Britney, Paris…Barack?!: Media Declares Interracial Dating Racist

Original Link: http://donedems.com/2008/08/01/britney-parisbarack-media-declares-interracial-dating-racist/

I thought it was pretty clever and spot on. Thus, I should have expected this. Whenever Obama’s opponents hit a nerve, the race card will undoubtedly be played, this time by Josh Marshall.

Jake Tapper, at ABC, gives us the story:

“I note with interest today, John McCain’s new tactic of associating Barack Obama with oversexed and/or promiscuous young white women,” writes liberal blogger Josh Marshall. “Presumably, a la Harold Ford 2006, this will be one of those strategies that will be a matter of deep dispute during the campaign and later treated as transparent and obvious once the campaign is concluded.”

Continues Marshall: “the McCain campaign is now pushing the caricature of Obama as a uppity young black man whose presumptuousness is displayed not only in taking on airs above his station but also in a taste for young white women.”

Others pushing this meme note that the notorious Harold Ford ad – which featured an attractive young white woman looking at the camera and asking Ford to call her — was put together by a group once headed by Terry Nelson, who was McCain’s campaign manager for a time, though he left in the Summer 2007 purge.

The McCain campaign says that Nelson had nothing to do with this Britney/Paris ad, that it was put together by their normal team of Mike Hudome, Fred Davis, and Chris Mottolla.

And they say this interpretation is “ridiculous.”

What say you?

I say this ad is in no way shape or form racist, nor does it imply that Obama has “a taste for young white women.” And if he did, what would be the damn problem? This was exactly my reaction to the supposedly racist Harold Ford video. As an African American woman who “has a taste for young white men,” what I found truly offensive was that people implied that somehow insinuating that interracial relationships are occurring is racist. Umm, no. The people who get upset about interracial dating are the racists!

The late Tim Russert apparently believed the ad was racist, while addressing the Harold Ford ad, he had this to say (click here to see the entire exchange):

The whole idea of having a blond white woman winking at a black congressman, the notion of interracial sex is not in your mind racist?

I can hear them arguing now that the ground breaking Star Trek episode with the first interracial kiss between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura was meant to gin up racial hatred. When what was actually racist was that some stations in the South initially refused to air it. The “notion of interracial sex” should not be racist in anyone’s mind. In fact, if it’s an issue for you, then you’re a racist.

Can Obama’s campaign and his supporters please start answering attacks instead of creating distraction arguments about whether it’s racist to have white women and black men in campaign ads together? It would be greatly appreciated.