CNN and the 'Anti-Christ'

The dog days of Summer are really turning out to be quite revealing. I have almost no respect for most of the American legal, political, academic or media class, who are functionally one group, I suppose. Yet one thing about them is that they are essentially driven by commercial pressure, both from sponsors, employers and consumers.

With that in mind, CNN has hit upon a little goldmine. The McCain campaign and its surrogates at the minute have been running quite strange ads. To outside, European eyes, especially those of 'our' commentariat, the point of these ads has been to 'swift boat' Barack Obama. A series of harsh, contradictory and infuriating blows are in theory raining down from all angles, with the aim of dragging the presumptive Democrat candidate down from any high horse and distracting attention from any theme of change.

I wonder if the ads don't actually serve another purpose which is being ignored. John McCain is fantastically unpopular with large parts of the Republican coalition. Many business types and fiscal conservatives distrust him, generally; anti-immigrationists do not hold him in high regard; and religious evangelicals know that any attempt to paint McCain as one of them, or even as sympathetic, is a big fat lie. I've linked to an older story but one which makes my point, by the way.

Yet McCain needs his coalition. America has become a country where ideas like 'rapture' and apocalypse are serious political currency. In a country which fought the Mormon Wars, or which experienced George Whitefield fever before it even came to be, that is not surprising. One can sell huge numbers of books and promote websites on the back of biblical prophesy, and fairly extreme Protestant pastors can wield serious influence.

Catholics are in on the game too, of course, and always have been. One lucky Jesuit found himself head of New York's Campaign Finance board last month, for instance. The thing about Catholics, who are now America's biggest single church, though, is that Catholic ideas are hard to place ideologically and are not, given the body of tradition behind them, embarrassing to talk about, though they may be socially frowned upon. Not enough, though, to stop Catholic jurists forming the majority of the Supreme Court and a largely undisputed presence in state and national affairs.

Knowing about Catholic disputes, especially if one has a smattering of Latin and can name drop Origen, can make one seem clever, and suggest sexual repression of the sort that gets people asked on dates for sexual purposes. Most of the West's philosophy of mind is bound up with Catholicism too, and even fairly dodgy ideas like natural law can attract serious professors.

Protestant evangelism, which tends to be more interested in spirit, predestination, and faith than reason, may sell many many books, but mentioning it, and especially its apocalyptic melodies, is apt to damage candidates. In such a Calvinist country, it's harder at the minute for an overtly Protestant politician to articulate their ideas without getting into serious trouble when they seek the highest office.

The McCain team, though, have been clever. By using 'Matrix' style abuse of Obama as 'The One' or as a parody of Moses, McCain has managed to seem funny, and to play on evangelical fear, and to touch on some fairly weird parts of the American psyche without actually associating the candidate with millennial fear mongering.

CNN hasn't held back though. They've stepped right in and are probably hardening the evangelical base to as much of a pro-McCain consistency as it is likely to get, without realising it. Here is their report from yesterday, and what I have been leading up to. A serious American news segment entitled, 'Is Obama the Antichrist?'

And no, nobody in that business has any shame at all. At least its preferable to the Edwards stuff, even if they know their Revelation of St John even less than the Muslim nutter I passed on Putney Bridge today who was declaiming about Constantine and Nicea and who needed to be told that he meant Theodosius and Constantinople. Tut. Not that I did. He was a nutter. Night night, if you are still reading.

The picture at the top of this blog is Tintoretto's 'Christ at the Sea of Galilee'.