By: Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
Many Republicans and conservatives do not seem to know, or appear to not have the faintest clue, as to what is a racially insulting and dehumanizing image. At least they feign ignorance. It is the same ignorance that was used to claim that there was nothing wrong with usage of the “Black Sambo” or “Chinaman” images of a generation ago. It is the same ignorance that was used to claim there was nothing wrong with using a Mexican bandit — the “Frito Bandito” — to sell Frito Lay’s corn chips. And then came the 1960s.

These people that feign ignorance nowadays always seem to work for political campaigns. Unless the topic is sports mascots. For example, the 1960s bypassed the Washington Redskins and Chief Wahoo of the Cleveland Indians. The dehumanization of American Indians, particularly in the sports universe, has been normalized.

That aside, the rest of these operatives seem to work on political campaigns. But they are not ignorant; they know precisely how to tap into deep-seeded fears and how to stir up profound hate.

The 1988 Willie Horton ad by the Bush I campaign is always cited as a prime example of what campaigns are willing to do to scare the electorate: associate Blacks with crimes. Fast forward to 2010 and fear [and hate] of brown people has also become acceptable and normalized. Nevada Senate hopeful Sharron Angle’s campaign has exploited images of Mexicans coming across the border. However, her explanation is that they actually may be Asian. She made that explanation in front of little children, mostly Mexican, telling them that they too looked Asian.

Across the country, “illegal aliens” have become this year’s election year political piñatas, particularly for those on, though not limited to, the extreme political right wing. This year, a campaign is not complete without an ad of invading brown hordes. Fear [and hate] works in any part of the country.

If one were to substitute the words illegal aliens for say Blacks or Jews, etc — all that is said about so-called “illegal aliens” — would be deemed shocking and socially unacceptable. And yet the use of the dehumanizing terms “illegal aliens” and “wetbacks” are but code words for Mexicans… regardless of where they were born. Thus politicians venomously speak of illegal aliens and even wetbacks, lest they be accused of being racists. The use of such terms, as opposed to “Mexicans,” permits them to believe that they have been granted a racism exemption card.

In Arizona, this is a canard. Here, political operatives have resurrected an image right out of the 1960s. The unflattering image is that of an unsmiling Mexican man, with a massive, oversized moustache. It was produced (photoshopped) and paid for not by Tea Party types or minutemen or vigilantes, but by none other than the Arizona Republican Party (ARP). The image is that of Congressman Raul Grijalva. It is not a generic hit piece; it is a campaign flier mailed out on behalf of his opponent.

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The ARP denies that the flier is racist (surprise). Their rationale is that Grijalva has a moustache and he uses it as his campaign logo. A look at the two images will not create confusion. His own image is not offensive. However, the Republican version unleashes a blatant Mexican stereotype made to elicit fear, hate and revulsion. The truth is, conservatives have targeted Grijalva — head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — for his stand against SB 1070, the racial profiling measure that has been temporarily struck down by the courts, and also been denounced by UN Rapporteurs.

Of course, his opponents have a right to boycott Grijalva all they want and they have the right to make any [distorted] claim they wish. That does not mean the rest of us have lost the ability to see a blatant stereotype in the ARP fliers. In reality, the flier projects a stereotype even more vile and sinister than the Frito Bandito.

That in 2010 such stereotypes can be created and defended tells us something about our nation’s state of affairs. It can be dismissed as just an extension of Arizona’s extremist politics, including Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s call for an army of vigilantes to prevent “illegals” from “stealing” the 2010 election. It’s even more insidious than that. It is proof that the anti-illegal immigrant hate is actually good old-fashioned anti-Mexican hate, regardless of place of birth.

It is easy to see why Chief Wahoo has survived into the 21st century; apparently, Grijalva too is being honored by his opponents.

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Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: Hidden Email Address For archived columns, go to: http://drcintli.blogspot.com/
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MediaMatters: The latest Andrew-Breitbart-manufactured phony scandal is just one more nail in the coffin of Breitbart’s already dismal credibility. Breitbart was the first to post video falsely suggesting that Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod had discriminated against a white farmer — allegations that are rapidly unraveling as they churn through the media. [ READ MORE ] [ MEDIA ACROSS THE BOARD REJECT BREITBART'S RACE-BAITING LIES ] [ BREITBART FLOUNDERS AS HIS SHERROD STORY COLLAPSES ]

Big Falsehoods: An updated guide to Andrew Breitbart’s lies, smears, and distortions — Following the dissolution of Andrew Breitbart’s smear of former Obama administration official Shirley Sherrod, Media Matters provides an updated look at how his sensationalist stories have been based on speculation, gross distortions, and outright falsehoods. [ READ MORE ] [ "BRAVO": RIGHT-WING MEDIA'S INITIAL PRAISE FOR BREITBART'S "GREAT WORK" ON SHERROD ]

