John McCain, Left Behind? August 8, 2008
Posted by Zack in DC , trackbackAnyone want to weigh in on the new McCain ad that tries to equate Barack Obama with Nicolae Carpathia, the Antichrist from the Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series?
Here’s the ad:
Read Amy Sullivan’s Time Magazine piece for more context:
Tags: barack obama, John McCain, left behindAs the ad begins, the words “It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One” flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds The One World religion (slogan: “We are God”) and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the senator saying, “A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.”
The visual images in the ad, which Davis says has been viewed even more than the McCain’s “Celeb” ad linking Obama to the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, also seem to evoke the cover art of several Left Behind books. But they’re not the cartoonish images of clouds parting and shining light upon Obama that might be expected in an ad spoofing him as a messiah. Instead, the screen displays a sinister orange light surrounded by darkness and later the faint image of a staircase leading up to heaven.
Perhaps the most puzzling scene in the ad is an altered segment from The 10 Commandments that appears near the end. A Moses-playing Charlton Heston parts the animated waters of the Red Sea, out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer before being mocked into retiring it. The seal, which features an eagle with wings spread, is not recognizable like the campaign’s red-white-and-blue “O” logo. That confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp until he went to his Bible and remembered that in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle.
Comments»
At first I thought this video was funny, to be honest. I’ve watched it a couple more times since then, and I’m starting to wonder. That article touches on a couple of good points, namely that this ad may be cruel and disrespectful and that it may cause damage to Obama’s campaign for the wrong reasons. I’m just still not sure what I think about it.
It’s really… odd. On the one hand, it seems insider–ha ha, look at the silly Obama worshippers–and on the other, just poorly done. The end “…but is he ready to lead?” is a non sequitur. Part of me wonders if it’s just meant to confuse people into thinking that the ad was made by the Obama campaign, until the final hook.
To quote Nicolae Carpathia after President Louis Gossett Jr. falls 8 stories from his window and gets up to walk away:
“That’s not humanly possible,” [looks up to the sky]
“is it?”
If McCain continues to run this type of campaign he can give up any hope of cutting into Obama’s poll numbers among the important demographic “Citizen’s of European Nations that do not have a vote in this election.”
I think Amy Sullivan covered it pretty well. I am suspicious of the bit about Carpathia being a “junior senator”, since Left Behind describes him as having been in the lower house of the Romanian parliament and specifically clarifies that he’s not a senator. Do the books actually say “junior senator” somewhere else, or is that something that someone’s introduced to play up the Obama angle?
I don’t know if the book says “junior senator” but the Wikipedia page does. Maybe the Senate is the lower house in Romania?
From the Wikipedia page on Nicolae Carpathia:
“At the age of 24, Carpathia stepped into the political scene as a junior senator in the lower house of the Romanian Parliament.”
I was going to mention the Wikipedia article as a likely place for someone to introduce that sort of thing into the discussion. It gives no source for that statement. The “junior senator” has been there for quite a while, but it’s the sort of thing that could be added and remain uncorrected for a long time unless someone called attention to it.
And no, the senate is the upper house in the Romanian parliament too. The lower house is the Chamber of Deputies, and Left Behind even specifically says it’s not the senate. Of course I wouldn’t be surprised if the books are internally inconsistent about that.
Well someone just needs to fess up that they have a copy and straighten this out for us!
Then we’ll correct the wikipedia article.
This is important! We need to know exactly who to keep an eye out for don’t we!
Here’s the page, though I don’t know whether there’s anything different somewhere else in the books.
I’m going to fix the Wikipedia article.
Antichrist or McCain. Such a hard decision!
Maybe Obama should start attacking McCain’s age. You know, it’d be funny…
That people are looking to the authors of a fiction book for commentary on a real presidential candidate says a lot about this so-called firestorm.
Would there be so much scrutiny if Obama were a pro-life Republican?
GWB came right out and claimed to be God’s gift to the White House and no one seemed to be posing the anti-christ question then.
obama leads with christian voters.
for good reason, imho
using that to make a correlation is useless
“I am The One… ”
man..as much as I know that has been used so much that that ‘one’ should be adjusted to 700billion (pundit intended)…talk about inflation. Even Jet Li used that for the title on one of his movies. On my holy molly opinion, the only ones that I can trust will never say ‘the one’ are people with schizophrenia!!
“We are the ones that we’ve been waiting…” uh uh…english is not my first language , but I believe One is singular. Is Obama sure he wont’t rip any logical-mythological time-space continium with saying that?? and they complain about poor McCain for use the ‘That one…’ on the second debate. Should be something like we are those that people has been waiting for???
so bottom line: that phrase is so used/abused that has lost most of it meaning. Everyone use that twist to make himself look good. Everyone is self proclaimed mesiah of their own perceive karmagedoom (typo intended)
so if you see a correlation here, please do not forget to check it out everywhere else, cause you will find it too