The racists are coming. The racists are coming.

From Fact Check: 3AM Ad Included African-American Child, 3/11/2008 1:35:20 PM — In an op-ed in the New York Times, Orlando Patterson says the following about the campaign’s recent ad:

The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother or father.

The ad did include a photo of an African American child. Here’s the image in the ad:

Today’s op-ed piece in the New York Times by Orlando Patterson is a perfect example of the hysteria plaguing our country. According to Mr. Patterson in his opinion piece The Red Phone in Black and White (NY Times) there is a subtle message hidden within Hillary’s 3 a.m. ad. On the surface of it I find Mr. Patterson’s claims absurd. It is as if he is looking for racism in everything he sees. And in this case that is blatantly obvious. But what is even more odious is that Patterson has decided to condemn an ad that apparently worked in Texas by claiming it has racist overtones.

Let’s examine the facts shall we?

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.

You notice that he watched it over and over again. But then suddenly the clouds lifted and a light from on high beamed down to enlighten him and behold, he knew with certainty that Hillary was a racist and this ad proves it. Yes, a fully clothed white woman looking at her white children asleep in bed is a sure sign of racism. It comes from the Jim Crow play book I suppose.

But it isn’t just the imagery that bothers Mr. Patterson. He is concerned that the ad states that a woman with more foreign policy experience would be better equipped to handle an emergency call at 3 a.m. Imagine the audacity of the Clinton campaign daring to state that the hands on wife of a former President might know a thing or two about responding to emergencies; that a highly respected Senator from New York might know a little more about dealing with emergencies than someone that didn’t stand on the rubble of 9/11 attempting to help any and all she could. No, it is some nefarious plot to suggest that Hillary Clinton is more qualified than Barack Obama. In fact it is a nefarious racist plot.

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.

Powerful images. Like sleeping children, an onlooking mother and a hard working woman answering the phone to deal with a national emergency.  Scary. Hell, I just grabbed my blankie. Oh…. but they are all white. I’m freakin man!

Remember when the Obama campaign went after Edwards with the claims that he was racist for stating that he was the most electable Democrat? We should have paid more attention to them way back then. Because they succeeded in getting John out of the race. And that despite the vast majority of the polls that backed up Edwards’ claims. But apparently facts don’t matter because John is white and well, you know, those whites are out to bamboozle us again.

Those white devils, they are all racists.

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.

This is where this gets very interesting. You see, Mr. Patterson has somehow juxtaposed “innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger” with a racist movie that sought to revive the KKK.

Heard enough. Are you as outraged as I am? Stay tuned because this so-called “expert” has a lot more expertin to do.

Let’s go over that last line one more time.

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.

As he sees it, the danger implied in this ad is that a black man might answer the phone and that would be a threat to our security. Oh, I see now. This is clearly an attempt to point out that Barack Obama is a black man. That is what this whole ad is about. That’s why the children and the mother are white in the ad. And so is that evil racist engendering woman at the end. Yep, it was secretly produced by David Duke, that bud of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Obama is so keen on sitting down and chatting with. Oops!

And then he lays it all out for us:

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.

Yes, Hillary should have demanded that the children in the ad were black. How dare she show a blond haired girl. And if that isn’t bad enough the other children are “vaguely Latino.” Don’t know about the rest of you but that last sentence seems like a racist message to me. Or is that a racist sub-message? Vaguely Latino! How in the hell can someone be vaguely Latino? But the guy is a Harvard grad so what do any of the rest of us know?

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.

Oh… I see. Hillary wears pantsuits because she is white and to show that Obama would be a danger to our country because he doesn’t wear pantsuits and is black. Funny what you can buy a Harvard degree for on ebay these days.

Now to the meat of all of this. Did the evil plot work? Are the Grand Wizard Zombies rising from their graves?

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.

Yes, it worked. The secret plan to divide the country by race worked on people that made their minds up 3 days after the ad was aired. White Power is alive and well and living in the campaign of Massa Hillary. What absolute bunk!

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.

Mr. Patterson isn’t satisfied associating Hillary with the KKK he decides to throw in the Kitchen sink and associate her with Richard Nixon.

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.

Interesting that he is quoting a Fox poll don’t you think? What this so-called professor neglects to mention is that all of the polls showed a much tighter race in Texas than Ohio. And that is the reason why the “competency” ad was used there. Because Texans were bamboozled once before by a slick talker that looked good in a cowboy hat. They know first hand exactly how incompetent a good image can be. And they won’t be hoodwinked again.

And as to Hillary’s “refusal” to declare that Obama was never a Muslim, how in the hell would she know. His dad was a Muslim. His step dad was a Muslim when they lived in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation on earth where Islam is the unofficial state religion. So it might be conceivable that he was raised Muslim by his stepfather. But Hillary can only take Obama’s word for it. How would she know one way or the other? And when Steve Kroft tried to gotcha her she actually came to Obama’s defense. This selective revisionist history goes along well with the racism meme though. Quite fitting in fact.

And finally Mr. Patterson leaves us with an out for his interpretations. It’s as if he is saying: You walk like a racist and talk like a racist and….. but he leaves this part intentionally blank.

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.

I wonder if the phrase “darkened memories” has a racial overtone to it?

I have a brother that is a paranoid schizophrenic. He really believes that everyone in our family is out to poison and murder him. Nothing we say or do can change his mind. Believe me we have all tried. It’s always the same. We are out to get him. Perfect strangers are his best friends, unless we may have talked to them once before, or their cars are the same color as ours or… well you get the picture. It is a very difficult thing to live with, knowing that someone you are related to feels strongly that you are out to injure him on a daily basis. Honestly it is heart wrenching at times.

But there is one thing I have learned over the years in dealing with him. And that is that I have no control over the situation and that as much as I know medication will help him I cannot force him to take it. Because even if I could, he wouldn’t understand that I was doing it for his benefit and would hate me all the more for it.

People like Mr. Patterson are similarly obsessed and living in a world of lies. They see racism everywhere. A blackboard is a whitey conspiracy. And so on. There is no hope for people like that. Even all of Obama’s hope won’t help them. They are like lost children that will never know the comfort of a loving family because all they see is hate, deception and distrust.