It's always nice when the radical left and the radical right agree on
something.
:)
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>From the August 8 Wall Street Journal article ("McCain Web Ad Is Accused Of
Linking Obama to Antichrist":
Suggestions that Sen. Obama is the Antichrist have been circulating for months
in
Bible-study meetings in towns like Chillicothe, Ohio, where congregants compare
his remarks and his biography with verses from the Bible.
Stewart Hoover, director of the Center for Media, Religion and Culture at the
University of Colorado at Boulder, said the references to the antichrist in the
McCain ad were "not all that subtle" for anyone familiar with "apocalyptic
popular culture." Some images in the ad very closely resemble the cover art and
type font used in the latest "Left Behind" novel.
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Boston Globe
Some say ad casts Obama as the antichrist
McCain spot may have themes on the apocalypse
By Foon Rhee, Globe Staff | August 9, 2008
Does John McCain's Web ad that mocks Barack Obama as "The One" have a darker
design?
Outraged Christian supporters of Obama say it does - that it is intended to
further Internet-fueled rumors that Obama is the antichrist. Deconstructing and
analyzing the ad, they say the images and language play into apocalyptic
themes,
including those featured in the best-selling "Left Behind" series,
fictionalized
accounts of the end of the world.
McCain's campaign, which did not respond to requests for comment yesterday, has
said that the ad was intended merely to poke fun at what they see as Obama's
arrogance.
But the buzz over possible apocalyptic subtexts in the ad, which has been
viewed
nearly 1.1 million times since it was posted a week ago on YouTube, has become
so
loud that yesterday Time magazine and The Wall Street Journal reported on the
controversy and the authors of "Left Behind" issued a statement about it.
Authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, in the statement issued through their
public relations firm, said they don't believe Obama is the antichrist
mentioned
in the biblical prophecies in the Book of Revelation. Their series of 16 novels
has sold more than 63 million copies worldwide.
"I've gotten a lot of questions the last few weeks asking if Obama is the
antichrist," Jenkins said in the statement. "I tell everyone that I don't think
the antichrist will come out of politics, especially American politics."
LaHaye added: "I can see by the language he uses why people think he could be
the
antichrist, but from my reading of scripture, he doesn't meet the criteria.
There
is no indication in the Bible that the antichrist will be an American."
Those analyzing the ad point to the opening words - "It should be known that in
2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One" - and a clip of
Obama saying in a speech: "A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones
that we've been waiting for."
In the "Left Behind" series, the antichrist is a charismatic young political
leader who is founder of The One World religion and promises to heal the world.
"Short of 666, they used every single symbol of the antichrist in this ad,"
Eric
Sapp, a Democratic operative who advises Democrats on reaching out to faith
communities, told the Journal. "There are way too many things to just be
coincidence."
LaHaye and other believers say the antichrist will come from Europe, maybe
Romania and possibly a leader of the European Union.
But for the last few months, there have been viral e-mails that compare Obama
to
Nimrod, whom some evangelicals believe was the first evil king of world history
and who is black in some accounts, said James Tabor, chairman of the department
of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
While the Obama-as-antichrist accusation is on the fringes now and not
seriously
mentioned from the pulpit, Tabor said, "I think that could come."
After reviewing the video yesterday, Tabor, a specialist in ancient apocalyptic
thought, said that while the ad's creators might have wanted to play with
apocalyptic themes in a tongue-in-cheek way, it could have "serious
consequences."
"Is anyone naive enough to believe and watch that and say, 'Oh no, I won't vote
for him because he's the antichrist?' I'd have to say in our country, yeah,"
Tabor said.
And, he noted, another biblical prophecy is that the antichrist gets wounded,
and
a disturbed believer could try to fulfill that prophecy. A man has been charged
in Florida for threatening to assassinate Obama, who requested and received
Secret Service protection last year at the earliest point for any presidential
candidate after his campaign received hate mail.
"This stuff is very, very dangerous," Tabor said. "It can be seen as playful,
but
too many times in history it has led to armies marching and people dying. The
ad
is really unfortunate."
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/08/09/some_say_ad_casts_oba
ma_as_the_antichrist
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Time Magazine
Friday, Aug. 08, 2008
An Antichrist Obama in McCain Ad?
By Amy Sullivan / Washington
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" 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 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 and political
blogs
and in widely circulated e-mail 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, 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
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 e-mails she received from
conservative
Christians fell into two general topical categories: abortion, and the
assertion
that Obama is the Antichrist. The cataloging of similarities Obama shares with
the Antichrist began nearly two years ago. But it 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 e-mail 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 WorldNetDaily, "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 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."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1830590,00.html
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