Not-So-"Subliminable" Racism
Conservative GOP Group Rolls Out New TV Ad
by Dave "Doctor" Gonzo

Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2000 -- NEW YORK (AmpolNS) -- They're desperate, and it's getting obvious.

The ultra-right sees the writing on the wall concerning George "ShrubYa" Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress.

They know that their hard-core, always-there voters are getting dispirited, and even if they did show up in droves it will not be enough to prevent the Democrats from retaking the House of Representatives and maybe even the Senate. As for the White House -- well, BushBaby was behind as of Labor Day, and it doesn't look to be getting any better with the Olympics drowning out his latest reinvention -- not to mention the fact that his blundering campaign "amateur hour" failed to register his new slogan, "Real Plans for Real People," as an Internet name. The Gore campaign beat him to it.

But I digress...

When the going gets tough, the hate and the fearmongering start to surface -- and not so "subliminably," either.

Case in point: The Republican Ideas Political Committee is now airing a television ad in support of GOP candidates featuring a fictional mother who says she yanked her son out of a public school because there was "a bit more diversity than he could handle."

Now, the mother precedes that statement by claiming that "We didn't want him where drugs and violence were fashionable" -- which, in and of itself, is hypocritical fearmongering. Forget about the fact that just about any private school student will tell you it's not exactly difficult to score recreational chemicals from schoolmates -- and to hell with that troubling trend that shows the most highly publicized incidents of school violence to have been happening in communities that lean politically and socially conservative.

But then our fictional mom drops the big one, saying that the school provides "a bit more diversity than he could handle" as the picture cuts to a shot of multiracial kids.

Multiracial American kids, I would remind you.

Well, at least we now know what the "ideas" coming from the Republican Ideas Political Committee are -- the same ideas for which Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott lauded the segregationist Conference of Conservative Citizens (the "White Kollar Klan," if you will) not too long ago.

We're glad that the Republican Ideas Political Committee is running this spot. Sure, it will get the "white sheet and noose in the pickup" crowd fired up to get out and vote for the bigot of their choice -- but it will alert far more people to the racism that runs pervasive and unchecked through so much of America's right wing.

'Nuff said.