That's the choice some Democratic bedwetters are putting to us in the wake of John McCain's Britney/Paris/Barack commercial.
Let me stipulate that I think it's a stupid ad. I think it's perfectly normal and legitimate to attack Obama as a flash in the pan celebrated for shallow reasons that have nothing to do with his ability to govern. McCain ought to be doing this, exploiting people's doubts about the young senator's gravitas (Obama went on the overseas trip in the first place to help dispel those doubts). But the ad itself was not funny. The tone was all wrong. It should have been Jon Stewart-y; instead, it features the voiceover of a woman who sounds like she's a doctor about to deliver a cancer diagnosis. McCain ought to be poking fun at the Obamessiah image, not acting like it's a threat to the future of the Republic.
Still, Democrats and Obama supporters, especially his amen corner in the MSM, are having a nuclear meltdown over the dumb ad. Their reaction signals a racialized campaign, and if Obama wins, a racialized presidency in which normal political disputes become racially charged, as the sanctimony of the Lightworker brigades leads them to declare their opponents not only wrong and stupid, but Evil. Let's unpack this. Read on.
Hollywood is clutching its collective pearls in anguish, the nation's editorial pages are having a connipition (including my own, despite Your Working Boy's best efforts yesterday). The New York Times accuses Team McCain of, get this, playing the O.J. Simpson card. The Wall Street Journal had a sensible take on the matter, saying McCain's ad "fell flat," but dinging Obama for his "Clintonesque" playing of the race card to defend himself, more on which in a moment. But nothing quite matches the Newsday blogger who accused McCain's ad of playing off fears of miscegenation, and nothing exceeds Rick Perlstein's crackhead-crazy accusation that the ad is meant to evoke Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda film "Triumph of the Will." As Ross Douthat puts it:
Here's a tip for liberals: If your candidate is going to stage enormous rallies in front of tens of thousands of chanting Germans (with monuments to Prussian military might in the background) in the middle of his Presidential campaign, it isn't the GOP's fault if the footage comes out looking a little like Hitler at Nuremberg.
Yesterday in the DMN editorial board meeting, I argued that while the McCain ad wasn't successful, if the point is to convey the allegation that Obama's celebrity is built on little or nothing, you really can't telegraph that more effectively than by using images of Britney and Paris. (And look, I'm old enough to remember that liberals back in the 1980s constantly belittled Ronald Reagan by saying he was nothing but a washed-up Hollywood actor, nothing more than a flash in the pan with nothing to offer but charisma.) I asked my colleagues which celebrities McCain might have used that wouldn't have offended them. I still haven't received an answer. The answer, I believe, is that no celebrities would have sufficed, because we have a different set of rules to criticize the Lightworker. Well, not all of us have gotten the memo that His Holiness is not to be mocked, nor his substance questioned.
A friend and I were talking about all this yesterday, and he put it to me, "I like Obama, and might actually vote for him. But the sanctimony of his supporters are driving me toward McCain against my will."
Obama really is playing the race card, invoking race when it can help him, and imputing racism to others when it's to his advantage. The remarkable thing is he uses virtually the same language to do so, as a reader of The Corner identified:
Obama camp now: John McCain and his Republican allies will try to scare them by saying Obama "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."Obama in Berlin: "I know that I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city."
Doesn't Obama need to explain why he's hurling such undignified attacks at his own campaign?
Even ABC News political correspondent Jake Tapper, a man not known to be a Republican stooge, said that Obama's imputation of racism to McCain was groundless and "pretty inflammatory."
I think Obama has the right comeback to McCain's Britney/Paris ad: "Is that all you've got?" It mocks it, and redirects attention away from the attack on Obama's celebrity to issues of substance. But Obama doesn't stop there. He has to get racial about it, which, along with much of the freaked-out reaction of his supporters in the media and elsewhere, telegraphs that any criticism of Obama is going to be seen as crypto-racist.
