John McCain: the "Great White Hope"
John McCain and Company are shocked, SHOCKED that their now infamous Britney Spears/Paris Hilton attack ad against Barack Obama has become a topic of speculation for its "racial overtones."
Pop Quiz (Three Questions):
1). What American political party in the mid-1980s ran ads featuring a close up of a pair of alabaster white hands crumpling up a job application because affirmative action gave all the good jobs to undeserving blacks?
2). What American political party in the late-1980s ran an attack ad that featured a scary black convict who was released on a prison work furlough program and raped a woman?
3). What American political party in the last election cycle ran an ad featuring a seductive scantily-clad young white woman beckoning the African-American candidate to "call" her for a sexual rendezvous?
And John McCain says Barack Obama is "playing the race the card?"
As the nation grapples with its first African-American nominee from a major political party to come so close to winning the presidential prize it is perhaps useful to look at a bit of American history from the early 20th century. In 1910, the "Fight of the Century" took place between the defending heavyweight-boxing champion, John "Jack" Johnson, who was African American, and James Jeffries, who was white. Newspaper reporters and sports writers at the time referred to Jeffries as "the Great White Hope." One sports writer from the Chicago Tribune opined that Johnson's "innate conceit and vanity will cause him to strive for the theatrical, to pose for the crowd and the pictures, whereas Jeffries will go about his work in a businesslike manner."
When I read that 98-year-old newspaper clip I couldn't help but think of some of the words the McCain campaign (with a hefty assist from the corporate media) has tried to associate in the public's mind with Barack Obama: "presumptuous," "overconfident," "cocky," "out of touch," "elitist." Obama is in good company. These are the same kind of charges that white supremacists leveled at Jack Johnson, Paul Robeson, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
McCain's TV commercial smearing Obama for his "celebrity" with images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton dissolving into images of Obama is the first montage the Republicans have deployed featuring Obama and young white women.
It will not be the last.
There is a pattern here: John McCain willfully misconstrues things Obama says and then pretends to be "astonished" that Obama would say such things. McCain stands by his campaign's attack ad that falsely accused Obama of snubbing troops in Lundstahl, Germany. He also stands by his campaign's sleazy Britney/Paris ad claiming that some useful or worthy public information service was provided.
This election should be a referendum on eight miserable years of misrule by the Republicans. But the descendents of white people who used to picnic at lynchings are coming out of the woodwork -- with the active encouragement of the McCain campaign. This silent army that is connected not only to the Republican Party's Southern wing but to white supremacist groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens (C of CC) needs no marching orders from Fox News, the McCain campaign, or the Republican National Committee. They know that if they cannot muster the resolve to stop a black man from becoming the president of the United States then what is the value of white privilege? McCain is carrying the torch to keep "hope" alive that wealthy white men will continue to be the center of the world.
John McCain is the "Great White Hope."
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See Joseph A. Palermo's Profile
Thank you all for the great commentary and discussion -- I really appreciated the link to "Falling Down" on Youtube. These comments are among the best any of my posts have ever sparked. Bravo!
I forgot to check spell AGAIN ... sorry!!
Finish your analogy about Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries..
is this your prediction for 4 nov?
Yes. I do, and it may not be what you expect. It goes back to the subject of Bibles and guns.
Did you notice that McCain had a bandage on his right cheek this week? If the skin biopsy turns out to be another melanoma, the Republicans will have to nominate another candidate at the convention this summer. Then what? Well, there will be groups: 1) The Gun and Bible crowd; 2) The greedy bankers who have looted the Treasury. Crowd #1 will deal with #2; and then group #1 will have to go to jail. That will be the end of the Republican Party. The Democrats will then split into Conservative and Moderate Wings; and we can have an election. (BTW, I believe in the right to bear arms).
keep "hope" alive that wealthy white men will continue to be the center of the world.
And that is really what it's all about isn't it. That is always what is has been about.
It is why women like Elizabeth Hasselbeck on "The View" can say the ridiculous things she does. Women like her are also hoping that wealthy white men continue to be the sugar daddies of the ...oops...
I have often wondered why women support such men, when it is clear that they do not respect women as equals and worse, regard them as objects, entertainments, playthings, junior humans. All one need do is google up McCain sexist comments going back a few decades to see how misogynist this guy is. Misogyny and racism go hand in hand I've noticed. Ever known a racist man to be all for equal pay/ equal rights/abortion rights for women?
Hello,
Thank you for your article. As one of those people who is descended from the crowd that picknicked at lynchings I have to weigh in. (Hey, my dad is in the Sons of Confederate Veterans. I am not nor will I ever be.)
There is a definite racial undertone to this campaign in my opinion. I have refuted dozens of spurious emails and stupid statements about Obama that came from my school friends and my family. They have all allegedly been about something else but are really about race and nothing else. I grew up in the traditional South in a religious background. My family and friends all believe that white people are supposed to rule this country.
