a link? I did try searching it but couldn’t find stuff on their actions in the face of such person.
the antichrist get to go to heaven. Everyone is, well, we’re doomed, apparently. You don’t have to read the Left Behind series to know that (thankfully!), just Revelations…
Who knows? There are many flavors of Christianity and many flavors of the insane wing of the Christian faith.
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p>From the last link in my comment, a video from Max Blumenthal called “Rapture Ready”, 6 people say they want the second coming to come tomorrow. One of them is former Republican rep, “The Hammer” Tom DeLay:
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p>I was being half-facetious, and I’m guessing that if there was an intentional anti-Christ subtext, then McCain’s peeps are counting on that meme to help them against Obama. On the other hand, McCain’s campaign often doesn’t appear well thought-out and look desperate to rush anything out there to see what works.
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p>In the end, we’re probably both right, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more “oppose the anti-Christ” Left Behinders like you say. With the twisted logic behind these people’s hopes are so detached from reason and reality that it makes no sense to try and figure out exactly what they think, because they’re not living in a reality-based world.
McCain has basically said, unleash the unstable nutcases with guns. Paging the next John Salvi.
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p>It’s not a joke, it’s a religious rationale for murder.
For once, I hate being right.
sorry.
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p>http://ryanpadams.blogspot.com…
obama uses tons of religious references himself. in fact, he uses religious “reasoning” for his policy on civil marriage. why does he continue to get a pass on his heavy and inappropriate use of religion in a political campaign?
by otherwise good debaters as a petulant inability or refusal to come up with a logical defense for obama but not mccain. let’s be honest here. presidential candidates in both parties have frequently indulged in god-talk. so isn’t it a but dishonest to point fingers here?
… is the dog whistle aspect. This technique is used to create otherwise unpalatable pandering efforts under the noses of the majority who would object to win the votes of people who’s views are also unpalatable to the majority.
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p>Whatever Obama’s ‘God’ strategy is, it’s not sleazy.
although i don’t necessarily agree that obama’s more overt use of religion isn’t sleazy.
… believer, the its honest. In its honesty and its complete lack of obfuscation I find it hard to call what Obama is doing ‘sleazy’, and that’s coming from a somewhat militant atheist. I find his beliefs troubling (being an atheist, I’m used to being troubled by candidates’ beliefs), but his methods certainly seem honest and indeed sound.
and a civil rights advocate while claiming religion as a legit reason to ignore the 14th amendment is not honest.
people not responding to your argument. Right Laurel?;) lol
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p>Anyways, on this topic I completely agree. Obama does get an absolute pass on using religion in the public policy domain. It’s allowed because it’s pragmatic. He’s wooing religious citizens who have not been courted (very well anyways) by past Democratic presidential nominees. He’s opening up a whole new pool of voters and so people allow it. It also helps that he’s a fine speaker and the way he describes using religion in government almost makes it seem a-okay (think Obama’s expanding of faith-based initiatives). As to marriage equality, most people agree that Obama is the most pro-gay rights Presidential candidate we’ve ever had and sadly it’s just not politically pragmatic to support it, yet.
“if our guy does it, it’s all ok. if their guy does it, it’s sleazy pandering”
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p>as for relating to people not responding, rightie-o! đŸ™‚
… curiosity, do you find that it is possible for a devout candidate to bring up religion and not be sleazy? What would the criteria be?
“devout” doesn’t necessitate talking about your personal beliefs all the time. i think kennedy and carter approached the subject by briefly mentioning their religious preference, then insisting that it is a private matter, and shutting up about it thereafter. but certainly just avoiding the use of religion as a reason for policy decisions would be a good start. and dumping the benediction ending every speech “..and god bless america!” would be easy to do, too. in fact, i’d like for speeches to end with some sort of reminder to us that they remember that they’re there to uphold the constitution. how about “in service to the people of the united states and the constitution, i bid you a good evening.”?
… of Carter is that he didn’t really “shut up about” his religion, he just didn’t bring it up himself. When it came up he was more than happy to expound (“sin in his heart” in the Playboy interview for instance). If there was anything that he “shut up” about it was his poetry. His campaign was scared to death that it may get out that he was a serious poet.
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p>Kennedy certainly chose to “shut up”. But then, his religion was thought of as a liability, not an asset. As such it makes strategic sense to “shut up”.
