ABC news reports: “MoveOn.org, which has endorsed Barack Obama for president, is encouraging citizens to develop 30-second pro-Obama television ads which will be judged by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Oliver Stone, multiple Grammy-winner John Legend and others.” Oh, my. My first thought: how happy must this make John McCain? In fact, I’m not so sure this isn’t a SNL parody or a sly gag by the RNC. MoveOn.org and Oliver Stone lining up behind Obama? If you are an aspiring filmmaker, do you play for Stone’s vote with a wild conspiracy piece tying the JFK assassination, 9/11, and Mark Penn together? (If the winning film stars Reverend Jeremiah Wright, we’ll know this is really Karl Rove oppo work gone wild.)

On a slightly serious note, isn’t this starting to look like a pattern for Obama? Already identified with a wife and minister who think America is mean and racist, Obama would do well to get back in the mainstream of American values and not associate himself with organizations and people who have made a career of denigrating America and ingratiating themselves with America’s enemies. It probably is not a good idea to have as the contest sponsor the group whose idea of effective political advertising is a full page in the New York Times vilifying an Amercian general with a second grade pun ( “General Betray-Us”) . And does Obama really want as an ad judge the film director who hobnobbed with Hugo Chavez (and defended FARC) and made a fawning documentary about Fidel Castro? And you wonder why Obama is losing the lunchpail Democrats.