EFFin' Unsound

I was just going to leave this alone, but since the SP boys can’t seem to figure it out, I’ll comment on a couple of their posts on the racist Republican ad. First Sharkansky’s post:

My good friend Josh over at The Stranger blog is falling in line with other media Democrats who are claiming that the Republican video against Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford is racist. The ad itself is here.

It’s called Slog. If I were to call your blog the Sack of Shit blog instead of its proper name, The Evil Braintsust of the Third Tier Washington State Republicans, Unsound Politics for short, I imagine you’d be a bit angry. But yes Josh Feit is claiming that saying that Harold Ford Fucks White Women in your party’s ad is a bit racist.

The allegation of “racism” is about the young white woman who hints that she met Ford at “the Playboy party”. Huh? The ad itself is humorous and although the part about the Playboy party is the weakest bit (Ford apparently attended a Playboy Super Bowl Party once. Whoop-de-do), I fail to see it being racist. It merely suggests that Ford, who campaigns as a church-goer is also, hypocritically, a bed-hopping bachelor. I personally think that criticism is lame (it’s not like, say, he’s sleeping with other people’s wives and fiancees), but I don’t think it’s racist. Those who are alleging racism are upset that the woman is white. So what? This is 2006, not 1926. I think Americans have accepted interracial relationships to the point that NOBODY CARES about what color someone’s girlfriend is. Those who are alleging racism are merely demonstrating, through their implication that they expect very many people might be upset about interracial sex, their own bigotry about the Tennessee electorate.

It doesn’t hint that she met him at the Playboy party she says, in a rather annoying voice, “I met Harold at the Playboy Party.” The implication, and not a subtile one, is that he fucks white women.

Giving Sharkansky the benefit of the doubt, the reason that he found it so out of place is because he doesn’t think that it’s wrong for Ford to fuck white women. He prefers to focus on the tax stuff. And that has a history too, especially in the South where anti-tax leagues formed during Reconstruction because they didn’t want to pay for things like enforcing civil rights in the South and educating black children.

But I do like that this paragraph both insinuates that there is no racism anywhere in America, especially in the old Confederacy, and that Democrats are all racist. It’s kind of mind blowing. And it’s funny coming from someone who likes to joke about how Ron Sims is the same as Robert Mugabe. Not funny, “ha ha,” but neither are Sharkansky’s jokes.

Then Eric Earling steps up:

Did you know you’re a cretin pig, a racist, a bigot, and an intolerant ass if you support the Republican party. Really, you are. So says Josh Feit, as reported by Stefan below in the discussion of the hilarious ad being run against Harold Ford in Tennessee’s US Senate race. Beyond the discussion of that ad itself, there is an important sub-plot in the events surrounding the cry of “racism” laughably, yet predictably, unleashed after the ad’s airing: liberals can’t identify with the average voter.

I did know that many Republican supporters, and candidates, are racist bigoted pigs. Yes, the average voter doesn’t want to have sex with playboy models. It’s true, but only if there are more women than men in Tennessee.

The average voter doesn’t view life through the lens of race. The average voter with a basic knowledge of the campaign in Tennessee sees the ad and probably chuckles, especially if they’re a Republican and agree with the policy ironies in play. The only people viewing the ad through the lens of race are outraged liberals and sympathetic members of the national press corps. Rather revealing, no?

Erling, who I’m guessing has never been to Tennessee, knows it better than a man who grew up there, has lived there his entire life, and is tied for the Senate race. See it’s literally impossible for any White Tennessean to be racist.

It’s fair to say Feit’s ideology aligns nicely with the netroots, and the rest of the liberal base in a lather as Election Day approaches. Does anyone else wonder how such people can find a message to appeal to voters not already set on a straight party ticket if they assume all Republicans and like-minded souls are automatically “haters”?

Well, a lot of swing voters are people who like Ford on the issues, but don’t like that he’s black. They want someone who’s more conservative than a typical Democrat, but who wants to use the government to support farming. And who’ll hold President Bush accountable for massive deficits and a slow economy, and the war too.

Ironically, Harold Ford himself isn’t such a Democrat. Prior to recent stumbles he was running perhaps the best Democratic challenge for a Republican-held Senate seat this year, as acknowledged by prominent conservative pundit Rich Lowry. Why had he been doing well? Because as Lowry recounts, he’s sane.

Well, yes, only Republicans get to be crazy and elected. Take Mark Foley for example: he wanted to fuck children, and the Republicans didn’t care. Also, the ad was trying to give the hardcore conservatives a reason go volunteer and get to the polls.

Evidently, Ford had the good sense to tell Sean Hannity today that he didn’t think the RNC ad raising a ruckus is racist, just silly. Heck, if Ford had not earlier equivocated on whether or not he attended the Playboy party in question, and instead immediately gave this more recent answer, the whole affair might not be such an issue: “I like football and I like girls. I don’t have any apologies for that.” A 36 year-old bachelor who admits he likes girls and football (especially in the South where college football is a religion) is not likely to be roundly condemned in Tennessee.

