Posted on 11/09/2006 9:12:02 AM PST by meg88
Thursday, 11/09/06 'Call me' ad actress says 'it was just a job'
The bare-shouldered blonde whose appearance in a political ad helped sink Democrat Harold Ford Jr. says she isn't very political, and didn't know who "Harold" was when she said, "Call me."
"I don't involve myself in politics. I stick to my job," said Johanna Goldsmith, an Austin, Texas, actress. "For me, it was just a job like any other."
Goldsmith's ad in the U.S. Senate race in Tennessee touched off a national political and racial firestorm.
She had promised to keep quiet until after the election, and she spoke to The Tennessean by telephone Wednesday.
Although the ad has been criticized for playing into racial fears of a black man dating a white woman, Goldsmith said she saw no such message. Goldsmith, who has Mexican heritage, said she has “dated all nationalities” and didn’t see the ad as racist.
Tammy Thompson, a Texas radio personality who also appeared in the ad, agreed.
"I live with undertones of racism all the time," said Thompson, who is African-American. "But I also have to think of it as, 'Everything is not racism.' We as black people have a tendency to be a little sensitive because of what our ancestors went through and what we continue to go through today."
Thompson said the actors didn't have a script and were thrown lines to repeat as they stood in front of the camera. They shot Oct. 15 in Dallas and a week later the ad aired.
In the commercial, Goldsmith plays a flirtatious blond who says she met Ford at a Playboy party — a reference to his attendance at a Playboy-sponsored Super Bowl party in Jacksonville, Fla., last year. The ad, filmed in a man-on-the-street-style, featured other questionable characters who said they backed Ford.
Some pundits and politicians speculated that the ad, paid for by the Republican National Committee, helped put Republican Bob Corker over the top.
The first poll — a Bloomberg survey — that showed Corker leading by more than a percentage point was conducted in the days just after the "call me" ad aired, and Ford was never consistently ahead in the polls again.
"It clearly had an effect. After the ad ran, that's when the polls started changing — Corker for the better and Ford for the worse," said David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center of Political and Economic Studies, a nonprofit black think tank.
The fact that 30 short seconds caused such an uproar — and landed Goldsmith's picture all over prime-time television news channels and the front page of major print publications such as Time magazine and The New York Times — surprised her, she said.
A Spanish translator for a Texas doctors association, Goldsmith said, “I don’t just play the bimbos, I play the young mom, too.
“I love children and comedy.”
As the spot was criticized as tacky and latently racist, calls started pouring in alerting Goldsmith to her newfound fame, she said. A friend from Australia even called to tell her she'd made the cover of a major magazine in Melbourne.
Two days after the election, Goldsmith is trying to catch up on the back-and-forth over the ad. She recorded some of the news broadcasts and plans to watch them this weekend.
Linda McAlister, Goldsmith's agent, said people of all political hues signed on to the commercial, produced by Dallas-based company Scott Howell & Co., because the script was funny. McAlister said she was surprised people took the ad so seriously.
"That's what's been so hilarious about the whole thing," she said. "We've been looking at each other like, 'You are good. You sold it!' "
No picture? :)
PS This whole controversy was nonsense, of course.
Democrats LOVE to show that "Bible-thumping" Republicans are hypocrites. This ad did the same to Ford.
If it had showed a black stripper, there would have been cries of racism. It showed a white stripper, and there were cries of racism. I'm sure an Asian stripper would have resulted in . . . you guessed it.
Notice a pattern here? Of course. No surprise.
As a white guy who graduated from a historically black university, I have this to say about racism:
Racism is far more prevalent than most whites believe... and far less prevalent than most blacks believe.
The race of the woman wasn't the problem.The fact that Ford would associate himself in any way with that 80 year old pervert is what was offensive to voters.
She was referred by Willie Horton.
A couple of Shakespearean actors if I do say so myself.
I have heard more vicious racial comments by blacks to other blacks than I have ever heard from other white people toward blacks.
What put Corker over the top probably had to do more about the criticism of the ad being racist. I saw that ad and thought it was funny, didn't even occur to me to think there was anything racist in it. So when I heard on Brit Hume's show someone say it was rather racist, I thought to myself, this is the dems looking to make colour an issue here. To me they're the ones who are fixated on colour, not the republicans.
I've seen Harold Ford, I happen to think he's a good looking guy, and many girls, regardless of colour, probably wouldn't mind dating him.
I just saw that ad and it was hillarious. Saw no racism in it at all. Just some flirty chick saying "Harold, call me [wink]".
Even that might not have raised the ire of some - but the fact that he was pretending to be this devout Christian conservative made it worse.
Democrats savor it when any Republican or Christian leader is shown to be a hypocrite.
But not this time.
No surprise.
here's the link for the ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWkrwENN5CQ&eurl
It's too bad they only showed her neck up in the ads...
Saw the commercial here in N. Alabama - it was very funny and clever. Racism never even crossed my mind. I would have never thought about it unless it was mentioned in the media. I have not heard one explanation to date about why exactly it is 'racist.'
she is a good actress, I'll give her that! and a very light skinned Mexican to boot...
OK. someone's gotta do it. Grumble, grumble.
I'm a black woman and there wasn't an ounce of racism in that ad. Only the DemocRATS saw racism in that ad because it was effective!
Plus, I heard that Harold Ford, Jr. dates white women anyway so why he was crying about it is a mystery.
I saw that happen, and sometimes the comments were vicious, but frankly, I don't consider it racism. By definiton from dictionary.com, racism is "a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others."
Blacks deciding that some blacks were less attractive than others doesn't rise to the level of racism. Hearing it in context struck me about like white people saying that they preferred blondes over redheads.
Now, don't misunderstand me - I met plenty of black racists. It's just that the particular issue of dark-skinned vs. light-skinned blacks doesn't really qualify for me.
Pretty lady. Harold will probably give her a call, for real!
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