There’s been a pretty big deal made of a campaign commercial against black Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr. The ad features a white woman talking, rather bimbo-ishly, about how she met Ford “at the Playboy party.” It ends with her wagging her hand, thumb and pinky extended, next to her cheek and saying “Harold, call me.”
The allegation stems from a gossip column in the DC paper Roll Call that said Ford was at a Super Bowl Playboy party. He denied it at first, but he’s finally come clean that he was there. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, but (A) he lied and (B) Ford backers accused the opponent’s campaign of feeding off Southern aversions to interracial, shall we say, mingling. Wonkette (a “politics for people with dirty minds” blog linked, along with video of the commercial, from “pretty big deal…”) even claims it’s known Ford “does have a bit of a thing for white girls.”
I don’t think the commercial necessarily had any racial intent. That’s not to say no racist who saw it was affected that way, but that the ad is consistent with an anti-”partying lifestyle” message regardless of the girl’s skin. Tennessee folks tend to be socially conservative, and they might not think Ford’s lifestyle represents their values — I may not care whether my representatives are around scantily clad women now and then, but if the target audience thinks differently, Republicans have every right to point this out.
And just imagine the hell that would’ve broken loose if the GOP released an ad depicting a black woman as a Playboy floozie. If they were going to make the point through an actress, they had to pick a white one.
Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.

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