T

alk about your racist assumptions.  If Sarah Palin says “soccer mom,” it’s racist, but if an Obama supporter says blacks are the kind of people who just can’t help themselves and will riot if things don’t go their way, well heck, that’s hardly something to be elevated to the same hateful level as “Joe Sixpack.”

I’d heard about the rioting meme some time back but was reminded of it this week when ultra-Dem James Carville said to Anderson Cooper after the debate:

Now let me be clear here, if Obama goes in this race with a 5- point lead and losing this election, the consequences are—bull, man. I mean I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I think David it’s a point to bring up.

But you stop and contemplate this country if Obama goes in and he has a consistent five point lead and loses the election, it would be very, very, very dramatic out there.

Talk about speaking in code.  “Very, very dramatic out there,” in case you didn’t know, is code for “black people taking to the street, breaking windows, looting, beating up any stray whites they come across, and burning down the ‘hood.” But you knew that.

I’ve done a bit of poking about and I’ve found some more code-speak from Dems that could be as riot race-baiting.  Let’s start with Philly Daily News columnist Fatima Ali, who wrote:

If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness – and hopelessness!

I looked it up in my handy-dandy code book and “full-fledged race and class war” is code for “black people taking to the street, breaking windows, looting, beating up any stray whites they come across, and burning down the ‘hood.”

A post at One News Now gives us the academic’s view:

A recent Associated Press-Yahoo News poll suggested Senator Obama’s race could cost him up to six percentage points on election night. David Corbin, a politics professor at The King’s College, contends there is potential for public riots the night of or after the election, if Obama’s lead in the polls does not translate into victory.

“I don’t think that’s something that we’ve looked at very closely, and I think that this could be a powder keg here as we get towards that day, given that Senator Obama is an African-American and given that there might be some backlash if he actually loses,” Corbin explains.

“Powder keg?” “Backlash?” Those are code for “black people taking to the street, breaking windows, looting, beating up any stray whites they come across, and burning down the ‘hood,” but stated more academically, of course.

Finally, over at Obama News Weekly, aka Newsweek, Allison Samuels threads the racial needle for us.

In the African-American community, the thinking on Obama’s candidacy has gone something like this: In the beginning, there was disbelief that a black man could become president. Then, when Obama became the Democratic nominee and soared in the polls, listeners were concerned for his safety. Now that the race with John McCain is as tight as Sarah Palin’s smile, Baisden’s audience has started to worry about Election Day itself. There is still a fair amount of optimism in the black community, but it’s being tempered by two words: what if. What if Obama loses? How should people respond? What should they feel?

One would think they’d feel a lot like I felt when Bill Clinton got elected.  Pretty much, “Shoot! We’re going to have at least four years of this guy, and he’s going to mess things up.” Then I went to sleep, got up the next morning, and went to work … like black supporters of Gore and Kerry did in 2000 and 2004.  But that’s not what Samuels would have folks – is “folks” that racist? – do:

There’s not a lot of anger—yet—but you can start to sense the potential for it.

If Samuels were an attorney, someone would be standing up right about now and shouting, “I object! Leading the witness.”  At least if she were a TV attorney.

“I’m going to be mad, real mad, if he doesn’t win,” says Daetwon Fisher, 21, a construction worker from Long Beach, Calif. “Because for him to come this far and lose will be just shady and a slap in black people’s faces. I know there is already talk about protests and stuff if he loses, and I’m down for that.”

Well I’ve never quite confronted racism right in my face like this before.  Am I supposed to think that black people cannot process negative news?  That if things don’t go their way, they’re down for protests and stuff?  Shouldn’t Samuels have added some sort of “don’t generalize” disclaimer?  But she didn’t. Instead she goes on:

Jacon Richmond … spent two years in prison for possession of marijuana and has never voted before. “I thought, ‘What’s the point?’ But my mom started talking about Obama last year and getting so excited about him, I started paying attention.” Now Richmond reads the paper and is talking to his buddies about the importance of the election. But since this is his first time voting, he has no idea what it feels like to lose, and he’s not sure what he’s going to feel.

