-By Warner Todd Huston
The Christian Science Monitor apparently thought it was doing the country a public service by laying out rules by which to judge whether or not a Mitt Romney ad is “racist,” but in its five questions to ask yourself about Mitt Romney’s ads, the magazine essentially laid out criteria that makes any ad Romney has done or even could do into a racist attack on Barack Obama.
In fact, the C.S. Monitor begins with the premise that racism must naturally be a prime Romney tactic against Obama. The campaign will be racist, the authors in the Monitor say. “It’s not a matter of whether racism will appear in campaign messaging, but when,” they write.
What the authors then do is indulge that famous left-wing practice of saying that everything whites do — this time in politics — is either outright racism, purposeful yet veiled racism, or subconscious racism. In other words, everything is racism no matter what.
For the Monitor, professors Charlton McIlwain and Stephen M. Caliendo also insist that blacks are never racist in their campaign efforts, another lefty trope popular in the world of academia.
The first rule wonders if there are “racial stereotypes” in a Romney ad. Is Obama presented as having done something that could be considered “untrustworthy”? That’s racist. How about anything that smacks of a crime? Racist. Does the Romney ad say Obama is “misleading” or the president is saying things that are “not true”? You guessed it, racist. Is anyone criticizing Obama for golfing so much thereby hinting that he might be a “lazy” president? Racist all day long.
The second question asks ad watchers to note if Obama’s image appears “alongside racial stereotypes”?
I am not sure how this is different than rule one because the professors again bring up “criminality” as they did already but the pair go on to say that when Obama calls Romney a “felon: that’s no big deal because whites have “no association with crime.”
Whites are never associated with crime? None? Really?
The third question asks if Romney has white people in his ads. If Romney is shown alongside whites, well these profs apparently think he must hate blacks, or something.
Question four asks ad viewers to note if Romney is creating an “us vs. them racial contrast?”
In this one, the writers say that if Romney uses the words “we,” or “us,” or “them” then he’s a racist. I’d find it a bit hard to make a political ad where the other party isn’t a “them,” and my supporters aren’t an “us,” but I guess that’s why I am a racist!
Finally, the last question essentially posits that if a Romney ad about Obama runs in a predominantly white part of the country, guess what? The ad is surely racist. Does it matter what’s in the ad? Probably not to these two.
In essence, the pair seem to claim that any and every criticism of Obama must be a racist attack on the man. Using their criteria, Romney could not make an ad that isn’t racist no matter what he tries to do and as far as they are concerned Romney likely intends a racist attack anyway.
And who should be surprised that these two professors see racism everywhere they look? After all, they have a book to sell based on the idea. At the end of the piece the Monitor notes that the two profs authored the book, “Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns.” So, they have a vested interest to claim that racism infuses every ad that white candidates run, I suppose.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
At one point, as I was reading this I wondered if the two professors had skin of a darker color than those on the Mayflower. Then I read the last paragraph and found it didn’t matter. These professors are simply hate filled, greedy capitalists that want to fill their pockets with filthy lucre. Obviously Tea Party members that are willing to throw anybody and everybody under the Tea Party Express as long as they get theirs before the house of cards collapses.