No, Glenn Reynolds voted against Ford because he's a Republican hack.

Point taken.

That ad is astonishing, almost as astonishing as George Allen. The ad is also very good, the particular lady carries many things besides miscegenation. Casting brilliance.

I hate em all so bad.

Eh. Because of his purported father, I give Insty the benefit of the doubt on first order race issues. I'm also not sure the commercial had come out before he voted. (I'm not sure the miscegenation issue is foreground enough for him to be able to explain it away, either.)

As Republican hacks go, Reynolds appears to be a decent enough human being. (No, that's not saying not much.) What's annoying is the pretending-not-to-be-a-Republican-hack schtick.

Agreed.

The relatively appealing Republican hacks like Brooks and Reynolds are probably more useful than the generic wingers, because they chip off bits of the less-crazy vote and get them to vote for the crazies. I think of them as worse rather than better, because if they don'tmknow that that's what they're doing they have to be completely lacking in self-criticism.

To clarify: I was assuming that the ad came out after GR voted absentee. The intent of the last paragraph of the post is to say "I hope he at least feels bad about it" rather than "this was a reason for him to have done things differently."

Yeah, at least a hack like Hannity is honest about what he's up to. Reynolds can't even manage that. It's annoying.

I understand you, FL.

From Ford's campaign website:

From the time that I was a little boy in Memphis, church and faith have always been central to who I am as a person...

In many ways, my faith and my belief in service are the enduring legacy of my grandmother....

This desire to serve and to put my faith and beliefs into action is why I ran for Congress...

I believe that my faith mirrors the principles on which our nation was founded...

And so, I will continue to be guided by my faith in the Senate.

Faith inspires so many to do so much...

And so on. Ford has made a big point of his Christian faith and how it gives him moral guidance. Could it be that the naked bunny interview is simply an attempt to brand him a hypocrite?

Yeah, doubtless a Southern campaign ad pointing out how a black guy likes to bang white women is about faith.

Plus everyone knows that faith is about not having any sexual drive, or more precisely, the lack of any means of implementing one. And not, you know, helping poor people.

Hypocrite, damn right.

I'm no scholar of the Christian faith, but from what I've heard, banging cocktail waitresses isn't one of its central tenets. Personally, I have no problem with what the guy does in his spare time. But I could see how a conservative Christian would.

14: People are always going to cast a skeptical eye towards Republicans making arguments that work at two levels, particularly in the South. And there's a pretty good reason for that. I mean, short of actually lynching Condi Rice on national TV, what would it take to make Allen no longer viable? Jeebus.

This is the best campaign ad ever.

It's by a Democrat, attacking his Republican opponent, and basically just quotes a bunch of other Republicans who have called the Republican opponent an idiot.

It also may be the only campaign ad to include the word "fricking".

i never thought about racial componenets to that until you guys pointed it out. The FORDS NOT PRUDE!!!@>! message, i got. just saying. (i feel like this 75% of the time when i read feminist's blog).

I'm sure Reynolds could emit a disarming cloud of smoke to the effect that the ad wasn't racist. Of course, GR is the same dick who runs an ad with himself wearing that t-shirt saying "Celebrate Diversity" with a picture of a bunch of guns. He's never been against a racial dig every now and then.

The ad has more than one message--its a racist message *and* about religion. The repeated references to porn (the playboy one, the guy saying Ford had taken porn money, the fact that the blond seems shirtless) are red-meat for the religious right part of the base. That one will jump out and grab more people in Tennessee than you think (Larry Parish and the Deep Throat prosecution were in Memphis, folks) and will also allow some folks on the right to feel better about responding to the bait in this ad-- "I wasn't outraged about the race thing! It was the porn thing!"

Its a cluster of irrational appeals aimed at the a similar white demographic. The gun nut (he's gonna take away some of my guns!), folks who never have a chance of paying an estate tax but still seem to think it's their issue. The race one is the most pernicious, but the whole ad is a dishonest and evil piece of work.

I'm pleased to say that Kerry Healey's attack ads accusing Deval Patrick of being soft on crime (in the Massachusetts governor race) appear to have backfired. "Sixty-one percent of those surveyed said the tone of Healey's campaign made them less likely to vote for her", according to the Globe. Patrick is leading by 27 points in a recent poll. Bear in mind that our last two governors have been Weld and Romney.
Healey cited Patrick's interest in a convicted rapist as evidence that he was indifferent to crime victims. It was kind of absurd, since what Patrick did was donate money for and help to arrange a DNA test, and when the test confirmed the man's guilt, Patrick dropped the matter. This was fairly easy to explain, even to Americans. Next, when Patrick was asked why he had been so interested in the guy, and Patrick replied that he had been quite eloquent in his letters, Healey ran an ad asking "Why would Deval Patrick praise a criminal?" It appears that even eliminating tolls on the Mass Pike isn't going to compensate for this stupidity.