Really?  He didn’t feel like he lost when he lost in court and went to jail?  This got me wondering:  When he had sex for the first time, was there a chance he’d become a serial killer because he wasn’t sure what he was going to feel?  When he got freed from jail, was there a chance he’d become a priest and work with lepers because he wasn’t sure what he was going to feel?

Samuels would have us fear the reaction of this young  black ex-con, because that fear serves Obama well, in three ways.

First, it encourages more blacks to vote for Obama.  Second, it encourages whatever whites may be struggling against their inner racist to be shamed into voting for Obama since the black population obviously wants him so badly.  And finally, it just might get some whites – particularly those who live or own property in predominantly black areas – to cast a “safety vote” for Obama.

But remember all you soccer moms and Joe Sixpacks, drumming up this fear by casting blacks as violent primitives who are incapable of dealing maturely with the ups and downs of Democracy isn’t racist. And it sure isn’t what we thought they meant by “change you can believe in.”

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Y

esterday at a political campaign rally, Sarah Palin thrilled the mostly white audience when she said,

Dit-dit dit-dah dah-dah dit-dit-dit dit-dah dit-dah-dit dit-dah dit-dit-dit-dit dit-dah-dah-dit dit-dah dit-dah-dit-dit dit-dit dah-dit.

At least that’s how the Black Congressional Caucus heard it, the New York Observer tells us:

“They are trying to throw out these codes,” said Representative Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York.

“He’s ‘not one of us?’” Mr. Meeks said, referring to a comment Sarah Palin made at a campaign rally on Oct. 6 in Florida. “That’s racial. That’s fear. They know they can’t win on the issues, so the last resort they have is race and fear.”

Meeks is the race-monger here; trying to get blacks and people with politically correct hyper-sensitivity to turn away from McCain/Palin (as if that was a big problem to Obama/Biden ticket). He understands that the “He’s not one of us” comment was made in the context of the Obama-Ayres association, and had to do with his opinon of America, not the color of his skin.

Another Black Caucus member with a name you’ll recognize took another tack:

“If McCain’s attacks don’t cross the line, they’re certainly teetering on it,” said Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois. “He is certainly appealing to people’s fears and not their hopes.”

Mr. Jackson took issue with the McCain campaign’s attack on Mr. Obama’s connection to Mr. Ayers, who committed acts of domestic terrorism when Mr. Obama was 8 years old, and contrasted that with Mr. McCain’s long relationships with erstwhile supporters of segregation in the Senate like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond.

“Should McCain be held responsible for having served with segregationalists when he was 8 years old, 18 years old, 28 years old, 38 years old, 48 years old, 58 years old, 68 years old?” Mr. Jackson said. “Did he ever meet with any of them? Did he ever conference with them or work with them? Did McCain quit the Senate instead of work with them?”

Of course Jackson overlooks something rather obvious in his far-left (that’s GovTrak‘s assessment, not mine) rhetoric. Thurmond was elected to Congress; Ayres blew up Congress. Oh, and BTW, did Jackson resign from the House because Thurmond was in the Senate? After all, they served in Congress together form 1995 to 2003.

Yvette Clark saw racism in another common line from Palin’s speeches:

“Some may say their true colors are showing,” said Representative Yvette Clarke of New York. “Others may say they’re just not being thoughtful. But certainly a lot of the language I’ve heard I consider to be incendiary. I believe it is meant to generate a certain sentiment within their base that engenders fear and certainly appeals to a group of people within our society who would pursue this along racial lines.

“It’s very clear,” she said.

Ms. Clarke also found a racial subtext in Ms. Palin’s repeated appeals to “Joe Six-Pack” and “hockey moms.”

“Who exactly is Joe Six-Pack and who are these hockey moms? That’s what I’d like to know,” she said. “Is that supposed to be terminology that is of common ground to all Americans? I don’t find that. It leaves a lot of people out.”

Saying Joe Six-Pack cannot be black is racist in itself. Who exactly decreed this? What does Clarke think? Black men don’t work? It has to be Joe Crack-Rock to be black? And if Clarke thinks that basketball moms can’t see themselves in hockey moms, she’s got some pretty impenetrable walls in her perception; besides, the expression clearly comes from Palin’s personal history; it is not code.

