Huck's Christmas Ad Generating All Kinds of Weird Reactions

Mike Huckabee's seemingly innocuous Christmas ad (which you can see here) is generating all sorts of weird reactions. Drudge has been highlighting the "floating cross" as though it's some type of spooky omen (in fact, it's just the peculiarity of the lighting of a bookshelf behind Huckabee and the movement of the camera).

Money-rich but vote-poor candidate Ron Paul also had some thoughts on this morning's Fox and Friends:

STEVE DOOCY: Mike Huckabee has started running an ad in Iowa, where you're at right now, also in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and in the back, it's a windowpane but it also looks a lot like a cross. And, and, we had a guest a little while ago who said it was inappropriate to be using religion for political purposes. Congressman, I'm just curious what you think?

RON PAUL: Well, I haven't thought about it completely, but you know, it reminds me of what Sinclair, uh, Lewis once said, he said 'when Fascism comes to this country, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross.' I don't know whether that's a fair assessment or not, but you wonder about using a cross like he is the only Christian, or implying that subtly. So, uh, I don't think I would ever use anything like that.

Various folks at The Corner have been desperately trying to decipher the mysteries of the ad. Here's just a sample of the reactions from both Corner regulars and emailers:

From Rich Lowry: The more I think about it, that Huckabee ad may be the most subtly brilliant wedge ad ever. Per my e-mailer, it's bound to kick up a fuss, but in the ensuing fuss, Republican caucus-goers are going to side with Huckabee at least 80-20. So Huckabee is teeing up a controversy that's bound to benefit him, at the same time he can plausibly say, "I didn't mean to kick up any controversy—I was just wishing people Merry Christmas." You can almost hear him saying it already. You've got to give him credit—he's nothing if not very shrewd.
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From Kathryn Jean Lopez, who describes the ad as "brilliantly offensive": On the Huckabee Christmas commercial, I'm about where this reader is:

Huck's ad wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, while fine in any other context, strikes me as him once using religion to score political points for himself - something I find utterly repulsive. The ad not-so-subtly underlines the message that he's the Christian in the race (distinguishing himself from the Mormon, the adulterer, the movie star, etc, etc) and also appeals to all those Bill O'Reilly types who see generic 'holiday greetings' as proof of our eroding cultural heritage.

Ideally, I want a candidate whose faith informs their world view (they believe in God, they look to the Scripture for guidance and they pray often for strength and wisdom). However, what I don't want is someone who uses religion as a means to an ends. To me that's real scary. From his 'innocent' question regarding Romney's religious beliefs to this current ad on television, I think Huck crosses the line.
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From Jonah Goldberg: I agree with my colleagues on how savvy the Huck ad is. But I think it boils down almost entirely to the phrase "celebration of the Birth of Christ." If Huckabee had simply said this is a time to celebrate Christmas, it wouldn't have had nearly so much cultural oomph. A generic Christmas ad would still have been smart, because it would humanize him and makes him seem like he was taking the high road, but the "Birth of Christ" thing taps perfectly into a very common resentment about Christmas: that the Christianity is being taken out of it. This gives Huckabee's ad just the slightest spin as a volley in the "Christmas wars" but not enough for him to be fairly tagged as trying to politicize Christmas. Rather, that charge will be aimed at anyone who complains about the ad. It really is quite deft.
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From Mark Steyn: Jonah, the go-ahead-punk-make-my-day aspect to that "birth of Christ" business also leaves the ecumenical bit of Mitt Romney's speech - all that stuff about loving the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims, the gay outreach of the Episcopalians, whatever - seeming generic and wishy-washy. ...

The sub-text of Huck's ad is: I can't be bothered deferring to the vacuous generalities of the liberal establishment's pseudo-religion. Iowa's pretty much in the bag.

Everybody's working pretty hard to figure out what's really going on in what appears to me to be a pretty simple ad.

Blogger buddy and now Huck campaign staffer Joe Carter responded to the folks at The Corner:

NRO’s amusingly in-depth deconstruction of Governor Huckabee's "What Matters Ad" reminded me of this exchange from Whit Stillman's comedic masterpiece, Barcelona (1994).


Fred: Maybe you can clarify something for me. Since I've been, you know, waiting for the fleet to show up, I've read a lot, and...
Ted: Really?
Fred: And one of the things that keeps popping up is this about "subtext." Plays, novels, songs - they all have a "subtext," which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext?
Ted: The text.
Fred: OK, that's right, but they never talk about that.


Through clever eisegesis you guys have inserted the subtext. But the text—"God bless and Merry Christmas"—you never talk about that.

Joe was a good hire.

UPDATE: Huckabee responds to the ruckus:

(CNN) — Republican Mike Huckabee poked fun at critics who said a bookshelf in his new Christmas-themed ad that appeared to highlight the shape of a cross was meant to send a subliminal message.

“Actually I will confess this, if you play this spot backwards it says ‘Paul is Dead, Paul is Dead, Paul is Dead,’” the presidential candidate joked to reporters in Houston Tuesday. “So the next thing you know, someone will be playing it backwards to find out the subliminal messages that are really there.”

The ad is intended for the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The former Arkansas governor said the spot was last-minute and ad-libbed: “They had a bookshelf behind me, a bookshelf. So now I have these people saying, ‘ahhh there was a subtle message there,’” said Huckabee. “….I never cease to be amazed at the manner in which people will try to dissect the simplest messages, can't even say ‘Merry Christmas’ anymore without somebody getting all upset about it.”