Shep Smith slams Breitbart’s BigGov: A “widely discredited website” that posts “inaccurate” and “edited” videos

Notes: The Most Despicable Racist on Radio Rush Limbaugh — Knows Andrew Breitbart, And Andrew Breitbart Does Not Screw Around? [ READ MORE ]

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By Ari Rabin-Havt

A long line of inmates solemnly enters and exits a prison yard through a revolving door. As the lone black inmate reenters society, he peers into the camera with a menacing glance. He is the only inmate to do so.

The ad described above was created by George H.W. Bush’s campaign as part of a broad strategy to terrify America by, as psychologist and political consultant Drew Westen explains, playing on “fears of the dangerous, lawless, violent, dark black male.”

While the most infamous Willie Horton ads were created by an independent organization, it was Bush’s media consultant Roger Ailes who “gleefully” told Time Magazine in August of 1988, “The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it.”

1988 wasn’t Ailes’ first experience dividing Americans along racial lines. During a taping of the “Man in the Arena” series in 1968, the Nixon campaign stumbled on a problem when a panelist they thought was a physician turned out to be a psychiatrist. Ailes quickly figured out a solution.

According to Rick Pearlstein’s “Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America”, Ailes would substitute a “good, mean, Wallaceite cab-driver. Wouldn’t that be great? Some guy to sit in there and say, ‘Awright, Mac, what about these niggers?’” Pearlstein added that “Nixon then could abhor the uncivility of the words, while endorsing a ‘moderate’ version of the opinion.”

Given his history, it should be no surprise Ailes’ minions at Fox News have obsessed over the discredited 18 month-old story of alleged voter intimidation by New Black Panther Party members on the day of the 2008 election. Since June 30, Fox News has spent over 8 hours of airtime and 95 segments on the story.

And no network has done more to expose Americans to the extreme and hateful politics of the New Black Panther Party, which has been designated a “hate
group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, than Fox, where the group’s spokespeople have appeared more than 50 times since 1998.

The truth is, it was President Bush’s Justice Department, not Obama’s, that made the decision not to pursue criminal charges against members of the New Black Panther Party for alleged voter intimidation at a Philadelphia polling center in 2008. In fact, the Obama administration successfully obtained default judgment against Samir Shabazz, a member of the New Black Panther Party carrying a nightstick outside the polling center on Election Day.

Their mission isn’t to find the truth, but to plant the seed in viewers’ minds that maybe, just maybe, the President and the Attorney General are the same type of militants seen wielding a nightstick and repeatedly slurring whites on Fox News. As the Chicago Tribune‘s Clarence Page wrote, “Now the New Black Panthers are being used to vilify a black president as being soft on black racism. Coming soon, I am sure, to campaign attack ads near you.”

Roger Ailes and Fox News – along with the entire Republican Party – are praying the mainstream media will cave to right wing pressure and delve into this story. As the chief communications strategist for Republicans, Ailes couldn’t have scripted it better.

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The summer months are typically when the quality of political discourse in this country reaches its yearly nadir. Washington tends to slow down from June to August, and people who hold moderate interest in the political process instead turn to barbecues and baseball games. As a consequence, the people who remain engaged are those who are more, let’s say, passionate in their beliefs, and aren’t going to let a little thing like "other things to do" get in the way of their political activism. Summer is also tough for political journalists who still have deadlines to meet, but much less material with which to work. As a consequence, we see stories that would ordinarily merit passing or no mention earn disproportionate coverage. Minor gaffes become "scandals," non-issues become "controversial," and the end result is that pretty much everyone gets angrier.

It’s in this environment that the right-wing media thrive, practiced as they are in ginning up stories based on manufactured outrage and utter nonsense. And lately, they’ve all had one topic on their minds: race. Specifically the racism of black political figures, which they claim is nothing short of institutional policy in the Obama administration, and the racism of white tea partiers, which they claim doesn’t exist.

And where else can one begin except with the ever-evolving, increasingly ridiculous New Black Panther Party "scandal," which revolves around the allegation — and it’s hard to believe that right-wingers actually profess to believe this — that the Obama Justice Department dropped voter intimidation charges against members of this fringe hate group due to the administration’s official policy of not pursuing cases in which the defendant is black and the victim is white. Is there evidence for any of this? No. Does the partisan GOP hack/former DOJ attorney making this allegation have any facts to support it? Not so much. But that’s the story they’re sticking to, and it has sparked a frenzy of race-baiting more explicit than any we’ve seen thus far during the Obama administration.