Finally, NY State Senator Kevin Parker added this:

“If you have to remind people that Barack Obama is African-American, you have reached the bottom.”

From the quotes above, we see reference to a white terrorist, a white Senator, blue collar workers and everyday moms. I’m not seeing here, nor have I seen on any tapes of any McCain or Palin presentations, any reference, direct or indirect, to Sen. Obama’s race. So who exactly is reminding people that Barack Obama is African-American?

From the very outset of this campaign, most of us realized that any criticism of Obama would be cast as racist, and the Black Caucus is proving us right. Here they are in an America that by all indications is on the cusp of electing a black man president, an America where their own Frank Raines is $20 million richer thanks to our system, an America where TV commercials routinely show mixed-race couples, and all they can do is cry “racism.”

If I call them stupid and pathetic, does it make me a racist?

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A Mighty Wind

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s wind power ready to step up, step in and replace tried and trusted energy-producing technologies? Well, this photo seems to say maybe not. I am reminded of a Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live when Amy Poehler reported:

According to a new report by the Energy Department, wind turbines can produce a fifth of the nation’s annual electricity needs within about two decades. Which could drastically reduce our dependence on foreign wind.

Twenty percent in twenty years – oh, great! Let’s just shut down the oil biz now and twiddle our thumbs ’til 2028. As Dylan said (in a line William Ayres really, really liked), “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Hat-tip: Jim Continue Reading »

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I

really didn’t think that thick-headed, close-minded hatred and bias could get any more pronounced than yesterday’s NYT editorial on McCain and the race card … but leave it to NYT op/ed scribe Bob Herbert to go even further, as he did today.

I swear, the man isn’t just totally confused about race and racism, he’s obsessed with sex, particularly white women sex, it seems.

Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.

The Republican National Committee targeted Harold Ford with a similarly disgusting ad in 2006 when Mr. Ford, then a congressman, was running a strong race for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee. 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.

Like most men, I’m more than a bit nuts about female physiology. Curves, legs, breasts … phew! But when I saw the fleeting snippets of Britney and Paris fly by in the McCain ad, the last thing that occurred to me was the, er, indelicate photos of them exiting cars. Neither is on the screen for more than a half second and both are standing, surrounded by crowds, and wearing normal red carpet clothing. The GOP could not have been more careful in their photo selection: The photos say “celebrity,” they don’t say “vulnerable white women about to be raped by black thugs.” There was nothing “incongruous” about their placement in the ad whatsoever. The ad is about celebrities with obsessive fans, not about sex, so the ad showed celebrities and excessive fans: Britney, Paris, Barack. That’s all it says and Herbert’s over the top response simply proves the point.

The Howard Ford ad is quite different. Unlike Britney and Paris, the woman in the ad is unknown to us in any context, so we must judge her by her appearance and behavior. Her hair is done in a porn star rat, no clothing is visible in the shot, and she has a bimbo voice. The conclusion is obvious … although she is hardly the innocent white girl who is the subject of the racial sex fantasies Herbert is writing about. It’s too bad she is in the ad at all, because it’s more effective without her and her presence does make the ad too much about black men and white women and sex, even if the intent was to make it about a Democratic candidate who was hiding behind a family man facade while partying with Heff and the Playmates.

What Herbert is trying desperately to avoid by focusing on racism and sex is the effectiveness of the ad’s message: Obama has too much ego, not enough depth and is not qualified to be president. Good points all, but to Herbert, they’re just more racism:

The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. … 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.

Really? It’s not that Obama is one of the least qualified presidential candidates in the history of the republic? That he surrounds himself with fake presidential seals and busies himself with fake international presidential tours? That he stands before 200,000 in Berlin and says nothing of substance? Could it be that we’re looking at his policies, his substance, his judgment and finding that he just comes up short, not that he comes up black? No, says Herbert, out of the question!

Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this — the sole reason — is that he is black.

No criticism can be raised against Obama without it being about race. We saw this coming ever since he announced his candidacy, but we conservative bloggers didn’t make the campaign about race, nor Rush or the entire crew at Salem Radio, nor did the GOP, nor did McCain.

