When Republicans Attack

After setbacks in the polls, the McCain campaign staff has released a series of visually complex (and deliberately disorienting) TV and web ads: Dangerous, Ambition, and Ayers (embedded below). All three use panels of frames with bogus frame numbers to give the impression of continuity and objectivity, when in fact images are juxtaposed in an extremely subjective manner, to create guilt by association. When Republicans Attack will analyze each of the three commercials in detail, but as a fourth installment of the Subliminal Shenanigans series, we’ll concentrate on eight contiguous frames in the Ayers ad.

Here’s the entire ad:

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The ad uses several swish pans, but the most interesting occur after the frame at 16.154 seconds (frame 484), and continues for four frames:

Frame 486, 16.221 seconds

In the above shot, the left frame depicts the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a project that had both Ayers and Obama on its staff. Here is how the National Review Online article (the source used in the Ayers ad) characterizes the challenge:

Even more intriguing, in 1995 Ayers won a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation — matched two-to-one by public and private contributions — to promote “reform” in the Chicago school system. He quickly brought in Obama, then all of 33 and bereft of any executive experience, to chair the board. With Ayers directing the project’s operational arm and Obama overseeing its financial affairs until 1999, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge distributed more than $100 million to ideological allies with no discernible improvement in public education.

In the half-frame to the right of the Annenberg image is the Pentagon, described in the “Ayers” ad as a target of Ayers and the Weather Underground. The stage is set for the Obama / Ayers image distortions that follow:

Frame 487, 16.255 seconds

Frame 488, 16.288 seconds

Frame 489, 16.321 seconds

The beginning of the Obama / Ayers skull heads.

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Frame 490, 16.355 seconds

Frame 491, 16.388 seconds

The full death-head distortion, which lasts 3 more frames.

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Frame 492, 16.421 seconds

Frame 493, 16.455 seconds

The skulls at their clearest.

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Frame 494, 16.488 seconds

The last of the distorted images.

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Frame 495, 16.522 seconds

The swish pan ends, and the images lose their distortion (though the photos are hardly flattering, and of course Obama’s and Ayers’ undistorted smiles are all the more frightening after the previous frames).