Ford, Football & Girls

We didn’t want to let our last blog before the mid-term elections go by without weighing in on the Tennessee U.S. Senate race. Though there are prominent minority candidates running in national and statewide elections in a number of states, this race has gotten the most attention, largely due to the ads run by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The first of the controversial ads, which has since been pulled (and replaced by a number of similarly-themed replicas), features a number of persons on the street facetiously praising Harold Ford for such things as looking good and taking money from people in the pornography industry. The person on the street who got the most attention, though, was a white woman, who appears to be naked (but who is only shot from the shoulders up), claiming that she met Ford at the Playboy mansion. The spot ends with the woman holding her fingers to her head in a mock-phone pose, saying, “Harold, call me.”

The NAACP, as well as Democrats and other pundits, cried “foul” and claimed that the ad was implicitly racist. It is. In Tennessee, interracial romance is not widely accepted, and the appeal plays to deeply held fears of white men that black men are trying to steal “their” women. To further place the ad in context, it is important to know that the primary theme of the Republicans’ campaign against Ford is that he is “not one of us” – that he does not reflect “Tennessee values.” This is simply one brick in the wall of an overall strategy by Republicans to paint Ford as the brutal black buck caricatured in a number of media genres – a black man with unbridled sexual appetites whose greatest conquest is the sexual ravaging of white women. .

Early in the campaign, the NRSC launched a website – Fancyford.com – that is critical of Ford’s taste for “liv[ing] the good life.” The viewer is invited to “Party like Ford,” “Shop like Ford,” “Relax like Ford,” or “Dine like Ford.”

The original NRSC ad has inspired a number of over-the-top spoofs, including this one, this one, and this one.

Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican National Committee, defended the original ad as not being racist – a dubious claim, particularly in light of Mehlman’s trip to the NAACP last year to apologize for the GOP’s history of exploiting racial inequality for political purposes.

However, Ford, too, denies the reality of the ad's racial flavor. “I don't think race had anything to do with that ad,” Ford commented on Fox News Sunday this past weekend. Admittedly “smut,” he asserts, but no hint of racial animus. Surely Republicans and others will take Ford’s comments as support for the disavowal of the racial undertones of the ad. “Ford is black, and if he says there’s nothing racial about the ad then it must be so. Wouldn’t he know?” The answer is he does know. And, he also knows of the strategic dangers, in this case, of admitting what he undoubtedly knows full well. That is, if Ford jumps on the race bandwagon – even as a defense – he gets voters thinking and talking about race, and that’s the last thing you want to be most salient in the minds of Tennessee voters come election day. If race becomes a deciding factor, then Ford loses with some Tennesseans.

In fact, Ford is quite clear that if you’re going to make football parties and women an issue of public discussion, then let’s talk about women and parties and not race. “I like football and I like girls.” Ford said quite pointedly on the same Fox News interview cited earlier, saying he thinks that’s something that will resonate quite well with Tennessee voters. Talk about smooth moves – not to mention simply a politically brilliant retort.

Willie Horton – Again? Really?

On a side note, we have been surprised to see more overtly racist advertising, some of which centers on illegal immigration (see our 10/19/06 blog). But others, such as this spot run by the Ohio Republican Campaign Committee on behalf of State Legislature candidate Bill Hayes, does so by replicating the infamous “Willie Horton ad” run against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential campaign. This ad features a full-screen picture of the black man accused of the crime, with a narrator describing the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl and claiming that Hayes’s opponent, Dan Dodd, has a liberal plan to spare the man’s life. A photo of Dodd appears in the ad, posed beside the head of the black man, with a menacing shadow behind him. Dodd’s body (waist to head) is nearly the size of the man’s head.