Hmmm

Called "Daisy," The RNC's new 30-second Web ad uses footage of the now-infamous 1964 Lyndon Johnson commercial by the same name that showed a young girl picking off the pedals of a flower as a nuclear explosion is heard in the background.

That ad, which only ran once but was widely criticized as being extreme, ends with the image of a mushroom crowd and Johnson declaring, "We must either love each other, or we must die."

The New RNC ad splices the image of the girl with Obama's earlier declaration suggesting that closing Guantanamo Bay is "easy." This time the girl asks "To close it? To close it not?" as she picks off flower pedals.|CNN|

I don't see any way to read this except as an attempt to double-down on fear mongering. Maybe I'm biased. Anyhow, I tried to imagine what was going on in the room where they conceived the ad, but all I came up with was this:

GOP Thinker #1: We need a web ad for this Gitmo thing...
GOP Thinker #2: Got to drive home the message that the world will end if any of these guys are moved anywhere. Cuba, man, it's isolated. You can't even get a cigar out of there.
GOP Thinker #3: Man, all you have to do to get a cuban cigar is go to Canada.
GOP Thinker #2: Really?
GOP Thinker #3: Oh yeah. I've got a friend who crosses over from time to time and always brings a few back. Want me to get you a box?
GOP Thinker #2: Wow, that'd be...
GOP Thinker #1: Guys! On task, ok? We need fear, and the cigar angle isn't going to work.
GOP Thinker #2: Save the cigar angle for when Clinton runs!
GOP Thinker #3: Ha, ha, ha
GOP Thinker #1: Guys! Ah hell. Let's just recycle the daisy ad.
GOP Thinker #2: Chappaquiddick!

Bonus Content: Probably you'd like to watch the ad, so here it is.

All is flux, nothing stays still

I think this is the first time I've lived in a battleground state during a general election. It's something else. This ad is in heavy, heavy, heavy rotation here in Michigan:



I get the feeling that the Obama campaign wants to frame McCain as being the same as Bush, but I could be wrong. What's interesting about the ad, though, is the sophistication and tone. It's not exactly postmodern, but it expects viewers to be more than passive signal receptors. Meanwhile, McCain seems not to be running any ads statewide, but the Republican National Committee has been running a version of the celebrity ad for at least the last two weeks.

Incidentally, a lot of the ads that I see, especially the Obama ads, I see once or twice and can never find on the internet. Which is interesting because my naive expectation was that the Obama campaign would keep a well-organized comprensive online archive of their ads, but they appear not to be doing so. Or, if they are doing so, they sure aren't going out of their way to make the archive easy to find. Could be an oversight, but I suspect that this a way of narrowcasting.

Bellman culture watch

Item: Mongol and Hellboy II are both excellent eye candy with annoying plots.

Item: Bud Light's new advertising slogan, "Endless refreshment from start to finish", describes a state of affairs which is not conceptually possible.

Item: "Real Vice Cops Uncut" is not the title of of a porn movie.