A Taste of Racial Politics to Come

The Inquirer's Dick Polman is a hack, that's already been widely established. As a blogger, that's fine but he writes for a major daily and is front and center in the op/ed section every Sunday morning. In other words, his essays are read by many in the Delaware Valley so he does have a certain degree of influence for those who may just start paying attention to the presidential race--the rest of us who pay attention all the time know he's nothing but a shill for the Democrats.

Today, our buddy Dick offers us a piece that is misleading at best and fraudulent at worst. For those who haven't been paying attention to the race between Hillary and Barack Obama, you'd think the GOP racist machine has revved up and our true racist character has re-emerged because we fear that a black man may win the Oval Office. Here's some snippets:

Obama warrants all kinds of scrutiny; legitimate questions can be raised about how he'd actually end the war, how he'd tackle the Social Security entitlement woes, how he'd pay for his ambitious domestic ideas, and whether he has the intellectual tools to trump his inexperience. But those who smear do so because they understand the potential power of visceral argument. It is so much easier to exploit people's fears and ignorance than to debate Obama's ideas directly.

Consider, for instance, the Pledge of Allegiance flap. A mystery e-mail has been making the rounds, featuring a Time magazine photo that shows Obama at an Iowa event last September with his fingers entwined at waist level, supposedly during the recitation of the pledge. The e-mail stated: "He refused to not only put his hand on his heart during the pledge, but refused to say the pledge . . . how in hell can a man like this expect to be our next Commander-in-Chief?"

This, in turn, is sparking outrage on the right. The other day, commentator Linda Chavez huffed: "You can't imagine conservatives refusing to fly the flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance." Georgia Republican congressman Jack Kingston declared on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher the other night that "the guy would not say the Pledge of Allegiance . . . that is disturbing to Americans." Therefore, Kingston asked, with respect to Obama and his spouse: "Where do they stand on America?"

But the e-mail is a lie, and these people are perpetuating the lie. It turns out - and this was reported long ago - that the photo was snapped during the playing of the national anthem, not during the pledge. (By the way, it's amusing that conservatives are so hung up about the pledge, given its actual pedigree. It was authored in 1892 by a prominent American socialist, Francis Bellamy, who lectured widely on the evils of capitalism and conceived the pledge as a socialist credo, especially the words "with liberty and justice for all.")

Now these may well be anecdotal evidence of smears perpetuated against Obama but Polman only blames the political right and never once utters anything about Obama's own party, in particular the Clinton administration, who've been at the forefront of inciting the racial overtones. The only thing that even remotely casts aspersions on a Dem is this:

...And that's precisely the opposite of what the smear practitioners intend. Ignorance is their fuel. By depicting Obama in ceremonial Somali garb (a 2006 photo posted on the "Drudge Report"); by running anonymous quotes, supposedly from a "senior Pentagon official," about how Obama's ascension would be "the final victory" for "the Arab street" (news story in the Washington Times); and by writing, more politely, about how Obama's priorities are really "post-nationalist" and "post-American" (the National Review), the goal is to insinuate that a Trojan Horse has breached the castle walls, with plans to lead us to ruin.

(Drudge said the photo came from a Clinton staffer, but this has never been confirmed, and Republican bloggers and operatives have been quite pleased to disseminate it.)

Got that, it is known by everyone that the Clinton camp released that photo but it is the rightish Drudge who is responsible. As for the Washington Times and NR quotes, it's not that Obama is black, it's that Obama in a hard-core Liberal and his policies will lead us to ruin. Anyone who read the pieces in their entirety would only come to that conclusion but Polman uses them to insinuate that it's racial by selectively quoting a line here and there.

It gets worse:

Granted, none of these critics has "Hussein" for a middle name, so surely that's an effective way to suggest that Obama is too foreign to be president - which is why Bill Cunningham, the talk-radio host who warmed a crowd for McCain on Feb. 26, chanted the name repeatedly, and why the Tennessee Republican Party dropped the H-word in a news release, explaining later that "we have a duty to inform the Republican base."

At no time does Dick mention that the first to use the name "Hussein" was former presidential candidate and highly-respected Democrat Bob Kerrey. Nor does he mention that it was Democrat Bill Shaheen who brought the drug issue back into the arena insinuating with a wink and a smirk that if we elect the black guy, there will be crack pipes littering the Oval Office.

The list goes on and on. Polman's piece is some of the most dishonest opinion I've seen this election year. He completely ignored that many in his party are and always have been anti-black--the didn't call them "Dixiepubs" Dick. But you see, Dick is a liberal and liberals believe that they are the ones to lead the African-American community to the Promised Land--and hell, some of their best office cleaners are black and they say "hi" to them and everything.

This is but a taste of what we'll see when Obama is the nominee, race will be just under the surface of every single quote. It will make the "macaca" garbage seem tame by comparison. It hasn't started in earnest yet because Libs can't exactly hit other libs for being racist, now can they? I mean, Dick and his brethren anointed Bill Clinton the "First Black President", of course they didn't care that it was probably a real slap in the face to actual black people but why argue?

No, people like Dick are keeping their powder dry until Obama is the official nominee and all of a sudden we'll see racial politics as never before. Get ready for it folks.