Of course, these ads didn't have even the tinest trace of wit about them, but were more in a movie-trailer melodrama voice, so they can't compare to the Corker ad, which while loathsome makes some effort to amuse its target audience.

Last night I heard a Bach organ cantata written for an election. I'll vote for the candidate who makes that kind of commission.

With a naked Playboy bunny already in one of the ads, you may get some organs, cans and tatas, but probably not any organ cantatas.

19 gets it exactly right. Every other clip is just a layer of wrapping paper they can use to cover over the racist bits when anyone else is looking. You know what would be funny? If the ad made some white wome look at the TV, look at their husbands/boyfriends, look at the TV again, and decide they're now more interested in voting for Ford.

I have to say, my brain is still in meltdown over how we're the sexual McCarthyites. I just... like, seriously, I try to formulate a coherent responding statement and it ends up coming out sounding like "Buuuuuuuu... GARGH!" Then the next five minutes are a blank.

Right, it's like each party is judged only against their own aspirations and there's no objective standard. "The Democrats favor full equal rights and treatment for gays and lesbians, but occasionally one of them says something that falls short of this standard. Minus ten points. Republicans as a party support restrictions on the civil rights of gays and lesbians, and many prominent spokespeople for the party affirmatively state that the 'gay lifestyle' is harmful and damaging to society, but many Republicans aren't personally prejudiced at all. Plus ten points. Therefore, if you care about gay and lesbian issues, Republicans are better than Democrats."

Makes your head spin, doesn't it. It's kind of like the 2004 presidential debates, where Bush was expected to look really really stupid, and Kerry was expected to look really really smart. When Bush only looked kinda stupid, and Kerry looked smart but awkward, this got called a Bush win.

mcmc, you're in MA too? It's well past time for a Boston meetup, I say.

24: Right. And pointing out the hypocrisy of a gay or lesbian Republican who has chosen to sell out - perhaps in a very real, financial sense - their own equality and their own self-respect in order to be a part of an organization that openly despises them is a witch-hunt?

Crap, I just lost another five minutes.

I think it's great that Ford is polling within the margin of error behind Corker, but last night Rah and I were talking about it and it reminded him of the '90 race between Helms and Gantt. Gantt was polling very close behind Helms, but lost the election by a million votes because many, many people - many of them in the more liberal areas of NC - were simply unwilling to admit to a pollster that they weren't going to vote for the black guy. (I had a professor whose theory was that a lot of the well-to-do Democrats in said metropolitan areas were unwilling to admit to a pollster that they were going to vote for Helms because they believed it would be in their financial self-interest, but I'm betting race had as much or more to do with it.) I really hope it's not the same case in TN this year, but I also won't be hugely surprised if he does much worse in the voting booth than he's doing in the polls. I just hope stupid shenanigans like this one have a degree of backfire effect in that they shame some of those people who might self-identify as liberal or progressive into having the backbone to live up to their stated ideals. They didn't when Helms pulled even worse advertising stunts in NC 16 years ago, but then, that was 16 years ago.

This is interesting. Or maybe just to Labs and I. Anyway, Ann Althouse posts a trademarkedly wishywashy couple of paragraphs about the ad, but in the course of it, manages to write that she finds the ad "shameful."

The thread is now at 107 commments and counting, with most of her regulars opining that there was no racism in the ad, that Ford was a big ol' nasty race-baiting Playboy, and that surely Ann didn't really mean "shameful."

Will she step in and clarify her position? Will she bend even further to the right in order to keep her choir?

Here's my prediction: she'll append an update to the post (ADDED: Lots of people are saying I'm reading too much into this ad in comments, but I'm sticking to my guns! Tee-hee!), and in subsequent posts, she'll muse about how interesting it would be if the authoritarian, racist position were the correct one.

Yeah. I worry about the same thing with HRC, that she'll win the primaries, poll as if she's going to win the general in a walk, and then lose because people don't want to vote for a woman. I don't know if that's a valid worry, but I have a hell of a time shaking it.

poll as if she's going to win the general in a walk

I wouldn't worry about it too much, because the above won't happen. HRC-hatred is overdetermined. When she loses--and she will--it won't tell us anything about how people feel about female candidates. Unfortunately, no one will believe that, and everyone will come to (bad) conclusions about the effectiveness of running female Presidential candidates.