Depressing. It's going to be a long campaign, and if Obama wins, and even longer four years. Every normal political dispute is going to end up a racial dispute (one of my editorial board colleagues, an Obama supporter, said in yesterday's meeting that the McCain Britney commercial used lighting to highlight that Obama had "bling" on his hand, thereby sending a subtle signal to racists; she later retracted that absurd remark). You can see it coming. So much for idiots like me who used to think that an Obama presidency would be good for racial healing.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Francis, Archie did nothing but say what he believed. He never, far as the show went, acted on them.
But, if you're saying the girl doesn't say she has them, does nothing about them, shows no indication that she has them.. then, outside of the hypothetical world, how would you even KNOW she held that belief?
You used a famous example for one extreme, I used one for the other.
There is a TON of leeway in between. (Such as your Sicilian lady.)
If you're going to bring up a singular rather vapid celebritante, as one side, it isn't quite fair to use just an average Joe for the other.
Matt, I direct you to this site (add the usual):
primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/12600
and specifically to this quote from a month ago, which includes comments from Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (all words that follow are from the link above, not from me):
Echoing comments by Barack Obama, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius predicted that Republicans would undertake "a major effort to try and frighten people about him" because of his race.
"That has been the Republican playbook for the last eight years," said Sebelius, an Obama ally. ‘"He’s not qualified, he’s somebody who should scare you. He’s too liberaI.’"
The Kansas Democrat, often mentioned as a possible running mate for Obama, said those were all "code words" to try and make voters "uncomfortable."
"I don’t think anybody’s going to go directly at the race issue, but that’s going to be an underlying theme," she said in an interview this week.
Obama said much the same thing to an audience in Florida last week.
"They're going to try to make you afraid of me," the presumptive Democratic nominee said. ‘"He’s young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?"’
I'm not aware of any evidence of racism in John McCain, and I'm not aware of any racism in Barack Obama. But Rod, you live in this (well, in Dallas county, maybe not), you reside in one of the reddest of the red states where the Republican Party itself promotes racism, where, as the executive director once commented to me personally, "Of course, I love N---ers, every white man should own two." However, going back a ways, the manager of the Dukakis campaign also commented to me personally, "We don't need the N---er vote."
There's no shortage of racism in the USA, and it's not limited to one race. The thing is, a lot of us thought it was gone. Obama is entirely justified to complain about it and justified to use examples his audiences are ready for. It's just a travesty that both candidates are taking time away from discussing any of a number of truly vital issues facing us.
If Obama does become President, Rod, I think you're right, the level of discourse goes down from here. But over the long run, in terms of legacy, his election would promote racial healing in our country. The thing is, a lot of people will be too weary to notice.
"I recall Howard Fineman on Hardball saying when it came out that the purpose was Racial and that the fact it was brought out was because many East Tenn Voters perhaps did not know Harold Ford was black. Of course that was silly and insulting.
The white girl was in the ad because the people of East Tennessee knew darned well Harold Ford was black. I know the habits of the rabbits around here. I know what was being said about Ford and I know what is being said about Obama. Not our finest hour, I'm afraid.
Just exactly who are the real, most dangerous racists these days?
All stats are from the FBI and US Department of Justice. Remove the "*" and put "." in the links for them to work (sorry, otherwise my post won't go through).
Black people (men, women, and children) make up only about 12% of the USA, which logically makes "crime-age" black men ONLY about 6% of the US population, but somehow only 6% of the population commits over 50% of all murders, over 32% of all rapes, over 56% of all robberies, and over 34% of all aggravated assaults in the USA.
ojp*usdoj*gov/bjs/homicide/race*htm
fbi*gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_43*html
When viewing the stats linked above, be aware that the FBI and USDOJ counts Mestizos (the proper ethnic term for most Mexicans or "Latinos") as being WHITE, which unfairly raises the reported "white crime rate", ESPECIALLY the "white sex offender rate", much higher than it actually is in reality. Most Police Departments in the USA also do the same thing. Don't believe me? Check out the Sex Offender page of the Grand Prairie, Texas (a large suburb of Dallas) Police Department. Every Mestizo/Mexican/Latino/Whatever is categorized as being "white".
