My first reaction to this was the same as ABL's: it's the work of a reprehensible hatemonger.
Today, Burnt Orange Report received [this] photo ..., taken in front of a home in Northwest Austin. The resident, a Republican, lynched an empty chair from a tree in his yard....
... in light of Clint Eastwood's speech at the Republican National Convention, in which he had a largely one-sided conversation with an empty chair he pretended was Barack Obama, this imagery is now associated with the President....
But my second thought was this: The guy is a hate-filled scumbag, but his act of hate requires you to be in on right-wing in-jokes. Yes, a lot of us watched that Clint Eastwood speech, so we understand the point of this. But a lot of people never saw it, and others probably watched it and then forgot all about it. (A lot of people watched Bill Clinton's Democratic convention speech, too, but I wouldn't expect most Americans now to get a reference to Clinton's comments about Republicans and math.) Right-wingers didn't forget the chair bit, of course -- they ran with it. To them, the notion that Obama actually is, in effect, an empty chair is incredibly profound and hilarious. They'll never stop chuckling over it.
So as reprehensible as this is, it's awfully insular. But that's how right-wingers are these days. From a somewhat more respectable precinct of the right, there's this ad, from an independent anti-Obama group, which is airing in Florida starting today:
I get why Republicans would want to sell themselves as the party of foreign-policy muscularity, and sell the notion of solidarity with Netanyahu in Florida -- but is the reference to "apologies" at the end going to mean anything to anyone who isn't already a hardcore Obama-hater and committed voter? This is also the right talking to the right, in right-wingers' own shorthand language.
Maybe I find this odd because, here in New York, there are plenty of people who disagree with much of the right's messaging but who are rather hard-line on defending Israel. And I remember moderates voting for hawkishness in Reagan and W years. But this ad concludes by saying to those people, in effect, "We're not talking to you -- we're talking to people who've already absorbed the Fox/talk radio talking point that Obama's foreign policy is largely based on apologizing."
I see this insularity even in a new Republican National Committee ad accusing Obama of believing in "redistribution." Talking Points Memo addresses the main thing that's wrong with the ad -- it relies on outrageously selective editing -- but I want to add that it also doesn't even seem to be talking to the middle:
Why waste the first eight seconds -- one-fifth of the 43-second ad -- on that Ronald Reagan soundbite? The only reason is that either (a) this ad isn't aimed at anyone outside the base or (b) the makers of the ad just think Reagan is so unbelievably awesome that of course you want to lead with a quote from him, because once people hear Reagan, they're sold. The folks behind this ad really have no idea that many of us, in the center as well as on the left, simply don't swoon over the guy.
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UPDATE: Oh, look -- another racist sleazebag hangs a chair, this one in a park in Virginia. In this one the chair was labeled -- the label reads "Nobama," which is also an in-joke. (Wingers find it hilarious to call the president "Nobama.")
