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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Obama’s Questionable Ad Strategy

Family Security Matters (FSM), a blog site that has carried my columns for a number of years now, is a non-profit organization under the IRS’s 501(c)(3) guidelines. As such, it may not carry any column that endorses or attacks any political candidate’s positions during a campaign season. President Barack Obama is running for reelection, so his policies and comments are off-limits – per IRS censors. A violation of the IRS’s guidelines would result the termination of the organization’s non-profit status and likely incur severe penalties.

So, in order to discuss Obama on FSM without really discussing him, I contrived this stratagem. What follows is a version of what will appear on FSM’s blog site.
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Before commenting on President Barack Obama’s newest campaign ad on YouTube, I invite readers to first watch the ad here. It isn’t long.

Now I ask readers to reach their own conclusions about this ad. Is it racist? Does it appeal exclusively to blacks or “African-Americans”? Is it addressed to all Americans, and not just blacks? Or not? Do you think the ad is a version of the White House’s policy of “class warfare” between the rich, the poor, and the middle class? I personally do not recall another candidate or incumbent addressing a specific race to garner votes. I have been watching presidential campaign ads for decades, and, in my experience, this ad is unprecedented.

Liberal pundits are screaming bloody murder over what they deem acerbic campaign ads put out by both parties. But I have heard or read nothing in the MSM or on any PBS affiliate or in any newspaper about this ad. Apparently, because the MSM has said nothing about it, it passes muster with them as a legitimate campaign ad.

I don’t recall JFK appealing to Catholics for their votes. I don’t recall Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton asking for Baptist votes. I don’t recall either of the Bushes pleading for “Caucasian” votes. I don’t recall any black candidates overtly soliciting black votes. Or Latino votes. Or Jewish votes. Not in a nationally broadcast speech addressed to the whole nation. And not delivered from the White House. And YouTube is open to the entire nation.

The only exception might be a George W. Bush campaign video ad from July 2004, in which he stresses that Latinos or Hispanics are Americans. It does not appeal to envy, and doesn’t seek to be divisive. Watch it here. If you have trouble remembering other innocuous campaign ads from years ago, find them and compare them with the Obama ad. You may see a radical difference.

Which ad is flip side of segregation? Of affirmative action? Of Jim Crow-ism?

Racism, after all, is the lowest form of collectivism, but it’s obvious some incumbents are willing and desperate enough to stoop to it.

FSM would like to hear from its readers. What do you think?

5 comments:

  1. MSM, et al., gives this racist pandering a pass owing to the entrenched notion of blacks as victims. (Which, being on the receiving end of stuff like this, they are, in a way!)

    It'll be interesting to know whether your intended post is accepted. I see your strategy, but I'm pessimistic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ed,

    Did you see this?

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2106631/Fireman-Sam-creator-Dave-Jones-detained-branded-racist-burqa-joke-airport-security.html

    Why are Objectivist writers, bloggers, organizations not outraged at this? No but they'll scream their heads off at Rick Santorum.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I would suppose that most "O"-bloggers ARE outraged at this. And they SHOULD be "screaming their heads off" at Santorum (if they aren't already)--who is way more of a would-be menace than these lackey airport screeners (who are only doing the bidding of their organizational superiors, so that they, the screeners, can safely retire to the south of France, or Florida). Santorum, on the contrary, has no one to answer to, at present, than himself--making his true colors all the more obvious.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jayeldee,

    You are unhinged. And you are exactly the type of "Objectivist" which legitimizes the term "Randroid". You are saying that a milquetoast like Santorum is more dangerous than the Leftist/Islam unholy alliance that the article I linked to represents. That is INSANE.

    You live in the Blue Pill world. Ed is starting to emerge from that and to understand that the greatest evil we face is Islam and the Left, not Conservatives.

    D. Bandler

    ReplyDelete
  5. D. Bandler, at least you are consistent: You batted, here, nearly 1,000, by my reckoning, in that every single one of your sentences—excepting perhaps (and only perhaps) the last—contains a baseless assertion. (And whether the last is baseless is best decided by Ed, who all too obviously can certainly speak for himself: but, the last time I checked—in a previous reply to you—he made it very plain that he considered both Islam and Christianity to be equally threatening, with which estimate I generally agree; except I think the latter might be at least slightly more threatening than Islam, to what remains of America, owing to its greater acceptance and long-standing entrenchment in American culture and politics. It is virtually taken for granted now, by both the Left and of course the Right, and most in-between, that Christianity ought to have some place at the political table. We haggle, now, only over the size of the placemat.)

    Your first two sentences, and your fifth, of course merit no reply.

    But your third sentence is interesting, and does merit rebuttal. Here, you imply that being a “milquetoast” obviates the threat one poses, as a politician. To see the folly of this misguided appraisal, one needs only to enumerate several of the more obvious milquetoasts who have recently finagled themselves into high political office, by virtue of a clueless American citizenry, and managed to wreak, during their tenures, untold havoc on what is left of America. To wit: Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. To this gallery of dimwits, I would also add the person of Ronald Reagan—who was far more of a milquetoast than most anyone seems to realize, and was probably more damaging to America, in his accommodation of religion, than any other president in U.S. history. (In fact, all four of the cited milquetoasts were devoted to Christianity, which devotion was hardly only coincidental to their shared character.)

    You appear to consider Christianity as a rather innocuous evil, compared with the depredations of Islam. In fact, it is no less potent as a religion—and is currently even more of a threat to America, as I noted above, precisely because the vast majority of the U.S. population has been conditioned to accept and accommodate it. But that is not so for Islamism (yet).

    ReplyDelete

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