So, unless you've been living under a rock, you've seen the recent ad from the Clinton campaign in which your children are sleeping and it's 3AM and somewhere a phone is ringing and it's terrorists on the line and they're totally dialing M for MURDER and OMG! The call is coming from inside...the...house! But no worries because Hillary Clinton has thirty five years of experiences and is working the night shift and as long as you aren't from a caucus state or a state that doesn't have a lot of elderly Hispanic women, she is absolutely going to save you. It's a great ad, especially if you love, love, LOVE the complete works of Rudy Giuliani. Gee, whatever happened to him?
Anyway, the ad has inspired a response from Obama that basically says your kids are going to be fine because of that speech he once gave, so totally vote for him. It's also inspired at least one decent parody, which we've included below:
But if the "3AM Phone" has done nothing else, it at least can be considered the inspiration for the Dumbest Blog Post of the Election Season (So Far). Yes, courtesy of Ann Althouse comes this great example of why that dude who wrote The Cult Of The Amateur may be right - or at least an example of how one idiot blogger can make it really, really, really, really, really difficult to suggest that he is entirely wrong - in which we learn that the coincidental, microscopic, barely noticeable lettering on the child's pajamas in one brief instance of screen time is totally a subliminal racial slur. Ye gods, I kid you not. See for yourself.
Yes. The letters "N" and "I" appear on the clothing. Also, the letter "C" or "G!" And if it's "G", well, what does that subliminally tell you? Does it say, "GoodNIGht Moon?" Maybe, "NIGhtlight?" Maybe "beNIGn?" Maybe, "yellowcake from NIGer?" Or does it say something else? Maybe the title of the new Nas album or an old book by Dick Gregory?
Oh, Ann, Ann. What a waste of personal bandwidth. My dear, IF ONLY the people who made these ads were that clever. Typically speaking, political ads are ham-fisted expulsions of pure visual hackery where no one is being "artistic" or attempting to convey a message on some sublime, subliminal level. It's all about dropping the heaviest anvil onto the head of the viewer. There's just no way that the makers of this ad took the special time to frame the fold in the clothing JUST SO to send a secret message, like they were working on a J.J. Abrams show or something. Even if it were something they could do, what ad-man in their right mind would risk their career on the chance that they might end up being known as the person who dropped a racial slur into their commercial?
Althouse mentions the famous "RATS" ad from eight years ago, but I feel this is probably the exception that proves the rule. My guess is that the makers of that ad either never noticed "RATS" appeared on the screen, or if they did, found it to be an interesting example of happenstance that they chose to keep, never expecting it to blow up in their faces. Well, it didn't really win or lose anyone an election, but it sure bred a group of paranoiacs.
It wasn't long ago that people like Althouse were jumping up and down, claiming to have discovered a subliminal, floating Cross in a Mike Huckabee ad. What was Mike Huckabee trying to say with his secret floating cross, they wondered? Does the floating cross have a hidden message or meaning? Is Mike Huckabee trying to say that he loves Jesus or something? Well, heck! Maybe the floating cross WAS Mike Huckabee's way of secretly getting his pro-Jesus message out! Of course, that message may have also been communicated when Huckabee used his mouth to form words which he then spoke out loud and which conveyed that same message.
Anyway, congratulations to Ann Althouse and the methamphetamine enthusiasts who have worked themselves into a lather over this super-secret message. Keep reading between those lines with your awesome decoder rings and then blogging about it!