We just got off a conference call with Camp McCain, defending their new ad comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
They said they thought the ad was legitimate because Obama is a big celebrity (which happens to be what John McCain was, too, when he came home from Vietnam and started to build his political career), and Britney and Paris were Number 2 and 3.
The problem: Anyone with even a vague sense of pop culture knows that Britney and Paris are yesterday's news. Here's a link to Forbes' Celebrity 100. Paris and Britney don't even make the list any more.
Instead, the top 10, in order: Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Angelina Jolie, Beyonce Knowles, David Beckham, Johnny Depp, Jay-Z, The Police, JK Rowling, Brad Pitt.
So, they didn't pick other big celebrities, who were either men, or black, or married.
What they picked was two sexually available white women.
This ad was featured early on this morning's Today Show but they didn't get into the racial angle. McCain has gone highly negative, highly personal and excessively dishonest in the last week or so. Is he over-reaching? It seems that some pundits believe that he may be close to over-reaching and permanently tarnishing his image. I've even read one pundit who believed that Obama was engaging in some rope-a-dope with McCain, standing back while Mavericky McStraight-talk flails about inflicting more damage on himself than Obama.
I keep telling myself that Obama beat the Clinton machine so we should be confident that he can beat the McCain-Bush-Rove machine as well. These attacks have been downright ugly - let's hope they're not ugly and effective.
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