What Does Her Race Have To Do With It?
Posted on October 12, 2008 at 4:31 pmHarold Ford, Jr. takes John McCain to task for not denouncing an ad from his 2006 Senate Race:
While I am disappointed in McCain’s about-face, I am not surprised. When I ran for the Senate in 2006, my opponent, Bob Corker, also found himself trailing in the October polls. His campaign and the Republican National Committee launched a series of false and vicious character attack ads, including the infamous “call me” ad, in which a scantily clad white woman looked at the camera and said, “Harold, call me.”
Every major news organization and independent ad-checking group ruled the ad a smear and deemed it way over the line. But that didn’t stop John McCain from coming to Tennessee and campaigning for my opponent while the “call me” ad and other smears were broadcast across the state. Not once did McCain speak out against that ad as he did about the smear against John Kerry. In fact, the first manager he hired for his 2008 presidential campaign was Terry Nelson, the person who produced the “call me” ad.
What exactly is the point of inserting the word “white” in the above sentence? Is Harold Ford suggesting that the ad contained some sort of racial code?
Because back in the day, Ford himself said he didn’t think “race had anything to do with that ad.”
So has Ford changed his mind on the now infamous ad or is he subtly using a myth that has been allowed to gestate in the national media’s subconscious for craven political advantage?
The language in an op/ed like this one is very carefully chosen and reviewed. Can we really pretend to assume that the word “white” was just a descriptive adjective choice? Or must we conclude thatFord was trying to send the message that he now agrees with the popular media myth about the “Call Me” ad?
Which is it? Was the ad racial code or not?
UPDATE: From just this week:
As Harold Ford Jr. told me in Nashville: “If Barack were not African-American, they’d be doing this.”
Comments
4 Responses to “What Does Her Race Have To Do With It?”
You notice Jr. didn’t tell the “sistas” he was passing over every single one of them to marry a rich white woman who had given his campaign pretty big money. Until the election was over.
Oh, the ad was absolutely code, and Ford knew it then too. I speak with only a tiny amount of insight from that campaign, I was about as low on the totem pole as you could go. But remember, Ford spent that campaign running as far away from the race issue as he could. I don’t think he wanted to remind anyone of his background, even though there was no escaping it. I really feel that he could have changed some minds if he had confronted the issue head on the way Obama did.
That ad was absolutely playing the race card. For more about that type of destructive politics. visit http://www.stopdogwhistleracism.com, where we’re following the good, bad and ugly from the right, left and center on race in the race.
She was hispanic. The woman in the commercial was of hispanic descent.
Hello?
- Matthew