Opinion: Sometimes a bookshelf isn’t a bookshelf

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When is a Christmas greeting not just a Christmas greeting? When it’s paid-for a presidential campaign. Mike Huckabee’s new television ad, in which he reminds viewers (and Iowa voters) that “what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ,” is notable not just for its explicit invocation of Jesus but for some subtle iconography that recalls the subliminal ads associated with the 1950s.

Behind Huckabee in the ad are bookshelves whose intersection with a divider forms a cross. In the next ad, perhaps Huckabee could position a picture of Mitt Romney on a shelf in front of a box with two protruding pencils, causing viewers to wonder: Could it be Satan’s brother?