When campaign ad analysis goes a little too far (OK, more than a little)

March 1, 2008

Last June, in one of the more jaw-dropping blog posts of all time, Ann Althouse offered a detailed analysis of the Clinton campaign’s Sopranos parody. As Ann interpreted the ad’s “symbols,” onion rings were representative of vaginas, carrots were phallic symbols, and moisture on carrots were supposed to be some kind of bodily secretions.

Ann returns to Clinton-ad analysis today, scrutinizing the campaign’s much-discussed “3 a.m.” ad and finding what she believes is evidence of … well, I’ll just let her explain it. The headline reads: “Why are the letters ‘NIG’ on the child’s pajamas?”

Asks a commenter — “Tom” — on my post about the new Hillary Clinton commercial, the one that shows several children sleeping and then Clinton taking a national security phone call in the middle of the night. You can see the commercial at the link, and the pajamas in question are on display during seconds 11 and 12. On pausing, staring, and thinking, I believe these are pajamas that say “good night” all over them, but the letters “NIG” are set apart by a fold in the fabric.

Is the campaign responsible for sending out a subliminal message to stimulate racist thoughts in the unsuspecting viewer? It is either deliberate or terribly incompetent. There is no other writing on screen until the very end of the commercial, and if letters appear in anyplace in a commercial, they should be carefully selected letters. Certainly, each image is artfully composed and shot and intended to deliver an emotional impact. Could this be a mere lapse?

Oh my.

OK, here, once again, is the ad.

If you look carefully — very carefully — at the pajamas of the kid shown at the 11 second mark, tilt your head, and stare at the child’s right shoulder, you’ll see what appears to be the letters “N” and “i,” followed by what may be a capital “C” or “G.”

What do the PJs say? I haven’t the foggiest idea. Do I think the Clinton campaign somehow planted a racist message in the PJs? No, that strikes me as insane.

The glowing cross in Huckabee’s Christmas commercial was borderline; I didn’t even notice it at first. But hiding obscure partial messages in pajamas? I’m afraid that’s just over the top.

I’m not sure what drives Clinton Derangement Syndrome, but the effects really aren’t pretty.

I think this is one of those cases where the observation tells more about the observer than the observed.

  • Paul is dead. Miss him. Miss him. Miss him.

    And I thought I spent too much time on this stuff.

  • It looks to me like the pj’s have “good night” printed on them.

    Pretty damned powerful subliminable stuff.

  • Reminds me of the dark Freudian reviews of Bil Keane’s Family Circus books on Amazon a few years back.

  • I think Ann was permanently scarred by an intro to semiotics class her freshman year.

  • Ann Althouse offered

    Was she born with these intials? Was her mother in some sort of denial? Does A.A. just suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome?

  • The Huckabee cross seemed to me to be deliberate and obvious, but in this ad I didn’t even notice all the letters in question until my third viewing. However, I’m so oblivious that I perceive the ad as making a better argument for Obama that for Hillary.

  • well, there’s only so much one can read into an ad that has hillary answering a white phone fully dressed and coiffed at 3 in the morning.

    this ad must have been produced on a pre-hillary-loan budget.

  • I went to Ms. Althouse’s blog to read the original post. Among other things, she says this:

    “Feel free to observe the claws out on many other websites, where personal attacks on me take the place of any serious effort to engage on the merits. For example, the usually serious blogger Kevin Drum calls me harebrained and a glue sniffer. The vicious attack on the messenger bespeaks fear of the message and lack of a substantive argument against it.

    CB, so there you are! No substantive argument against her! You’re terrified of her message! 🙂

    As a law professor, poor Ms. Althouse should know that one can only make “substantive arguments” against statements that are falsifiable. It’s impossible to refute the hallucinations of a glue-sniffer.

  • Danp said:

    Ann Althouse offered

    Was she born with these intials? Was her mother in some sort of denial? Does A.A. just suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome?

    Good catch, Danp. And further serious analysis makes us wonder the meaning of naming her, Anna Al-thouse.

  • This really is industrial grade crazy. It’s worth mentioning that Althouse pretty enthusiastically endorsed Obama not very long ago.

  • Okay, I’m freezing the frame at “second 11” and just to the left of that “N” is a “D.” You can clearly see the top left of the letter—the “straight-back” of the D, with the curve of the letter running away from the back and beginning its downward curve.

    Substantive enough for Althouse?

    *This message brought to you by RealityBasedObama-dot-com…..

  • Althouse compares the “subliminal message” to that Bush anti-Gore ad where the word bureaucrat disappears and leaves “rat” behind for a brief second. A bit different scenario this time around, I think.

