McCain: MLK and RFK Were Dumb Blondes
And the people who went to their rallies calling for an end to the war and for social justice were airhead-worshippers.
It took me long enough, but I think I've finally figured out what those McCain ads about Paris and Britney -- and, yes, the Summer of Love -- are saying. As always, with Republicans in general, the most reliable way to understand their thinking is from the perspective of the culture wars of the '60s, and in the case of McCain in particular, the perspective of his Vietnam experience.
McCain is saying that the people who believed in Bobby Kennedy, the Americans who made him a star, were just as ditzy to believe in his message about ending the war and reducing inequality as they were to worship Marilyn Monroe. The people who rallied on the Mall in amazing numbers to hear Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream, the people who wanted to follow him out of Vietnam, were naive starf***ers; by turning their backs on Nixon and Kissinger, by putting joy ahead of sacrifice, they were undermining America in the world and our troops in Southeast Asia.
Those McCain ads are as much about you as they are about Obama. If you believe in all that global warming and gay marriage stuff, you're as dumb as a Lindsay Lohan fan. If you cheer a guy who talks up negotiation as part of our national security arsenal, you probably went to San Francisco and put flowers in your hair instead of being tortured in Hanoi. If you think this economy hurts the middle and the bottom and favors the rich, you're as dumb as a plank, or as Paris, or as Britney.
To the movement conservatives in charge of McCain's campaign, and to the movement conservative that McCain himself has settled in to being, Obama is just the most recent leader of a series of children's crusades -- spoiled children's crusades. No wonder they want to paint him as elitist and effete; after all, a couple of generations ago, these were the Nixonians who depicted the anti-war mobilization not as a principled political groundsurge, but as a bunch of Ivy Leaguers indulgently parented by Dr. Spock.
Obama often said in the primaries that he feels as though today's Washington conflicts were actually reruns of campus skirmishes of the '60s, and that he wants to get beyond that. It's an admirable sentiment. But the paleo-conservatives running against him are determined to refight and win those culture wars, just as that movement's "intellectual" parents are forever rerunning the '30s battles of the City College of New York cafeteria in their heads.
Don't forget: the people behind McCain loathed Bobby and Martin at the time. Today, they'll do anything they can to make it feel embarrassing to imagine that those leaders might have an heir in Obama. The message of McCain's ads is that change is for chumps, belief is for boobs, fame is for charlatans, and that the calendar in America will be forever set on Groundhog Day 1968 until all the war protesters, uppity women, tree-huggers, faggots and dirty f*****g hippies finally go back to the places where they belong.
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
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thanks for another terrific column. As an aging hippie-type myself I sure hope this culture war from 1968 is out-of-date. It is vital that young people (people who were not born in 1968) actually vote this year. Often they do not. Only the old can be counted on to actually vote. (Let's define old as people over 50..just for the sake of defining it). So you young people get out and vote and make sure all your friends vote. Your future and your childrens future depend on it. McBush will make the rich richer..(that is the top .01 percent of the richest)..and the working and middle classes will lose big time..and your grandkids will be paying the war profiteers for this war forever (or rather paying off the Chinese from whom we have borrowed the money to pay the war profiteers).
right on, marty!
ironic also that at least britney has voiced support for bush. i haven't heard any attempt at political commentary from paris yet, but with heidi's and spencer's ringing endorsement, that if most of the really useless, obnoxious celebutards vote at all, they vote republican.
"if most of the really useless, obnoxious celebutards vote at all, they vote republican."
of course they do. even if they came from nothing they are rich now and they like the status quo.
If Marty's interpretation of the ad's underlying message, that Obama's supporters are a bunch of easily led fools, is right, and I believe it is, then the irony of the accusation is fascinating given that Obama himself is protrayed as an "intellectual elitist," the same image that was imposed on John Kerry to cast hin in an unfavorable light next to a comfortingly dumb and simple minded Bush - a man the average dumb voter could relate to and, of course, be easily led by.
The fact is that the better mass of American voters is fairly un-informed and easily led, swayed not by thoughtful consideration of facts but by charm and charisma. That was Bush's appeal (even ifthe more cerebral set has a hard time imagining how hard headed simple-mindedness passes for charisma). Bush, for all his lack of intellectualism, seemed to have an appealing personality, especially next to poor dull Al Gore and stiff John Kerry, who even made me cringe. But this time the Dems have the guy with personailty, sex appeal, AND substance, proving smart people can be cool, too. It's killing the GOP to think they are losing Fool vote, but I don't think that a good way to get them back is to point out that they are fools.
