Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote a must-read op/ed piece for August 2nd targeting the GOP’s long-standing habit of exploiting race in America.
Most of us who are paying any attention to the presidential campaign have seen John McCain’s confounding and enigmatic negative ad against Barack Obama (if you haven’t seen it, here it is), evidently comparing Obama to the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. The comparison is completely unfair, and even if it’s ridiculous to us, we get what John McCain is trying to say: Barack Obama is a celebrity, but not only that; Barack Obama is a celebrity for no reason. Just like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are celebrities for no reason.
The McCain ad is scandalous and maddening even if we leave it there. But Bob Herbert, in this August 2nd piece “Running While Black”, sees more in that particular ad than I have. Speaking of the similarities between GOP campaign ads run against Harold Ford and Barack Obama, Herbert says this:
Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were 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.
The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir. (Mr. Obama in Muslim garb with the American flag burning in the fireplace.) It’s driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches — a man who obviously does not know his place.
In the foreground of the John McCain ad, he compares Barack Obama to two highly sexualized women. The ad certainly suggests scandal and sex and it certainly suggests that Barack Obama has something more in common with white women than just his perceived celebrity status.
If this is not obvious, or doesn’t sound like a credible argument, then let’s go farther. We have paid attention to what is in the foreground of the ad, but have we paid attention to what is in the background? Bob Herbert doesn’t write about this in his op/ed piece, but he did speak about it on Morning Joe the day after. Floating in the background throughout the same campaign ad are images of the Siegessaule, a symbol whose repetitious prominence in the ad makes no sense if McCain’s only point was to compare Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Barack Obama did speak in front of the Siegessaule while on his world tour, but the shots used in the McCain ad more so highlight the tower itself than Obama’s speech there.
The Siegessaule is a very prominent phallic symbol whose presence and prominence in the McCain ad has no other explanation than to woo our unconscious into hammering home what I think is really the intended, primary, and completely Freudian insinuation of the ad (And Bob Herbert talked about this on Morning Joe): Barack Obama is an oversexed Black American celebrity who has a jonesing for white women.
During his appearance on Morning Joe, Bob Herbert was wrong on two accounts. First, he said that images of the Washington Monument were used in the ad, but the Washington Monument is no where to be found, and, second, Herbert mistakes the Siegessaule with the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Herbert is careless in making these errors, but I have to agree with his central points. Some campaign people somewhere spent a lot of time thinking of every single image and every single word used in that particular campaign ad. Somebody made the decision to repeatedly use close-up shots of a very prominent phallic symbol and insert them (excuse the image) into the background of the ad and float it around as if in some kind of dream-state, while in the foreground we encounter images of two oversexualized celebrities-for-no-reason. Both of whom are considered by Americans to lack character–to be empty, vacuous, and meaningless.
In his op/ed piece Herbert reminds us of what Barack Obama said at the very beginning of the race for the White House, “What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me.” And with this ad, that’s exactly what John McCain is trying to do.
Read Bob Herbert’s op/ed piece. John’s McCain’s campaign ad deserves to be critiqued as carefully as it was made.
Oh, and at the the very end of the ad. There’s John McCain’s voice-over.
I’m John McCain, and I approve this message.
