Influenced by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert’s recent claims on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that the McCain campaign deliberately included “phallic symbols” along with images of attractive young white women in an ad attacking Barack Obama to exploit racial resentment, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann latched onto this theory on Monday’s Countdown show and observed that the ad featured “two underdressed blondes mixed with the black guy,” and contended that the ad included “three phallic symbols, two blondes and Barack Obama,” opining that the ad is an example of “miscegenation,” and that it suggests Obama is “going to wind up dating those women.”
Seeing miscegenation in the juxtaposition of celebrities – and phalli (sp?) pretty much everywhere – reveals a great deal more about the subject than the object. And while a part of me wonders how intellectually and morally degraded a man has to be to say these things, hoping against hope that maybe someone will believe him, it isn’t worth the risk of examining the phenomenon too closely: This kind of stupid might just be contagious.
Heh. I was thinking about that video while reading the post… and there it was at the bottom!
You’re so right about those who seem to see racism everywhere they look. When we have pundits and politicians saying things like “I’m from the South, so I know racism and this is racism,” it makes me want to say, “Speak for yourself, you old racist pig.”
This was something that upset me as I grew beyond high school–I had spent my time in a VERY integrated (in every sense of the word) high school and it was so offensive to go to college and have people twenty and thirty years older than me telling me I was racist based on thoughts that had never existed in my mind. I kept saying, “my ________ (idea/comedy/word/behavior) as referencing a certain race has never occurred to me or my rainbow of friends in my life. What is your problem? It’s all in YOUR head, not mine!” This political campaign is the same thing all over again–a bunch of racists telling me I’m the one with the problem.
Keith Olberman is an excellent example of the old saying, “evil sees what evil does.”
Olberman is not only an idiot, he is a disgusting man who happens to have a stage, be it ever dwindling in size, from which to spout his venom.
He is filled with hate for our President and it shows in every word he says. As a result, his motivation is highly suspect and his credibility is zero.
Lex and friends …Obama and his handlers keep pushing McCain and his campaign toward making racist comments and they just won’t. Why? partly because there are so many substantive things about Obama’s drawbacks to criticize that McCain and his campaign aides don’t have to descend to playground insults to score points. They wouldn’t talk race anyway. McCain has made that very clear.
As Mark Steyn says, Obama could print his resume on the back of his driver’s license. He’s never run a company, he’s never run a city, he’s never run a state, he’s never helped to pass a significant piece of legislation since he’s been in the Senate — all two and a half years of one term, during which he’s mostly been on the road running for President of the most powerful country on earth.
Surely the Democrats could have come up with some candidate who has done some impressive thing since he looked in the mirror and saw a President.
I think you’ve hit on something there, Marianne. Something those of us not fanning our fevered selves never noticed before. Obama is the perfect Democratic Party candidate for a general election precisely because he has no legislative record. It’s all about electability, always has been. That was why the Democrats chose Kerry in 2004, because they thought that in a time of war a candidate with military experience would trump one without even though no one particularly cared for him.
The American people are much more conservative than the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. In order to have a shot at winning – all that matters, really – they have to run a candidate that doesn’t have a record.
The interesting thing is that President Bush did have military experience. He served in the Texas Air National Guard. What he lacked was combat experience.
As far as Kerry, what got him in trouble was his badmouthing his brothers in arms, his work with VVAW against those still in combat, and his serial lies about his combat experience (anyone else remember the magic hat and his supposed trip to Cambodia?).
Olbermann is right of course; what sane woman wouldn’t date Alfred E Newman w/ pigmentation and a complete set of teeth?
The only licit response to that tripe is GKC writing in “The Everlasting Man” regarding another profligate: ” Then we sat down in the meadow and gazed idly at the tree-tops and the spire of the village church; while the warm afternoon began to mellow into early evening and the song of a speck of a bird was faint far up in the sky and no more than a whisper of breeze soothed rather than stirred the ancient orchards of the garden of England. Then my companion said to me: ‘Do you know why the spire of that church goes up like that? I expressed a respectable agnosticism, and he answered in an off-hand way, ‘Oh, the same as the obelisks; the Phallic Worship of antiquity! Then I looked across at him suddenly as he lay there leering above his goat like beard; and for the moment I thought he was not Pan but the Devil. No mortal words can express the immense, the insane incongruity and unnatural perversion of thought involved in saying such a thing at such a moment and in such a place. For one moment was in the mood in which men burned witches; and then a sense of absurdity equally enormous seemed to open about like a dawn. ‘Why, of course,’ I said after a moment’s reflection, ‘if it hadn’t been for phallic worship, they would have built the spire pointing downwards and standing on its own apex!”
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nfluenced by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert’s recent claims on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that the McCain campaign deliberately included “phallic symbols” along with images of attractive young white women in an ad attacking Barack Obama to exploit racial resentment, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann latched onto this theory on Monday’s Countdown show and observed that the ad featured “two underdressed blondes mixed with the black guy,” and contended that the ad included “three phallic symbols, two blondes and Barack Obama,” opining that the ad is an example of “miscegenation,” and that it suggests Obama is “going to wind up dating those women.”
Heh. I was thinking about that video while reading the post… and there it was at the bottom!
You’re so right about those who seem to see racism everywhere they look. When we have pundits and politicians saying things like “I’m from the South, so I know racism and this is racism,” it makes me want to say, “Speak for yourself, you old racist pig.”