Fox News has, of course, been leading the charge, embarking on what Jonathan Chait calls "the most widespread and mainstream right-wing effort to exploit racial fears against Obama." Glenn Beck nonsensically claimedthat the New Black Panthers "have ties to the White House" and flat-out accused the administration of tacitly endorsing the "race war" he sees coming down the pike. Perpetually outraged Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, the "straight news" driving force behind the bogus story, has been corrected on the facts more times than should be necessary, but continues to hype the story with wide-eyed indignation.

In some ways, that’s to be expected from Fox News. The danger is that, with not much else going on and the right-wing rage machine operating at high speed, the bogus story starts bleeding into the mainstream press. Kelly herself boasted that Fox News "dragged the media kicking and screaming" to the New Black Panther story, and already there have been overly credulous treatments of the non-scandal on CNN and in the pages of The Washington Post.

The obverse to the right-wing media’s fact-free claims of racism at the Justice Department are their assurances, contrary to the facts, that there exists no racism in the tea party movement. After the NAACP signaled its intention to pass a resolution condemning the "racist elements" within the tea party, conservatives went ballistic, claiming that the many, many, many, many, many examples of tea party racism and bigotry simply don’t exist. And nothing will convince them otherwise — not the many photographs of racist placards at tea party rallies (if Sean Hannity couldn’t find them, they must not exist!), nor the word of civil rights legend Rep. John Lewis (he’s a liar!).

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Bigoted, racial attacks from conservatives against Obama aren’t anything new. Hell, not even a week after he announced his intention to run for the presidency, they were excitedly spreading false rumors that he spent his childhood in a madrassa. But this past month has been something different. Gone are the code words, the winks and nods, and the dog whistles — the conservative media are openly and aggressively trying to turn Obama’s race into something threatening. You can chalk it up to the heat, the summer doldrums, or whatever. The fact is that they’re going down roads from which there is no coming back, and it’s only going to get worse as the summer rolls on.

Erick Erickson conjures Atwater’s exorcised demons

In January 1991, Lee Atwater, the storied political strategist whose bare-knuckled tactics helped propel George H.W. Bush to the White House in 1988, issued a public apology to Bush’s opponent, Michael Dukakis. Suffering from terminal brain cancer, Atwater disavowed the statements and tactics he employed against Dukakis, in particular his stated intentions to "strip the bark off the little bastard" and "make Willie Horton his running mate." According to Atwater: "I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not."

The shameful history of Willie Horton’s role in the 1988 presidential campaign need not be recounted here — what matters is that the man who gave Willie Horton that starring role came to realize afterward that he had crossed the line on racial fearmongering, and he sincerely regretted doing so.

CNN’s Erick Erickson, however, wants to cross that line, and he wants to take the Republican Party with him.

"King Samir Shabazz Should Be 2010′s Willie Horton, "wrote Erickson on RedState.com, referring to one of the New Black Panther Party members who was under investigation for voter intimidation. The New Black Panther story is a farce, and, as noted above, it is merely a vehicle for conservatives to race-bait against President Obama.

But the naked political and racial callousness of Erickson’s remarks put them in a class all their own. Erickson’s desire to turn Shabazz into the next Willie Horton is shocking not just because he’s advocating a return to the Southern Strategy-style politicking for which Republican leaders from Atwater to Ken Mehlman to Michael Steele have expressed regret. He also openly acknowledges the potential for racial divisiveness and dismisses it — along with the support of black voters — as irrelevant: "The Democrats will scream racism. Let them. Republicans are not going to pick up significant black support anyway."

It’s an extremely warped and cynical view of the political landscape, and it really makes you wonder if CNN realizes what it’s paying for.

Boss Limbaugh, The Boss, and the "death tax"

One does not have to be a Yankee fan (like me) to be affected by the passing of George Steinbrenner. In many ways, The Boss embodied everything that is great and terrible about baseball. Like a player who takes steroids to give himself a competitive edge, Steinbrenner’s own relentless drive for victory frequently led him to act less than admirably. At the same time, it’s hard to argue with results — the seven championships and 11 pennants the Yankees won in the Steinbrenner era are almost as many as the rival Boston Red Sox have won in their entire existence.

Rush Limbaugh, however, is a football fan, so Steinbrenner’s passing would obviously affect him differently, and he needed to find something to say about Steinbrenner that wasn’t about baseball. He opted for his two trusty stand-bys — offensive racial commentary and conservative economic dogma. "George Steinbrenner has passed away at age 80. That cracker made a lot of African-American millionaires," Rush observed in a statement that, to use a subject-appropriate cliché, came out of right field.

