Missing Celebrity!

A John McCain TV commercial compares Barack Obama to celebrities:

Paris Hilton — check.

Britney Spears — check.

Mary-Kate Olsen — hey! Where is she? If I were her, my feelings would be hurt.

Mary-Kate Olsen is on the cover and the authoritative page six of the New York Post. So why isn’t Mary-Kate in Senator McCain’s commercial?

M-K is hanging tough with Federal investigators, demanding immunity from prosecution as a condition of her testimony about her role in the prescription drug overdose death of film actor Heath Ledger. Among those Rx drugs: OxyContin, (“Oxycodone Continuous Relief”), a form of the same opioid abused by Mrs. McCain.

That’s right. The McCain campaign should be reluctant to draw attention to the issue of prescription drug diversion. After years of drug abuse (which lost her doctor his license and included theft of drugs from a medical charity for children), Mrs. McCain was sentenced to an indeterminate sentence in a luxury spa, and somehow avoided a felony record. Maybe M-K will settle for the same deal.

Mrs. McCain is writing an autobiography (with help from Beth Brophy), and NotionsCapital advised her (more than once) to get the chapter on her drug problem and recovery out before now, as a magazine article. With proper timing, Mrs. McCain could have come across as a combination of Betty Ford and Eleanor Roosevelt.

The magazine excerpt hasn’t happened, and the McCain celebrity commercial has opened up a new style of “tabloid presidential campaign.”  Well, we tried.

Americans would have known the dangers of OxyContin sooner, but manufacturer Purdue Pharma claimed it was much safer than other opioids. Why wasn’t Purdue Pharma punished by the government? The company hired a celebrity lobbying firm: Giuliani Partners.

 

Stop the presses! Image by Mike Licht in awestruck admiration of Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KCSG . Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

The phrase “New York Post” and layout representation are used under the satire clause of the the Fair Use Provision.