Democrats and liberals are obsessed about race. They always have been, always will be. We saw their 40 year old race and gender based coalition begin to come apart during the primaries.
As such they are always the first ones to play the race card. NY Times whiner and scribbler Adam Nagourney warned us last spring that any attack on Obama would be an attack on his race. And, as if on que, the Democrats
are responding, like the mental lemmings they are, to the John McCain attack ad showing Obama to be the celeb lightweight that we at The Neville Awards have always said he was.
We've collected a smattering of liberal drivel for your watching and reading enjoyment.
This from ex-NY Times whiner and scribbler and now Obama campaign staffer Bob Herbert:
HERBERT: You guys have seen the ad a number of times, I am sure, and you have it here in-house. First thing you see are a couple of images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, right? And we see an image of Barack Obama right after that, comes quickly right at the beginning of the, you remember that, right? Do you remember any other startling images right there at the beginning?
–Silence on the set.–
HERBERT: Alright. There is an image right there in that very beginning of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and there is an image of the Washington Monument. Look at the beginning of that ad again. And you tell me why those two phallic symbols are placed there [snaps fingers]—pow!—right at the very beginning of that ad.
What's on Bob Herbert's mind these days...
Timothy Noah at Slate.com has figured out that Barack Obama ectomorph body type is somehow racist code talk:
Excerpted from When "Skinny" Means "Black"
http://www.slate.com/id/2196756/
The Journal stumbles over racial subtext.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, Aug. 4, 2008
In the Aug. 1 Wall Street Journal, Amy Chozick asked, "[C]ould Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability?" Most Americans, Chozick points out, aren't skinny. Fully 66 percent of all citizens who've reached voting age are overweight, and 32 percent are obese. To be thin is to be different physically.
Chozick insists that she didn't intend her playful feature about Obama's physique as potential electoral liability to carry any racial subtext. "I can't even respond to that," she told me. "That's ridiculous." Bob Christie, Dow Jones' vice president of communications, phoned me in a flash to reaffirm that message. I believe Chozick and Christie when they say that the Journal never intended skinniness to serve as a proxy for race.
But I firmly disagree that a racial reading of Chozick's story is "ridiculous," and I would counter that any failure on Chozick's part to recognize such is just a wee bit clueless.
Let's review the basics. Barack Obama is the first African-American to win a major-party nomination for president of the United States. African-Americans are distinguishable from other Americans by their skin color. This physical attribute looms large in our nation's history as a source of prejudice.
Consequently, any reference to Obama's other physical attributes can't help coming off as a coy walk around the barn. A whole genre of humor turns on this reality. A Slate colleague informs me that an episode of the TV sitcom Happy Days ("Fonzie's New Friend") had its 1950s-era characters nervously discussing the fact that a black man in their midst was so … skinny. Was it true that skinny people liked fried chicken? That they were good at basketball?
During Stalin's show trials, even the most loyal communist apparatchiks could find themselves accused of being counterrevolutionaries. Likewise, Bill Clinton, the guy with the office in Harlem, who has been said to be blacker than Obama, the guy who felt our pain, felt compelled to deny the thought crime of racism:
"But I am not a racist. I've never made a racist comment and I never attacked him [Obama] personally." Clinton’s comparison of Obama’s South Carolina victory to those of former Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson drew the predictable "I'm shocked and outraged!!" comment from the usual suspects in the African-American community and an apology from Hillary Clinton.
MSNBC's Contessa Brewer, in an interview with Newsweek Paris bureau chief Christopher Dickey, dragged out one of our favorite stereotypes of Southerners being a bunch of knuckle-dragging klansmen still clinging to their Southern, sometimes racist traditions...guaranteed to get the Southern vote for Obama.
The transcript of the August 4 segment, which aired at 10:37 a.m., follows:
CONTESSA BREWER, host: Barack Obama is crossing the Mason-Dixon line with a new strategy to compete in traditionally Republican states. He’s trying to win crucial southern votes. Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey took a road trip through Tennessee and Georgia and the Carolinas to find out if Barack Obama’s candidacy is bringing people together or dividing the South even further. Christopher, I suppose this is a far cry from what you're normally doing, bureau chief there in Paris.
CHRISTOPHER DICKEY, Newsweek: Well, yes, it is, but my family has very deep roots in the South so it was also like a homecoming trip.
BREWER: So, when you go there, you described emotions as being raw. What did you mean by that?
DICKEY: Well, I think the idea that we could have a black president is something that is very much on the surface in the South. The South is not the only place where race may be an issue. The South is part of the country that’s had to deal with race as an issue for a very long time and often very painfully so the idea that Obama is a black man that may be the next President of the United States has raised hopes among African-Americans tremendously, uh, but it’s also raised a lot of concerns among whites who may not talk about it as a race question but raise lots of other issues that may in some cases be code for race.
BREWER: There are probably a lot of families, too, who are wary of that stereotype, that racist stereotype that gets slapped on the South so frequently, but in your travels, you found merchants who are selling what clearly are hurtful symbols of the South's racist past. And so how does Barack Obama really stand a chance in places where so many people do cling to their Southern, sometimes racist traditions?
