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Unsubtle

Unsubtle

Last updated on: August 8, 2008 at 6:57 pm by Fred Clark

Unsubtle 2008-08-08T18:57:01-04:00 Fred Clark

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Yes, I’m slightly side-tracked this Friday. I’d intended to continue our sojourn through the pages of the World’s Worst Books, but I find myself distracted by the fact that those books and their awful ideas have become an issue in the presidential campaign.

This ad from John McCain’s campaign is a disgrace. Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, claims that the spot was conceived as “a light-hearted ad that pokes fun at [Obama].” Brian Rogers knows that’s not true.

The point of the ad — the entire and only point of the ad — is to suggest that Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president, may be the Antichrist warned against in the pages of Left Behind. Take that message away and you’re left with nonsense. Without the Barack Obama = Nicolae Carpathia subtext, the ad would consist only of something like “he’s a famous leader … but is he ready to lead?” Hunh?

That steaming pile of spin from Brian Rogers is quoted in a Wall Street Journal article that also includes commentary from Tim LaHaye himself:

The End Times, a New Testament reference to the period surrounding the return of Christ, were popularized in recent years by the “Left Behind” series of books that sold more than 63 million copies. The Rev. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the series, said in an interview that he recognized allusions to his work in the ad but comparisons between Sen. Obama and the Antichrist are incorrect.

“The Antichrist isn’t going to be an American, so it can’t possibly be Obama. The Bible makes it clear he will be from an obscure place, like Romania,” the 82-year-old author said.

Let me repeat the key part of that:

“LaHaye … recognized allusions to his work in the ad.”

LaHaye recognized those allusions in the ad because those allusions are in the ad. They were put in the ad.

They were put in the ad by the very same campaign people now insisting that the ad doesn’t contain such allusions, or that they were coincidental, or unintentional, or intended only as jokes. Or maybe all of the above — maybe those non-existent, unintentional allusions were intended as jokes.

And there are a lot of those allusions. The whole look of the ad is taken from the cover art of the Left Behind series. Eric Sapp of The Eleison Group has documented many more of these visual cues and allusions to Left Behind in a memo excerpted by Steve Waldman on BeliefNet. Sapp notes that:

… Numerous parts of this ad that make no sense in a high-budget presidential ad unless they are understood for what they really are: attempts to scare people with contextually bankrupt scriptural and Obama quotes and imagery tied together to send messages of fear that Obama is somehow the Antichrist.

Here’s how that memo concludes:

If the McCain camp was trying to spoof Obama as Messiah, they missed a number of more obvious images and did a very poor job with this ad. If they were trying to draw parallels to Obama as Antichrist, they nailed it.

Yep. And note again that both Tim LaHaye and I agree with Sapp’s take here. I think it’s safe to say that we’re both fairly familiar with the text and subtexts of the Left Behind series, and that it might count for something when we both say we see those texts and subtexts inserted into this ad.

But then you might also argue that Tim LaHaye and I are a bit too familiar with the motifs of Left Behind, and that maybe both of us are just obsessively reading too much into this and seeing things that aren’t really there. So what do other viewers think?

At Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell says that the ad is “so staggeringly bad at achieving its purported aims that it doesn’t make sense except as a dogwhistle* video” and links to Scott McLemee’s take. McLemee says the dogwhistle for the Armageddon faction is unmistakable, but slightly off-key. McCain’s people speak Crazyfundie, but they don’t speak it fluently:

The people who created the ad know that most of the public won’t pick up on any of this.

But as someone who grew up in the 1970s listening to a rock opera called It’s Getting Late for the Great Planet Earth! (not reissued on CD, alas) I have no doubt the message will be received loud and clear by the audience it’s aimed at, which otherwise might not feel that enthusiastic about McCain himself as a candidate.

On second thought, this might not help the campaign very much. If you are waiting for the Rapture, it’s not like preventing the rise of the beast with seven horns and ten crowns etc. is a huge priority. (You sort of want to get it all over with, ASAP.)

The RNC panders to these folks, but it doesn’t actually consist of them. The ad’s makers know their audience but not quite well enough to grasp how it really thinks.

He in turn also links to Maud Newton, who says the ad:

… is designed to galvanize a very specific group: Evangelical Christians of the End Times, Rapture-Ready variety. It is designed, more to the point, to scare the shit out of these people by insinuating that Barack Obama is the Antichrist.

This is a particularly nefarious and crafty argument to make because it is the one context in which all the candidate’s strengths — his smarts, his articulateness, his contagious smile and way with people — can become evidence against him. All these traits are associated in the Bible with the charismatic, popular, well-spoken man who is supposed to become the leader of the world and bring about the Tribulation.

