ON first watching Hillary Clinton’s recent "It's 3 a.m." advertisement, I was left with an uneasy feeling that something was not quite right — something that went beyond my disappointment that she had decided to go negative. Repeated watching of the ad on YouTube increased my unease. I realized that I had only too often in my study of America’s racial history seen images much like these, and the sentiments to which they allude.
I am not referring to the fact that the ad is unoriginal; as several others have noted, it mimics a similar ad made for Walter Mondale in his 1984 campaign for the Democratic nomination. What bothers me is the difference between this and the Mondale ad. The Mondale ad directly and unequivocally played on the issue of experience. The danger was that the red telephone might be answered by someone who was “unsure, unsteady, untested.” Why do I believe this? Because the phone and Mr. Mondale are the only images in the ad. Fair game in the normal politics of fear.
Not so this Clinton ad. To be sure, it states that something is “happening in the world” — although it never says what this is — and that Mrs. Clinton is better able to handle such danger because of her experience with foreign leaders. But every ad-maker, like every social linguist, knows that words are often the least important aspect of a message and are easily muted by powerful images.
I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.
The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother or father — or by stating that the danger was external terrorism. Instead, the child on whom the camera first focuses is blond. Two other sleeping children, presumably in another bed, are not blond, but they are dimly lighted, leaving them ambiguous. Still it is obvious that they are not black — both, in fact, seem vaguely Latino.
Finally, Hillary Clinton appears, wearing a business suit at 3 a.m., answering the phone. The message: our loved ones are in grave danger and only Mrs. Clinton can save them. An Obama presidency would be dangerous — and not just because of his lack of experience. In my reading, the ad, in the insidious language of symbolism, says that Mr. Obama is himself the danger, the outsider within.
Did the message get through? Well, consider this: people who voted early went overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama; those who made up their minds during the three days after the ad was broadcast voted heavily for Mrs. Clinton.
For more than a century, American politicians have played on racial fears to divide the electorate and mobilize xenophobic parties. Blacks have been the “domestic enemy,” the eternal outsider within, who could always inspire unity among “we whites.” Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy was built on this premise, using coded language — “law and order,” “silent majority” — to destroy the alliance between blacks and white labor that had been the foundation of the Democratic Party, and to bring about the Republican ascendancy of the past several decades. The Willie Horton ad that George H. W. Bush used against Michael Dukakis in 1988 was a crude manifestation of this strategy — as was the racist attack used against John McCain’s daughter, who was adopted from Bangladesh, in the South Carolina Republican primary in 2000.
It is significant that the Clinton campaign used its telephone ad in Texas, where a Fox poll conducted Feb. 26 to 28 showed that whites favored Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton 47 percent to 44 percent, and not in Ohio, where she held a comfortable 16-point lead among whites. Exit polls on March 4 showed the ad’s effect in Texas: a 12-point swing to 56 percent of white votes toward Mrs. Clinton. It is striking, too, that during the same weekend the ad was broadcast, Mrs. Clinton refused to state unambiguously that Mr. Obama is a Christian and has never been a Muslim.
It is possible that what I saw in the ad is different from what Mrs. Clinton and her operatives saw and intended. But as I watched it again and again I could not help but think of the sorry pass to which we may have come — that someone could be trading on the darkened memories of a twisted past that Mr. Obama has struggled to transcend.
Orlando Patterson is a professor of sociology at Harvard and the author of “The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s ‘Racial’ Crisis.”
Theodore: You haven't gotten much rest in the last few days, have you?
Ivan:I'm no good at all. I'm selfish and self-satisfied. How am I unfortunate? She was... they were but still... they died without complaint. Look at them. (sobbing) I'm so blessed it's embarassing.(more sobbing) I'm no good. I was vain and proud of being. I was 'too good. I even held you in contempt; despised you. I'm a despicable man...(sobbing)conceited (more sobbing) ...and insincere.
Theodore: You're tired. You need to get some sleep.
Here's a perfect example of why I can't stand "girls."
Just to give you some quick background, Opie & Anthony are a radio duo ("shock-jocks", if you like) with a syndicated talk-show for CBS and XMRadio. They're pretty hilarious. I'd call them radio geniuses in fact. They're more clever though just as base as Howard Stern ever was. In fact they're currently broadcasting in his old drive-time morning slot in New York and other markets.
This particular clip is of a bunch of 'Playmates' coming onto the show to plug something or other for MTV. Now O&A, having done scores of interviews such as this one, knew that there's only so much substance to be had out of a conversation with girls like these. And this isn't just about whether the girls are "airheads" or not, though sometimes these chicks have nothing to offer, conversationally, besides silly giggles and superficial comments; adding nothing to the show beyond the fantastic imagery of a hot girl. But it's often the case with these women that when you try to engage in that fantastic imagery, you get stonewalled. All of a sudden a woman, who had no problem using her sex appeal as a commodity during the beginning or current career, wants to "prude-up" and act like she's too good for the room.
The porn-star refuses to engage in sexual activity, which would be fine if she had something to offer besides superficiality. The playmate or model could, at the very least, indulge in some open honest conversation, going with the "flow of the show." Sure it'll probably be sexual in nature at first. I mean, it's a collection of single guys and that's the main demo. But if you're a strong enough personality it shouldn't be too much of a problem to expand out of or away from just one subject.
So to bring it back to the clipO&A, knowing that they'd in all likelihood get little radio out of the girls, played graphic sex videos on the monitors above the console; anal-gaping, 2-Girls-1-Cup, men fellating trannies, all sorts of shit. All the while they're ostensibly trying to conduct a normal interview.
A few things to notice: 1. The guys never make reference to the video, at least not initially. This means that their continued attention to whatever was playing is pretty much self generated. 2. All the models were at some point nude models and all are currently employed as some form of "eye candy" (ie: the chick who's a "Round Card-Holder" for MTV's Wildin' Out). It's not a problem to jump-start your career with the your" sex" but it's a problem if men, as consumers, maintain an interest in you based on that "sex." 3. Not all the girls have the same reactions to the video or to the increasingly personal nature of the questioning. Some of these girls are cool with it! Or at least willing to engage in the interaction. But as soon as enough of the girls express enough discuss, and as soon as ONE GIRL says she's had enough, they all follow suit. This phenomenon screws millions of men over on a nightly basis.
p.s. After you watch the original Porn girls clip, take a look at the one titled Louise Ogborn McDonald's Security Tape. It's long but it will blow your mind.
Sometimes, on rainy Tuesdays, when the sun deserts the earth and all that is left of joy resides in an empty kitchen, unused and unloved for as long as an un-lifetime, I remember you as you were here.
Or, on jovial Saturdays, you still play your father’s records loud enough to wake me and the dead before noon comes.
And I still yawn and grouse as I watch you hum and sing, dancing and smiling for Miles.
And, on these days, you still talk to me and we still argue. You still love me and still laugh. You still cook and
