The celebrity charge in the recent John McCain ad seems specious. So what if Barack Obama is a celebrity? Ronald Reagan was a celebrity. If being a celebrity is a problem for a presidential candidate, why did Republicans elect and reelect Reagan?
On the surface, it might seem that McCain is playing the “race card” in portraying Obama in an ad with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. But the real card that’s being played here is the gender card. By showing Obama in the context of two women who aren’t exactly thought of in a positive light, the commercial isn’t conveying Obama as a celebrity so much as effeminate. Or, to use another stereotype, the male equivalent of a dumb blonde.
This campaign strategy was also used with John Kerry in 2004. In a discourse analysis published in Critical Studies of Media Communication, “French and Feminine: Hegemonic Masculinity and the Emasculation of John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential Race,” Anna Cornelia Fahey looked at Republican National Committee and National Rifle Association advertising in the 2004 election. Fahey concluded advertisers associated Kerry with the French as well as with lap dogs, using phrases like, “that dog don’t hunt.” Because Americans associate lap dogs as women’s pets and the French with effeminate traits, the implication was that Kerry was effeminate.
Sadly, such advertising communicates more about Republican attitudes toward American voters--in particular toward male voters--than it does about Kerry or Obama. In order for such advertising to work, the Republican Party must make the following three assumptions:
1. American men vote primarily based on their emotions rather than their intelligence or values,
2. American men fear emasculation and thus feel threatened by a candidate who fails to shore up their flagging sense of masculinity, and
3. American men are too gullible to realize when they’re being emotionally manipulated by advertising.
We can see by his advertising that McCain is playing American men for fools. We already have a president who’s done that the past seven and a half years. The only real fool is the one who doesn’t learn from his mistakes.
On the surface, it might seem that McCain is playing the “race card” in portraying Obama in an ad with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. But the real card that’s being played here is the gender card. By showing Obama in the context of two women who aren’t exactly thought of in a positive light, the commercial isn’t conveying Obama as a celebrity so much as effeminate. Or, to use another stereotype, the male equivalent of a dumb blonde.
This campaign strategy was also used with John Kerry in 2004. In a discourse analysis published in Critical Studies of Media Communication, “French and Feminine: Hegemonic Masculinity and the Emasculation of John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential Race,” Anna Cornelia Fahey looked at Republican National Committee and National Rifle Association advertising in the 2004 election. Fahey concluded advertisers associated Kerry with the French as well as with lap dogs, using phrases like, “that dog don’t hunt.” Because Americans associate lap dogs as women’s pets and the French with effeminate traits, the implication was that Kerry was effeminate.
Sadly, such advertising communicates more about Republican attitudes toward American voters--in particular toward male voters--than it does about Kerry or Obama. In order for such advertising to work, the Republican Party must make the following three assumptions:
1. American men vote primarily based on their emotions rather than their intelligence or values,
2. American men fear emasculation and thus feel threatened by a candidate who fails to shore up their flagging sense of masculinity, and
3. American men are too gullible to realize when they’re being emotionally manipulated by advertising.
We can see by his advertising that McCain is playing American men for fools. We already have a president who’s done that the past seven and a half years. The only real fool is the one who doesn’t learn from his mistakes.
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