McCain Gurgles in the Slime

By Ishmael Reed

"McCain campaign manager, Rick Davis, in a television performance, which, if he were a woman, would be called strident, or a black man, angry, faced down a cowed Andrea Mitchell after she questioned him about a McCain ad that even offended the Time’s gentle Bob Herbert. Herbert wrote: ”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.’" Herbert even located some dog whistle meat in the ad. Phallic symbols like the leaning tower of Pisa. Davis for his part accused Obama of playing the race card, when he commented that he didn’t look like the presidents whose faces appear on the currency. Of course, Hillary Clinton said something similar during the primary, yet nobody accused her of playing the gender card, but Davis and his associates weren’t interested in consistency."

Ishmael Reed Politics of the Race Card: McCain Gurgles in the Slime