It's Official
The GOP is the party for racists. I thought Deval Patrick had it bad in Massachusetts, this is an advertisement the RNC has put up against black candidate Harold Ford Jr in Tennessee.
posted by mochi at 7:43 PM
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
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9 Comments:
Its October 24th, we should be getting an al Qaeda video anyday now.
Or perhaps the capture of the 2nd in command of al-Qaeda.
Seriously, ok, how many second-in-commands can these guys have? Are they all, like, tied for second-in-command or something? Does al-Qaeda have a BCS-like rating system provided by al-Jazeera news for who gets to be second in command and there just happens to be a deadlock?
Because if they do, theyre doing a bad job and if they ran our BCS, we would never have a national title game. Would we have ever seen Vince Young bring Texas back over USC last year? I dont know.
And that ad was seriously ridiculous. I know there have to be some Republicans out there willing to actually debate an issue. Maybe two. What is the funniest thing, is that ad doesnt even mention who Harold Ford is running against. It does not mention Corker's name ANYWHERE IN THE AD.
Racist? Did I miss something?
-Jack
That blonde doesn't play on people's fears of multi-racial relationships? Give me a break. Even conservatives think this ad crosses the line.
My two cents about all this negativity is that it's insulting to my intelligence. When politicians paint complex policy issues with absurdly broad strokes, who does it help? I guess the ones running the ads are hoping it gets stupid people to vote for them. Again, insulting.
Sorry, Mochi, I must be pretty naive. I didn't realize that.
-Jack
Agree with you also, Smorg. It is a pretty tacky ad.
Hi Smorg,
I noticed the other post is gone. I certainly hope that you didn't think I was attacking you personally. Like always I was trying to respond to the ideas presented. I never look at disagreement as an issue affecting fellowship and the exchange of information, ideas and opinions.
My apologies, though, if I was offensive.
-Jack
Yeah what happened to that post, it was pretty cool.
Mochi,
I have a friend, Ralph Bristol, who does a radio show and a daily email newsletter. Here is his take on this issue:
Stupid demagogues annoy
Ralph Bristol
October 31, 2006
It bothers me when people are falsely accused of such things as racism, and rarely has the accusation gotten under my skin more than the ongoing barrage of demagoguery over the campaign ad that targeted Congressman Harold Ford, running for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee.
DeWayne Wickham, a columnist for the USA Today is the latest to join the cacophony. Wickham first described the ad, which includes a young white actress, cooing on camera, “I met Harold at the Playboy party (a reference to Ford's attendance at a party that Playboy hosted during the 2005 Super Bowl).” As the commercial closes, the woman says with a wink, “Harold, call me.”
Wickham then writes, “The commercial plays to the fears of whites who think interracial relationships are taboo.”
People, please – stop and think with that part of your brain that filters out silliness and concentrates solely on logic. Is it logical to believe that even one voter in Tennessee who fits the definition of “whites who think interracial relationships are taboo,” would be a likely Ford voter were it not for that ad? How many white separatists vote for African American candidates? Is Ken Mehlman so stupid that he would waste money trying to convince white separatists not to vote for a black candidate?
Wickham starts his column by saying, “Last year, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman apologized for the race-baiting tactics that members of his party used for decades to court white voters in Southern states. Last week, he started backsliding.” That race-baiting charge has spread like wildfire throughout American political punditry. It is completely unsupported by facts or logic, and yet it has gone practically unchallenged by Republicans, who are so fearful of the charge itself, that they hesitate even to defend themselves when it’s leveled, choosing instead to try to ignore it and move on.
When I first saw the ad, I thought it was sarcastic and probably misleading, but it never occurred to me that it was playing the race card. There are so many black-white power couples in our country that they don’t even generate a second look anymore.
As I understand it, one of the last vestiges of jealousy and/or separatism when it comes to mixed relationships are black woman, some of whom feel slighted when a black man chooses a white woman for his mate. It may be that the ad touched a nerve among black women, and people who empathize with black women, but if that was intentional, it was equally stupid. Would a smart political operator spend money trying to convince either white or black separatists to vote against a black man?
White separatists won’t vote for him anyway, and black female separatists are about as likely to vote for a white Republican (Ford’s opponent) as they are for a green frog.
In a year when the campaign for control of the Senate is so close, it would be a colossal waste of money for Mehlman to spend a nickel, let alone tens of thousands of dollars for such a needless mission.
The same people who lavish praise on Melham and Karl Rove for being brilliant political strategists accuse them of doing things that would not only constitute race-baiting, but would be a monument to political stupidity.
For the record, savvy race-baiters are those who play on racial fears or hatred to convince white voters to vote against white candidates who indulge blacks, or to convince black voters to vote against black candidates who are too comfy with whites. The use of race-baiting to convince white separatists to vote against black candidates would be like using your fattest worm to try to catch a fish that’s already in your boat.
I don’t know whether the racially charged criticism of the ad is intentionally sinister, or whether Wickham et al are actually foolish enough to believe what they say and write. Either way, it annoys me that they are getting away with it
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