Ad Review: MoveOn's Obama Misfire

Since I so thoroughly trashed John McCain's pitiful campaign ad slamming media coverage of Barack Obama, I feel it's only fair to turn the same critical eye on a new pro-Obama spot from MoveOn.org, one that will have the distinction of being the first political ad ever to run on Comedy Central.

(By the way, a new study from the Center for Media and Public Affairs found that the press was actually harsher on Obama than McCain during the opening weeks of the general election. How's that for reality conspiring against McCain?)

But I'm finding it hard to give the commercial a fair shake. It arrived in my in-box with a press release announcing it had been picked as the "funniest video" in a poll of MoveOn members. That's a little like being the official perfume of the Anosmia Foundation, no?

More to the point, the empty-headed repetition of the "hope" mantra seems like the kind of thing savvy Daily Show and Colbert Report viewers expect to see mocked. Satire and uncritical adoration are an uneasy fit.

But maybe I'm wrong? Watch for yourself: