From the Bottom of the Deck

From the back of the bus, to dealing the race card "from the bottom of the deck." Our national pastime, awkwardly dancing around the specter of how we came to be America, shows no signs of abating as we approach the dog days of the campaign for President 2008. A recent House-issued apology for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow segregation," was all but obscured by another sordid race card flap.
          Of course the use of "race card"as a catchphrase to deflect mostly legitimate grievances about racial inequality is one of contemporary America's most efficient forms of doublespeak. It's on a par with "I want a yes or no answer" in the way that it attempts to silence discussion about our society's definitive elephant in the room. Its invocation is an abuse of language, a flattening of the intellect that purports to reduce the struggle to overcome deep and difficult divisions into a card game.

            This last exchange between McCain and Obama over the Paris Hilton/Brittney Spears attack ad (we're living in a more subtle world than the Swiftboat days) begs the rhetorical question: Was flashing images of Obama in synchronous crossfades with dysfunctional tabloid bad girlz the original sin here, or is McCain justified in divulging how hurt he is that anyone could think he was insinuating anything "colorful" about Barack?

          

               

             

This new "go-negative" strategy seems to be the brainchild of Steve Schmidt, a Rove protege otherwise known as "The Bullet." It also includes a bizarre new ad that uses Charlton Heston as Moses in an attempt to mock Obama's (media-designated) status as "messiah." The Rove imprint, i.e., nerd revenge par excellence is clearly visible here: Obama as the most popular guy in high school, likely to steal your prom date.  

                It seems both Obama and McCain were eager to engage in this sort of back-and-forth, each candidate believing that they could turn race-card fallout to their advantage. Obama no doubt thinks that painting McCain as a petty negative campaigner proves his point that he is part of the "past," while McCain hopes that Bradley-effect voters everywhere now feel even more justified to stand against Obama not because he is black, but because he is paranoid and vindictive.

              The first, crude attacks, the smear campaign about Obama's secret "Muslim" identity, have been streamlined into insinuations that he is "touchy" about race, a "creation of celebrity journalism" and suffering from "delusions of grandeur." By lumping in Obama with Hilton and Spears, the McCain Team is at once seeking to feminize Obama as well as reinforcing the idea that he belongs to a flaccid Hollywood-based liberal elite. If you think Al Gore is bad because he invented the Internet, here comes this black man who thinks he is a prophet. 

              But the new Bullet strategies, designed to eliminate "unforced errors" also symbolizes the Arizona senator's handlers' desperate fear that Obama's candidacy is most threatening because Barack is cool, attractive, perhaps the ultimate mass media candidate for the new millennium. 

                McCain and his people must realize that he will have difficulty winning a poll that asks who you'd rather have a beer with. The early Rovian attacks have been quick, stinging jabs, unlikely portents for the haymakers to come.