First, John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, suggested on a conference call that depicting the Illinois Senator alongside Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in a campaign ad is merely comparing "apples to apples."

At the same time, a line out of a new freestyle verse from rapper Ludacris posed a new celebrity-tinged question for the Obama campaign. "Hillary hated on you, so that bitch is irrelevant," Ludacris...