Obviously, most people have been focusing on the racial component of Limbaugh’s remarks (Al Sharpton denounced them as "repugnant and offensive") but there was another remark in Limbaugh’s ugly eulogy that deserves some attention: his statement that Steinbrenner "knew when to die," because the estate tax will be
reinstated next year and Steinbrenner’s considerable estate will avoid taxation as a consequence of his passing before 2011. That sentiment was echoed across the conservative media and even in the halls of Congress, where Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), a Hall of Fame pitcher himself, said of Steinbrenner: "Because he was smart enough to die in 2010, there is zero tax liability on the estate tax."

In short, conservatives were very pleased that the ultra-rich Steinbrenner and his ultra-rich relatives were able to escape the tyranny of the so-called "death tax." This is amusing, because up to this point, these same conservatives were assuring us that the evil of the estate tax was that it wreaks havoc on family farms and small businesses. Of course, that isn’t true — just about every small business and family farm in the country escapes estate taxes.

Nevertheless, conservatives told us that in repealing the estate tax, we’d be acting in the interests of the little guy.The timing of  George Steinbrenner’s death, and the ensuing right-wing celebration of his already wealthy heirs’ good fortune, should make clear whose interests they really have at heart.

Rest in peace, Big Stein.

Simon Maloy is a Research Fellow for Media Matters for America.

Reference: A conservative dismisses right-wing Black Panther ‘fantasies’

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Republican State Representative Rob Schaaf of District 028, Missouri, has come up with a filthy bigoted AD that only a Republican can conjure.

The ad is running on you know where –Fox News, the FAIRLY RACIST CHANNEL, and it takes aim at accusations that opponents of President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan are racist. It is sponsored by a new right-wing documentary, I Want Your Money (www.IWantYourMoney.net) and features Rep. Robert Schaaf (R, MO) among others admitting that if opposition to government-sponsored healthcare is racist, then he is racist.

Here is the AD

Here is the “Analysis of The Pathology“

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This AD is very similar to one of the McCain ADs that aired during their ELECTION HATE-FEST of 2008 — Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman. or George Bush senior’s Willie Horton and Revolving Door ADs.

…and here is The Willie Horton AD

From LivingRoomCandidate.org: The symbolism Willie Horton AD was very powerful…you can’t find a stronger metaphor, intended for racial hatred, in this country than a black man raping a white woman!

This stark and unsettling ad from the Bush campaign didn’t mention the notorious escaped convict William Horton by name. (Although he went by William, the Bush campaign referred to him by the less respectable name “Willie“). However, with its release just a few weeks after the independently financed ad “Willie Horton” had generated controversy and national press coverage, the connection was clear.

Under the direction of campaign manager Roger Ailes, Dukakis was linked with the case of the African American felon who fled Massachusetts during a weekend furlough and and attacked a young white couple in Maryland. Focus groups conducted in Paramus, New Jersey, in May showed a strong emotional reaction to the failed furlough system, and Bush decided to make this a key issue in the campaign, attacking Dukakis in a speech as “a tax-raising liberal who let murderers out of jail.”

In The Revolving Door AD prisoners walk through a turnstile, all looking down to the floor, except for the one black one — a veiled message to “frightened whites:” beware of BLACK CRIMINALS!

Because of their strong imagery and underlying racial message, “Willie Horton” and “Revolving Door” received substantial coverage on TV news programs during the final month of the campaign. “I realized I started a trend,” said Ailes. “Now guys are out there trying to produce commercials for the evening news.” The creator of the “Willie Horton” ad, Floyd Brown, also made attack ads against John Kerry in 2004.

Fox News’ Roger Ailes is a Master Manipulator and Race Baiter

In August 2009, Paul Rosenberg wrote: “Put simply, my argument is that color-blind racism serves as the scaffolding that enables white supremacists-such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, etc.–to project their racism onto the minority figures whose highly visible success puts the lie to their ideology of white superiority.

Racists have always projected the disowned, loathsome aspects of themselves onto racial others. Now that racism itself has come to be seen as socially unacceptable, it’s only natural, in one sense, that racists should project their racism onto racial others as well-particularly onto individuals whose very existence refutes their worldview. Yet, the functional logic involved cannot dissipate the bizarre aspects of hearing Rush Limbaugh, such a well-confirmed racist, hurl that charge at prominent people of color, and not be roundly condemned as himself being a racist.” [ READ MORE ]

Racist Limbaugh: “Tiger Woods‘ Choice Of Females” Is Not Helping The “Black Frame Of Mind“

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