Bob Herbert and his fellow Democratic racists did and they will continue to make it about race for one simple reason: They have to. How else will they defend the flawed candidate they’re burdened with?

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T

he only way you can make John McCain’s campaign the racists in the recent Britney/Paris ad flap is by being racists. And the NY Times editorial board pulled out all the stops this a.m. to prove the point. Writing about the ad, it said:

The ad gave us an uneasy feeling that the McCain campaign was starting up the same sort of racially tinged attack on Mr. Obama that Republican operatives ran against Harold Ford, a black candidate for Senate in Tennessee in 2006. That assault, too, began with videos juxtaposing Mr. Ford with young, white women.

Mr. Obama called Mr. McCain on the ploy, saying, quite rightly, that the Republicans are trying to scare voters by pointing out that he “doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills.’’

But Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, had a snappy answer. “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” he said. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.’’

The retort was, we must say, not only contemptible, but shrewd. It puts the sin for the racial attack not on those who made it, but on the victim of the attack.

So the first test is “does the ad put black and white people together,” or specifically black men and white women? Sort of like Heidi Klum and Seal, who we regularly see on those racist programs Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood.

Well, the imagery was just a bit different from what I’m showing here. Say out loud, “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world.” That was how long it took the McCain ad to dispense with the images of Obama, Britney and Paris. We see Obama walking onto the stage in Berlin as “He’s” is said, then Brittney flashes by with “the biggest” and Paris with “celebrity,” then back to a waving Obama in Berlin for “in the world.”

The intent was clear: To show that like other famous headline-grabbers, Obama knows how to dazzle an adoring public. Putting him with Britney and Paris was inspired: They are the ultimate paparazzi fodder; they play well to the cameras. The intent of the Harold Ford ad was quite different: To remind voters that Ford had partied at the Playboy mansion, along with some other accusations: He takes money from pornographers, he’s anti-gun, he’s pro-tax.

Watch them both and see if you get “an uneasy feeling that the McCain campaign was starting up the same sort of racially tinged attack on Mr. Obama that Republican operatives ran against Harold Ford, a black candidate for Senate in Tennessee in 2006.” First, the Ford ad:

Cheesy and worthy of contempt, for sure. Now let’s turn to the scary black man is gonna rape your wimmin McCain ad:

Sorry, but who are the racists here? Who’s seeing racial overtones and is being judgmental about it? Certainly not the McCain camp.

Next, the NYT says Obama called McCain on the ad “quite rightly.” You’ve heard the quite rightly quote:

“They’re going to try to say that I’m a risky guy, they’re going to try to say, ‘Well, you know, he’s got a funny name, and he doesn’t look like all the presidents on the dollar bills and the five dollar bills,’ and they’re going to send out nasty e -mails. And the latest one they got me in an ad with Paris Hilton. You know, never met the woman. But, you know, what they’re going to try to argue is that somehow I’m too risky.”

“Risky” is a substitute for “black,” which Obama used earlier in the dollar bill comparison, but dropped because it is too obviously race-baiting. Obama raised race by saying the GOP was making a point that he’s black, and different, and you know, black. But all McCain played was the celebrity card; there was no race card in sight, so Obama had to manufacture it. The only ones who are buying it are the racists who are always seeing the world in racially charged black and white.

The snip I pulled from the editorial ends by quoting McCain’s campaign manager saying Obama dealt the race card, then calling the McCain camp “contemptible” and “shrewd” for “putting the sin of the attack” on the victim, Obama, not on McCain himself.

What sin of the attack? Showing three celebrities together? Why is that contemptible? Here’s the test: If the McCain ad had shown Beyonce and Halle Barry with Obama instead of Brittney and Paris, we wouldn’t be talking about NYT editorials here today. Lesson: It’s OK to show blacks together, but it’s race-baiting to show blacks and whites together.

I said when the Obama campaign first started getting traction that it would become impossible to criticize him in any way without being called racist. The Times proved me right today, by proving that they are the most contemptible sort of racists themselves.

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