Obama ads: Can we please leave Brit and Paris out of this?

Britney Spears and Paris Hilton?

Oh, my. This got out of hand MUCH sooner than I expected.

John McCain's new anti-Obama ad, unveiled Wednesday, aims to link the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate to two pop tarts whose names have become synonomous with shallowness, outsized celebrity status, undersized talent, poor driving habits, and dubious parenting skills. Among other things.

When I heard about the ad, I couldn't see how it could be effective for McCain. If you're going to link someone to someone else in the minds of people seeing the ad, there should be some valid points of comparison. Looking at the list above, I just don't see where there's that much common ground between Mr. Obama and Ms.'s Hilton and Spears. Even his detractors would be hard-pressed to say Obama isn't a bright guy, so that rules shallowness out. He's obviously talented in his chosen field of politics, or we wouldn't be having this little talk, would we? I don't think there have been any negative things said about his role as father to his two little girls. I'm not sure if he's a good driver or not.

Obviously the one thing they DO have in common is that they're all famous. But this is a curious tactic for McCain. As our CW11 reporter Chris Glorioso said on the news last night, it puts McCain in the odd position of criticizing his opponent for being popular and well-known. And not well-known because he made a sex tape or didn't wear underpants. He's well-known because he's a U.S. Senator, a powerful speaker, and he's running for president. Read more after the jump.

And on some level, McCain's campaign must have known this. Have you seen the ad? Despite all the hubbub about Britney and Paris being shown in the commercial, they're hardly in it at all! It starts off showing the huge throng of people listening to Obama's speech in Berlin, his name is chanted by thousands in the background behind the voiceover saying, "He's the biggest celebrity in the world." At first I thought it was an ad FOR Obama. During that sentence, a shot of Britany Spears pops up, completely out of context, and then dissolves into a shot of Paris Hilton, the entire montage lasting less than two seconds. Their names are never spoken. It's almost like one of those subliminal messages where you flash pictures of food up on the screen, and people watching get hungry. As a matter of fact, I did suddenly have an urge to hit a car with an umbrella. But from then on, the rest of the ad is legitimate political material, questioning Obama's positions on off-shore oil drilling, taxes on energy, and reliance on more foreign oil. Without the Britney/Paris/fame angle during the first few seconds, the spot wouldn't be news at all.

I'm sure that's what the McCain campaign had in mind. Putting aside the dubious premise that being famous makes you less ready for leadership (last time I looked, John McCain is pretty famous, too), it's interesting to hear how the McCain team thought this through. Campaign manager Rick Davis said, "what we decided to do is find the top three international celebrities in the world, and I would say from our indications, Britney and Paris came in second and third."

Uh, dude... it seems to me your "indications" are stuck somewhere in 2006. If Britney and Paris are the second and third most famous people in the world, then I crack the top ten. What about Tiger Woods? The Dalai Lama? Oprah? Ohhhhhhhhhhh, right. THOSE famous people are talented and respected. For them, fame doesn't equal shame. Their accomplishments made them famous, and for a lot longer than 15-minutes. By choosing the most clichéd examples of people who are "famous just for being famous," the McCain campaign is hoping that voters will see Obama in the same light. Nice try, but I think it's a little late for that.

But even with bad campaign ads, valid themes can echo. It's perfectly appropriate for McCain to raise the question of how relevant adulation for Obama in Europe is to the immediate concerns of people here, concerns like high gas prices. If in fact the Obama camp feels it can coast to victory on nothing more than its candidate's charisma, then McCain has every right to raise the question of whether there's enough "beef" there-- to go back to 1984 for a moment-- beneath that shimmering surface. It will be interesting now to see if Obama focuses his message more on the nuts and bolts of governing, and less on matters of image. The McCain campaign might have questioned his ability to do that in a clumsy way, but that doesn't mean it isn't a question worth asking.