"The One"
I. YouTube Video (not released on TV)
-- Roll Video ---
II. "I N F O R M A T I O N A L M E M O R A N D U M
TO: INTERESTED PARTIES
FROM: The Eleison Group
Contact: Eric Sapp
DATE: Wednesday, August 6, 2008
RE: McCain Campaign Resorts to Scare Tactics in new “The ONE” Ad Choosing Lowest Possible Path to Mislead with Religion, Creating Fear and Division Instead of Unity and Hope
The McCain campaign has responded to initial criticisms about their “THE ONE” ad by saying it was meant merely as a joke poking fun at Obama’s strong support and Messiah-like imagery. But this was not some YouTube video put together in someone’s basement. It was a professionally and carefully produced ad that had a much more sinister subtext that millions of Americans will pick up on. The makers of the ad chose all of Obama’s quotes very carefully and the ad is rife with image after image equating Senator Obama to the anti-Christ, and especially to Nicolae Carpathia, the anti-Christ in the popular Left Behind series. One or two images might be able to be written off to coincidence, but the number of overt and subtle images packed into this short ad and the frequency of images torn straight from the pages of Revelation and Daniel (the two primary apocalyptic books of the Bible) that make no real sense in any other context leave little doubt of the true purpose of this ad. This is the use of religion at its very worst in politics because it is an attempt to subtly and perhaps even subconsciously play on some of the deepest fears of millions of evangelical Americans. From the title of the ad (that immediately reminds anyone familiar with the Left Behind series of the name of the false church set up by the anti-Christ) to the quotes (with no respect to context) and images that the McCain camp chose to use, which basically allude to every symbol of the anti-Christ possible short of flashing 666 on the screen, this ad is an attempt to stir up already circulating falsehoods about Obama and add more fuel to the fire. [ . . .] The Left Behind series has sold nearly 70 MILLION books (plus a 40-book children’s series, graphic novels, books on tape, movies, etc). Another recent poll found that 3 of 4 Americans believed that the Left Behind series accurately depicted the events described in the Book of Revelation, although less than half believed that was an accurate description of how the world would end. And a simple search for “Obama anti-christ” or “Obama Nicolae Carpathia” turns up numerous hits and bloggers commenting about how many people came to their posts doing just that search. This is a real phenomenon being put forth and encouraged by modern day false prophets and now we see coming to light in the McCain campaign’s TV ad."
II. Was this ad really targeting "millions" of such shadowy believers through the Internet?
Method
I virtual
A. "manifest by effect"
II. ekklessia
A. assembly
B. focusing on individual constructions of communities that are themselves dispersed and diverse
III. documenting the vernacular web surrounding a key terms ("End Times")
A. cataloging, locating links, archiving, surveying, and interviewing
a. thickly describing
b. invoking the sublime, mystery, or "intrinsically incomplete" nature of my human experience
B. finally, doing textual analysis
a. includes criticism
i. the habitual opening to the sacred in the form of literal prophecies the"End Times" as a mode for public discourse isolates and disempowers those who engage it
III. McCain's Ad Backfired
A. The Elaison Group Memo exploits this disempowerement to portray the McCain campaigned as attempting to pray on the "deepest fears" of Christians in order to win power
a. that argument made possible by the existence of public deployments of this particular kind of End Times prophetic discourse
Discussion Point
Does or should this claim or this kind of claim matter to an inclusive academic audience? An audience of college students?
Criticizing the Sacred
I. "There is no way around the fact that most people of faith live with a whopping contradiction. The mentality they use to navigate modern society would if applied, destroy the beliefs they hold in church. To avoid this result, one can either spend a great deal of energy in deep reading and anguished reflection, or one can forget about it. And so, most of the time, we forget about it" (Hariman 533).
A. Hariman contends this is structural
a. argument, belief, and action from faith in one sphere of life, but reasoned rational arguments for action and belief in the other
II. Doctrinal Beliefs held apart from scholarship
A. "prophetic speech" offered up as the source of God (not the "sacred") in human discourse
B. "In a pluralistic society, which I believe is also what God wants, [the prophetic tradition] is always already bracketed, disqualified, or otherwise disabled. [ . . . ] The question then becomes, how can public discourse ands scholarship about public discourse, refigure prophetic speech so that it can be heard in this world?" (Hariman 532)