Here's a link to that infamous Harold Ford Ad paid for by the Republican National Comittee. I've read and heard so much about it over the past couple days, I thought I finally had to give it a looksee. Check it out, it's really a pretty funny, well done, watchable ad. And I'm not sure I read the racism that most Dems seem to be reading. The Dem read seems to be that the flirting bimbo is there to insinuate that Harold Ford fools around with white women and therefore stir up all the Tennessee folk who believe interacial dating is wrong. If you ask me, this interpretation is just as much of an insult to white folk in Tennessee as the ad is to African Americans/black folk.
I'm from the north, so maybe I'm discounting the angst the interacial dating causes in some parts of the country, but the first time I watched it, I just thought they were trying to suggest that Harold Ford consorted with bimbos and hangs out at the Playboy mansion, which is a strategy that could conceivably be used to attack white as well as black politicians. I mean look what they did to Clinton over Monica L., and they were both white. I'd have to say that the liberal Dems are just as guilty as the Republicans here, in there efforts to make a mountain out of a molehill - but I must add, that like the Republicans have traditionally been, they seem to be succeeding with the help of the national media.
Just some food for thought.
Ralph
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4 comments:
I agree with you Ralph, that if you just read the script of the ad, it would not seem to be racially based. But speaking as a person of African descent, I believe that the intent of the ad was to put that seed in the minds of many people. It may be more important to the final analysis of the ad is the fact that the republican candidate himself has thoroughly distanced himself from the promoters of that ad.
Well, yes, he has distanced himself, but was it after the uproar was started? How about John Kerry's comment yesterday? What a buffoon. And then his excuse was pitiful... if his excuse was valid, he was truly clueless, and if it wasn't, he's once again proven himself part of the Democratic intellectual snob class. You have to think the Dems were trying to throw the election when they nominated him over Dean.
I don't think that Kerry's remark shows any animus toward the troops, especially given the fact that he volunteered to go to Viet Nam (unlike most of his perpetual detractors).
Yes, the "joke" was stupid. But I think that what he was trying to say to college students (clumsy as it was delivered) was something like "if the current administration keeps up its current foreign policy, it is likely that a draft will be enacted. And if a draft is enacted, then the people drafted will be the ones who are not in some kind of college deferment. So do your best to stay in school." Ha Ha.
But somehow Kerry mangled that simple concept into a stupid joke that someone else scripted for him.
What the joke really is that people like Limbaugh and his ilk (all non-veterans) can so easily turn public opinion against otherwise honorable people.
Not a racist ad.
DDD
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