I think that's a very valid concern about HRC. (I'm not saying it's a reason not to vote for her, I'm saying I think you, LB, are not paranoid to think like this.) I would think - but "think" is the wrong word, as I hadn't considered it and I'm just speaking off the cuff without any real thought - that many of the worst attacks that could be leveled against her are, in fact, attacks on the idea of a successful woman, and that those attacks would backfire horribly. Or are you speaking without regard to a specific attack campaign that sways people to vote according to their fears, and talking about resident sexism that wouldn't need to be agitated by an explicit campaign? Honest question; it's not something I had considered about HRC's candidacy, but that's because I haven't spent a great deal of time thinking about her candidacy at all except that I think she's spent a lot of time trying to get in the middle of the curve such that I think of her as a bit of a Lieberman in that regard.

Or are you speaking without regard to a specific attack campaign that sways people to vote according to their fears, and talking about resident sexism that wouldn't need to be agitated by an explicit campaign?

This, more. I don't know how much of a worry it should be -- I'm just concerned that, just as in the Helms/Gantt race, she might have a lot of fair-weather supporters who evaporate on election day. (Hrm. That metaphor, while humidity based throughout, got mixed somehow.)

And yeah on the 'bit of a Lieberman' front. While I'd vote for her happily over any Republican, she seems to step to the right a little too easily. She's still not publically regretting her support for the war, for example.

The hidden non- vote is why Powell won't run. His wife is more afraid of an out an out assassination attempt, but I think Powell fears being an unsuccessful candidate, and he knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men in a secret ballot.

I think Powell fears being an unsuccessful candidate,

I think the easiest way for either a woman or a minority to become President has to be to get one in the VP slot first.

34 -- what about an Edwards/-gg-d ticket?

34. Does anyone remember the SNL skit after GWI with Michael J. Fox as Quayle, cheeirng Powell in a joint session of Congress, obviously about to replace him on the ticket?

19: doesn't go far enough. Besides the porn and miscegenation, just look at the lady. Certainly not quite good-looking enough for Playboy, she is brash and crassly flirtatious. Folks, this is, if the blog will forgive me, a trailer-trash slut. One can imagine those lines delivered say, by someone like Gwynrth Paltrow to understand that something else is going on. What particular class is to be treatened I can't say.

In fact her very features look ethnic, although I can't put quite describe how. I think, Tammy Wynette, some kind of multi-generation British Isle descent...IOW, hillbilly. Somehow I think residents of Tennessee would see things in that woman the rest of us don't.

On why Hillary fears Obama.

Hilzoy on Obama.

36: No. But Powell never could win the Republican nomination, and including him on the GHWB ticket would have killed it. For every black vote they would have picked up for including Powell, they would have lost 1.5 (made up number) white votes to the Democrats. My suspicion is that the latter number has gone down over time, but that it's still greater than 1. That's why I've never really been troubled by "advances" by the GOP among Hispanics: Hispanics were either going to come back to the Democrats, or Republicans were going to have to change sufficiently on specific symbolic issues toward the Democratic position and therefore lose significant white votes.

25: who said that? I think a Boston meetup is a great idea. How many Bostonians/New Englanders have we got here? Lurkers too.

I also wonder whether Berkeley Breathed nailed it twenty years ago when Oliver's dad told Binkley's dad that the first black President would be a conservative (and whether the same is true for every minority and for women). I'm just worried that they'll be an Alan Keyes style complete freakjob or a Liddy Dole style complete nonentity in their attempt to prove how nonthreatening they are to the base.

My God, I would have been tempted to vote for Powell. And I am not exactly a target pick-up vote for the Republicans.

My God, I would have been tempted to vote for Powell. And I am not exactly a target pick-up vote for the Republicans.

That's the problem: any black candidate is really the de facto Democratic nominee. The coalition he or she will bring in, and therefore be responsive to, will include a lot of Democrats.

37: (Full disclosure: I grew up on the NC side of the state line down the middle of the Smokies, so maybe I misunderstand.)

What she is, IMO, is a trailer-trash stereotype of upper-class. It's hard to really peg it in the absence of clothes, but the highlighted hair and the gold choker and the heavy but dark makeup aren't meant to telegraph lower-class to the viewer, they're meant to telegraph a certain upper-class stereotype to a specific set of viewers that the makers view as belonging to a certain lower-class stereotype.

To put it in as crass a fashion as I can, they're not trying to say he bangs trailer-trash white women, they're trying to tell trailer-trash that he bangs country-club white women.

I think 44 goes to far. I agree she's not meant to be trailor-trash; I think she's just meant to be the stereotypical slutty party girl likley to be found at the Playboy mansion. I don't think that's meant to be upper-class, although she is meant to be expensively yet not tastefully adorned (frivilous).

40: Ooh! Ooh!

Brock - I don't endorse what they're trying to say or the way they say it, but I think that is what they are trying to say. I did note I was trying to be as crass as possible. I should have gone on to note I did not do this because I found it pleasant but because I felt that the ad itself is pretty crass and that it's best discussed in its own terms.

