Obama: Not Good Enough for a Messiah, Not Good Enough for a President

John McCain's latest ad says that Barack Obama is a messianic figure, sent to save the world, or at least five percent of it. But it says so in a silly voice suggesting that exactly the opposite is true.

Silly voice politics is nothing new. I'm very well trained by these ads, myself. I know that whichever candidate has a black-and-white photograph that shrinks gradually while ominous music plays is bad. The good guy will have a color photograph that gets bigger. And happy music will play.

This is not arbitrary, but rather a consequence of simple science. Evil candidates are part vampire. Full-blooded vampires cannot be photographed; evil candidates can but only in black-and-white. Photos of evil candidates appear to get smaller as you stare at them; this is because your brain is gradually realizing how tiny their souls are. It must be admitted that the ominous music may influence some people, but it is seldom if ever chosen intentionally. A good commercial director chooses his background music while watching his visuals; it is almost impossible to choose anything but bassoons while staring at a picture of a black-hearted blood-sucking evil candidate.

Silly voice political ads are a first-cousin of shrinking-photo political ads. The first silly-voice political ads were Marc Antony's "Brutus is an honorable man" series (the one with the red phone) in the forties. It may seem extremely childish to say the opposite of what you mean in a silly voice, and in real life it is. Try going a whole day making nothing but sarcastic statements and requests, and you'll see what I mean:

- "Oh, I hope you don't give me a change for a twenty!"

- "Please stop calling Domino's, how can I not help you today?"

- "Hi, Honey--- I sure don't want to know how your day was."

You have to read these out loud: sarcastic voices can't be written at all. (This is a corollary of the Vampire Photography Theory.) As opposed to in real life, the silly-voice approach is actually a perfectly valid and eloquent form of political ad: if it wasn't, would it be in Shakespeare?

Once you've decided to say something about your opponent in a silly voice, what should you say? The first criterion is that your statement should not be true - it should be the opposite of true. For example, you could say: "John McCain is a woman. An attractive, waif-thin, Scandinavian woman. John McCain rides around on a tricycle all day dressed in pajamas and being a woman." (If you're still protesting that this is childish and ridiculous, you obviously don't understand politics. You probably think the stock market is childish too.) Even better, you can say that's not true about your opponent that you think his supporters wish were true: "John McCain has super powers. He flies around all day saving orphans and welding metal bridges with his melty vision. He sings songs about it and he has a rock band and they go on tour singing about his melty vision biceps." It will crush his supporters to hear you say this in a silly voice, because they'll know all of a sudden that it's not true and they were sort of hoping it was. (If you long for the decorum of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, you're obviously a utopian and out of touch. Also, you have the mind of a child and you're probably an elitist.

This is the tactic that McCain has so artfully employed in his silly-voice "Obama is the Messiah" campaign. Get it? Obama is not the Messiah! So why would you vote for him?! Vote McCain in 2008 instead.

Vote for an attractive Scandinavian woman.