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p>For me… it’s possible to be “offensive” without being “sleazy”. Sleaziness in this context, as I see it, is signified by cynical pandering and convenient dishonesty. While I agree with you about the offensiveness of religious policy basis and speech endings, I don’t find Obama’s use of the “sleazy”.
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p>Contrast this situation with McCain appealing to people on a religious basis with dog whistle code that he himself probably doesn’t believe in at all (if he does, we’ve got a much bigger problem than I though). I find it cynical and thus ‘sleazy’.
well, if you want to consider mccain’s variety worse, that’s fine. but i actually like mccain’s brand better, since it is clearly a cynical ploy and i get no feeling that he bases policy on personal religious belief.
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p>i find obama’s soft mainstreaming of religious talk to be, in the long run, more of a threat. he’s just embedding deeper and deeper the expectation that christian rhetoric will be interwoven with the political.
the general theory that, in politics, what you see is what you get. Obama’s courting the religous folk because.. well… he’s religious. I also disagree that it’s ‘not pragmatic’ to support equality. A majority of this country, at this point, support either marriage or civil unions. A major politician supporting it would push that over the edge to a majority supporting marriage, IMO.
Do a majority of voters in:
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p>Colorado
Nevada
New Mexico
New Hampshire
North Carolina
Virginia
Indiana
Michigan
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p>support it? In this context it doesn’t matter if Californians and New Yorkers are groovy with equality. My hunch is that there aren’t good nonpartisan state numbers available, but I can tell you for damn sure that Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina absolutely don’t support marriage equality or even civil union equality. The others I’m not certain but I sure don’t think it’s obvious.
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p>If Obama comes out for it and loses, not only does that set marriage equality back 8 or 12 years, but it also sets back good environmental policy, tax policy, foreign policy, and so forth.
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p>It seems to me that Obama’s stance is at worst as far as he’s willing to go, which would still make him the most pro-gay rights president ever. At best, he’s keeping his views on the down low until he wins the POTUS, and then he’ll surprise us.
It just seems very odd to include a civil union state on that list. Otherwise, I agree with the idea and remain optimistic.
It’s been Republican state supreme courts across the country, in the main, who have demanded equal rights in marriage – most notably Massachusetts and California, Republican courts that demanded the whole kit and caboodle.
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p>Obama will probably win NH, because it’s been trending blue and he’s a better candidate, but the fact that it’s a CU state has little to do with it. Rank and file Republicans, as opposed to the die-hard religious fanatic crowd, will quickly move in favor of full marriage or at least civil unions across the country, if they haven’t already. Unfortunately, though, it’s not that crowd who national Republicans pay lip service to, or care about in regards to social issues. They go the way their base demands.
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p>It could be in VA and NC. Not that those in the constit were going to vote for Obama, but if true this will help motivate them to vote against Obama instead of just staying home.
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p>McCain could very well be trying to beef up his Evangelical credentials without weakening his support by moderates and “Rockefeller Republicans/Reagan Democrats” from places like the Northeast*.
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p> * PA, NJ, and NH to be precise.
Obama is the antichrist wouldn’t they would rejoice at his election just as they advocate for the building of the third temple on the temple mount? If I believed in the second coming and thought that the election of Barack would result in my inheriting the kingdom of heaven I would vote as many times as I could.
So McCain can be lampooned here for weeks for having one of the most laughable campaigns in modern history and makes screw-ups and blunders left and right yet it is immediately assumed that, based on what I thought was pretty weak circumstantial evidence and over-stretching, he is running a silent campaign implying that Obama is the anti-christ? I’ve watched that ad numerous times and I see an attempt at some humor at the expense of Obama’s slightly egotistical campaign and not much more.
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p>Besides, the mocking tone of that ad wasn’t invented by the McCain Campaign. HRC and Celestial Choirs anybody?
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p>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
read the Left Behind series, because you really gotta want it bad to make the connection between Carpathian and Obama. The anti-christ wasn’t really a “junior senator”-he was in the lower house of the Romanian(methinks)parliament. He didn’t simply rise to power with one huge speech but (huge sigh before I go on)…you know what? I was going to explain what happened in the books, but I’m far too embarrassed to have read them all and have no desire whatsoever to write a book report about the awful experience.
you can win the argument if you want, just don’t make me tell what happened in the damned books.
for that long winded first sentence. It was dangerously in run-on sentence territory.
