There has been a lot of smart commentary about McCain’s ads of the last week, some of it parsing the subtle undertone of race. I believe that this is misplaced, because the thrust of the ads is that Obama is a puffed-up bullshit-spouting celebrity bolstered by a smitten media and ga-ga fans, not a puffed-up African-American bullshit-spouting celebrity bolstered by a smitten media and ga-ga fans. Though, as Adam Serwer notes,

The rapturous coverage of the Obama campaign during the primary was less about Obama himself than it was America congratulating itself for being willing to consider a black man for president, with the subtext being that the United States had finally liberated itself from its racist past.

However, none of the McCain ad commentary I’ve read has noted that the “Britney and Barack” and “The One” ads could have come straight from the Daily Show.

Here’s a similar smart-alecky move from the McCainiacs:

McCain aides are distributing them to the campaign’s travelling press corps and back at the HQ they’re offering Obama tire gauges in exchange for donors who send in $25.

“John McCain says we need offshore oil drilling and we need it now,” says campaign manager Rick Davis in an email to supporters. “Senator Barack Obama has consistently opposed offshore drilling - calling it a “gimmick.” Senator Obama’s solution to high gas prices is telling Americans to make sure their tires are inflated.”

Those lambasting McCain would do well to remember the most striking sentence he wrote about himself in his recollections about his captivity at the hands of the North Vietnamese:

“Acts of defiance felt so good that I felt they more than compensated for their repercussions,”

Something tells me that for better or worse, win or lose, McCain will continue to defy those who tell him what he can and cannot do, and will continue do things his own way—even including the Daily Show way.