By Mike Glover
PHOENIX (AP) --If you think you’ve heard this line of attack before, there’s a reason.
Republican John McCain’s latest TV spot is playing off Hillary Rodham Clinton’s best-known ad against Barack Obama to heighten any concerns that Obama isn’t ready to take a 3 a.m. phone call that could signal a crisis demanding judgment and experience.
The McCain ad debuted Tuesday, just hours before Clinton was to address the Democratic National Convention in Denver. While she was expected to repeat her post-primary support for Obama’s candidacy in an effort to bring her supporters to his side, McCain’s campaign didn’t want voters to forget that she had once considered McCain to be more experienced.
Opening with a scene lifted from Clinton’s old ad, the McCain spot then switches to scenes of war, missiles and hooded gunmen as an announcer says: “Uncertainty. Dangerous aggression. Rogue nations. Radicalism.” Clinton herself is shown saying: “I know Sen. Mc Cain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.”
The announcer adds: “Hillary’s right. John McCain for president.”
The 30-second spot was running in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin as well as in Denver.
McCain ads using Clinton’s words against Obama drew the New York senator’s ire on Monday. She told delegates from her state, “I’m Hillary Clinton and I do not approve that message.”
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said Tuesday that Clinton laid the groundwork for making the case that Obama, a first-term Illinois senator, wasn’t ready to lead the nation. McCain will spend much of the fall campaign fleshing out that argument, Bounds said.
Clinton’s commercial, which aired as she struggled to stop Obama’s march to the nomination, was designed to reinforce the message that her years as first lady and in the Senate gave her the experience that’s needed to govern in a troubled world . The ad was stark and designed to be frightening, using the image of children asleep in their beds and a telephone ringing in the middle of the night.
“It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep,” the announcer said. “Who do you want answering the phone?” In answer to that question, the ad ended with a shot of Clinton at work.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More