I watched the Bartoshevich advertisement this morning, and something about the closing really concerned me.
In addition to addressing women, and particularly, purportedly, former Clinton supporters, this ad is a play for undecideds in general or for people who are planning on voting for Obama, even though they may have reservations they can't quite put their figure on. White women, it would make sense, represents a demographic the McCain campaign knows they need and they think they can sway, to some extent, with this kind of permission to vote their prejudice coupled with a non-argument argument.
It's like, "It's okay, you don't even need a real reason to vote for McCain, and there's no reason to feel bad about it. Come on...everyone's gonna do it."
And by "do it", I mean, be racist.
The message I got, more than anything, from the Bartoshevich advertisement was that the McCain campaign wants people to tell themselves it's okay to let vague prejudices, or whatever it is they want to believe, keep them from voting for Obama.
It's a suggestion that people give in to that little evil place in their hearts that is uncomfortable with Obama for all the wrong reasons. The "It's okay. Really." made it about as clear as it comes. insidious and subtle, but very very present. Particularly the mock whisper/mock secret hand gesture. Like she's sharing some secret with us which gives us the permission think and behave similarly. "It's good to be bad!" Kind of like a diet commercial, you know, including the "they even let us have chocoloate cake!"-style secret at the end. Except this time the wink wink part is about something far more dangerous and grotesque.
And it was also the whitest ad, literally, I've seen in a while, including all the backgrounds, and images, etc. (except for McCain's background at the end), and I'm sure other people noticed all those flashes of white light that punctuating the advertisement.
So, this "It's okay, really" sentiment: I think we might see a lot more of it from the campaign, in different ways. Who knows. Seems like a dog whistle to me, one that speaks to those who would never admit and never really believe that they harbor racism, and are meaningfully motivated by race in their decisions. It would make sense that the McCain campaign would think they need to access these people's prejudices in this kind of way. Check out the ad again. Any thoughts from the community? People see what I'm getting at? Gots to be vigilant.
Update: To say more about the main idea here, there's a little bit of that 3 a.m. phone call sentiment, you know, as if the ad is saying, "It's okay if you'd rather not have the black guy looking after your kids." It's playing into the evolutionarily-embedded leeway mothers will give themselves, and give each other, in avoiding the slightest possible sense of threat to their family, even if the perception of threat stems only from an unconscious fear of '"the other".
Update 2: Here's the link http://www.youtube.com/...
Update 3: If you're interested by this, and want as many others as possible to be able to think about it, chime in, be more aware of this kind of stuff, rec the diary so it stays up...