Pick a Card

Villainous Company has the best take on Obama’s attempt to play the race card (also, by the way, she has one of the most enticing banners in blogdom – woof!).

The charge of fear-mongering is, of course, nothing more than an attempt to put McCain and the Republicans on the defensive, and to frame the election contest in such a way as to characterize perfectly legitimate criticism of Obama’s experience, personal and political associations, ideology and ostentatious flip-flops as the tool of closet racism.

Here, from VC, is a portion of what he said:

"They’re going to try to make me into a scary guy,” he said last week. “They’re even trying to make Michelle into a scary person. Right?" And so that drumbeat – 'we’re not sure if he’s patriotic or not; we’re not sure if he is too black.'
"I don’t know, before I wasn’t black enough," said Obama. "'Now he might be too black. We don’t know whether he’s going to socialize – well, who knows what.'"

Now, if he were to phrase it this way – say, after a dose of sodium pentathol - he might have a point about the fear-mongering, but it would be purely academic since the fear would be perfectly justified anyway:

“They’re going to try to make me a scary guy because I want to have talks with Tehran without preconditions. They’re even trying to make Michelle into a scary person just because, up until the moment I became a serious presidential candidate, she thought America was a lost cause. Right? And so that drumbeat – ‘we’re not sure if he’s patriotic or not, just because he was previously associated both personally and professionally with a couple of unrepentant terrorists; we’re not sure if he is too much like Jimmy Carter’. I don’t know, before I wasn’t enough like Jimmy Carter, now I might be too much like him. ‘We don’t know whether he’s going to socialize or not – or will his sweetheart deals with crooks like Tony Rezko convince him that socializing everything will dry up all the gravy?’ Well, you won’t really know until you elect me, will you? And yeah, I guess that is kind of scary.”