… ad was a straight-forward lampoon as well. The trouble is, as a lampoon it could do a lot better. You mention the Clinton campaign’s ad. That ad was an obvious lampoon with, as you point out, celestial choirs and if I remember correctly, halos (cue goofy picture with photoshopped halo and heavenly light). By contrast, the McCain ad actually makes Obama look good, and there really isn’t a lampoon going on there at all. Kind of weird for an add that’s supposed to denigrate him. So it wasn’t actually that surprising to me that others theorized that ‘something else’ may be going on. This woman at Time seems to have found something that may explain. Based on the emails that have been going around (mentioned in the article) she may be on to something.
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p>Certainly it’s not definitive (as she points out: “Sapp knows that the phrasing and images could just be dismissed as a peculiar coincidence.”) but it certainly is convenient. The telling part for me is that if you wanted to put forth the ‘innocuous’ version of the message, there are probably many better ways to do it than the way this particular ad did it. I think the GOP media machine is many things, but incompetent isn’t one of them.
They put up an ad with plausible deniability. They used some key buzz language, as Bush has been known for throughout his presidency, targeted at people who would understand it. They knew most people wouldn’t understand it, though much of the base would. This is a multi-tiered ad designed to suggest that the McCain camp sees the potential that Obama’s this wicked evil dude and must be stopped, but for those who won’t get that message, it’s also designed for the less offensive purpose (though still absolutely offensive) to purport him as someone who would think of himself as a messiah more than a leader, which goes along with the celebrity meme. It’s a sophisticated ad written created by people who are used to delivering sophisticated messages. This is not all that hard for them to do.
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p>It’s not an attempt at humor; it would have been way more obvious if it were. The very nature of the choppiness is because they were building that plausible deniability in there: mixing images and messages in there that could spread several actual messages. If it weren’t trying to do three things it does at once (assure the base they know he’s the anti christ and keep pushing the messiah/celebrity meme for those who aren’t in the base, and also to throw people off to the true nature of the ad), it wouldn’t have seemed like such a choppy – and quite frankly, bad – ad.
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p>The absurd nature of it is enough to throw the MSM off, added with the fact that unlike any other ad in the history of Republican ads over this decade, it’s not suitable for TV. Where’s the 6 second clip of it that could be played over and over again on TV that would display the full message of the ad? Why would Republicans ever make an ad that couldn’t do that? Well, we know why. Furthermore, McCain can be comfy that the MSM will buy pretty much anything McCain says without second guessing and they’d never consider him the type of person who would propogate the Anti-Christ meme.
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p>I honestly can’t buy skepticism of what this ad does with the color tone being so bleak and damning (and very much like the covers of the LeftBehind series – pause at 18 seconds in in the ad and tell me it doesn’t look like something out of the Left Behind series covers). Again, if it were just mocking Obama, the color scheme would be way different. What other major Republican ads have even used these colors and types of images? The eagle-Obama symbol rising up between the water in the Moses scene is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Watching the ad and thinking about it for a couple minutes makes it obvious what the Republicans are trying to do. They don’t have to outwardly say he’s the anti-christ to do their work; that would have actually been a bad thing and cost McCain the election. They just need to send out sublte hints that they think he is, targeted toward those who want to hear it, which will go along with the much more obvious talk that I’m sure the Michael Savages types are more than happy to spout, along with plenty of hearsay on the internet. They just have to throw the idea out there for the base to run with it; they don’t actually have to tangently say it. The base is well trained for these subtle religious messages – Bush has been using them for years and he’s no where near the first.
“It’s a sophisticated ad written created by people who are used to delivering sophisticated messages.”
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p>or
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p>”it wouldn’t have seemed like such a choppy – and quite frankly, bad – ad.”
Next time don’t selectively quote without context.
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p>Nice way to pick off one tiny phrase of a very long sentence. Obviously, it would have been a bad ad if not for the fact that the ad wasn’t designed to look nice. It was designed to propogate the myth while also being plausibly deniable. To do that, there had to be an assortment of messages and purposes in the ad, which made it choppy. To some, that would seem bad, including the media – which likely won’t show the ad on TV. McCain ain’t buying spots, either. All of that is for a reason: they don’t want this ad to be scrutinized by the majority of people, it’s meant for a specific target audience. So the ad doesn’t look good, but it’s not meant to, which makes the ad all the more dangerous.
