Writing of FAIR’s new Smearcasters report on the Washington City Paper‘s website (10/13/08), Bobby Allyn finds that “searching U.S. newspapers on Lexis Nexis for ‘Obama,’ ‘Muslim’ and ‘smear’ generates 509 unique hits.” Allyn continues:
There have been plenty of reports debunking the Obama Muslim allegation, but not enough about the racial subtext of “smearing” a politician for being Muslim. FAIR’s senior analyst Steve Rendall told Brooke Gladstone on On the Media: “If someone was accused of being a secret Jew, weâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢d have a discussion not only about the fact of the matter, but one about anti-Semitism in the campaign. The second part is not happening in this case.”
Related to this are the tactics of the anti-Prop 8 campaign (opposing same-sex marriage) here in California.
On the advice of their “experts”, not a single lesbian or gay person appears in their ads … so as not to “scare off” the undecideds.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph … how hard should I slap my forehead?
Show married couples. Let them say what being married means to them. Let they say what having that taken away from them would mean.
And don’t show just “normal” couples. Show the community in all its diversity.
There is nothing to hide … and doing so just plays into the hands of the gaybashers. Doesn’t it imply that there’s something wrong with being homosexual if they’re not even shown in a campaign to uphold their rights?
Now, if Prop 8’s defeated, they’ll say the strategy was vindicated. If it wins, they’ll say we don’t need to change the strategy … we just need to do a better job of implementing it.
Isn’t this the same crap the Demorats engage in? “We won, so our strategy of ‘pragmatism’ worked.” Or, “We lost, so we should move *further* to the right.”
Excuse me … I’m suddenly feeling a bit queasy.