Maybe, but most of them won't get the point. Remember, the mean average intelligence score is 100. There are, therefore, an equal number of individuals below the peak of this curve as there are above it and they all get to vote.
Your analogy doesn't quite work for me. In '68, it was the Johnson administration that was promoting the war, not the Republicans. I think Nixon won only because the Democrats tore themselves to pieces that year, not because the Nixon people were so smart. The Republicans invented their current tactics much later.
Agree. Seems people forget the reigning political party was DEMOCRAT during the Vietnam War...and selective memory allows this same crowd to insinuate that McCain is stuck in a 'time warp' about war and that he missed out on the "Give peace a chance: crowd.
Too much 8$ to even start wading through
What were the years of Vietnam? When was the most fighting and bombing. Who was president from 1969 until he resigned. what was his party. Who is talking about selective memory? Who is suggesting that the Democrats were in power for the entire war?
Disagree. the war was supported by a faction of the Democratic Party and by most all of the Republican Party. I do not recall any major Republican being antiwar. Nixon said he would end the war Honorably --meaning with a victory- and then expanded it and continued it for years. the anitwar movement was not "in" the Democratic party but was reviled by Republicans and had real support from some Democrats. Reagan complained as governor that the regents at Berkeley were not cracking student heads who protested the war. Read the reactions to Kent State.
Great piece, Marty! Let us remember that Henry Kissinger talked Dick Nixon into slowing down the iwthdrawal of US forces from "South" Vietnam, because Republicans would likely suffer at the polls in 1972 if the "South" Vietnamese government was already being seen as collapsing. This is power politics, Kissinger-style! Currently, Kissinger is tutoring McCain on how to sell the American public on keeping permanent US military bases in Iraq against the clearly expressed will of the Iraqi people. Kissinger wanted to keep permanent US bases in "South" Vietnam, on the spurious pretext of needing them to "protect" all the countries under "threat" by the communists in "North" Vietnam.
The terminally historically amnesiac American people cannot be expected even to remember the outlines of the events in Southeast Asia, and the squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars in an insane effort to keep "South" Vietnam from being rejoined with "North" Vietnam even though most Vietnamese wanted the US out of their country ("North" or "South"). McCain's father wanted to blow the hell out of them, and the Cambodians, and the Laotians. Who cares if millions of people are killed? We are "protecting" America!
When one is dealing with ignorant, and often stupid people, one simplifies, and tells lies. This is the McCain campaign. Remember, those who have been subverting the Constitution want and need protection.
This whole "celebrity" tag is plain stupid. Republican's managed to get two of their candidates elected president who were celebrities - Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower. Ike was the most popular person in American at the time of his candidacy. Reagan was known the world over just as Obama is. What hypocrisy and stupidity on the part of the Republican's but then what else is new.
And Reagan was known for being an ACTOR!!
He was also a governor and watched over the 5th largest economy of the world. He was the only president to be a labor union president. (Screen Actors Guild) Yeah your right he was just an actor, give me a break.
Ike's celebrity was not for being an actor but rather for actually doing things that qualified him to be president. With Reagan I am sure many confused the characters he played on the screen with Reagan. Ike actually was a very moderate man and governed well for the most part.
Obama is a celebrity like many charismatic people before him - not all turned out to be good for the country.
I guess I am a dumb Lindsey Lohen fan. I loved her in Prairie Home Companion. And I do worry about all those beautiful children with more money than good guidance.
But seriously, I think this really explains a lot about an ad I just didn't understand. (dumb here) It is trying to make Obama look like a glamorous "have" so the "have nots" can hate him instead of asking themselves about a system that allows such endemic have and have not.
Lohen is a good actor. Not so Britney and Paris. the campaison I think is trying to identify the eloquent Obama with the illiterate Paris and Britney..and we are just not that stupid. Even our stupid people are not that stupid.
Right on brother, that is it in a nutshell.
