If not race what?A race on the issues and McCain loses to a 10 year old child.They have to have to go against Obama on race.The only question in their minds is how far can they can go.The shame is this race stuff will work with a segment of our population.Shame on us.

Running While Black
Saturday 02 August 2008
by: Bob Herbert, The New York Times

~  “Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office - say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford - the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.

  Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

  There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us - the “us” being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at.

  Since then, Senator McCain has only upped the ante, smearing Mr. Obama every which way from sundown. On Wednesday, The Washington Post ran an extraordinary front-page article that began:

  “For four days, Senator John McCain and his allies have accused Senator Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.”

  Evidence? John McCain needs no evidence. His campaign is about trashing the opposition, Karl Rove-style. Not satisfied with calling his opponent’s patriotism into question, Mr. McCain added what amounted to a charge of treason, insisting that Senator Obama would actually prefer that the United States lose a war if that would mean that he - Senator Obama - would not have to lose an election.

  Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.

  The Republican National Committee targeted Harold Ford with a similarly disgusting ad in 2006 when Mr. Ford, then a congressman, was running a strong race for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee. The ad, which the committee described as a parody, showed a scantily clad woman whispering, “Harold, call me.”

  Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.

  The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir. (Mr. Obama in Muslim garb with the American flag burning in the fireplace.) It’s driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches - a man who obviously does not know his place.

  Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this - the sole reason - is that he is black.”~

The rest is at the link.

http://www.truthout.org/article/running-while-black

EJ, This is BS.

The Re-thugs are playing the race card, hard and slickly because they have nothing else, and McFaust, will do ANYTHING to get to the WH.

From the gazillion clumsy attempts by Fox Noise to paint Obama and Wife as “uppity niggers” (despite lacking the guts to call them that) in every way possible, to a gross mag cover, the GOP is CONSTANTLY reminding bigoted Americans “Hey! He’s a nigger! Do you want a nigger in the White House who isn’t in servant’s livery?”

Since Nixon’s vile “Southern Strategy” of 1968, the Re-thuglicans have played the race card.

So, when Obama NAMES the issue, they slam him.  His only mistake was not saying: “They can’t face the truth.  Their only REAL issue is: I’m Black and they can’t stand it!”

Come on Hasn’t the majority of Ameircans had enough of this fear the other minority?
Hillary intentionally pitted ‘Feminists’ against the other minorities- better to have a White Female then a Black Male.Problem with that is that those of US who understand th emain goal of Liberation requires we liberate ALL minorities, recognized her Ruse. Using the Feminist movement without shame or reservation to win a place for herself at the Big Boy Table.thanks for undermining all the work we women have put into dispelling the Male propaganda against Us. Reconfirming every lie used against Us- whiny, expects the bar to be lowered, rules changed, manipulative/liars, weak, mentally deficit (difficulty with memory & facts), Hormonal/tempermental/Irrational.
the Neo cons could have produced her right out of their factory- as the embodiment of what is wrong with women and why we should never have any form of power.
Seems to me,She is the perfect prototype for the Neo Cons (Corps) to work both sides of the street. Creats the facade of ‘feminist’ while re enforcing the stereotypes.
Then she hands her deck over to Mac, which has done a nice job working to divide minorities along race & gender lines. Ddin’t think that Britney /Paris ad had some sexist undercurrents. ‘unfit mother’ and ‘Slut’. Funny they didn’t use a drunk Hasselhof or K-Fed as stars who are worshipped without regard to their parenting skills or sexual promscuity. Nope they targeted the females. then sent out their surrogate Police Cheif in LA to reinforce the idea that only women cause scandals and act irresponsibly. Why did he not mention Male stars who have had run in with the law.. .Mel Gibson, Robert Downy Jr, Andy Dick??? Nope equated the recent decline in media frenzy and crimes to only the Starlets.This asshole ran out of the Gym just to make this statement- WHY??? To re enforce Mac’s sexist/Racist ad. Think Mac stopped considering women ‘cunts’ just because no one has heard him say it recently? His Ad’s a Freudian slip!

Indeed EJ..

“...The great opportunity this year for less scrupulous Republican strategists is that Obama is both black and a Columbia-Harvard-educated former professor who lived in the intellectually rarefied precincts of Hyde Park in Chicago, Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Cambridge, Mass. They can go after him subtly on race and overtly on elitism. They can turn the facts of Obama’s life into mutually reinforcing liabilities…”

~~~

This has been one of the more effective tricks in the repiglican playbook, and they’ve used it since the beginning. Probably the MOST disgusting part of it, is that they’ve drawn in huge numbers of African-Americans to smear him, based on the very same. It makes me sick.

We hear ignorant people, (black and white) claiming that they don’t appreciate ‘people of privilege’ telling them they have to restrict their diet, or ‘lecturing’ black men on the responsibilities of fatherhood.

Now the very same people wouldn’t even question it when a WHITE ‘person of privilege’ (have there ever been any presidents that WEREN’T?) says all of the same stuff.

So this ‘elite thing’ (despite the fact that Obama didn’t start out that way, and didn’t do anything different than other have also done, just by working hard) is going to be made into a huge issue to create all tons of resentment that would NEVER be the case with any white candidate, because it never has been before.

Since when did an Ivy League education become a LIABILITY for a US Presidential candidate? How jacked -up is that? If that doesn’t speak to the totally loathsome mentality of a so-called civilized population, I don’t know what does.