Racism silliness

I've been astounded at the mock outrage at the McCain celebrity ad using images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Apparently, it's racist whenever a white woman is used in an ad with a black male candidate. Bob Herbert, the Washington Post columnist, even goes so far as to say that the McCain pounded home their racist message by juxtaposing the bimbos with, get this, the phallic symbol of a tower. And the guy is so delusional and so eager to see the ad as racist that he insists that he's seeing the wrong monuments.

BOB 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.

The guy is so convinced of his crack-pot idea that he doesn't realize that the tower he's seeing is actually the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in Berlin which happened to be the site that the Obama team chose for his speech there. So talk to them about the juxtaposition with a phallic symbol!

And it turns out that Barack Obama was the first politician to make a joke using Paris Hilton. Apparently, it's not racist to juxtapose Paris Hilton with Barack Obama when he does it, but not when John McCain does.

It's absolutely ridiculous claim to say that the ad is racist. You might find it insulting or silly, but it's not racist. By leaping to that argument, Obama supporters have diluted the criticism of the ad and made themselves seem even more ridiculous and humor-challenged. Perhaps that is why only 22% of the public who had seen the ad thought it was racist compared to the 63% who didn't. The Obama campaign needs to put out the word to all their supporters on the internet and the media to tamp down all this hyper-sensitivity on perceived racism. Obama already made a big mistake by playing the race card in talking about how the GOP and McCain would scare voters by pointing out that he didn't look like the presidents on the currency. If he wants to seem above race, he has to return the favor by making sure that he and his supporters don't make silly accusations of racism when it's clear to any clear-thinking person that no racism existed. It's also an insult to all the people in our nation's history who suffered from virulent racism to start seeing racism in a humorous ad.