All of the passages you quote, Mr PC, support the argument that the ad is racially insensitive. None claims that the ad is intrinsically or objectively racist – or intrinsically or objectively anything. That’s open to interpretation.

As I’ve stated, and re-stated, and as you’ve quoted, I believe the ad is clumsy, offensive, and inflammatory. I don’t think it’s even intelligent enough to be considered representative of any particular ideology, including racism. I do accept the obvious, however, which is that the ad is and will be and has been taken to be racist – as when I suggest, in one of the passages you quote (with typical incomprehension), that African Americans may “see a political party trying to inflame a white racial response to the Democrats and their black frontrunner.”

I don’t know or claim to know what was going through the heads of the NC GOP’s ad makers. I have described how I expected their ad to be received.

The fact, however, that you don’t understand the difference between racism and racial insensitivity, and apparently also don’t seem to understand the difference between saying something wrong and saying something in the wrong way, probably helps explain why you can’t understand why people would be offended by the ad for any reason other than over-sensitivity. You don’t think you’re a racist, you don’t think the NC GOP is run by racists, you don’t think conservatives are racists, so you can’t imagine why anyone would think that something you or they said was insensitive – because to you it’s the same thing. It’s not, though one can easily lead or turn into the other. Racists do make racially insensitive remarks, but not everyone who makes a racially insensitive remark is a racist. And there are doubtless many, many racists who refrain out of self-interest from revealing their thoughts. Indeed, some of the most racially sensitive people also happen to be the worst racists – in both parties, and all over the world.

The makers of the ad may be a lot like you. Maybe they’re convinced that they’re not really racists – though it might be hard to figure out what they think “racism” really is. Maybe they associate racism with weirdos in Nazi drag who believe that there really are well-defined human races, and who follow some brand of white supremacism. Maybe they associate racists with segregationists or the KKK. Whatever the explanation, they don’t think that by merely showing Wright giving his spiel and then by showing a candidate embracing Obama, they suddenly turn themselves into segregationists or neo-Nazi weirdos.

If all they really wanted to do, however, was make the logical argument that Obama associates with extremists as typified by Wright, and that Obama’s endorsers should be held responsible, then they could have presented Wright’s words and other relevant facts without, for example, showing the video – which, after all, has already been widely seen and is readily available to anyone who wants to view it. Instead, they chose to feature the video, and so entered into the realm of aesthetic choices that don’t have any absolute or necessary relationship to what they supposedly most want to argue: They wanted the audience to see and feel the hatred. They wanted to associate Obama with the worst of Wright, without having to confront any question of differences between Wright and Obama, without having to confront Obama’s self-defense, without having to propose any solution to the problems they represent other than rejecting them and everyone who has anything to do with them.

In so doing, the NC GOP and all of its defenders are contributing to the image of the Republican Party as a home for simple-minded self-righteously insensitive hypocrites – people who talk about moving beyond race but don’t hesitate to feed racial hatred, who produce political ads that anyone who really was a racist could approve of wholeheartedly.

Congratulations.

CK MacLeod on April 27, 2008 at 2:46 AM

You don’t address arguments specifically, I’ve noticed, so let’s take these one at a time:

Uh, no – let’s not. I reserve the right to ignore nit-picking, gratuitous insults, internet cliches of the “nuance” and “check” and “scare quotes” variety, and to focus, or try to focus, on what I believe are the main issues.

If I were to try to go piece by piece with you through this all – receiving nothing but insults in return for my labors – I’d need to write a virtual book, especially considering the apparent necessity of repeating simple statements and arguments in hopes of finally being understood. For instance:

[you quoting me:]I think a large number of them rightly see themselves painted in the worst possible light, and see a political party trying to inflame a white racial response to the Democrats and their black frontrunner.

[your reply:]So, you think they rightly see themselves painted [in this ad] in the worst possible light, and see a political party trying to inflame a white racial response [in this ad]. But the ad isn’t racist?

I guess I’ll need to repeat myself: I don’t take a position on whether or not the ad is “racist” – among other things because I don’t even know what you mean, or think you mean, by the term.

