Mike Huckabee Defends ‘Merry Christmas’ Ad, Says Cross Imagery is Incidental
(Fox News) - In a new television ad debuting Tuesday in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee does the unthinkable - he wishes early voters “Merry Christmas.”
Wearing a red sweater and standing before a glowing Christmas tree as “Silent Night” plays in the background, the former Arkansas governor asks viewers if they’re “about worn out of all the television commercials you’ve been seeing, mostly about politics.”
Behind Huckabee appears to be a white cross, which may be intersecting shelf lines or a window pane and slowly moves to the right on the screen until it’s behind his head.
But the ordained Baptist minister, who has been riding a wave of evangelical support with his open religious appeals, said Tuesday that it’s just a bookshelf and defended the ad.
Wearing a red sweater and standing before a glowing Christmas tree as “Silent Night” plays in the background, the former Arkansas governor asks viewers if they’re “about worn out of all the television commercials you’ve been seeing, mostly about politics.”
Behind Huckabee appears to be a white cross, which may be intersecting shelf lines or a window pane and slowly moves to the right on the screen until it’s behind his head.
But the ordained Baptist minister, who has been riding a wave of evangelical support with his open religious appeals, said Tuesday that it’s just a bookshelf and defended the ad.
posted by BP News Bureau | 12:08 PM
2 Comments:
Huckabee said the bookshelf is “nothing more than a bookshelf” and shrugged off the controversy: “I will confess this: If you play the spot backwards it says, ‘Paul is dead. Paul is dead.”‘
He was joking about the Beatles’ recording of “The White Album” and the urban legend that if a portion of the album is played backwards, the words “Paul is dead” is heard, a reference to the very much alive Paul McCartney.
I have to admit I did laugh when I read that. :)
The cross was probably supposed to be a little more subliminal, or at least a little more subtle. Online and in person, people seem to be running about 50-50 on whether they even saw the cross. The first time I saw the ad, it stuck out like a sore thumb to me.
If the image is unintentional, it is hard to explain the strange camera trick that is going on in the spot. Huckabee and the camera appear to be stationary while the background rotates behind him, as if he and the camera are sitting on some kind of turn-table.
I, for one, am not buying Huckabee's lame brush-off. It was downright Cintonesque.
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