grandprairiepolice*org/sexoffender/75050*htm
Washington State, where I live now, does this too. Do these guys look white to you???
ml*waspc*org/offender*aspx?pid=292821&name=Garcia,%20Juvencio%20John&address=17xx%20Independence%20RD&city=Outlook%20&zip=98938
ml*waspc*org/offender*aspx?pid=1094963&name=Garcia,%20Israel%20Trevino&address=13xx%20Summerfield%20DR%20SE&city=Lacey%20&zip=98513
---------
ojp*usdoj*gov/bjs/pub/press/bvvcpr*htm
"Black Americans accounted for 13 percent of the U.S.
population in 2005 ...but were the victims of 49 percent of all homicides. Among single victim-single offender homicides, about 93 percent of black victims were murdered by black offenders."
ojp*usdoj*gov/bjs/abstract/bvvc*htm
"Blacks were victims of an estimated 805,000 nonfatal violent crimes and of about 8,000 homicides in 2005."
PLEASE KEEP IN MIND that 93% of those 8,000 black people killed in 2005 were killed BY OTHER BLACKS.
----------
Much has been made about the percieved threat that blacks feel from whites regarding noose-hangings lately.
What do you make of these following facts? This comes from "The History of Lynching In The United States", a class at The University of Massachusetts.
umass*edu/complit/aclanet/ACLAText/USLynch*html
"There are "2805 [documented] victims of lynch mobs killed between 1882 and 1930 in ten southern states. Although mobs murdered almost 300 white men and women, the vast majority - almost 2,500 - of lynch victims were African-American."
----------
I certainly think that any kind of violence is evil and that racist lynchings are particularly awful.
I do find it interesting that according to the US Government, at
ojp*usdoj*gov/bjs/pub/press/bvvcpr*htm
and
ojp*usdoj*gov/bjs/abstract/bvvc*htm
that at least 8,000 black people were murdered in 2005 alone, and that 93% of the murderers of these black people were black people themselves.
In light of the recent "Jena 6" situation, and the threat that black people have claimed to feel from whites because of it, what do you think about the fact that more black people were murdered by other black people (7,440 people, which is 93% of 8,000) in one year alone, 2005, than were murdered by all the white lynch mobs during the 48 years of 1882 through 1930 combined (about 2,500 people)?
This means that, in only one year, blacks killed almost 3 times the number of blacks than were killed by all the white lynch mobs during the 48 "peak-lynching years" combined!
Therefore, it stands to reason that the real, most dangerous threat to black people these days is not from racist white people or lynchings, but from black people themselves.
=====================
From the US Department of Justice:
ojp*usdoj*gov/bjs/abstract/cvusst*htm
Go to the "Victims and Offenders" and download the pdf document for 2005. Then go to table 42. It PLAINLY states:
"Type of crime and race of victim" for "Rape/sexual assault" : White only - Number of single-offender victimizations - 111,490- Percieved Race of Offender - Black - 33.6%."
33.6% of 111,490 is 37,460.
Here are the numbers for black victims of rape and sexual assault:
"Type of crime and race of victim for "Rape/sexual assault" : Black only - Number of single-offender victimizations - 36,620- Percieved Race of Offender - White - 0.0% *."
and if you follow the little asterix to the bottom of the page for the footnote, it says very clearly:
"Estimate is based on about 10 or fewer sample cases."
So there you go, plain as day. According to the US Department of Justice, in the year 2005 alone black men raped at least 37,460 white women, and in the same year white men raped less than ten black women.
Therefore, statistically, over 100 white women are being raped every day by black men.
======================================
When whites do violence like rape, murder, and assault, how often do they choose black victims? Shouldn't a nation of ant-black racists target blacks most of the time? At least half of the time? Of course, it does not. When whites commit violence, they do it to blacks 2.4 percent of the time. Blacks, on the other hand, choose white victims more than half the time.
So just exactly who are the REAL, MOST DANGEROUS racists these days? If you have any connection to reality you can easily see that it is not white people.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.