The Obama campaign recently released a radio ad aimed at black voters. It features a 1970s-style R&B jingle and the slogan "We've got your back."
This, of course, shows up at Fox Nation with the banner headline "Is Obama's Black Voter Ad Offensive?" What's fascinating though, is that the folks Fox has answering that question -- Bill O'Reilly and O'Reilly's guest, a returning Glenn Beck -- aren't quite prepared to go full-bore racist in reaction to the ad. They want to draw attention to it because they know it will make the old white people who watch Fox cringe, but they seem to be looking for any other reason to get the audience to pay attention to this black ad aimed at black voters featuring black music and black singers and black musicians promoting a black guy who's black:
At the outset, O'Reilly deadpans, "I'm not sure who's paying the backup singers, but they do sound very good." Beck responds, "I've never heard anything like that, Bill." Really? Never? Never heard a political ad with old-school R&B? I guess they've never heard the famous 2006 Herman Cain PAC ad that urged blacks to vote Republican, invoking abortion with a character who says, "I don't snuff my own seed":
In the Fox discussion of the Obama ad, O'Reilly sidesteps race-baiting by, well, engaging in Mormon-baiting: "I would love to see Mitt Romney's backup singers. They'd probably look like the Osmonds."
From there, these guys avoid race talk -- as much as they can manage it. Beck whines about the fact that the ad implies that voters have Obama's back: "Isn't the president supposed to have our back? Isn't he the guy who's supposed to be the guy who ensures that he's watching our liberty and our life, so nobody comes and kills our family or kills us...?" (And on and on in that vein -- gosh, I've missed Beck's fantasies of catastrophe. As for the point he's making, I guess the shirts and bumperstickers you could buy in the last decade that said "I Stand with President George W. Bush" or "I Stand with W" were equally offensive to him, right?)
Beck goes on to complain about the fact that Obama is endorsing the notion of government actually doing something for people via social programs -- "Marxist," Beck calls this, though O'Reilly won't go that far:
"That's the difference between you and me and Barack Obama. Barack Obama is a big government guy and he's telling the African American community, 'I'm gonna continue to give you more stuff if I'm re-elected.'"
There's also this:
Beck further critiqued Obama's campaign method, noting "he'll say the keywords to each particular group," telling voters what they want to hear in order to get elected.
See, no one thinks what's wrong with this ad is that it sounds black. No, sirree. It's that Obama is dividing us into groups! He's trying to appeal to us by our group identities! No politician has ever done this before!
This may be a good time to bring back a little memorabilia display I posted a few years ago. All items were found here.
Newsflash: Barack Obama did not invent ethnic politics.
And, see, when you appeal to a certain subset of white people by, say, having your cowboy-hatted candidate ride a horse into the frame at the outset of an ad or having your candidate shoot up an unpopular bill, isn't that also a targeted subgroup appeal?