46: mrh, I didn't know you were in Boston; cool. Who else have we got? Maybe we can get one of big guys to give us a Boston meetup thread.

RMMP: I didn't mean "goes to far" to imply that I was offended. I actually just meant I think you're wrong. I don't think she's meant to be a "country-club" girl, I think she's meant to be a playboy-mansion party girl. That's all I was saying; be as crass as you wish. I didn't even find 44 particularly crass.

I'm in Boston, and 25 was me. I know there are at least a half-dozen or so of us. Probably more that I don't know about.

49: Fair enough, I misread. I still think that's what they're saying, but I'm glad you weren't bothered.

mcmc, I'm actually in Providence, but I'd come to Boston.

We have a Boston meet-up thread now--if everyone puts down the times they can come, we can find out when they intersect.

Between this post title and "They call it Beantown," which I am hearing to the tune of "Madness," I'm having a hell of an earworm battle going down over here.

Here's a detail about Corker's ads that I missed.

This morning about 6:45 I'm getting ready for work and have the radio tuned to the local mega talk station. The hosts are talking about the heat that the Corker/RNC ads are picking up, but are pretty neutral on them themselves, suggesting that the ruckus--and the suggestions of racism--are overblown. They're going through some callers, when one says, "That's nothing. Have you heard the jungle drums on the radio ad?"

So they play it, and, sure enough, the caller's right. Soaring music underneath the copy when discussing Corker's merits, jungle-like drumming when cutting to Ford's demerits. The hosts were stone-silent when it finished, until one whistled, and said, "Damn." They both agreed that the drumming -- and the intent -- was obvious.

Classy.

The radio ad can be heard here.

It's sure good that we've gotten that whole racism thing behind us.

#41: I also wonder whether Berkeley Breathed nailed it twenty years ago when Oliver's dad told Binkley's dad that the first black President would be a conservative

Good point. You bet against the creator of Bloom County at your peril.

I take back my #16. This is the best. campaign ad. EVAR. It has to be fake, right?

Could it be that the naked bunny interview is simply an attempt to brand him a hypocrite?

You ain't from the South. Your innocence is so touching! But surely the ad Apo mentions in 55 is the nail in the coffin for this fairlytale fantasy.

I listened to it. Didn't sound like the ooga-booga jungle drums I was expecting. Just a general, menacing musical cue that would work the same against an opponent of any race. Not racist unless you wanna say that any and all drums = black people. The racism-accusers remind me of cryptozoologists who think every smudge in a photograph is the Loch Ness Monster.

But yeah, I'm not from the South, so what do I know?

Also, the drums keep playing in the background when the ad talks about Corker, too; they're just a bit quieter.

But yeah, I'm not from the South, so what do I know?

Apparantly not much about the nature of attack ads. If you don't think that Republicans don't know what they're doing when they put a white floozy in an attack ad against a black congressmen, then you really should indulge in some readings in the history of American politics.

UPDATE: The ad has been pulled.

I will concede that it is conceivably possible that the politicos behind the ad were simply thinking of slamming Ford for a character flaw. However, they were also certainly aware of what they were doing, and that it would almost certainly be very effective. Is that enough to call the ad racist? In these situations, it's best to just stay away from that shit. Especially when you're the R party, and you've got a big ol' history of deliberate exploitation of racist opinions.

Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the RNC, insisted that the ad, which RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman defended Tuesday in an interview on MSNBC-TV, wasn’t being “pulled.” He said the decision had nothing to do with the controversy; instead, the ad had simply “run its course.”

Probaby true. It sounds like a the Rs are trying to have their cake, and eat it, too. It might work.

This whole kerfuffle could have been avoided if they had just used a black bunny.

If avoiding the kerfluffle was in their interest. The way they played it, their ad got major airtime, had its appeal, but yet the candidate immediately distanced himself from it and it was later pulled - so the inherent racism of the ad couldn't hurt him much. AND the people who were actually responsible for the ad weren't even the RNC! just a shadowy faction of the RNC that the real people at the RNC don't know and can't control! (my ass) This is almost conspiracy-theory...except that Republican strategists have a solid track record of getting "independent" groups to run dirty ads so that they can do their dirty work without reflexively damaging the R candidate.

I should mention that as far as I'm concerned the clencher evidence that the Rs knew they were engaged in racist tactics was this whole farce of pretending that neither the candidate nor the main RNC guys knew this ad was coming out. Really! They were just all shocked when they saw it! No clue anything like that was going to air! Horseshit.

Yeah, this sort of tactic has a long and inglorious history down here.

But yeah, I'm not from the South, so what do I know?

You seem to have your Kaus pretty well down.

Did you guys catch Canada's objection?

Atwater quotation describing dog-whistle politics, for GB, because mine is a message of love:

You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.' (at Needlenose.)