Posted on 04/24/2008 11:39:45 AM PDT by LJayne
New York Times reporter Michael Luo wrung his hands Thursday about a potentially racially divisive ad from the North Carolina Republican party that linked two Democrats running for governor to Sen. Barack Obama and his hate-mongering former pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Despite objections from Senator John McCain, the North Carolina Republican Party is planning to roll out a television advertisement on Monday attacking two Democrats who are running for governor by linking them to Senator Barack Obama and playing a clip of his former pastor excoriating the United States.
The release of the commercial, which Republican officials in North Carolina said would make its debut during the 6 p.m. newscasts, injects a potentially divisive racial element into the campaign for the state's Democratic presidential primary, which is on May 6.
That's the second time in two days the paper has described the ad as racially divisive. On Wednesday, Patrick Healy wrote:
Yet Mr. Obama also faces challenges ahead: According to Republican Party officials, party members in North Carolina -- which holds its primary on May 6 -- are considering running an advertisement against Mr. Obama that highlights his ties to controversial figures like his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. That ad could have the effect of adding a racially divisive element to that Southern state's primary.
Apparently Wright's words themselves weren't divisive, but a GOP ad pointing them out is.
Luo's Thursday story continued:
In the advertisement, a narrator intones, "For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew, listening to his pastor." Then a video clip of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who was Mr. Obama's pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, is cued up.
Preaching in 2003, Mr. Wright uses an expletive when referring to the United States and discussing its treatment of African-Americans, arguing that instead of singing "God Bless America," they should sing something else. Mr. Obama has said he was not at the service.
Sing "something else"? How quaint. The Times is obviously queasy about printing Wright's tribute to his country, "God damn America." The Times has yet to quote Wright's charming phrase in a news story, although it's shown up twice in the paper, in columns by Maureen Dowd and William Kristol.
But the paper apparently has no official policy against using the phrase in its news pages. It cropped up in a January 6, 2007 story by Hassan Fattah about protests after the hanging of Saddam Hussein -- perhaps because it drove home an anti-Iraq war point.
Here in Beirut, hundreds of members of the Lebanese Baath Party and Palestinian activists marched Friday in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood behind a symbolic coffin representing that of Mr. Hussein and later offered a funeral prayer. Photographs of Mr. Hussein standing up in court, against a backdrop of the Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem, were pasted on city walls near Palestinian refugee camps, praising ''Saddam the martyr.''
''God damn America and its spies,'' a banner across one major Beirut thoroughfare read. ''Our condolences to the nation for the assassination of Saddam, and victory to the Iraqi resistance.''
—Clay Waters is the director of Times Watch, an MRC project tracking the New York Times. [Recommend story on Digg.com]
Good for them. Let it be known henceforth, the American people elect people to represent them, not to "lead" them.
I was miffed back in 2004 over the Purple Heart band-aid business. At least back then, we were reasonably assured that GWB was the candidate favored by the majority of the actual Republican party, rather than the one that the Democrat crossovers consider most beatable.
McCain's word carries no weight at all.
I am waiting for a rational explanation as to how “God D... America” is inherently racist. The logic escapes me.
John McCain is a senator from ARIZONA. What business is it of his what candidates in NC do?
As far as I can tell, the head of the NC GOP would make a better candidate for President than McCain.
This is a flashback to the Clinton years, when the news media (and the Dems, of course) thought it wrong to talk about Bill Clinton’s conduct. It was not the conduct that was thought to be bad, just the “talking” about the conduct.
And now, the NYT thinks that mentioning Obama’s racially divisive pastor is racially divisive.
There might be some kind of logic in there, but one would have to be a liberal to grasp it.
I was wondering the same thing.
G— Damn the NYTs!
Why doesn’t the NYT slam Hillary for doing the same thing? Or the Demo-rats ?????
This a preemptive strike by the Democrat media to determine to what extent they can dissuade Republicans from using Wright’s racist, anti-America hate sermons against Obama. Sure enough, McCain and the RNC are rolling over right on cue, smiling winningly as they present their soft, furry underbellies...
As it does anyone who is not a race baiting liberal. This is just a hint of what is to come in the general election when any time McCain speaks he will be accused of racism.
The Republicans have to repeatedly come back and say that it is Obama’s pastor of 20 years who has made racist and racially divisive comments, and it is not racist to point that out. In fact stating that one cannot state means the Democrats are condoning racism.
“GD America” may not be particularly racist, except that part of his hatred of America stems from his belief that it is run by thehated white and is unredeemably racist against blacks. However, you cannot listen to the youtube videos of Rev. Wright and not conclude that the bitter contempt with which he talks about “white people”, Europeans, Italians, etc., is not out and out racist hatemongering.
Which Republicans have the brass to do it? THAT'S the problem. We've become a party without a backbone.
any criticism of a member of a protected group is inherently racist
by leftist definition.
It’s time to take this rhetorical rifle butt to the head away from them by not letting it work.
a perfect visual of the wimps!
Anything said about Obama or his associates the least bit critical will be called racist. Of course revenge will be extracted at the polls in November.
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