((I agree that "Vaguely Latino" might be a good name for a rock band.
As I've said for years, Caesar was not an Aztec, so why are Mexican
steezers and indios "Latinos"?????-Bret))
The Red Phone
>>"Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson is quite worked up in the NYT
over that Hillary Clinton "Red Phone" television spot.
You know the one (as explained by the NY Daily News):
"It's 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep," a grim-
voiced announcer intones over footage of angelic young kids in their
beds.
"But there's a phone in the White House, and it's ringing," the
menacing voice-over continues.
"Your vote will decide who answers that call," the announcer says.
"Who do you want answering the phone?"
Patterson uses his super racism decoder ring to explain the subliminal
hidden message:
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.
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 ****trayal 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 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.
And we know what that means ...
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.
They should have shown all the children sleeping in one bed with all
the lights on, and they should all have been different races. It would
be like Angelina Jolie's house -- gotta catch 'em all!
By the way, wouldn't "Vaguely Latino" be a good name for a rock band?
No, you're right, it wouldn't.
Finally, Hillary Clinton appears, wearing a business suit at 3
a.m., answering the phone.
Well, that's a reassuring image: An overwhelmed President Hillary
trying to get by on two hours of sleep per night, cranked out of her
skull on prescription uppers.
Anyway, the question I had about Hillary's ad must be the reason they
showed Hillary fully dressed and sitting at her desk at 3 AM:
When the Red Phone rings in the President's bedroom at 3 AM, who else
is in the room?
With President Obama, I presume it would be Mrs. Obama. And we can
forecast Michelle's advice with some degree of confidence:
"Barack, honey, I have to be up early for my personal trainer
before I chair that crucial meeting of the National Diversity
Sensitivity Outreach Relations Commission and I just don't know how
I'll manage it all, so, whoever it is, just nuke 'em so I can get some
sleep. And while you're at it, could you drop one on Princeton, New
Jersey, too? Make sure it's big enough to take out the Educational
Testing Service as well. They'll know why."
But with Hillary, doesn't this ad just re-open that question that
we've all tried hard not to think about?<<"
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/03/red-phone.html
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