Respected NYT Obama supporter: 3am Clinton ad was racist "Ku Klux Klan" ad

[Thorgrim]

Obama's surrogates playing the race card again:

ON first watching Hillary Clinton’s recent “It’s 3 a.m.” advertisement, I was left with an uneasy feeling that something was not quite right — something that went beyond my disappointment that she had decided to go negative. Repeated watching of the ad on YouTube increased my unease. I realized that I had only too often in my study of America’s racial history seen images much like these, and the sentiments to which they allude.

I am not referring to the fact that the ad is unoriginal; as several others have noted, it mimics a similar ad made for Walter Mondale in his 1984 campaign for the Democratic nomination. What bothers me is the difference between this and the Mondale ad. The Mondale ad directly and unequivocally played on the issue of experience. The danger was that the red telephone might be answered by someone who was “unsure, unsteady, untested.” Why do I believe this? Because the phone and Mr. Mondale are the only images in the ad. Fair game in the normal politics of fear.

Not so this Clinton ad. To be sure, it states that something is “happening in the world” — although it never says what this is — and that Mrs. Clinton is better able to handle such danger because of her experience with foreign leaders. But every ad-maker, like every social linguist, knows that words are often the least important aspect of a message and are easily muted by powerful images.

I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.

The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother or father — or by stating that the danger was external terrorism. Instead, the child on whom the camera first focuses is blond. Two other sleeping children, presumably in another bed, are not blond, but they are dimly lighted, leaving them ambiguous. Still it is obvious that they are not black — both, in fact, seem vaguely Latino.

Finally, Hillary Clinton appears, wearing a business suit at 3 a.m., answering the phone. The message: our loved ones are in grave danger and only Mrs. Clinton can save them. An Obama presidency would be dangerous — and not just because of his lack of experience. In my reading, the ad, in the insidious language of symbolism, says that Mr. Obama is himself the danger, the outsider within.

Did the message get through? Well, consider this: people who voted early went overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama; those who made up their minds during the three days after the ad was broadcast voted heavily for Mrs. Clinton.

For more than a century, American politicians have played on racial fears to divide the electorate and mobilize xenophobic parties. Blacks have been the “domestic enemy,” the eternal outsider within, who could always inspire unity among “we whites.” Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy was built on this premise, using coded language — “law and order,” “silent majority” — to destroy the alliance between blacks and white labor that had been the foundation of the Democratic Party, and to bring about the Republican ascendancy of the past several decades. The Willie Horton ad that George H. W. Bush used against Michael Dukakis in 1988 was a crude manifestation of this strategy — as was the racist attack used against John McCain’s daughter, who was adopted from Bangladesh, in the South Carolina Republican primary in 2000.

It is significant that the Clinton campaign used its telephone ad in Texas, where a Fox poll conducted Feb. 26 to 28 showed that whites favored Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton 47 percent to 44 percent, and not in Ohio, where she held a comfortable 16-point lead among whites. Exit polls on March 4 showed the ad’s effect in Texas: a 12-point swing to 56 percent of white votes toward Mrs. Clinton. It is striking, too, that during the same weekend the ad was broadcast, Mrs. Clinton refused to state unambiguously that Mr. Obama is a Christian and has never been a Muslim.

It is possible that what I saw in the ad is different from what Mrs. Clinton and her operatives saw and intended. But as I watched it again and again I could not help but think of the sorry pass to which we may have come — that someone could be trading on the darkened memories of a twisted past that Mr. Obama has struggled to transcend.

Orlando Patterson is a professor of sociology at Harvard and the author of “The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s ‘Racial’ Crisis.”

More Obama supporters agree:

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

I have never heard something so ridiculous in this campaign...the Obama crowd will super-analyze EVERYTHING until they can find a way to make it racist...a pattern I've seen since they lied about Clinton's "fairy tale" line

If Obama supporters harp on for the next 8 months about McCain being racist and constantly doing racist things, are you going to switch your vote? You think this is a winning strategy for a general election?

