Monday, October 06, 2008

Palin as klansman

An AP article argues that Palin's using racist attacks against Obama. There are two elements to the claim. First, attacking Obama's Ayers association is racist because terrorists "are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims", even though the particular terrorist, Ayers, is white. Second, when Palin claims Obama doesn't "see America like you and I see America", she paints him as the other, ie black and scary.

What bullshit. These aren't coded race attacks, they're "unpatriotic liberal" attacks, no different from previous years.

TPM, of course, approvingly links, with the title "If the sheet fits." Attacking an opponent's unsavory personal connections is not the moral equivalent of lynching.

2 comments:

Leo said...

I tend to agree with you that these attacks aren't much different from what we'd be seeing against any Democrat. But then, the attacks we see against Democrats have always had more than a little bit of racial/xenophobic tinge to them.

factory123 said...

I think that's true, and the right has benefited from that kind of racist sentiment.

At the same time, I don't think that what Palin said was racist. I think it was a legitimate line of attack. Similarly, I think it's legitimate to attack the Palins on their AIP connections, or John McCain on his association with G Gordon Liddy.

This campaign season has had an awful lot of loose accusations of racism thrown about, and I don't really think they're fair.

I think it's wrong to assume that people who disagree with you do so out of a moral defect, and I feel like that's been a theme with the Obama campaign and some supporters - criticism of Obama is intrinsically racist. I think that's just as bogus, just as when the patriotism of those who opposed the war was challenged.