It is sad what bigotry has done to our country in the past. It is even sadder that bigotry is still so prevalent. I say that sadly because of the years that I spent believing the bigotry that was taught me. Somewhere along the way I learned to think for myself and it started to disgust me. Now I look back bitterly at the missed opportunities for friendship and love that I lost because of inherited bigotry.
Obama '08
dpiyjrtmfr:
Reading your comment is a good way to start this new day of promise and potential. That is what your comment speaks to -- promise and potential. I rail on America in comment because for too long it seems America has been willing to rest on laurels and ignore ills or not address them properly and thoroughly such that we finally rid society of them for the common good. Reading your comment echoes the good I know about America. Many have grown beyond the confines of the narrow avenues of the circumstances that they were pushed out into (literally) as a baby. No one asks for life therefore we are all born innocent. Whether we return to innocence or even rarer, whether we stay innocent, is the glorious journey of life. Sometimes life is a process where you gain layers that through living you later strip off for you realize the accumulation weighs you down and keeps you from true Liberty. Such has been life for me. Society gave me a heavy dose of indoctrination early and I have had to work to shake that off and undo or unlearn many things that I determined or deemed injurious to living life. One example of this is the early impressions I developed of self in a world that devalued those who look like me. I had to go inside to find my worth for the world was saying I was worthless in ways overt and covert.
Regards and thanks.
I do not say this lightly: awesome post.
Wow...than
you mean the great white hype
Hear, Hear! Wonderful response!
Signing for McCain Is Signing for The Great White Hope As History Is The End of an Old Great White Hope
The Great White Hope Is Not a War without End In The Middle East ... Not To Bring America In Bankruptcy.
Not To See The Grow of Poverty in the White population
2008 and people still are obsessed with the shade of a persons skin....so sad
Smackdown:
I agree in every particular. But I still don't think this is the main point insofar as the effect on the election.
When McCain called Barack "craven" and said that Barack was willing to lose the war in order to win the political campaign, the dialogue was no longer about issues or race or politics. It became a primordial interchange in which only might could make right. McCain was strong and Barack was not. And that has continued.
Barack has to smack McCain down. We all know that he doesn't want to, and we all know he can. He did it with Jeremiah Wright and he can do it with McCain. He must, else he will continue to look and be weak. American demand a president who can handle a street fight. McCain has started it. Barack must respond, not necessarily in kind, but respond he must, and it must be rough.
Barack didn't have to do that with Hillary, because by the time it was called for, his lead was unassailable and so he laid back. And he looked bad too, but he won. But he must act here.
John Kerry never did, and he lost. We can't afford for that to happen again. The county can't afford it; the world can't afford it.
Don
Interesting post. I feel somewhat differently than you, in that I think Obama is waiting for the debates, at which time any claims by McSame of a different kind of politics or of civil debate will be thrown back at him.
I believe this was the successful strategy used by President Kerry in his campaign.
Thank you for your post.
I feel sick tonight, literally, at these attacks - and am stunned that the corporate media parrots McCain's claims.
It's comforting to know that I'm not the only one, but I've been feeling sick for a few days now. The corporate media's having a field day, filling air time and keeping ratings up.
24 hours a day, the exact same talking points, airing of Mc Cains offensive ads for discussional purposes only, and the same guest day in and day out, making the same comments over and over again. I need a vacation, but can only afford a staycation. MSM has become the infomercial for politics.
Good night.
With the second coming, racism will be vanquished in this country. The enlightened ones will have won over the evil ones. The annointed one will solve all our ills. If anyone is critical, they are racist. If anyone is negative they are a bigot. Thats what I learned from this post. Is that wrong?
Critical != racism.
John McCain campaign approach == racism
Racism is not so hard to detect that you need a degree or clairvoyance to see it.
You know what the sick thing is? The McCain's adopted daughter is Black. The people who are now running his campaign are the same ones who did "McCain had a Black baby with a prostitute" just ahead of the South Carolina primary in 2000.
If they can beat you, ask them to join you..
Palermo neglected to mention that Jack Johnson defeated Jeffries, "The Great White Hope" after 15 punishing rounds. Jeffries refused to come out as the round began to avoid the humilation of being knocked out by an "inferior".
THANK YOU....
Let's review
Motto: "WHITE GUYS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN"
(I am a red-headed lily-white woman - I can state this from experience)
They are scared to death.
They are also completely ego-centric and utterly narcissistic.
They are also "Falling Down".
I call it gene-pool elimination. You know - it's a Darwin moment.
Change is inevitable.
Growth is optional.
Guess which way their "wind" is blowin'...
http://www
Yeah. White women too.
You hit the nail on the head Joe. This is exactly what people like yourself and others know what is going on. They are not slick. We have learned to access the language. It's in corporate America. It's in sports. Enough of the BS from McCain. All I want to here on election night is:
Down goes McCain!
Down goes McCain!
Down goes McCain!
Great White Hope? White, but nothing great and no hope.
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