Yes, well if you can believe the poling (and in this completely non-racist country of ours, African Americans tend to do a bit better in polls than they do on election day) then Ford is doing well. But honestly, he can’t come out and say, “of course they’re pandering to the deeply racist Tennessee electorate, vote for me!”

The trick with all this is that sane Democrats like Ford, rare breed though they seem at times, generally understand your average non-urban voter. Liberals like Feit do not. Accordingly, his continued implosion over the Seattle Times endorsement of Mike McGavick is a sight to see. He simply can’t grasp the fact an editorial board would make an endorsement without using a strict issue-by-issue scorecard (or more nefarious means). “Ah, candidate A agrees with us on seven issues we asked about, but candidate B only agrees with us on 5. Candidate A it is, no questions asked my friend.” I don’t think so.

Yes, why would ed boards care about that other shit when there’s an estate tax at stake?

Allow me an admittedly parochial yet handy example of how an editorial board can make and endorsement without a straight issues checklist, based on an overall assessment of each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. In 2003, my dad ran for Snohomish County Executive, and was endorsed by both the Seattle Times and the Everett Herald. Neither paper endorsed him because of some great gap between the candidates on the issues the papers cared about; they both endorsed him because his experience and personal qualities exceeded that of his opponent in their view. Sounds like the McGavick endorsement to me.

Sounds like the papers like endorsing Republicans.

You see, such rational thinking has long fled the liberal mind, somewhere around the Carter Presidency one would guess. But please, do not trouble liberal enthusiasts with such problems. Pressing business is at hand.

Such rational thinking as, “we need to vote for people who don’t agree with us because we think they’re good people.”

Behold, elections are approaching, and the Bush Empire’s vile army of Congressional Republican minions must be swept aside for the good of the Republic. Why? Because they’re “haters,” including you.

Well, and because I can’t prove that Goat Fucker Mike! doesn’t fuck goats.

Didn’t you know?

I assumed it was true. But maybe if they’d done any executive oversight, they wouldn’t be in this position. Maybe if they had ousted their predatory members (ick, no pun intended) before ABC News got hold of his IM’s, people would trust them. Maybe if President Bush didn’t campaign for Macaca Allen or girlfriend strangler Sherwood we wouldn’t have race and character to run on. Maybe if they hadn’t fucked up the economy, and then bragged about it, hadn’t run up the largest deficits in American history, hadn’t made it tougher to get healthcare, hadn’t got us into an illegal oil war, hadn’t let Bin Laden get away, we wouldn’t have any issues to run on. Maybe if their campaign in the South is that darkies are going to fuck white women, we wouldn’t have race to talk about. You know?

You know what else? This is a bad transition to Jim Miller’s post. He starts out with the joke about the guy who goes to a shrink, sees sex in all of the Rorschach tests and when the shrink says he’s got sex on the mind, says, “stop showing me dirty pictures.” He tells it a little slower, or more accurately, steals a longer version, but since it isn’t funny either way, I’ll move to the “substance” of the post:

If you need help understanding my point, read this post, or this post, or, if you must, read this one by Feit — though I must warn you that the language you find there is not fit for family reading.

I’m sorry, if your family is reading the Evil Braintrust then they probably have bigger problems than the fact that Feit said, “Fucking”.

And there are some facts that deserve open discussion, especially on the left, where so many can not see the beams in their own eyes. Both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice have frequently been attacked by the left, often in ways that have tinges of racism, and sometimes more than tinges. Columnist Michelle Malkin routinely gets racist (and sometimes unspeakably vulgar) emails from leftists. (We are even beginning to see occasional attacks from the left that have tinges, and sometimes more, of anti-Semitism.) And I could list many more examples if I wanted to. These attacks have drawn almost no criticism from my friends in the Democratic party.

If you want to judge “the left” by something someone you’ve never heard of said to Michelle Malkin (and that she may have made up) then we get to judge the right by Goldy’s comment thread. So unless you’re prepared to stand behind everything JCH and Mark the Redneck say, fuck you.

Neither party is entirely free from racism, but I think the party that drives out racist demagogues, such as David Duke, is far better than the one than hugs them to its breast. Need an example of the latter? Try Al Sharpton, whose racist demagoguery may have led to deaths in two riots. And again, I could add many more examples if I wanted to.

Well, I don’t think Sharpton is perfect, but to compare him to David Duke? That’s your frame of reference? Seriously, when Giulini’s police kill black people and then can’t even offer an excuse, or when they rape them with plunger handles, Sharpton was there. Maybe if people like the so-called libertarians at SP gave a flying fuck about that, it wouldn’t fall to him to help fix those problems. Maybe if the city had been serious about the Central Park Jogger case, it wouldn’t have fallen to Sharpton to doggedly pursue it.

Also, as I already said, you’re keeping the guy who welcomes someone of Indian descent who has been a Virginian all his life to Virginia. Seems like Virginia is for haters, and the Republican Party is with them.

It really is pretty amazing how much time the Evil Braintrust gave this story since it’s, you know, not local. Must have hit a nerve.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 11:28 PM and is filed under Carl. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.