The Year Of Campaign Chaos
Yet Freedom
McCain Replaces Palin With Startled Deer
Blaming Homeowners For This Crisis? Please
Memo To Republicans - Politics Is War
The Uplifting Debate
A Movement to Break the Silence of Churches in Political Campaigns
Of Generals And Victories
Post - Wall Street
Michelle Obama's Fearful Vision
Only Ourselves To Blame
Interesting Times
Memo To McCain: Take The Gloves Off
Main Street Need To Support Bail Out
A Heartbeat Away
The Curtain On The Last Act
Trust Us? In A Pig's Eye, I Say
Hoover-Era Ghost Stories No Longer Apply
America's Nervous Breakdown -- And The World's
Harper's Index
Why Independents Care So Much About Health Care
Gagging On Wall Street's Bailout
Does McCain Still Agree With Reagan That Government Is The Problem?
The Grip Of Bad Ideas
Who Needs To Pay Their Mortgage And Who Doesn't?
In Sunny Santa Monica, A New Appreciation Of Life
The War To Promote Terror
If Rescue Passes, Here's Who Gets Credit And Blame
Hail Mary Vs. Cool Barry
GOP To McCain: Attack Obama Now
Biden Can't Abide By The Truth
Adult Supervision Required
Pols, The Press And The Financial Crisis
Dear Congress: Put The Gun Down Now
No Country For Liberals
Palin Wins Big With A Reagan-Like Flair
Boon For Voter Fraud, Bust For Democracy
Village Idiocy
And In Other News …
What Is A Loophole?
It Was Palin's Night To Avoid Losing
Compassion, Certainly, But Justice, Too
Gotcha Questions For Katie Couric (And Her Colleagues)
Palin Alone Disqualifies McCain
Taking Stock of Testosterone
Whodunit ?
The Worst Of Both Worlds
The Change That Has Already Happened
The Supersize Bailout
Pundits Side With Wall Street Over Main Street
How To Talk To Someone Who Sounds Racist
Tough Speeches Instead Of Tough Choices
Palin Dominates VP Debate
Why the Bailout Is a Crock -- Opinion
Catholics And Abortion (Again)
Blind Defense of Koran Abrogates Reality
The Sky is Falling
What McCain Learned From The Rough Rider
McCain's Debate Challenge



No Name For The River
Robert Koehler 8/7/2008
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What astounds me about the "race card" -- which either did or didn't get played in the presidential race recently -- is its thinness.

Racial politics, and racism itself, used to be a way of life, as pervasive as hatred, as far-reaching as ignorance. Large institutions were devoted to it, politicians reveled in it, history is permeated with it. And now all that's left of the phenomenon, apparently -- or so it would seem, to anyone whose 24/7 mind-control machine (once known as the boob tube) is hooked up -- is that single card, the playing of which not only queers the game but forces a moment of freaked-out media attention on the fact that a game is being played at all, and all of us are in some vague way participants.

An examination of the incident might be illuminating not so we can cast a verdict on it one way or the other, necessarily, but so we can get a glimpse of the contours of the game itself, and the larger context in which it hovers uneasily. That context, of course, is America, past, present and future. Presidential elections have, over the years, it seems to me, become more and more about the game and less and less about the context.

So what
happened, of course, is that last week Barack Obama said: "Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, 'he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name,' you know, 'he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.'"

And a day earlier, in the wake of Obama's high-five world tour that generated enormous media attention, John McCain's campaign released an ad that noted sourly: "He's the biggest celebrity in the world, but is he ready to lead?" Mixed with images of Obama in Europe were America's two favorite airheads, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Maybe their presence in the ad is completely innocent, but to angry critics, the operative inference is that they're sexy, young white women "notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear," as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert noted.

And this is the state of America's racial awareness in the 21st century, as manifested in our quadrennial ritual of power transfer, the process that's supposed to make us the world's greatest democracy. How embarrassing.

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Radioactive Racial Politics COLOR
By Nate Beeler - The Washington Examiner * Posted 08/01/2008
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Radioactive Racial Politics COLOR
© Copyright 2008  Nate Beeler - All Rights Reserved.

Posted By: geoff  on Saturday, August 09, 2008

Well, we'll see. Don't forget, the "bad old days" weren't so long ago, given that there are still rumours going around that Obama's gay, a Muslim, wasn't born in the USA, etc. And what else does McCain have to campaign on, really?

All the Democrats need to do is show more photos of McCain hugging Bush, singing "Bomb Iran," being unable to answer the question about why health insurance covers Viagra but not contraception, and McCain will be toast.

Unless they steal another election, of course.

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