[IminWonderland]

It's not suprising to me to read that into the image. I have seen the film he is speaking of, and whether it is purposeful or not, there are cetain images and linguistic clues contrasting off the images that seem to reflect in culture, and in many cultures.

One of those cues is the idea of the "dark" man being negative, and it is so prevelent, that fundamental social shift that dark is inherently bad because of symbolism, is reflected onto what we see in culture.

Why is the heroine of the story typically young, helpless, alone, and fair? Because the human collective unconsious created it, and it's the same reason why today, we still struggle with racial issues.

The Clinton campaign may not have purposefully leaned the commercial in this direction, but it is certainly an archetype that is prevelent. And, I am pressuming that this can be conjured up by the mere showing of a white/pale woman looking after her white/pale children, under the hood of "night".

Symbols have alot of meaning. Humans are the only animal to use symbols and metaphor.

[Thorgrim]

they may not have personally leaned the commercial in this direction?

you really don't think he over-analyzed and you are just agreeing it's randing scribbling

[IminWonderland]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

they may not have personally leaned the commercial in this direction?

you really don't think he over-analyzed and you are just agreeing it's randing scribbling

Do I think he over analyzed? I think he supported his anlyzation with a well known and played out archetype, that does reflect an aspect of American Culture, an archetype that was once promenient, and is just now starting to break down in mainstream culture.

I think that this is in the concious of Americans, our history has shown a habitual nature to confirm archetypes and it has only been the past 60 years that more stident movements within the culture has come to majority.


One day this won't be an issue, and the image of the person in distress could have been a Father looking in on his children, being comfortable with Homosexual Latino President who is answering his phone in the middle of the night.

This professor is reflecting on that culture shift, that's what people do at Universities.

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by IminWonderland

Do I think he over analyzed? I think he supported his anlyzation with a well known and played out archetype, that does reflect an aspect of American Culture, an archetype that was once promenient, and is just now starting to break down in mainstream culture.

I think that this is in the concious of Americans, our history has shown a habitual nature to confirm archetypes and it has only been the past 60 years that more stident movements within the culture has come to majority.


One day this won't be an issue, and the image of the person in distress could have been a Father looking in on his children, being comfortable with Homosexual Latino President who is answering his phone in the middle of the night.

This professor is reflecting on that culture shift, that's what people do at Universities.

Obama supporters don't do it on Op-Eds of the NYT, he didn't do this as a class discussion, he did it as a public accusation of racism

[kombayn]

Anything that plays to the racist card is ignorant... Now if her 3am ad said, "It's 3am... Do you want a [CENSORED (N-Word)] answering the phone?" then ya... Over the line. His campaign needs to drop this race card, it just plays to the media and the uninformed TMZ crowd.

[IminWonderland]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

Obama supporters don't do it on Op-Eds of the NYT, he didn't do this as a class discussion, he did it as a public accusation of racism

And it is great that we have forums to be able to look at his ideas, understand why those ideas could be present, and then decide that we aren't going to view the ad in that reflection.

I am saying I understand what he sees, or thinks he sees, I see the same kind of symbolism EVERYWHERE. But, it doesn't mean that Clinton was racist.

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by kombayn

His campaign needs to drop this race card, it just plays to the media and the uninformed TMZ crowd.

It's not his campaign. It's a sociology professor from Harvard who probably never met Obama or anyone in his campaign. I'm sure if people looked hard enough we could find feminist professors writing similar things regarding Hillary. It doesn't mean anything. Obama doesn't control the views and writings of people voting for him, nor has he attempted to monopolize on this that I'm aware of. And if it drew serious media attention I have a feeling he'd "repudiate" the statements.

And going over Obama's donations, I don't see anything from an Orlando Patterson.

[7960]

I saw the commercial. Only a racist would say that commercial was racist.

[kombayn]

^ and to reply to JaJae, that Harvard man needs his Harvard degree revoked. If a dumb-ass like myself knows the difference, then come on... GO YALE!