Michael Dukakis was "too black"?

This is my favorite Michael Dukakis quote in a long time -- here's Ezra Klein apparently joking about the Willie Horton ad making Michael Dukakis "seem too black":

Similarly, attacks that should have shuttered Obama's campaign did not. In 1988, the Willie Horton ads managed to make Michael Dukakis seem too black.

Uh, Michael Dukakis had a lot of image problems, but I'm pretty sure "seem[ing] too black" was not one of them:

He's about the whitest man alive. As I'm sure Klein knows, the problem with the loathsome Willie Horton ad was that it primed racially motivated fears about crime and suggested Dukakis would be too lenient on the issue.

Update 10/9 9:54 AM: Commenters object that Klein is joking; updated the post above to try to be more fair.

Comments

[marc h.]

Wait, if you understood that Klein obviously didn't mean that Dukakis is actually African-American-- that he was saying "make Michael Dukakis seem too black" as witty shorthand for "primed racially motivated fears"-- then what, exactly, is the cavil here?

[Dave]

I'm pretty sure Klein is joking (I know I laughed when I first read it)

[Rob]

You're right, Brendan, it was certainly loathsome to suggest that a governor who had given prison furloughs to convicted first degree murderers might be too lenient on the issue of crime.

[David]

Students in today's universities are taught to loath the slightest tinge of non-politically correct speech. Yet, actions often get less attention. In fact, political correctness decrees that misdeeds committed by favored minorities are supposed to be ignored or minimized.

For those of us outside the ivory tower, what was most loathsome about the Willie Horton affair was his partipation in a gang that robbed and stabbed to death Joseph Fournier, a 17-year-old gas station attendant. This was a young man who was working responsibily with his whole life in front of him.

It was loathsome for Horton to be released, since he then raped a local woman after pistol-whipping, knifing, binding, and gagging her fiancé. Who knows if this couple will ever recover from the emotional scars of the attack?

Incidentally, the hear-no-evil, see-no-evil approach to black crime harms the black community IMHO. The black crime rate is very high, and most of their victims are other African Americans.

[MartyB]

Ack!

Brendan -

As I've mentioned in comments before, it is discouraging to see you talk again about "coded racial" attacks, as you claim the Willie Horton ad was, when you constantly decry other pundits "reading minds". It appears to me that nearly any assertions regarding racial coding involve just as much "mind-reading" as other examples you've criticized.

[Rob]

While we're on the subject of political correctness, it's interesting to examine Brendan's description of Dukakis as "about the whitest man alive." Since Dukakis's complexion is rather swarthy, it seems Brendan is using criteria other than skin tone to reach his conclusion. What factors might those be? I'm guessing they're pejorative factors, such as blandness, squareness, wimpiness. If not, why is Dukakis "about the whitest man alive" and not somebody like Tom Brady or Brad Pitt or Richard Brandon?

Would Brendan care to give us his opinion of who the blackest man alive is? I'm guessing not, because that wouldn't be politically correct. But associating whiteness with pejorative qualities is perfectly fine. Go figure.

[Stevie]

Ouch. Someone's still hurting from American Prospect Rejection Syndrome.