http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAyK-enrF1g

http://www.theunapologeticmexican.org/glosario.html#insanemartyr

Anyway I think that context and underlying intent is everything. While on the surface there’s nothing inherently disrespectful in addressing Obama by the term ‘Senator’, the fact that McCain only addresses Obama in this way, yet addresses every other Senator he debates with in a natural, yet courteous fashion (he addresses them by their first name with direct eye contact, is willing to shake their hand and in short treats them as human equals) speaks volumes.

I could speculate that he won’t use Obama’s first name because he has problems pronouncing the word ‘Barack’…but yeah.

Even if you want to argue that there is *no* underlying racism, (and I’m not prepared to entirely rule it out) he CLEARLY differentiates Obama from all of these other politicians that he’s dealt with. And I don’t think that it is too stupid to wager a guess that this chilly differentiation isn’t coming from a place of respect.

I completely agree with Nojojo about the body language and the racist historical context. I really don’t see how you can take factors like age, gender and race out of the equation. Obama has handled McCain with kid gloves because he is an old, WHITE, guy and walked on eggshells with Plain because she is an out-of-her-depth woman. Does anyone think that either McCain or Palin in turn, is somehow miraculously blind to his race, age or gender?

radh:
I’m assuming you’re being serious. If so, you should check out Bush’s seedy background (complete with ties to the Nazis no less) and the hi-jinks of HIS relatives (coke addiction, alcoholism, political corruption etc.) And he didn’t just run for president – he ‘won’ it twice.

And if you haven’t heard about Palin’s less than ‘ideally upright-and-Christian’ family circumstances and her secessionist husband by now, well…But then again since you are asking the question…

(I know she’s not running for president, but the fact that she’s even viable as a VP should answer your question.)

And uh – do you think that Obama could cheat on his disabled wife and then go on to marry an heiress significantly younger than himself or his first wife, draw up the marriage papers before he’d divorced his first wife – and refer to his wife as a ‘cunt’ and STILL be viable for a presidency?

D’ye think?

You’re an idiot, plain and simple. If a white woman like me was already thinking along the same lines as the ones so brilliantly and eloquently spelled out by Nojojojo, then I’m certain there are other whites out there who picked up on his coded behavior as well. Think it through, Zylonet: if a lot of the language being used by the McCain/Palin camp is coded for religious fundamentalists, why could some of the behavior and language not also be coded for those Americans who may be pretty uncomfortable with the idea of a black President? And, as we’ve been seeing in the past week, what was coded is now becoming more and more explicit in the horrifying cries of “Terrorist,” “Traitor,” and “Kill him!” heard at Republican rallies. It’s a pretty short journey from there to declaring that Obama needs to be lynched.

Obama will win and why not, but he is where he is, in part because he is not completely “white”.

McCain may be racist, he may simply try to get votes, but who cares?
You don·t have to like him or vote for him, have you?

Can you imagine McCain to doing something so blatantly dismissive to Biden? Or to any other member of the Senate, for that matter?

I was FLABBERGASTED by his behavior…

And I don’t get the comparison to saying someone “asked for it”. I suggested that some people are doggedly looking to find racism in any interaction between blacks and whites. What has that got to do with someone suggesting that a woman somehow provoked her own attack? I’m arguing that there are times when there is no attack at all. And that the proper way to figure out if there was isn’t to move from the presumption that there probably was.

I am well aware that addressing racism isn’t fun or easy. Despite this, some people like to root around until they find it anyway. Go figure. I find it hard to believe that you are not aware of this.

I think where we differ is that you feel we must address racism “…at the first sign of ridicule or dismissal.” I believe we should pick our battles. Largely because we have so many clear-cut cases of racism that focusing on a lot of debatable (lol!) racism is a waste of time. Let me put it another way–are things so grand that we’ve got to go begging for racist incidents by arguing that calling a black senator “Senator” is racist? To me, THAT seems to be playing into the racist’s hands.

I just am not buying this argument that calling Obama “Senator Obama” was disrespectful. I think it’s ridiculous. You seem to realize there are other ways to address Obama in a disrespectful fashion, but then insist he had to call him “Senator”. How about if he had just called him “Barack”? He wouldn’t have been using his title, he would have been calling him by his first name in accordance with Jim Crow etiquette, and no one could say anything about it because Obama called him by HIS first name.

This whole title idea is just contrary to any racist putdown that I’ve ever seen.

(And now, an aside: I was in the Army for a couple of years and I am well aware of the idea of addressing unpopular officers by their titles or by sir in a voice dripping with condescension. I do not think that is waht is happening here.)

Absolutely McCain is trying to put a wall of distance and formality b/t he and Obama. But I think it is because HE is on the defensive. Because HE doesn’t want to be forced to be engaged with Obama on that stage. Because he can’t afford to be familiar.

Because he can’t win that game.

He wasn’t mocking Obama’s title. He was using it to keep Obama at bay.

As for the body language, I hear you. But I’m telling you, McCain is a time bomb. He has a very bad temper. Did you see him mix it up with the white folks of the Des Moines Register editorial board, yesterday? Like those white folks, Obama pisses McCain off and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

But he knows he’d better not do that with Obama. Because that’s not a battle he can win verbally, physically, or politically.

Again, we only disagree on WHY he acts like an ass, not IF he acts like an ass.

And I’ve got a story, too! Back in the 50’s my grandmother lived in the deep south. She had an insurance policy that a white agent would stop by the house and pick up every week, month, whatever, as was the custom at the time.

One day he comes to my grandmother’s home and asks my uncle, a teenager at the time, “Is Evelyn home?” To which my uncle says, “You mean Ms. Robinson.” The agent frowns and says, “Is she home?” My uncle says, “She calls you Mr. Smith. You call her Ms. Robinson.” The agent turned and left and sent my grandmother a letter saying that in the future she would have to mail in her payments.

I can remember as a little girl (1970s) going with my grandmother to an old department store in our hometown (in Alabama). She would hand the money to the white clerk; the clerk would put the change on the counter rather than handing it back.

I’ve seen this happen in reverse in the supermarkets when I’m living in New Orleans. An older white woman pays the cashier, but she puts her money on the counter, not in the hand of the cashier (good grief! our ridiculous nation’s sins has forced me into this locution!) of color. Nor would she accept change from the cashier’s hand. She’d stand there until the mosquitos came out before she’d accept her change directly from the cashier’s hand. She also makes it very clear that it is purely an affront that the cashier is a person of color, done specifically to annoy HER.

Love, C.

BTW, there’s an excellent piece in today’s WaPo concerning Michelle Obama’s family’s ancestors, complete with a slide show of photos with audio commentary, so you can hear the voices of those written about in the long article. You can find it here. It includes a splendid photo of Michelle Obama.