Although on Thursday Moe and I decided that the McCain ad featuring Paris Hilton was simply dumb, it is now clear that it is all part of McCain's evil genius. While we were so busy watching Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, we were missing the subliminal message that Obama is the Antichrist! No, really, people actually believe that. So, after the jump - and once he has his Al Haig moment out of the way - I await the Rapture with Spencer Ackerman, with whom I talk about Gwyneth Paltrow's paltry contribution to the end of all Hope, arugula, our favorite iced teas, elitism, Duncan McCloud, Eric Cantor, a shirtless Obama, and my loose morals.


SPENCER: My God... As of now, ladies, I am in control here, in Crappy Hour, pending the return of Moe Tkacik. If something came up, I would check with Megan, of course. MEGAN: It would help if I weren't sitting right here, and if you had access to the publishing system... SPENCER: Curses... and so ends the coup. MEGAN: Foiled again! If it wasn't for you nosy kids... SPENCER: So hi from the back seat of my friends Michael and Dafna's Volkswagen Rabbit, careening south on 95, nearing the Susquehanna. MEGAN: Yes, enough Scooby Doo references, this is totally a place for adults to talk about adult things. Like Paris Hilton. SPENCER: John McCain is, at this point, the mother of all ironies: Kathy Hilton complaining about "a complete waste of the country's time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs." Kathy, your family could hire them all; you could house all the Katrina victims who still need housing. MEGAN: On the other hand, you think someone in McCain's ad department could've called over to the fundraising department and said, hey, um, are these prominent Hollywood Republican friends of his donors? Or gone to Open Secrets. SPENCER: Notice how the woman in the Times' photo is named Laura Hilton yeah, really — Rick Davis needs that $4,600 pretty badly! Also, how could you not think about the consequences of pointing out that your candidate is funded by Paris Hilton's family? MEGAN: They were probably too busy trying to fit as many Antichrist references in thirty seconds as possible without tipping off the non-Rapture contingent. SPENCER: OK, please explain this to your Jewboy interlocutor it seems pretty disgusting — every quote is out of context, for instance — but I am surely missing a ton of scriptural dogwhistles. MEGAN: Okay, so, there's this thing called The Rapture. You're excluded. Apparently, all the "good" Christian evangelicals of the world (so, I'm excluded, too) will be brought directly to God as soon as the Antichrist takes over the world. Someone, somewhere decided Obama is the Antichrist, aka, the harbinger of the Rapture. SPENCER: Ahhhhh see, and in the Left Behind series, the Antichrist is a Romanian. How diabolical of Obama! We always knew the Devil would have a smooth tongue. MEGAN: So, technically my understanding is that evangelicals should actually, like, exalt his candidacy and vote for him because the Rapture is a good thing, but I'm sure I'm missing something like their actual belief that they themselves will be Raptured because God knows what they're doing behind closed doors (but, in one case at least, it involved two wetsuits, a butt dildo and auto-erotic asphyxia). But, yes, "The One" is actually "The Antichrist" and not the Messiah. Or the Highlander, for that matter. I wonder whatever happened to that guy. Oh, nothing, never mind. SPENCER: Now, if McCain wanted to say that Obama is the Devil he wouldn't just use the booming-voice narrator and the churchy (to my ignorant ears) guitar music in the background, he'd hire the guy who narrate the last track on Integrity's Humanity Is The Devil album. MEGAN: But, see, the Antichrist isn't the devil exactly. It's different somehow. This is where the fundies lose me too. SPENCER: Another tin ear for McCain! White dudes will vote for the Highlander. MEGAN: Yes, totally, Obama needs to start going to cons. SPENCER: The Antichrist is the Devil's handmaiden or something? Whoa, Baltimore tunnel. MEGAN: Obama is sucking the devils dick! SPENCER: I may lose connectivity. MEGAN: That's cool, I'll wait the whole 3 minutes. SPENCER: So the Devil is Larry Sinclair, then you know, speaking of things white people like: Barack Obama. MEGAN: I believe the deal is that the whole thing is pre-ordained anyway, so it's not like Good and Evil, but it's all God's plan or some shit. He is pretty! He's going on vacation to Hawai'i soon, so there will be new topless pictures for us! SPENCER: My ex-boss has this great catch in today's WaPo story:
Obama's advantage is attributable largely to overwhelming support from two traditional Democratic constituencies: African Americans and Hispanics. But even among white workers — a group of voters that has been targeted by both parties as a key to victory in November — Obama leads McCain by 10 percentage points, 47 percent to 37 percent, and has the advantage as the more empathetic candidate.
So my Q to you: is there any demographic group that can decide the election that McCain leads among? MEGAN: What I like is that those people don't think either candidate will make a bit of difference in their day-to-day lives! And people say they're not smart. I think he does better among rich old white people. That's, like, Florida. SPENCER: But this is a GOP goldmine demographic that knows everything about McCain and nearly nothing about Obama, and they're going for Obama hard. That should be a nice campaign palliative now that I'm reading that Obama's lead is gone in the Gallup poll. MEGAN: And McCain is now vetting Eric Cantor for the Jewish vote and to keep Virginia red. Obama's up in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, though. SPENCER: That right there is a testimonial to the antipathy of the Tribespeople to the GOP. I think Eric Cantor was the nasally kid who ratted me out to the teacher for feeling up a classmate of mine at East Midwood Jewish Center. MEGAN: By the way, when we were at dinner with Erica at Zengo that time and I was like, dammit, who is that guy? That guy was Eric Cantor. SPENCER: Was Joe Lieberman not charismatic enough? Oh right, I forgot: We don't like that asshole, either. Shit, really? That was why our dinner took for-fucking-ever? I'm going to get J Street to destroy him. MEGAN: Yes, yes it was. Another reason not to like him. Amusingly, McCain operatives, I mistook him for someone that works for Blunt because I've never seen him do anything but toady up to Blunt. And because he looks 15. SPENCER: Speaking of blunt, as in unsubtle, and FUCKING IDIOTIC, an Obama ad more annoying than the Encyclopedia Britannica ad with that longhair douche. You know what a campaign getting attacked for elitism needs? More Gwyneth Paltrow. MEGAN: Also, she's the worst actor in the whole fucking commercial. It's like she thinks she's talking to learning disabled children. SPENCER: Right, I keep expecting her to tell me that my 50-cent donation will make all the difference to Aspergers' sufferers. MEGAN: I mean, these are Americans who actually bothered learning to speak another language. Except for her, I mean, she's just in London. SPENCER: And who approved the two assholes who are like "I'll be voting from Paris!" "Me too!"? MEGAN: Someone in London, probably. SPENCER: "...and I'll be eating arugula out of my gay husband's butt on a bed of shredded Bibles! We're just in the next Arrondisement!" MEGAN: Speaking of arugula, Honest Tea is the new arugula, and that's just unfair because Honest Tea rocks. Just because McCain is from Arizona doesn't mean the rest of us should be forced to drink that swill. SPENCER: We part company: Arizona ice tea got me through junior high, along with Snapples and Quarterwater. MEGAN: And now that you're not 12, which would you rather drink? SPENCER: What kind of elitist would rather drink ice tea that doesn't come from a powder? MEGAN: Or lettuce that isn't iceberg? SPENCER: Women of loose morals like yourself, clearly.