The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir. (Mr. Obama in Muslim garb with the American flag burning in the fireplace.) It’s driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches — a man who obviously does not know his place.
Running While Black
By BOB HERBERT
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.
Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”
There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us — the “us” being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at.
Since then, Senator McCain has only upped the ante, smearing Mr. Obama every which way from sundown. On Wednesday, The Washington Post ran an extraordinary front-page article that began:
“For four days, Senator John McCain and his allies have accused Senator Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.”
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Thanks, Bob. I am so tired
Thanks, Bob. I am so tired of listening to all of these mealy-mouthed liberals and post-racial kneegrow explainers trying to convince me and others why attack ads against Obama featuring white skanks like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are not about race. Of course, these ads are about race.
Attack ads have a long and
Attack ads have a long and celebrated history in the United States. Prior to the advent of television, newspapers ran attack cartoons virtually since the founding of the Republic. MA MA WHERE IS MY PA, GONE TO THE WHITE HOUSE HA HA HA - was an attack on Grover Cleveland (he had an illigitimate child), and Cleveland's people called Alexander Blaine "The Continental Liar from the State of Maine".
The web site: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/284996.html has a very nice list of attack ads on television. Notice that the first attack ads were in the 1952 campaign where the Democrats claimed that the Republican were flip floppers. The most famous attack ad was the Daisy spot used by LBJ against Goldwater. The most effective was the WIlie Horton (the convict not the baseball player (go TIGERS)) ad used by Bush I against Dukakis. Mr Lincoln was reviled by the Democrats during his reelection campaign in which he was called everything but a white man.
As long as Mr Obama does not do something stupid, he will win. All the attack ads show is that he is in the big leagues.
(that Darth Vador cartoon of McCain posted here was spot on and hilarious)
The issue is not about
The issue is not about attack ads. The issue is about attack ads that are aimed at playing on racist resentments and stereotypes and the difficulties encountered by Obama and his supporters when they attempt to point this fact out.
BTW, I could be mistaken because I haven't looked at any primary sources on this subject for years but I seem to recall that the accusations about Cleveland fathering a child out of wedlock were false.
Not all attack ads are false. I once wrote and designed a four-part fold brochure for a non-partisan political race that only had six words on the all white cover, which were the name of the incumbent near the top and the words: "The Republican Party Choice..." at the bottom. When a reader opened up the brochure to the second page, inside on the left hand side, she saw "...and the choice of banks, oil companies and housing speculators, too." Then it listed some of the financial contributions this incumbent had received from these companies etc.
I then mailed the brochure into a part of the district that contained more than 7,000 registered Democrats versus only 850 or so Republicans. Many of the registered Democrats had no idea the incumbent was a registered Republican because, as I wrote above, these elections were non-partisan. The incumbent's support in that portion of the district plummeted and we knocked him off in the run-off and actually elected a progressive Democrat.
P.S. I forgot to add that the so-called smart Democratic operatives in town, many of whom went on to become operatives and consultants to the DLC and their candidates and are now owed millions of dollars by Hillary Clinton, were appalled by the brochure. They thought it was too radical. Yes, the absolute horror of accusing a Republican of representing the interests of corporations instead of the middle and working class community he represented was just too much for these so-called Democrats to bear. They told the press, anonymously of course, that we would be lucky not to get beat two to one. So much for the conventional wisdom boys.