April 3, 2008

John McCain’s New Ad: War War War Glory Country War

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John McCain’s new web video entitled “Sacrifice” is 2:45 of non-stop war-fetishizing. His campaign might as well have played a loop of an American flag waving with fighter jets screeching past. Or heck, even 2:45 of Gladiator starring Russell Crowe.

Here’s a word count:

“War”: 7 mentions
“Duty”: 2
“Honor”: 2
“Valor”: 2
“Country”/”nation”: 5
“Loyalty”: 3
“Glory”: 5
“God”: 1 (just for good measure)

The grave voice-over in the ad says that soldiers’ claim on a nation’s success in war is “shorn of all romance, all nostalgia.” Funny, considering the whole ad is romance and nostalgia for war.

John McCain and “war” is the new Rudy Giuliani and “9/11.”

Update: Video of the ad is after the jump.

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We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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