Month: August 2008

A controversial TV ad for congressional hopeful Nikki Tinker was denounced
Saturday as “an effort to divide the community racially” by an impressive
gathering of African American supporters of her Democratic primary opponent, incumbent 9th
District congressman Steve Cohen.

The ad, which has run at scattered intervals on local television, beginning Friday, focuses on a vote some years ago by Cohen, while a member of the Center
City Commission, against a proposal by lawyer and former county commissioner
Walter Bailey to excavate and remove the body of the late Confederate General
Nathan Bedford Forrest from Forrest Park.

As Cohen explained Saturday, he argued at the time that the Center City
Commission was the improper venue for such a proposal, which, to be implemented,
would require action by the city council and mayor. In the event, support for the proposal was forthcoming from neither.

The congressman, author of a
resolution apologizing for slavery that has received worldwide attention since
its passage by the U.S. House of Representatives this past week, acknowledged,
too, that he didn’t favor the removal of Forrest’s remains as the best way of
redressing the past.

Among the things that stuck in the craw of Cohen’s supporters, including several
prominent ministers and public officials, was the ad’s juxtaposition of Cohen’s
image next to those of Ku Klux Klansmen.

“For this ad to come up at the last minute is an attempt to
divide this community racially. And this community isn’t going to be divided.
We’re all in favor of our congressman, Steve Cohen,” said Myron Lowery, the
longtime city councilman who, at the time off the most recent Forrest Park
controversy, floated a compromise proposal for adding anti-slavery exhibits to
the grounds of Forrest Park.

Cohen has “focused on the issues,” said Lowery. “He has not attempted to
divide this community racially. He has always brought this community together.” That’s why the group was supporting Cohen and denouncing the “racial politics” of the Tinker ad, Lowery said.

The congressman himself did not participate directly in the
meeting Saturday, which was convened at Cohen campaign headquarters on Union
Avenue by the Rev. Ralph White of Bloomfield Baptist Church. White got some of
the most animated response among those speaking when he said, “There are two
kinds of people, those who have something to say, and those who have to say
something. “

Elaborating on the theme, expressed by several attendees,
that Tinker had been less than forthcoming on issues, White compared Cohen’s
campaign to his opponent’s this way: “It’s not apples to oranges. It’s apples to
nothing.”

“The people of the 9th Congressional District are intelligent. They
will not fall for these kinds of tactics,” said White, who had been one of
Cohen’s opponents for the congressional seat in 2006. “Steve Cohen has been an
awesome congressman. And we’re going to support him, and I think the rest of
the 9th congressional district will.”

Among the others participating in the press conference denouncing the Tinker ad
and supporting Cohen were by city councilman Edmund Ford, Jr., former Shelby
County Commissioner Minerva Johnican, Frayser activist Antonio “2 Shay”
Parkinson, Dr. Melvin Wade, Rev. John Ragland, Rev. James Kendricks, Rev. H. O.
Kneeland, Rev. Darryl McDonald, Terry Walls, Michael Carper, Beanie Self, and
Travis Jenkins.

Have you seen the TV ad for
John McCain in which he compares Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris
Hilton, supposedly because he, like they, is a “celebrity.” I was stunned by
McCain’s choice of whom to throw up on the screen for this purpose. Of all the
people he could have chosen, these are the two vacuous, public embarrassments he
comes up with? And they’re supposed to be comparable, in any way, to the Harvard
Law graduate and United States Senator who’s the first African American to stand
a chance of being elected the president of our country?

If McCain’s point was simply celebrity, he could have chosen Michael Jackson
(the all-time notorious celebrity), or Tiger Woods (no question he qualifies),
or Opah Winfrey (they don’t get bigger than that) or any of a number of
prominent black people who get a lot of notoriety, for good reasons or bad. For
that matter, he could have chosen famous men, black or white, to accuse Obama of
resembling, like maybe Bill Gates, Bill Cosby, or Brad Pitt, any of whom are
also card-carrying celebrities.

But no; McCain’s point in
the ad (if he has one) is sharper than that; it’s not just that Spears and
Hilton are celebrities, it’s that there’s no real reason for their celebrity,
other than the fact that they’ve been made into that by a fame-besotted media
that loves to build up its icons. McCain, we know, is angry at the media for
paying so much attention to this upstart. After all, he’s just the first viable
black candidate for the presidency in history, who attracts throngs of
spectators everywhere he appears, including upwards of 200,000 during his
appearance in Berlin. How dare the media fawn over this pipsqueak! Don’t
they know that being a WARHERO trumps any other reason for
covering a candidate?

It’s no accident, either,
that McCain chose two women of notoriously ill repute to make his comparison.
Britney is famous for late-night jags during which she flashes beaver shots at
the cameras, for neglecting her children, for bed-hopping, and for her public
meltdowns and frequent visits to rehab facilities, and Paris is famous for being
a spoiled little rich kid with lots of time (and money) on her hands, whose
extracurricular activities include making a porn film with her “boyfriend”
that’s available for viewing on any of a thousand web sites. These are the
people John McCain thinks bear comparison to Obama, not for their fame, but for
their infamy. Shame on him.

This shouldn’t surprise us,
though. After all, McCain also thinks Obama is an “elitist” becaue of his
highfalutin (read: uppity) rhetoric. This from the man who’s married to the
scion of a brewing fortune (even if she looks and acts more like a “Stepford
Wife”), flies around in her company’s private jet, owns fancy houses all over
the country, wears $500 Italian loafers and doesn’t have a clue how much
gasoline costs because he’s never had to pump his own. But Obama’s the elitist.

So what is the real (i.e.,
subliminal) message in McCain’s flashing these trollops on the screen alongside
the image of Obama? And why did he pick two flashy, sexually-charged, blonde
white women to throw in our face as emblematic of what he wants us to believe is
Obama’s empty suit syndrome? The answer seems pretty obvious: Be afraid of Obama
because he’s a black man, and we all know what a danger black men pose to white
women, consensually or otherwise. Some believe that was the message in the
equally infamous TV ad by Bob Corker’s campaign during his campaign against
Harold Ford, Jr. – you know, the one which featured the pretty blonde white
woman at the end entreating “Harold, call me.” Notice, the Corker folks didn’t
pick a black woman for that role either. But, according to McCain’s most recent
attack, it’s Obama who’s playing the “race card.”

So will
McCain pay the price for this kind of sleazy campaign propaganda? Or will, as
they’ve come to be euphemistically called, the “low information” (read: stupid,
racist) voters who are McCain’s target audience (not to say base) buy into this
kind of low-road tactic? If Mencken’s philosophy (or a paraphrase of it) holds,
namely that no one ever lost an election by overestimating the intelligence of
the American voter, that is probably a rhetorical question.