As always Marty, the words are so lyrical they practically sing themselves off the page. But, I admit, I'm a HOPE junky who's been fighting for CHANGE a very long time. But, honestly, parts of this could be in one of Obama's stump speeches. You really hit the mark.
When McCain compared Obama a couple of "bad girls" (although, some might call them "hard working Americans... white Americans") he jumped the shark. Ney... he crawled into it's mouth.
John McCain: the millennial Captain Ahab.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick#Ahab
Hey Marty. I was there on that day in Washington when we knew we could change the world and yes our heroes will be forever enshrined in our heart of hearts. McCain is appealing to all those who don't want to think about the consequences of a country that runs out of money, cannon fodder for its wars, respect in the world and lack of health care for it citizens. The Republican gestalt is as you say stalled in 1968 only because they believe that the kinds of attacks they are funding now will somehow sway the people into fooling themselves once again as they did with Bush and Co. I have news for Republican wanna be rich folks. It isn't going to happen. Just because you support someone who is mean and nasty and only out for the bucks means that you will somehow get a chance to get in on the cashapallooza like Bush and his buddies have been doing. You Republicans are being left out in the cold. Especially conservatives. How long has it been since that name was anything more than a catchphrase? Record deficits put that lie out there. I wish the true Republicans would stand up somewhere at least we could have a true dialogue and a meeting of the minds like we used to be able to do. Now money rules without shame. It is with shame that McCain calls upon himself the mantle of dirt that he is covering himself with.
I was one of those "war protesters, uppity women, tree-huggers, faggots and dirty f*****g hippies" - and I still am, though I'm considerably older now. Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to "Make Love, Not War" - we still remember the "Make Love" part, but we seem to have forgotten the "Not War" end of it.
I hate knowing that the Repubs think I'm as dumb as a Lindsay Lohan fan, probably went to San Francisco and put flowers in my hair instead of being tortured in Hanoi, and am as dumb as a plank, or as Paris, or as Britney. I never did get used to it way back then, but nowadays I live in Kentucky, so I have gotten used to it. You're right, though - those latest ads really are more of a swat at me (us) than at Obama.
Poor lil me, the hippie - I never grew up to grab a rich mate, "earn" a zillion bucks by stealing it while standing on the backs of my co-workers, or run (the "i" in "run" is optional) a bank. Ah, but those poor lil Repubs - they never managed to get me to vote for the likes of Bush!
I'm thinking no so poor.....
Well stated Marty!
I suppose I'm just another dirty f***ing hippie, but I'm proud of it.
I think Marty almost has it but not quite. This latest from McCain appeals to that emotional vein: " ordinary people getting screwed by a self indulgent aristocracy."
It's a half truth. There is a small group of people who are getting very rich at the expense of working people. They are the ones funding this ad. The ad takes a rage that exists and re-directs it.
The celebrity attack is devilishly clever: It selects an issue that is close enough to a real issue, close enough to cause a gut reaction and then it stimulates that reaction and then, when people are stirred up and confused it gives them a line of thinking to allow them to settle their confusion: Aw, it’s Obama’s fault, or people like him. Good enough. I don’t have to think about this anymore.”
The counter to it is more difficult and Barack’s latest is pretty good, “Is this the best these people can come up with?
I do like the meme of TABLOID POLITICS. We can’t afford them anymore.
That might be a place to start.
wow Marty....when you put it like that - there's no one left who's deserving of hope OR change.
I think Marty almost has it but not quite. I think there is a streak of hard working midcultural, mid western and southern, mid america folks who are hard working and who also have a vague but accurate intuition that they are getting screwed. It's the "what's the matter with Kansas?" crowd. This latest from McCain appeals to that emotional vein: " ordinary people getting screwed by a self indulgent aristocracy."
It's a favorite right wing ploy.
It's a half truth. There is a small group of people who are getting very rich at the expense of working people. They are the ones funding this ad. The ad takes a rage that exists and re-directs it.
This is very skilled stuff. Make no mistake.
The rules of counter-propaganda, as practiced by the right is to take the progressives strongest issue and then reverse it on them. Kerry was a war hero and Bush a coward? Simply assert the reverse.
Evangelical Christians wish to deny science in favor of ideology? Say that it is science which is not respecting open debate. It's the audacity of dishonesty.
The celebrity attack is devilishly clever.
P
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