Latest racial smears from the campaign

More racial codewords are being directed at Barack Obama, who was called "uppity" by an anonymous Bush adviser:

A PRESCRIPTION FOR McCAIN, from one of the smartest Bushies: “I personally would make a lot of ‘accidental’ straight talk on the plane with reporters. Oh no. McCain was chatting with the press, slipped up and called the Paulson proposal totally lacking on detail at best and nothing more than bailout of Wall Street fat cats at worse. Oh no. McCain said it is time for a recusal by Paulson given that he is conflicted five ways from Sunday. Let staff say that they will see about clarification. Let McCain come back and say that he won't apologize and in fact it is worse than what he said the first time. … And you also could guard against underwhelming debate performances, which McCain needs to be worried about given his ability in that regard and his history of performance. The tactics that got them to mid-September in a tie are not going to get them to 50 percent plus one in November. They need … an eye toward driving out the range of contrast that makes McCain different from Obama (action-oriented rhetoric v. grand prose; accessible v. uppity; humble servant of country v. arrogant).

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) previously called Obama "uppity," as Think Progress points out. (By the way, what happened to Brad DeLong, who accuses Allen of making up the quote with no evidence?)

Similarly, Rush Limbaugh accused Barack Obama's campaign of hacking Sarah Palin's email account using racially coded language about Obama being "[a] community organizer, the street agitator, the Chicago thug":

Obama, folks, is showing who he really is. A community organizer, the street agitator, the Chicago thug, clear the playing field, is finally being -- it's on display for everybody to see. Sarah Palin's emails, personal emails, have been hacked, no doubt by Obama thugs. They dropped 30 people up there in Alaska trying to dig up dirt on her. Now they got some thugs that found her personal email address.

On the other side, Obama tried to exacerbate ethnic tensions in a Spanish-language ad that tries to link John McCain to inflammatory quotes from Rush Limbaugh that were taken out of context:

I'm expecting things to get much worse before this is over.

Update 9/23 10:17 PM: Brent Stapes has more on the disturbing racial discourse of the campaign in the New York Times.

Comments

[hermano]

this is what limbaugh said, supposedly an attempt to make a joke:

“If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people - I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs, let the kinds of jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do - let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work”

i dont see how that is out of context. obama's ad i thought was a major distortion though.

[Noumenon]

Yeah, man, I first learned of this when I was linked to Rush's editorial where he says, "Hey, I was taken out of context!" So I read it and thought, "Well, in context -- man, that's pretty racist!"

[David]

This quintessentinal Chicago thug was Al Capone. It's not nice to use that term for Obama, and it may be unfair, but it's not racist.

OTOH Limbaugh's accusation that Obama was behind the hacking of Palin's e-mails is utterly without foundation.

[MartyB]

As I've posted in previous comments, I am always extremely hesitant to label particular words as “coded racist”, as it usually involves too much motive and mind reading – much like claiming Obama’s use of “lipstick on a pig” was deliberate.

Having said that, I would agree that the word “uppity” has a definite, well known racist connotation, and should never be used about a black candidate, but “community organizer, the street agitator, the Chicago thug” could apply to a person of any race that uses hardball machine politic tactics reminiscent of the well-known “Daley” machine.

I’d also agree that Rush’s language, even in a parody, may have been tasteless, but the way it was falsely used by Obama’s campaign to stoke hispanic racial tensions is extremely sad.