I couldn’t agree more with your observations about McCain’s whiteness being normalised and ‘disappeared’ rather than having the implications of his glaring whiteness (and that of many of his supporters) discussed, and how Obama’s blackness is always problematised whether it’s perceived as giving him some mythical advantage (which isn’t fair to his white opponents and is thus, problematic) or whether it is a hindrance to him. Your posts that dissect the whole ‘catching flies with honey’ resonated with me, because I very recently argued with someone about that…

As for McCain – I’ve stated in other places that I just don’t care about whether or not he’s genuine or not in his attempts to tone it down, since he is privilged and never going to have to have to suffer the fall-out of his vile actions.

They want to bring on race wars. I’m very afraid.

Love, C.

I’m not that generous to him. He hired the very people who threw racism at his adopted daughter in order to keep him from office. He knew exactly what they’d do when he set them onto Obama.

The thing is none of Them are thinking other than must win, must win. The mavrik team really does know how evil this is, and that They were stirring it up. After all this is the same strategy and the same tactics that were used against McCain and their adopted Bangladeshi child back in 2004 in South Carolina. He knows how devisive it is, how much hatred it unleashes. And since 2004 this nation has had 4 MORE years of 24/7 non-stop coded racist language and hate speech out of talk radio and Faux News. They deliberately played it. But it comes naturally to his Alaskan running mate, and she enthusiastically endorses it. He is rather more uncomfortable with it — when his temper isn’t running him.

It seems that now his campaign is running him, he’s not running the campaign. The campaign and his running mate are ignoring anything he wants.

The real problem is the same as it was all along. He has nothing to offer, other than his desire to be POTUS. He has no ideas, so he can’t even counter his own campaign staffers and running mate who want hatred and divisiveness.

We are going to need to protect and defend Obama and his family with everything we’ve got. This is so much like the Civil War. The assassination of Lincoln was merely a continuation of it by other means once the military left the field. It wasn’t a lone aberrant mentally ill person, but a full fledged conspiracy, that targeted many other figures, including General Grant, who was en route by train with Mrs. Grant that night. He was surrounded by loyal staffers, his army and on a train, but they re-routed and kept it secret when they learned of the plot — this was prior to Lincoln being killed. I’m not making this up. You can read about it in more places than one, including Grant’s own Memoirs. But they just don’t teach what really happened in school, but the nation knew.

And the consequences are we got his running mate, Andrew Johnson was nearly impeached for NOT carrying out Reconstruction as Lincoln intended, and the consequences of that are still with us.

This country, this country, this country. We have had more assassinations, I think than anybody in the ‘developed world.’ Why do our teachers, our writers of history (well, some of us do), make more of this?

Love, C.

But that pandering and playing on fears of that group is what got us into another nightmarish four years of Bush, and I think—no, I hope—-that the majority of Americans will see that many of McCain’s supporters are like that old lady in that clip and realize that we can’t have another four years of catering to one population while ignoring everyone else.

Or maybe he’s a man of real integrity and honour mixed with a spoiled brat who never cottoned to the fact that you can’t always get what you want, even after you get out of the camp, even if you’ve got a lot of money.

Actually, Guantanamo’s kind of pretty too, aside from the prison. Why don’t we just go whole hog and stick ‘em in Antarctica? There’s still a little ice left.

Angie,

I wonder the same thing. But I don’t think it worked, in this case. Scratch that; I think McCain is successfully appealing to those redneck voters, and he made a decent show of having to cater to the “liberal media” to impress them. But I think that by appealing to this set, he’s reinforced the notion of the intellectual/fiscal conservatives that he’s just like Bush. Several of the links in that Berube article I mentioned point to big-name conservatives who are freaking out now, horrified that McCain has transformed himself into a moron in order to appeal to morons. I think he’s made 2 steps forward, but at least 1.5 back.

Yeah, I noticed that too. No attempt whatsoever to point out that Arab =/= Evil Incarnate. That kind of racism is A-OK, apparently.

Asada,

I think that, in his own pathetic, stupid way, McCain actually was trying to defend Obama. The problem is that he was trying to defend Obama from the irrational, funguslike growth of the racist seeds he planted, and he had no idea what the hell he unleashed. He was Pandora, trying to put chaos back in the box, when he shouldn’t've opened the box in the first damn place.

On some level, I suspect McCain himself is appalled. Once upon a time, he deliberately tried not to appeal to this face of the Repub party. He used to be the champion of the fiscal-but-not-social, not-ignorant-redneck conservatives, but that wouldn’t've won him the big house, because they’re all big-city elitists of the type that he’s been ridiculing. So now he’s started trying to use these Middle American morons, but he really doesn’t understand them or even like them, and it shows. He probably hates having to appeal to them for votes. It’s like appealing to the biggest, dumbest, meanest kid in your school for protection from bullies — it might work, but it’s humiliating.

Like I said, I would feel sorry for him, if I were a nicer person. (And I’m pretty damn nice.)