Når jeg ikke har skrevet meget om den amerikanske valgkamp, er det fordi jeg har svært ved at blive begejstret for hverken McCain eller Obama. Hysteriet om McCains agrebs-reklamer er meget symptomatisk.
McCains kampagne har lavet en række klodsede reklamespots om Obama – den mest omdiskuterede er reklamen, der sammenstiller den demokratiske kandidat med Paris Hilton og Britney Spears, omend denne her er min personlige yndling. Men i stedet for at kritisere disse reklamers totale mangel på indhold, har Obama og hans støtter valgt at tolke dem som racistiske angreb.
Michael Moynihan fanger stemningen godt:
In a web-only column, The New York Times editorial page charged that the ad was a “racially tinged attack” like the one that “ran against Harold Ford, a black candidate for Senate in Tennessee in 2006. That assault, too, began with videos juxtaposing Mr. Ford with young, white women.” The American Prospect’s Ezra Klein huffed that the McCain campaign is “running crypto-racist ads.” Bill Press, former co-host of CNN’s Crossfire, proclaimed that the “Celeb” spot was “deliberately and deceptively racist.” Polk Award-winning blogger Josh Marshall wrote that “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.”
The online hyperventilation quickly passed through to the Sunday chat show circuit. If this wasn’t dog-whistle politics, said Democratic strategist Donna Brazile on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” then “why not use Denzel Washington or Bono?” (Brazile is a frequent decoder of subterranean racism, having previously accused former President Bill Clinton of being racially insensitive for calling Obama’s view of the Iraq war a “fairy tale.”) MSNBC’s perpetually outraged host Keith Olbermann inveighed against the “almost subliminal racism, a black man with two women.” When the video briefly flashed Berlin’s Victory Column on the screen — where Obama addressed 200,000 adoring fans — New York Times columnist Bob Herbert saw a “phallic symbol.”
Tjek også Niels Westys indlæg om emnet på Punditokraterne.