    I’m just amused to think how much work would have had to go into intentionally putting the “nig” on screen (and I don’t think it was done on purpose). They would have had to find pajamas that had the letters “nig” on them in some easily explainable way (like good night), position the kid and fabric in a way that those letters stood out more than the others and get it on camera in readable manner. It seems like there would be an easier way to go about it.

  • If Hillary ran an ad that convinced me she was ready to deal with someone as crazy as Ann Althouse calling at 3 in the morning, I might think about voting for her.

    A call from Ann Althouse, now THAT’s a terrifying scenario…

  • As an Obama supporter, I both reject and denounce Ms. Althouse’s support on his behalf. I will also now try to fumigate the crazy out of my room.

  • I think this is one of those cases where the observation tells more about the observer than the observed.

    Why, whatever do you mean? Are you suggesting that the commenter is waiting, teeth and fists clenched, for the relief he’ll get when someone lets fly with the “N” word? That when it happens the commenter will get to outwardly express his disgust while secretly admiring whoever said it and wishing he was brave enough to do the same thing?

    Dear me, that would mean there are some seriously unbalanced cretins roaming the world. Like, the sort of people who stare really hard at images of sleeping children.

  • I don’t know it for a fact, but there’s a pretty decent chance that the kid-sleeping images are stock footage. I don’t think the Clinton campaign has time to be setting up custom shoots for this kind of thing, particularly since it’d be so easy to get it from stock. And no, stock video vendors don’t implant subliminal political messages into their clips.

  • This person is actually allowed to teach law? Really?

    Do her students’ diplomas have asterisks affixed to them?

  • But Steve, you miss the main point of her post. She doesn’t give a flying leap about politics. She doesn’t mind looking like an idiot. She cares about hits. She’s been on top of Memeo all day. She feels like a queen. Everybody is talking about HER. As far as she’s concerned, she’s won something. It’s rather sad really.

  • And would Prof. Althouses’s observation be crazy if McCain ran the exact same ad?

  • “further serious analysis makes us wonder the meaning of naming her, Anna Al-thouse.”

    Thanks, Dale. Reductio ad absurdum. And you can’t get anymore hilariously absurd than that.

    I shudder to think what poor old Ann would have come up with if the kid wore Winnie the Pooh pajamas. We’d be awash in fecal analogies for days …

  • Jimmie (13): It’s worth mentioning that Althouse pretty enthusiastically endorsed Obama not very long ago.

    Really? On today’s posts she writes in bold “Actually, Obama found the only possible low ground and made it look like high ground.” It’s in the article entitled, “The crafty Obama finds a way to look magnanimous while actually casting aspersions on McCain.”

  • Aside fromthe fact that the ad seemed to rely far too much on GOP-style fear tactics, after watching it I turned to my wife and asked “do you think that was supposed to convince us that Hillary doesn’t sleep?”

  • Sheesh, you can see many more letters in the design than N, I, and G, and the G you can see isn’t even really with the N and I. There’s several Os and at least one D you can see, too.

    You can see ‘GOOD’ written upside down and above the N and I visible rightside up. Ugh.

  • If you turn up the volume really loud and remove the narrator track, you can clearly hear one of those little kids whispering “please, Jesus, come and take the media morons away”.

  • And would Prof. Althouses’s observation be crazy if McCain ran the exact same ad?

    Yes.

    (Simple answers, simple questions, yadda yadda.)

  • @ 24 TR wonders:

    Do her students’ diplomas have asterisks affixed to them?

    @ 32 tAiO laughs so loud the cat runs out of the room.

  • Also worth mentioning about her response:
    For example, the usually serious blogger Kevin Drum calls me harebrained and a glue sniffer. The vicious attack on the messenger bespeaks fear of the message and lack of a substantive argument against it.

    Kevin Drum did call her post harebrained, but doesn’t call her a glue-sniffer. His post title is “Bad day to stop sniffing glue”, which is obviously an Airplane! reference implying that Kevin, not Ann, sniffs glue. Anyone curious can google the phrase “I picked the wrong day to stop”.

    Calling her post harebrained, and joking that he himself sniffs glue, doesn’t quite qualify as a vicious attack on her.

  • I’m not sure what drives Clinton Derangement Syndrome, but the effects really aren’t pretty.

    I actually find it hysterical.
    That is some hard hard work to dig that deep.

  • In the comment section Ann had to explaing while she though this was an important issue and she said…..”This post is no accident, but I can see why it disturbs you and you wish it would go away. But consider that a politician is seeking the greatest power in the word and is doing it in this ad by manipulating deep emotions in millions of people. If we aren’t to look closely at that with a critical eye, we don’t deserve democracy. “….. I think she is confusing utter ignorance with democracy.

