Tuesday, May 13, 2008

BARACK OBAMA, HILLARY CLINTON

Just in Time For West Virginia, a Spotlight on Racist Anti-Obama Voters

The Washington Post picks an interesting day to run a front-page feature story on volunteers for the Obama campaign encountering blatant racism as they promote their candidate.

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."

It takes twenty-nine paragraphs before the reader encounters a voter who refuses to support Obama but suggests it could be based on issues or a non-racial reason: "I just got a funny feeling about him," Roe said, a feeling he couldn't specify, except to say race wasn't a part of it. "Race ain't nothing," said Roe, who is white. "It's how they're going to help the country."

Are there racists out there? Sure. Are there people willing to be rude, crude, obnoxious and hateful to Obama volunteers? Sure, and it's a terrible thing. But the timing of the article, coupled with its relentless portrait of voters driven by ferocious, unmitigated bigotry, certainly feels like a prepared excuse for a blowout loss for Obama tonight — particularly in light of the pre-primary buzz lately.

I also noticed that in Jeanne Moos light-hearted piece on CNN this morning about how Hillary Clinton likes wearing the color yellow, she showcased one sentence from this weekend's Saturday Night Live sketch. Yup, it's Amy Poehler's faux-Hillary beaming to the camera and proudly declaring, "My supporters are racist."

We laugh, and the idea of Hillary arguing to superdelegates that the Democrats cannot concede the racist vote is absurdly funny. But note that it is just about unthinkable that SNL would do a sketch that featured Fred Armisen's faux-Obama (Fauxbama?) looking to the camera and saying, "Superdelegates, you have to ensure that I am the Democratic nominee because my supporters will never vote for a white woman."

05/13 09:53 AMShare