Election Coverage, Politics
The Republican National Committee has released this ad against Rep. Harold Ford who is running for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee. The ad shows a young white woman who is depicting a party girl who says she met Ford at a party and closes her brief segment by asking the congresman to call her.
This all but ensures victory for the Republican, Bob Corker, who has a slight lead that is within the margin of error in the latest polling. The ad targets Southern swing voters who may be fiscally conservative but who are not comfortable with the idea of people dating outside their race. In a race as tight as this one, these squeamish voters can make a difference and, sadly, in this one they almost undoubtedly will.
It has happened before: Harvey Gantt was a successful architect, a civil rights pioneer who was the first African-American student at Clemson University and a former mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina’s largest city — and my former hometown. He ran against Sen. Jesse Helms, the uber-racist, uber-homophobe in 1990.
To outsiders, Helms was a powerful and nasty champion of the entrenched Southern subjugation of African-Americans. To almost exactly 50 percent of us Tarheel voters, he was an embarrassing anachronism. In his (too) long career, Helms never won by more than just a sliver over 50 percent of the vote.
Helms achieved his slim victories by waiting until the final days of the campaign to unleash ads that were designed either to “empty the trailer parks” by scaring his yahoo followers about civil rights for blacks, to “empty the pews” to scare them about gays.
In 1990, the ad he released at the end of the campaign was very simple. It showed a pair of white hands wadding up a rejection letter, while the voice over says, “You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.”
This ad helped gain Helms his one of his largest margins of victory: 52.5 percent.
Update: Just heard on MSNBC that the RNC is replacing the ad. Sorry, Gops, that ship has sailed. If Ford loses by a slim margin, the responsibility lies with this racist ad.
Topics: Election Coverage, Politics
I don’t know, Jon, I watched the ad and it seemed like the girl was just a small part of it, and the reason for inserting her was the Playboy party, not interracial dating. The part that stood out as most damning to me was the guy in camo who said he did have too many guns. Now there’s a message that will resonate! The whole thing’s a sleezefest but I didn’t think the part with the party girl took that angle. Probably 96% of Playboy bunnies are white so to make her black or Asian or Latina would not have played to stereotype.
P.S. But they sure as hell did play the race card with those radio ads!
HELL THE REPUGS ARE AS LOW LIFE AND TWO FACED AS IT GETS AND WILL DO ANY THING TO GET THEIR ASSES BACK IN OF WHICH THEY ARE WORRIED ABOUT NOT MAKING IT!
I don’t know about all the who-ha about Racism….
To me this video is just stupid! Everyone is making hay about the bimbo in the ad, personally I dont think someone like Ford would give her the time of day, but knowing the Republicans, this is one of…
That snippet is not aimed at smart people like us but rather at a segment of society for whom the idea of inter-racial sex induces anger and disgust. The RNC denies that the “Playboy girl” is even a reference to Ford’s alleged womanizing.
My experience is, hardly anything the GOP does during the campaign is a mistake — it is after they are elected that they exhibit rank incompetence. That bit of casting was done very carefully. If they hadn’t been targeting hardcore white bigots with that bit, they would have cast a black woman.
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Posted by Jon Ponder | Oct. 28, 2006, 7:23 am
SEE THE ADWe have the video here. Who knew the produ [...]