The Red Phone in Black and White
By
ON first watching Hillary Clinton’s recent “It’s 3 a.m.” advertisement, I was left with an uneasy feeling that something was not quite right — something that went beyond my disappointment that she had decided to go negative. Repeated watching of the ad on YouTube increased my unease. I realized that I had only too often in my study of America’s racial history seen images much like these, and the sentiments to which they allude.
Huh, this is a standard ad throughout the history of political campaigns. The infamous “Daisy” advert had a little girl in a field picking flowers and then a mushroom cloud. After that you are just no longer allowed to complain about crazy, red phone ads.
I am not referring to the fact that the ad is unoriginal; as several others have noted, it mimics a similar ad made for Walter Mondale in his 1984 campaign for the Democratic nomination. What bothers me is the difference between this and the Mondale ad. The Mondale ad directly and unequivocally played on the issue of experience. The danger was that the red telephone might be answered by someone who was “unsure, unsteady, untested.” Why do I believe this? Because the phone and Mr. Mondale are the only images in the ad. Fair game in the normal politics of fear.
Not so this
I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.
The hell? Seriously, seriously, I know this is a really touchy issue, but how in the world is this a possible conclusion one can draw from this ad? Again, let me remind you, little girl, flower picking, mushroom cloud… this is the Platonic ideal of fear ads. Yet, somehow, this ad reminds Orlando Patterson of Birth of a Nation? Look, he is free to make whatever connections he sees from any piece of media, however, I just cannot possibly make that connection in my head. The only extent to which this is true is if any attack against Obama’s competence is challenging the competence of black men everywhere.
The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother or father — or by stating that the danger was external terrorism. Instead, the child on whom the camera first focuses is blond. Two other sleeping children, presumably in another bed, are not blond, but they are dimly lighted, leaving them ambiguous. Still it is obvious that they are not black — both, in fact, seem vaguely Latino.
Are you kidding me?!! This is totally out of hand. How loud would people be screaming racism at the
Finally, Hillary Clinton appears, wearing a business suit at 3 a.m., answering the phone. The message: our loved ones are in grave danger and only Mrs. Clinton can save them. An Obama presidency would be dangerous — and not just because of his lack of experience. In my reading, the ad, in the insidious language of symbolism, says that Mr. Obama is himself the danger, the outsider within.
You need to justify this claim. I know you’re a sociologist of renown, but god damn I have watched and rewatched this ad and have seen absolutely no “insidious language of symbolism” that refers to Obama as “the outsider within”. I wish actual examples of this were cited, but they just weren’t, this is a pretty devastating charge to levy with little to no evidence. Is this ad critical of Obama? Yes, because of his perceived experience and knowledge gap, not his race.
Did the message get through? Well, consider this: people who voted early went overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama; those who made up their minds during the three days after the ad was broadcast voted heavily for Mrs. Clinton.
True fact, there was also NAFTAGate and the stated purpose of this ad, national security fears. The fact that people changed their mind doesn’t prove racism, not even a little bit.
For more than a century, American politicians have played on racial fears to divide the electorate and mobilize xenophobic parties. Blacks have been the “domestic enemy,” the eternal outsider within, who could always inspire unity among “we whites.” Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy was built on this premise, using coded language — “law and order,” “silent majority” — to destroy the alliance between blacks and white labor that had been the foundation of the Democratic Party, and to bring about the Republican ascendancy of the past several decades. The Willie Horton ad that George H. W. Bush used against Michael Dukakis in 1988 was a crude manifestation of this strategy — as was the racist attack used against John McCain’s daughter, who was adopted from
The first example you cited, Nixon, was absolutely true. Your second example, Willie Horton, is marginally true at best. That was truly also a law and order issue. Reagan’s speech in
It is significant that the
She chose to use this ad in
It is possible that what I saw in the ad is different from what Mrs. Clinton and her operatives saw and intended. But as I watched it again and again I could not help but think of the sorry pass to which we may have come — that someone could be trading on the darkened memories of a twisted past that Mr. Obama has struggled to transcend.
Alright, this op-ed piece is downright offensive. Basically if I look at the subtext and symbolism within its text it implies that any attack on Obama is racist. Now I know that the Obama campaign is post-racial and would never condone an attack like this, but of course they can’t control their surrogates. This crosses a very real line that, if it becomes part of the cultural meme, will make this election even nastier and more divisive.
2 comments:
AMEN, JONATHAN. ORLANDO PATTERSON
IS STUCK IN A TIME WARP. WE ARE
BETTER THAN HE GIVES US CREDIT
FOR BEING. MAYBE MR. OBAMA IS
NOT READY FOR THE PRESIDENCY.
MAYBE HE NEEDS TO RESOLVE THE
SCHISMS CREATED BY MR. PATTERSON,
WHO CARRIES OTHER PEOPLE'S WOUNDS
AS A BANNER TO MAKE HIMSELF A
VICTIM. EVER HEAR ABOUT THE
HOLACAUST?
I don't think this is a reflection of the Obama candidacy. I think Obama is probably ready to be president, however he does have a tricky situation of avoiding this kind of rhetoric.
I am not really sure about your holocaust analogy, but I think the complication is actually fairly straightforward. Both candidates come from discrete subgroups who have absolutely been the victims of oppression. In fact, both candidates have overcome a great deal in achieving their success. I am fine with this being politically relevant, because it is, it matters that both Democratic candidates understand what it is like to grow up under such conditions. However, what should not happen is using identity politics as either a shield or a cudgel. To me this is pretty clearly what's going on in this situation.
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