Simple question from Bob Herbert of the New York Times:
Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.
Simple answer: Guess who’s coming to dinner? It’s a black man that’s dating your white daughter. But, I don’t need to tell Bob Herbert. He knows. Here he compares the Paris & Britney ad to the Harold Ford Playboy bunny ad and explains the motivation for creating them.
The ad, which the committee described as a parody, showed a scantily clad woman whispering, “Harold, call me.”
Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.
You’d think a guy raised by his white mother would get some kind of special dispensation to date white women. You’d be wrong. And, in any case, Barack Obama married a nice, smart, beautiful black woman…so what’s the problem?
The problem is that the Republicans are playing on something visceral and subconscious. Just as the the makers of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner intentionally chose a liberal white family to demonstrate that racism lingers longest and deepest on the subject of sexuality. I’ll work with them, live with them, drink with them, play with them, but I don’t want my daughter dating, let alone marrying, them. That’s the attitude of countless ‘tolerant’ white people and not a few ‘tolerant’ black people, too.
It is what it is. But just because we can’t change people’s hearts and make them race-blind doesn’t mean we have any right to exploit those feelings for political gain. And that is what the Republicans do, and have done, ever since they adopted the Southern Strategy and betrayed their legacy as the party of Lincoln.
Mention any of this and…RACE CARD!! comes flying back in your face.
look for the RACE CARD mudsling to shred.
Obama’s response
This fall, after the stimulus checks are spent, people will want to know from McCain how he intends to manage their pain…not whether Obama is black or too fit to be president.
It’s the weekend and the FDIC has taken over another bank. If it’s Friday, another bank has failed – the 8th failure this year with 142 more banks on the watch list.
link
yeah, you’re too smooth…. we read the same..great minds… thanks.
Rove is also an outside advisor.
how’s the beach?
Enjoy.
I meant that comment on economic pain. Bank Credit Analyst (BCA Research) guys are wooorrriieedd. Very. Really they do not hype. CEOs and heads of state – (except Bush does not read) – are their clients. They have an excellent track record over 40 years at leaast. (subscription at $2,000/year). BCA at the worried level, then we little people need bunkers with a store of food and water. This is an unwinding over the next 4 years.
Absolute unmanageable disaster.
Almost not want Obama to deal with the Bush mess. He’ll be a one-termer. The Clintons are happy. Let McCain have it.
I am actually surprised that they don’t bring up the subject that he is half white and married a black woman. Whatever would suit their agenda.
Calling someone a race-mongrel will not win you any votes. We’ve evolved beyond that. Now the messages have to be much more subtle.
Yikes! I did a doubletake and said I don’t remember writing this, before I realized I’m Joyful on here and not Joy!
McCain’s Paris Hilton ad made no sense unless its designed for what you describe.
I thought the same when I first saw that ad. There is no reason for that ad other than the underlying racial tones mentioned above.
I will add my vote to the idea that the Paris – Britney ad only makes sense that it was designed to stir racist anti-Obama feelings. They are hoping to achieve some of the success of the Harold Ford ad.
I will add one other observation – McCain/Schmidt have hired a legion of internet savvy campaign workers whose turf will be exclusively the internet and special video sites like YouTube and Myface, etc.
Right now these guys are working in the “creative shotgun” mode. (Remember it’s still before the general election.) Currently they are brainstorming ad topics, blasting them thru design, and then sticking them up on some website like YouTube to see if it works.
This is a 24 Hour, 7 days a week smear ad generation factory with only one target, Barack Obama. Schmidt doesn’t care about sillyness, crossing the line, racism, or any of that stuff. All he wants is a catalog filled with crap covered dirt, of which any one item you publicize STICKS & STICKS HARD!! Why the panic? Well, in Schmidt’s view, McCain wasted a lot of time before deciding to get REAL NEGATIVE, and so now they are running hard to get an effective proven (negative) playbook in order. Oh BTW did I mention unlimited OT??
So expect to see a flood of all kinds of nasty stuff coming out of McCain HQ leading up to the conventions, including a generous sprinkling of dirty tricks, 527 style.
Lots of busy folks on the ol’ “straight talk express”!!
They’re pretty stupid to boot – the ad would have been somewhat effective if they would have used some “virtuous” white women. Brittney and Paris aren’t exactly respected by the ad’s target audience, to say the least.
I don’t know – having it be trashy white women seems to be comparing him more to some kind of P-I-M-P rather than a guy who’s going to steal away your daughter. Either way, it puts him in crappy company, implying that he’s like any other talentless celebrity.
If you’re a Republican strategist trying to get a candidate elected, you’ve got a big problem– there aren’t many issues on which you have the upper hand. The GOP stands for almost nothing these days; they gave up their franchise on responsible money management, and also on competent conduct of foreign affairs. On just about every poll on every issue, the Republicans are on the wrong side of the fence. So, the only electoral tool they have to work with is to get down and nasty.
It’s easy to tell that McCain and his campaign decided to play the race card against Obama. They could have used any of a number of African-American celebrities, from Jesse Jackson to Oprah. Hell, they could have use African-American male rappers for that matter. Nope, they went for nubile, young white women — for both examples.
That’s the giveaway. Had they used only one white women as the example of celebrity and another of different race or gender, one could have built a case that the McCain campaign wasn’t playing the race card. McCain couldn’t resist the urge to go the full neocon monte, so we now know he did play the race card and is likely a racist too boot since he displays absolutely no understanding of what he’s done.
They had better be very careful here with this race baited shit. H. Ford just married this past late spring early Summer to a very lovely white girl and Clarence Thomas, of the Supreme court way has a white wife….so lets go for it and see just what settles for biased. Cohan (dp) from Clintons Dept of Defence married a black lady and he was and is still a republican, if my memory serves me correctly.
Remember the overall GOP strategy:
Make the emotionally complex decision to vote for Obama so uncomfortable and difficult that either people stay home completely or McCain becomes the candidate of absolution.
The fewer votes cast, the easier it becomes to disenfranchise those votes.