The Silliest Religious Issue Of This, Or Any Other Campaign

Posted by: John Schroeder at 05:31 am, August 11th 2008 — 1 Comment »

The Wall Street Journal writes of the latest McCain ad:

An Internet ad launched last week by the McCain presidential campaign has attracted more than one million hits by appearing to mock Barack Obama for presenting himself as a kind of prophetic figure.

The ad has also generated criticism from Democrats and religious scholars who see a hidden message linking Sen. Obama to the apocalyptic Biblical figure of the antichrist.

The first thing that runs through my mind is “Paul is dead, Paul is dead.” (You have to be well over forty to get that ) The idea of “hidden messages” in campaign ads, about anything, simply strikes me as paranoia. There is always an undercurrent of talk amongst the sillier of my mainstream Christian brethren about any candidate with whom they disagree being the antichrist. I heard such talk about Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, but it is just silly people being silly.

For people associated with the Obama campaign to take such talk seriously, to overlay such talk on a legitimate campaign ad is a sign of both incredible ego, and extreme hyper-sensitivity – but then those two go hand-in-hand anyway.

But as long as we are being cynical, what this is, I think, is an attempt to open the door to replaster McCain with the Hagee thing. Hagee, long since sent to the woodshed by McCain, has based most of his ministerial career looking and forecasting the end times. Trust me, he’ll come up in the context of this discussion soon.

Sure is a long way to go to get this lick in.