DICKEY: Well, I think that the real key for him is going to be whether people who don't want him as president go out and vote for McCain. The flip side of what I saw on the anti-Obama course of this trip was no McCain bumper stickers, no McCain signs in people's yards. There is not a lot of enthusiasm for McCain in the South. There's a lot of worry about Obama. So, if McCain voters stay home, and Obama can mobilize, really heavily mobilize black voters and those liberal voters who are sympathetic to his message in the South, then he might have a chance.
BREWER: What did you see in terms of resources being spent in these places where President Bush in both 2000 and 2004 swept these states?
DICKEY: Well, he did. And I think Obama’s best chance is probably in Virginia because of northern Virginia, but there are certainly resources being spent in North Carolina and in Georgia and sometimes you come across evidence of Obama at organization in places you wouldn't expect it. There was a sort of a civic fair in Crawford, Georgia, last week and there was a big Obama stand and people were canvassing for him. White people.
BREWER: In some of these places where if you look that President Bush took Georgia by 17 points, Virginia, you mentioned, 9 points there. Are these places where, with enough money, with enough voter registration that they become competitive for Barack Obama?
DICKEY: Well, that's what his campaign seems to believe, that if he puts enough money in there, if he avoids the wedge issues that Bush exploited in 2004 and 2000 then he may have a chance. Frankly, my impression is he does not. He is not likely to win North Carolina or Georgia. But we still have several weeks to go.
BREWER: Christopher Dickey, always a pleasure to see you. Thank you for coming in.
DICKEY: Thank you.
It's nice to know the Parisian perspective on our election Chris.
The Washington Post's Fred Haitt shows how above it all and balanced he is:
As a week of name-calling and rapid responses faded into history, political practitioners seemed to agree that John McCain had diminished himself and his straight-talk brand with negative ads and petty misrepresentations. Yet, surprisingly, a consensus also seemed to be forming that Barack Obama, at least tactically, had not come out on top.
Critics of his performance last week (including some supporters) focused on his "dollar bill" comments -- his apparent invocation of race in saying that his opponent would try to scare voters because he, Obama, did not resemble previous presidents whose portraits adorn our currency.
I was more struck by the preamble to that comment: by Obama's statements that McCain and the Republican Party are so bankrupt in policies that they can win only by spreading fear .
This resonates with an article of faith among many Democratic believers that has been so long and deeply held it is hardly considered noteworthy: that Democratic policies are so obviously superior, and so much more in the interest of a majority of voters, that only some form of chicanery can explain Republican election victories.
In this view of the world, Republican operatives, from Lee Atwater to Karl Rove, are more diabolically clever, and less bound by ethical restraint, than their Democratic counterparts. They manipulate cultural symbols and issues (God, guns and abortion) to deceive people into voting against their economic self-interest. Or they inflate security threats (Iraq, terror) to frighten them into voting against their self-interest. Obama himself a few months ago said that people who vote Republican are "tricked into believing" that Democrats are out of touch.
But by questioning Obama's substantiveness, McCain has begun to diminish the advantage of Obama's skill in rhetoric; and besides, there's no reason to think Obama -- who, after all, is deft, eloquent, quick-thinking and supremely well informed -- wouldn't be every bit as skilled in town halls as McCain. The forums would return attention to the issues, where Obama believes he has a clear advantage. And if McCain sought to use them for personal attacks, he would at least have to bear full personal responsibility for doing so.
What an arrogant, uninformed fool. Saying the terror threat is overblown is so 2004. But, then again, liberals believe that Muslims couldn't possibly want to kill them.
American Prospect's Adam Serwer, wracked by a severe case of Liberal White Guilt, is so pleased that America could actually back a black man for president:
You've probably seen it by now: the images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton dissolving into footage of Barack Obama's speech in Berlin, as a voice dripping with sarcasm proclaims, "He's the biggest celebrity in the world." The McCain campaign's "Britney" ad lays out a series of objections about Obama, questioning whether he's "ready to lead" and criticizing his opposition to offshore drilling.
But what's garnered the most attention is the juxtaposition of Obama with two white women known for their sex appeal. Rick Perlstein of the Campaign for America's Future concurred that the ad was playing off stereotypes about black male sexuality. The critics are correct in noting that a racial dimension is certainly present.
The rapturous coverage of the Obama campaign during the primary was less about Obama himself than it was America congratulating itself for being willing to consider a black man for president, with the subtext being that the United States had finally liberated itself from its racist past. It established an unspoken contract that Obama's success was proof that racism is no longer a serious problem, thus preempting any further discussion on the subject.
But even as the mainstream media all but trumpeted his nomination as the end of racism in the United States, Obama continues to face a series of arbitrary and shifting public tests merely because he is black. His dilemma remains that the only way to succeed is to pretend that this double standard does not exist. He has to extricate himself from an ongoing racial competition between blacks and whites, where the prosperity of one is seen as detrimental to the other. The paradox is that by succeeding, Obama has raised the white anxiety about his presence to a level at which it can be exploited as resentment.
The only people talking about race are you moron race-obsessed liberals....SO STOP TALKING ABOUT IT!!!!!