This was something that upset me as I grew beyond high school–I had spent my time in a VERY integrated (in every sense of the word) high school and it was so offensive to go to college and have people twenty and thirty years older than me telling me I was racist based on thoughts that had never existed in my mind. I kept saying, “my ________ (idea/comedy/word/behavior) as referencing a certain race has never occurred to me or my rainbow of friends in my life. What is your problem? It’s all in YOUR head, not mine!” This political campaign is the same thing all over again–a bunch of racists telling me I’m the one with the problem.
Bah!
Keith Olberman is an excellent example of the old saying, “evil sees what evil does.”
Olberman is not only an idiot, he is a disgusting man who happens to have a stage, be it ever dwindling in size, from which to spout his venom.
He is filled with hate for our President and it shows in every word he says. As a result, his motivation is highly suspect and his credibility is zero.
I’m still trying to figure out how he came up with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It looks nothing like it. What a moron.
Although, I find it funny that the Hilton family are big contributors to the GOP and not very amused by that ad.
Olberman is a spewing doofus; and if you listen to him for too long, odds are you’ll get infected with a brain destroying virus.
Lex and friends …Obama and his handlers keep pushing McCain and his campaign toward making racist comments and they just won’t. Why? partly because there are so many substantive things about Obama’s drawbacks to criticize that McCain and his campaign aides don’t have to descend to playground insults to score points. They wouldn’t talk race anyway. McCain has made that very clear.
As Mark Steyn says, Obama could print his resume on the back of his driver’s license. He’s never run a company, he’s never run a city, he’s never run a state, he’s never helped to pass a significant piece of legislation since he’s been in the Senate — all two and a half years of one term, during which he’s mostly been on the road running for President of the most powerful country on earth.
Surely the Democrats could have come up with some candidate who has done some impressive thing since he looked in the mirror and saw a President.
Guess not.
Marianne
I think you’ve hit on something there, Marianne. Something those of us not fanning our fevered selves never noticed before. Obama is the perfect Democratic Party candidate for a general election precisely because he has no legislative record. It’s all about electability, always has been. That was why the Democrats chose Kerry in 2004, because they thought that in a time of war a candidate with military experience would trump one without even though no one particularly cared for him.
The American people are much more conservative than the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. In order to have a shot at winning – all that matters, really – they have to run a candidate that doesn’t have a record.
Blindingly simple, when you think about it.
I really liked Jay Leno’s joke last night about the video with the supposed phallic symbols.
Jay said, “Of all the videos Paris has been in, THIS is the one her mother objects too?!”
I got to say that I have never been a fan of Jon Stewart, but “Obama is going to teabag America with his 2 black balls is pretty funny”
I think that one line captures the absurdity of this “news story”
Wake me when this election is over, I think I am going to be sick.
Hey, scott, if you really want to be sick, have a look at this… Obama’s “O-Force One”!
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/08/03/politics/fromtheroad/entry4317827.shtml
Hey, Scott… if you really want to be sick, take a look at this: the new Obama “O-Force One”.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/08/03/politics/fromtheroad/entry4317827.shtml
Hey, Scott, if you really want to get that sick feeling in your stomach, check this out! Obama has his own “O-Force One” now:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/08/03/politics/fromtheroad/entry4317827.shtml
The interesting thing is that President Bush did have military experience. He served in the Texas Air National Guard. What he lacked was combat experience.
As far as Kerry, what got him in trouble was his badmouthing his brothers in arms, his work with VVAW against those still in combat, and his serial lies about his combat experience (anyone else remember the magic hat and his supposed trip to Cambodia?).
Jim C
Jim C has a point, but forgot to mention that Bush flew the F-102. Delta Dagger. As aircraft go that one was a handful, or so I’ve been told.
Hard to believe an idiot flew the Dagger, but then lacking a better charge what else are the True Believers to come up with?
– Max
Bob Herbert is a moron. The only reason the Times hasn’t fired him is because he’s… oh, never mind.
//What? I was going to say “a liberal”!
Steve,
ROFLMAO!
Jim C
Olbermann is right of course; what sane woman wouldn’t date Alfred E Newman w/ pigmentation and a complete set of teeth?
The only licit response to that tripe is GKC writing in “The Everlasting Man” regarding another profligate: ” Then we sat down in the meadow and gazed idly at the tree-tops and the spire of the village church; while the warm afternoon began to mellow into early evening and the song of a speck of a bird was faint far up in the sky and no more than a whisper of breeze soothed rather than stirred the ancient orchards of the garden of England. Then my companion said to me: ‘Do you know why the spire of that church goes up like that? I expressed a respectable agnosticism, and he answered in an off-hand way, ‘Oh, the same as the obelisks; the Phallic Worship of antiquity! Then I looked across at him suddenly as he lay there leering above his goat like beard; and for the moment I thought he was not Pan but the Devil. No mortal words can express the immense, the insane incongruity and unnatural perversion of thought involved in saying such a thing at such a moment and in such a place. For one moment was in the mood in which men burned witches; and then a sense of absurdity equally enormous seemed to open about like a dawn. ‘Why, of course,’ I said after a moment’s reflection, ‘if it hadn’t been for phallic worship, they would have built the spire pointing downwards and standing on its own apex!”