  • Speaking of subliminable…vanderleun I shall send you the tab for having spew cleaned from the kitchen wall.

  • for Obamians everything Hillary does is racist. News flash they need us in November

  • I know Bill and Hillary are rasist. Proved it time and again. Passed laws to send your children to college.

    When you kids grow up get a life and quit worshiping

    For the adults in here vote smart not for a fad

  • What Ann didn’t mention is that those pajamas were sewn in China by an eleven your old girl who really doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the color of a man from Illinois or the woman who’s his rival for the Democratic ticket. Ann only cares to create a divide among anyone stupid enough to read the drivel spewing from her moronic head. Oh wait, that’s the entire Republican party as well. Did she mention that if you scramble the letters from the word “Bush”, and add an R (for retard), you get SHRUB. Or that Dick Cheney’s first name also reflects his personality? Freaky, huh?

  • I will vote for the candidate that promises a troll training program so all of our nation’s blogs have a supply of competent trolls.

    Knocking back a few and hitting the keyboard with your forehead doesn’t cut it any more lad!

  • All I can say is my paertner, who has been an active feminist from the days of “Friends of Jane” 40+ years ago, gets very angry with anyone who tells her that Ann Althouse has ever had anything worthwhile to say in furtherance of the cause of feminism. Althouse is sort of the female John Hagee/Louis Farrakhan of American feminism.

  • Ann Althouse once again proves that she is truly her own best parody. Call us when your space shuttle lands, dear …

  • Libby Spencer: “She doesn’t mind looking like an idiot.”

    As she’s made painfully obvious.

  • Ann seems to be competing to be the poster girl for solipsism: a thought pops into her head and somehow millions of people must be having the same thought.

  • Isn’t it possible that she got the idea from Talking Points Memo? They posted a parody essay asking about Obama’s ties to Muammar Khadafi a few days ago which was taken seriously by Bill Hobbs of the Tennessee G.O.P.

    I think what we have here is a copycat.

  • Althouse is nuts. There is a simple explanation for why this is not subliminal racist messaging—THIS IS STOCK FOOOTAGE! Hillary didn’t shoot this, this is footage purchased from a stock photo/video source and assembled into an ad.

    How do I know this? Because it’s what agencies do. It is cost- and time-prohibitive to cast, set-up and shoot stuff like that. It’s why Obama’s response video uses the SAME footage at the beginning—they both bought it.

  • How do I know this? Because it’s what agencies do. It is cost- and time-prohibitive to cast, set-up and shoot stuff like that.

    Excellent point.

    Of course, I wouldn’t put it completely past the Clinton incompetents to do so. “No worries! We can shoot this ad for a mere $103 million!”

  • Ann Althouse is a shill for the antichrist. Her mission is to deflect attention away from other more important hidden symbolic meanings.

    F = 6th letter of alphabet
    O = 15th letter
    X = 24th letter

    F = 6, O = 1+5 = 6, X = 2+4 = 6

    6 6 6

    We mustn’t let her get away with it!

  • for Obamians everything Hillary does is racist. News flash they need us in November

    Jim, you might want to re-read these comments and recognize that most of the people here are, in your somewhat snide language, “Obamians” and yet we’re all mocking the idea that this ad is somehow racist.

    Stop projecting and stop pouting.

  • Given the quality of manipulation, appealing to their baser instincts both overtly and subliminally, the American people are subjected to, and affected by, on a daily basis by commercial advertisers and regular programmers, would it be naive to not suspect the same from those competing for the most powerful office in the world? Would it be paranoid? Would it be counterproductive for the contestants to make a big deal about something to which we all blithely feel we, personally, are immune?

    Unless a clear, documentable pattern emerges or a blatant undeniable case occurs, the wise candidate will stear clear of
    the subject. Obama’s ‘high road’, without changing a thing, addresses the issue.

    Others, not directly connected to his campaign, don’t have to ,and should not be, so sublime, however. The rise of the dark side over the last 30 years has shown us that the game has to be played on many levels.

  • I guess the Clinton camp went to the “Subtle Half-Racist” stock footage library to grab that shot.

    Do you think Althouse knows that political campaigns don’t take the time to shoot footage like this (proven, of course, by the fact that Obama used the same shots in his response ad)? Do you think Althouse knows anything?

  • Do you think Althouse knows anything?

    Uh, no. If I had a law degree from Wisconsin, I’d be demanding a refund.

  • What’s funny is that in another display of incompetence the Clintons purchased footage and failed to pay for exclusivity. Not always an option, but often is, and is a particularly good idea in situations like this…You don’t want the images that appear in your ads to show up in other places, or be available to your competition/opponents.

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