The Race Goes On

A local California Republicans' club called the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated (their club uniform consists of conservative pants suits and blood diamonds) printed a newsletter this month featuring an illustration of a ten dollar bill with Barack Obama's head, a bucket of fried chicken, a plate of ribs, the Kool-Aid man, and a slice of watermelon. The club's president, Diane Fedele, says she received the image of "Obama Bucks" in an email ridiculing a comment Obama made about not looking like previous presidents. Of course, she says, she didn't mean any offense with the cartoonish racism she so eagerly reprinted. "It was just food to me," she said. Like the McCain campaign as a whole, Ms. Fedele apparently thinks you're an idiot. The club actually has a black member, who said she cried for forty-five minutes after reading the newsletter. I get that she was hurt over the fact that members of her own social and political group were so stupidly insensitive, but are these stereotypes really that bad? I mean, they're barely sensical. So what if black people like chicken, ribs, Kool-Aid, and watermelon? I'm so white I'm nearly translucent, and I like all these things, too. Regardless, I imagine we're going to start seeing more and more of this nonsense in the weeks before the election. The simple fact is that racism is far more rampant in this country than we'd like to believe, and the impending reality of a black president will start to wring some of this stuff out. All the more reason to vote Obama on November 4th. It'll really piss off America's morons. More details here.