WASHINGTON (AP) – The McCain campaign today admitted that the “Celebrity” attack ad supposedly released by the Obama campaign in retaliation for the “Celebrity” attack ad recently released by the McCain campaign, was actually just a parody ad released by the McCain campaign.

“McCain exhibits his deft touch at good-natured self-mockery.”

“John’s always had a great sense of humor,” said McCain campaign spokesman Jeff Sadosky, “and after the Paris Hilton ‘Celebrity’ parody ad, John suggested we make a parody of our own – like it was done by the Obama campaign. Trouble is, we may have done it TOO good, since a lot of Obama supporters didn’t get the joke and thought it was a REAL Obama ad. I guess Democrats really ARE as stupid as we think.”
McCain’s campaign issued a press release today, listing some of the “tip-offs” that this wasn’t a real Obama ad:
* Blatant rip-off of the flash bulb effect from the original McCain ‘Celebrity’ ad.
* McCain Featured with famous liberal comedians David Letterman, Whoopi Goldberg, Jay Leno, Steve Carell, and the whole crew of Saturday Night Live, thus creating positive emotional connections with the vaguely-liberal swing-voter bloc.
* McCain is consistently shown in this commercial smiling, laughing, being cheerful, and giving thumbs up while humorously upbeat music plays in the background. Normal attack ads show grim, dour images of the attackee in black & white backed by somber – almost funereal – piano chords.
* McCain laughs boisterously while the words “NOTHING FOR YOU” appear under him, in a VERY obvious allusion to lolcats.
* The exaggeratedly amateurish use of the same video clip flipped horizontally to show McCain “lurching to the right, then the left”.
* Pro-McCain image of “drilling here, drilling now”.
* Two uses of the word “old”, including one in text right underneath his name, an homage to Paris Hilton’s “He’s the oldest celebrity in the world” line.
* When Obama’s picture is finally shown at the end, the music stops as if to say “Party’s over. No more good times in America.”

“I don’t know what more we could’ve done to give it away,” said Sadosky, “unless we had a line in there about John ‘Sidney‘ McCain having a funny name and not having hair like the other presidents on US currency.”