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p>So, to answer your (rude) question, it’s A) because B) was by design.
I had trouble following your logic. I think what you’re saying is that it is sophisticated in its design, but badly executed. I hope I haven’t been rude again. Seems I’m always rude when I’m here.
I really meant that it’s sophisticated in that it’s intentionally not ready for TV, because it seeks to carry a certain message to a certain group of people, without attracting the attention of larger audiences.
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p>I guess that can be kind of hard to follow, so I guess I’ll use an analogy. I used to think that George Bush was smart, but tried to make himself look like a big doofus so more people could relate to him. (Of course, I later realized that what you see is what you get and he just had exceptionally bright people around him).
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p>Or, a better example may be a magician: in one hand, he does some grand and marvelous thing to distract people from the fact that, in his other hand, it’s a deceptively simple task that carries out the trick. In this case, the ‘marvelous, grand trick’ is the fact that his ad looks so stupid, crappy and absurd, but in the other hand it’s delivering a specific message to a specific group of people.
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p>Time can only tell how well executed the ad is, though. So maybe I’m being presumptuous in suggesting how well done the ad is. The very fact that we’re talking about this means that certainly some people are catching onto what it likely infers – the big thing, though, would be if this hits the Sunday morning media shows, or a CNN type cable news cycle – ie audiences that probably don’t read the blogs and aren’t political junkies who would be reading these kinds of diaries on the ad. Otherwise, this ad certainly won’t hurt McCain, especially when so many people are so busy talking about the Paris Hilton ad (indeed, maybe that was the grand hat trick to make this other ad work).
the internet is, unfortunately, 2d. So, sometimes we read infer thoughts that people didn’t necessarily mean when they wrote something down. In my head, I thought what you said sounded a little snarky and/or rude, but I’ll definitely take your word that I was mistaken – and I’ll apologize for the misunderstanding. Sorry =)
…dual purposes can lessen the quality of the product as seen through the eyes of a single purpose. When creating the “sophisticated ad” with an overt message while including a subtle message within (which is what requires the ‘sophistication’ in the first place), the end product might be made more ‘choppy’ than a ‘pure’ ad that only sought to include the overt message. This is what is meant by the idea that if they wanted to lampoon the guy based on the ‘overt’ idea of his ‘presumptuousness’, they could have done better (Hillary did). Knowing that they could have done better and realizing that they didn’t, it isn’t a stretch to think that there may be ‘something else going on’ in the ad and it’s inclusion resulted in an ad that ‘could have done better’.
how people can see it this way, even if I don’t agree. However, your additional comment of how
doesn’t really make much sense when its coupled with the fact that Amy Sullivan wrote the article that kicked of this diary for TIME Magazine. How much more mainstream can you get?
… quite a while before I’ve seen anyone make this connection. My guess is that the dual nature didn’t become apparent to the MSM until the “outraged Christian supporters of the Democratic nominee” spoke up.
was up on Youtube on August 1, 2008 and Amy Sullivan’s article came out on August 8. Unless I’m mistaken about the dates (which, if I am, please correct me and I’ll take it back) that doesn’t seem like quite a long time to me at all. Again, I stand by my belief that this is a whole lot of stretching to make the connection with this ad to the “Left Behind” series and the End Times as it is describes in Revelations and Daniel. That’s just me.
on cable news. If it hasn’t made the news by 1-2 days of coming out, it probably won’t be considered newsworthy by our corporate media.
I’m really talking national and cable news. Until I see Brian Williams and Anderson Cooper questioning this commercial, or having guests to do it, or see discussion on a Meet the Press type show, I don’t think it’s hit the mainstream.
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p>As I suggested, though, perhaps the ad wasn’t as effective as the McCain camp would have hoped, precisely because some of us are starting to pay attention to it.
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p>But I’ll definitely agree to disagree with you at this point, because if we haven’t convinced each other yet, it’s probably not going to happen – and there’s nothing wrong with that. The point’s been raised to you, so if they try to do it again, maybe you’ll see it then. I hope that doesn’t happen.