We heard about the incestuous promotion of Karl Rove's 'Obama Cool' web-ad by Fox, claiming it was a great Obama-bashing ad:
Fox Newsers have called the ad a "bombshell," "fabulous" and "the most effective anti-Obama ad I have seen."
Yes, it is a great ad. Bombshell? Not so much. But definitely fabulous, and effective. Maybe not in the way Karl Rove and Crossroads intended though. I'd vote for this guy. Doesn't it make you want to vote for President Obama?
Oooooh, yeeeahhh. I think the GOP is like that fly on Obama's hand.
The RNC also tried their hand at this game, making a web-ad that was supposed to land a body blow by contrasting President Obama's supposed 'frivolity' with Mitt Romney's seriousness, except it unintentionally
actually comes off as a contrast between O’s grace and Mitt’s forced emoting, but they can’t see that yet. Their ears are still ringing with triumphalisms from the debates about Obama’s “failures.”
Oops again! Shades of John McCain's
green screen from 2008.
.
Leslie Savan of The Nation gets to the real problem, i.e. the GOP's problem is fear of a cool President
But as you watch the two ads above, it becomes clear that it’s not only Obama acting like a celebrity that has the GOP’s nose out of joint. He’s also “acting black”--in fact, he’s rubbing their faces in it, just like he did when he sympathized with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. for getting arrested in his own home. And that gleams like troll gold to Republican strategists.
Obama has dared to be a cool black man more often lately. First, in January, he sang, “I—I’m so in love with you” at a fundraiser at the Apollo Theater, with Al Green in the audience, a totally engaging moment the Rove ad doesn’t fail to sneer at. (As Maureen Dowd wrote, “For eight seconds, we saw the president we had craved for three years: cool, joyous, funny, connected.”) Then, for a Black History Month celebration in the White House, Obama sang a few bars of “Sweet Home Chicago” with B.B. King, once again looking terrifically comfortable in his own (black) skin.
By March, the right was criticizing Obama for acknowledging, of Trayvon Martin, that “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Newt Gingrich called that comment “disgraceful.”
At some level, much of the GOP base still believes that Obama’s race is somehow disqualifying for the Oval Office, and they can barely keep themselves from overtly attacking him for it. But the demographics are daunting, and their professionals know it. To see a white guy like Jimmy Fallon acting black—doing a silly Barry White impression with Obama and Roots vocalist Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter behind him—reinforces the fear among some on the right that the hip youth culture is increasingly a black culture and that it’s inexorably taking over. Obama, half-black/half-white himself, is at the center of this race jam, which is as “impure” as topical comedy itself--a mélange of news and clips of political speech marbled with rap, R&B, tech-talk and global kid culture.
It's all that mixing that sparks miscegenation imaginations, creating GOP fears about cool whites leaving them behind in electoral limbo, forever.
If President Obama is 'rubbing their faces in' the fact that he's black, it was worth the wait, for all the disrespect they have shown their Commander in Chief. President Obama must be the most patient, frustrating opponent to spar with, waiting quietly and then striking without warning. Ha ha ha ha ha. Does anything more need to be said? Other than giving props to Ms. Savon's likely inspiration, for your listening enjoyment I leave you with Public Enemy's
Fear of a Black Planet. Oh, and GOP? Keep making those anti-Obama ads.
.
.