Though I think it’s a fruitless and picayune endeavor to try to hold someone to every word and phrase that might get uttered over the course of several long responses on an internet message board, in this case I have no trouble standing by the particular statement, even if I concede that it may have been too easy to mis-interpret.

Again, in the sentence you cite, as in others you’ve cited, I speculate about how the ad could be expected to be received by a particular group. I say that African Americans may “rightly see themselves painted in the worst possible light”: I believe that very likely the majority of African Americans see Rev Wright in full rant as a horrifying caricature of themselves and specifically of their aspirations to be treated as equal American citizens with leaders and ideas worthy of respect, in a country where, to see the least, that hasn’t always been the case. I wouldn’t blame them at all if they felt that being hit over the head with Wright again, now in the context of a paid political ad, is gratuitous and insulting.

The failure to understand that point strikes me as a basic failure of human sympathy. To you, maybe it’s a side issue. You and your virtual friends appear to think that blacks and their liberal advocates should just “get over it” if that’s how they feel, so that they and others can hear your wonderful inarguable message about how Democratic candidates who support Obama are “too extreme.”

I suspect that in the minds of Obama-supporters in particular (typically 90% of African American voters), Wright’s been discussed, addressed, exposed, and re-discussed already, and the Republicans with this ad are just counting coup on them, humiliating them. Beyond that, the Republicans are by definition trying to exploit this humiliation politically – using it in a political ad.

But I’ve already explained this at length and in multiple ways. Rather than acknowledge or respond to this main point, you prefer instead to focus on the second part of the statement you quote – another stray phrase – repeating your mis-attribution to me of a viewpoint that I am explicitly attributing to someone else.

I’ve already addressed this particular instance directly. Instead of repeating myself, I’ll expand on the underlying point. Yes, it’s very possible, indeed it’s rather common, for the recipients (in this case some number of African Americans) of a message or expression to “see” it and the message-senders as racist, even though there was no conscious racist intention on the part of those message-senders. Aside from going to a typical elementary misreading on your part, this kind of miscommunication goes to what you dismiss as a dubious “nuance” – the difference between racial insensitivity and racism.

It seems to me that any grown-up American whose been at least halfway around the block should already know and have experienced this difference many times, with excesses of sensitivity and insensitivity on both sides. Sometimes it’s easy to excuse, as when a foreigner uses an expression learned in school that has fallen into disrepute in contemporary discourse. Sometimes it’s ridiculous to the point almost of tragedy, as in the notorious recent instance of a government official being pilloried for his correct use of the term “niggardly” (which of course has nothing to do with the “n-word”).

The idea that the NC ad-makers shouldn’t have known how their ad would be received implies that they’re stunningly ignorant of their state’s and their country’s political history and culture. To me as a voter, that really would be disqualifying. The alternative explanations aren’t much better. One would be that they listened to just a tad too much Limbaugh or Hannity that week, got their combative dander up, and decided to just fire away, regardless of the criticisms, consequences, and political effects. That may or may not be disqualifying. It wouldn’t be something to be proud of, in my opinion, I don’t think it’s a very good way to run a campaign or a government, and it makes me think it’s no small wonder that they’ve been having problems in statewide elections in what’s historically been a dependable Republican state in national elections.

CK MacLeod on April 27, 2008 at 1:12 PM

misterpeasea on April 27, 2008 at 4:50 PM

You’ve now convinced me that you may really be incapable of recognizing elementary distinctions. Otherwise, I don’t think you’d try being snarky based on presumptions that have already and repeatedly been challenged directly and in detail. Leaving aside the “racist” slur and your insistence on pretending that you and your friends are the ones being reflexively and unjustifiably called racists, maybe the next time you go poring over my posts you can note the several times that I insisted that Wright and the issues the Obama-Wright relationship raise are “fair game,” even as I strongly disagreeed with the NC ad’s particular approach.

If you do take a look, please feel free not to share the results of your research. As for cereal boxes, you may very well possess the subtlety of mind that it takes to differentiate the top from the bottom, and open from closed. As for matters beyond such simple binary oppositions, based upon your performance here, I can have no confidence in your powers of discernment.

CK MacLeod on April 27, 2008 at 5:37 PM