[lit-ideas] Re: oh dear lord....
- From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 18:05:48 -0500
Somehow I've managed to be blissfully unaware of this until now... twilight
zone stuff!
Julie Krueger
On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 6:00 PM, <carolkir@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It's a slow news week...Believers in the antichrist stuff identified
> BO long ago. Thing is, some believers actually want to hasten the
> apocalypse, so they'll vote for BO because of it! Strange folks.
> ck
>
>
> On 8/8/08, Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > <
> http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1830590,00.html?cnn=yes>
> >
> > From TIME Magazine --
> > http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1830590,00.html?cnn=yes
> >
> > The various interpretations (of the ad, of the Evangelicals, you name it)
> > are as hilarious as anything else about this. If I'd switched on the tv
> and
> > happened upon this article being read aloud, I would have wondered what
> SNL
> > or MAD TV were doing on at that time of day....
> >
> > <<It's not easy to make the infamous Willie Horton ad from the 1988
> > presidential campaign seem benign. But suggesting that Barack Obama is
> the
> > Antichrist might just do it.
> >
> > That's just what some outraged Christian supporters of the Democratic
> > nominee are claiming John McCain's campaign did in an ad called "The
> > One"<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mopkn0lPzM8>that was recently
> > released online. The Republican nominee's advisers brush
> > off the charges, arguing that the spot was meant to be a "creative" and
> > "humorous" way of poking fun at Obama's
> > popularity<
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1830400,00.html>by
> > painting him as a self-appointed messiah. But even this innocuous
> > interpretation of the ad — which includes images of Charlton Heston as
> Moses
> > and culled clips that make Obama sound truly egomaniacal — taps into a
> > conversation that has been gaining urgency on Christian radio, political
> > blogs, and in widely-circulated email messages that accuse Obama of being
> > the Antichrist.
> >
> > The ad was the creation of Fred Davis, one of McCain's top media gurus,
> as
> > well as a close friend of former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed and
> the
> > nephew of conservative Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. It first caught the
> > attention of Democrats familiar with the *Left Behind*
> > series<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1002759,00.html
> >,
> > a fictionalized account of the end time that debuted in the 1990s and has
> > sold nearly 70 million books worldwide. "The language in there is so
> similar
> > to the language in the *Left Behind* books," says Tony Campolo, a leading
> > progressive evangelical speaker and author.
> >
> > As 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.
> >
> > Sapp knows that the phrasing and images could just be dismissed as a
> > peculiar coincidence. After all, it was Oprah Winfrey who told an Iowa
> crowd
> > that Obama was "the one!" But, he insists, "the frequency of these images
> > and references don't make any sense unless you're trying to send the
> message
> > that Obama could be the Antichrist." Mara Vanderslice, another Democratic
> > consultant who handled religious outreach for the 2004 Kerry campaign,
> > agrees. "If they wanted to be funny, if they really wanted to play up the
> > idea that Obama thinks he's the Second Coming, there were better ways to
> do
> > it," she says. "Why use these awkward lines like, 'And the world will
> > receive his blessings'?"
> >
> > Two months ago, Vanderslice founded a Democratic PAC called the Matthew
> 25
> > Network and soon noticed that the negative emails she received from
> > conservative Christians fell into two general categories: abortion, and
> the
> > assertion that Obama is the Antichrist. The cataloguing of similarities
> > Obama shares with the Antichrist began nearly two years ago. But they
> picked
> > up steam in February 2008 after he racked up a string of impressive
> primary
> > victories. A Google search for "Obama" and "Antichrist" turns up more
> than
> > 700,000 hits, including at least one blog dedicated solely to the topic.
> A
> > more obscure search for "Obama" and "Nicolae Carpathia" yields a
> surprising
> > 200,000 references.
> >
> > It's not hard to see how some Obama-haters might be tempted to make the
> > comparison. In the Left Behind books, Carpathia is a junior senator who
> > speaks several languages, is beloved by people around the world and
> fawned
> > over by a press corps that cannot see his evil nature, and rises to
> absurd
> > prominence after delivering just one major speech. Hmmh. But serious
> > Antichrist theorists don't stop there. Everything from Obama's
> > left-handedness to his positive rhetoric to his appearance on the cover
> of
> > this magazine has been cited as evidence of his true identity. One chain
> > email claims that the Antichrist was prophesied to be "A man in his 40s
> of
> > MUSLIM descent," which would indeed sound ominous if not for the fact
> that
> > the Book of Revelation was written at least 400 years before the birth of
> > Islam.
> >
> > The speculation reached a fever pitch after Obama's European trip and the
> > Berlin speech in which he called for global unity. Conservative Christian
> > author Hal Lindsey declared in an essay on World Net Daily, "Obama is
> > correct in saying that the world is ready for someone like him-a
> > messiah-like figure, charismatic and glib...The Bible calls that leader
> the
> > Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his
> > acquaintance." The conservative website RedState.com now sells mugs and
> > t-shirts that sport a large "O" with horns and the words "The
> Anti-Christ"
> > underneath.
> >
> > Even if a fraction of the Internet-using public engages in outrageous
> > Antichrist speculation, feeding those extreme beliefs wouldn't seem to be
> an
> > obvious political strategy. But McCain advisers are aware that one of the
> > goals of Democratic outreach to
> > evangelicals<
> http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1814206,00.html>has
> > been to simply neutralize their opposition. "You just have to take the
> > edge off," says Michigan Democratic Party chair Mark Brewer, explaining
> why
> > he spent much of a 2006 meeting with conservative pastors around his
> state.
> > "Now that they've met me, they can see I don't have two horns and a
> tail."
> >
> > A new TIME poll finds that the most conservative evangelicals are the
> least
> > enthusiastic about McCain's candidacy. Convincing them that Obama does
> have
> > two horns and a tail might be the best way of getting them to vote.
> That's
> > what worries Campolo, who also sits on the Democratic party's platform
> > committee. "Those books have created a subliminal language and I think
> > judgments will be made unconsciously about Barack Obama," he says. "It
> > scares the daylights out of me.">>
> >
> > - Buzz up!on
> > Yahoo!<
> http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/time/http%253A%252F%252Fwww.time.com%252Ftime%252Fpolitics%252Farticle%252F0%252C8599%252C1830590%252C00.html
> >
> >
> >
> > <http://www.quantcast.com/p-5dyPa639IrgIw>
> >
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