Newton is right about the way this accusation turns Obama’s assets into supposed grounds for suspicion, but it’s not quite true that “the Bible” describes an Antichrist with Obama-like characteristics. Folks like Tim LaHaye have long insisted that the Antichrist will be “charismatic, popular, well-spoken,” but the association of those traits with the Antichrist isn’t easily found “in the Bible.” That association arises, rather, from Antichrist Check Lists.** The current extra-canonical canon of such Check Lists is the formulation concocted by Hal Lindsay back in the ’70s. Lindsay, it turns out, has also weighed in on Barack Obama as a candidate for Antichrist, deciding he’s not the Beast itself, just its opening act.

Lindsay’s pop-heresies were, of course, re-popularized 20 years later by LaHaye and Jenkins. Like Lindsay, L&J praise Obama with faint damnation in their official statement declaring that Barack Obama Is Not The Antichrist:

Authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins don’t think Obama is the Antichrist. …

LaHaye and Jenkins take a literal interpretation of prophecies found in the Book of Revelation.*** They believe the Antichrist will surface on the world stage at some point, but neither see Obama in that role. “I’ve gotten a lot of questions the last few weeks asking if Obama is the Antichrist,” says novelist Jenkins. “I tell everyone that I don’t think the Antichrist will come out of politics, especially American politics.”

“I can see by the language he uses why people think he could be the Antichrist,” adds LaHaye, “but from my reading of scripture, he doesn’t meet the criteria. There is no indication in the Bible that the Antichrist will be an American.”

The reference there to “the language [Obama] uses” reinforces what Maud Newton said about Obama’s assets being used against him. LaHaye is talking about what we have repeatedly seen as a recurring, emphatic theme in Left Behind and throughout the entire premillennial dispensationalist sect: Those who seek peace and pursue it might be the Antichrist; those who speak of love, peace, unity and brotherhood might be the Antichrist.

So beware the peacemakers, recoil in horror from Middle East peace talks, fear the United Nations, wet the bed over nightmares of a One World Government and keep a terrified, watchful eye on anyone who suggests that international relations might consist of anything other than hot and cold war.

That’s the message of Left Behind, and that’s the message of John McCain’s Left Behind ad.

And that message is getting through. The dogs hear the dog whistle. Here is a letter to the editor, published in yesterday’s paper:

Those who ignored the many warning signs and are still swooning over Barack Obama should read John Bolton’s excellent column of July 31 dissecting Obama’s Berlin speech.

Despite his opportunistic shift to secure swing votes, Obama emanates from the Democrats’ left wing. His core beliefs are forced redistribution of wealth and formation of a world government, to which the United States will be subordinate. His “one world” platitude is typical of idealistic dreamers who made up the party before him. His willingness to dismiss inherent evil is reminiscent of the left’s acceptance of coexistence with the murderous communists of the 20th century. …

OWGOMG!

The point of the ad was to rally the fringe and at least one fringe-dweller was rallied enough to write that letter to his local paper. The problem for the McCain campaign, of course, is that he may not stick around to vote in November, having instead headed for the hills with the rest of his local Tribulation Force militia and their stockpile of canned goods, ammunition and krugerrands.

– – – – – – – – – – – –

* It’s a very clumsy kind of dogwhistle, though. When torture-apologist Michael Gerson inserted evangelicalisms into President Bush’s speeches he did so seamlessly. The intended evangelical audience understood the dogwhistle message, but it was embedded within a coherent message addressed to the larger audience. McCain’s ad works as a dogwhistle, but there’s no larger message for the larger audience. The Left Behind readers will understand his coded message, but the larger audience will just see him standing there, growing red-faced from blowing into a whistle that appears not to work.

** Those Antichrist Check Lists are culled from the Bible, but not in any kind of systematic, logical or repeatable way. It’s worth pointing out again here that the word “Antichrist” appears in only one book of the Bible, in plural form, and that book is not Revelation. “The Antichrist” is an extrabiblical character who can be read back into the text, but you won’t find him there unless you’re careful to bring him with you.

*** No, no, a thousand times no. There is nothing literal about their reading of the Book of Revelation. They interpret that book through a convoluted and contradictory allegorical scheme that treats it as a secret, coded mystery understandable only to the initiated. For decades, Tim LaHaye has insisted both A) the Book of Revelation must be read “literally,” and B) the Book of Revelation is impossible to understand correctly without the help of experts like himself. Getting away with that is a neat trick.

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