Anna Marie Smith,
"Sex Scandals, 'Responsible Fatherhood' and the 2008 Election Campaign:
When 'Sex Talk' Trumps Race and Class"
(page 4 of 7)
It may appear that President Obama escaped the 2008 campaign
relatively unharmed. But this is not entirely true: as an
African-American male, he was subjected to an extraordinary degree of
moral scrutiny. The Obama marriage and Michelle Obama, in particular,
were subjected to merciless scrutiny and disparaging attacks.
In response, we could ask, first, the "Gary Hart
question."[6] If an
emerging leader like Obama must be safely ensconced within a monogamous
heterosexual marriage with a properly subordinated loyal spouse in order
to be taken seriously on the public stage, then how many highly talented
and worthy individuals will be unjustly disqualified from running for
office? And how do race and gender intensify this sort of exclusionary
moral "vetting"? Why does the Obama marriage have to pass a much more
demanding test than the McCain marriage? So what if the Obamas fist
bumped[7];
can you imagine if they kissed on stage like the
Gores[8] did in
2000? How many mediocre white males are going to pass the political
leadership test by default, for the reason that simply having dark skin,
or simply bearing a non-Anglo-Saxon name, or simply being
female[9] is to
be already morally suspect?
Second, we need to remember the subtle ways in which race, gender,
and sexuality work together outside the terrain of an explicit scandal
itself. As Donna Brazile[10]
rightly pointed out, the McCain campaign
certainly chose carefully when it launched its ad that attacked Sen.
Obama as a mere celebrity. The ad placed the images of this middle-aged
black family man next to two white young single women known for their
unsavory conduct (Paris Hilton and Britney
Spears).[11] If the
point was simply to brand Obama as a young upstart lacking intellectual
depth and experience, why not compare him to Denzel Washington or
Bono?
In fact, President Obama is forced to work in a political environment
deeply poisoned by sexualized racist hatred. In 2006, Rep. Harold Ford
(D-TN), an African-American Democrat with a centrist voting record and a
strong foothold in his state and within the Party elite, campaigned for
the Tennessee Senate seat that came open after the Republican Senate
Majority Leader, Bill Frist, announced his retirement. Ford had been
re-elected four times and had garnered, on average, 80 percent of the
votes cast in his district. During the 2006 Senate campaign, the opinion
polls suggested that Ford was doing so well in contesting this
Republican seat that the race had become too close to call. However, the
Republican National Committee ran an attack ad against Ford. Working on
an extremely slender factual basis, the ad features a male character who
claims that Ford took funds from the producers of pornography; in
reality, Ford, who had cast several votes in opposition to gay rights
and abortion, had joined 3,000 other guests at a massive football party
in 2005 sponsored by Playboy, the mildly pornographic men's
magazine. More important, the ad also features a clip with a heavily
made-up young woman with blonde hair and a low-cut dress. She poses in a
sexually provocative manner, declares with evident pleasure that she met
Ford at a Playboy party, and then beckons directly to Ford,
"Harold, call me."[12]
Ford's Republican opponent, Bob Corker, described
the ad as "distasteful" and claimed that he asked the Republican
National Committee to take it off the air. The highly respected civil
rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP), denounced the ad. William Cohen, a former
Secretary of Defense and Senator (R-MA) from the Republican Party,
described the ad as a "very serious appeal to a racist
sentiment."[13]
The smear tactic of linking an attractive black family man to a young
blonde woman remobilizes the old racist beliefs about black men's
voracious sexual appetite and their predatory interest in sexually
assaulting white women.
Corker edged out Ford by three percent in the November 2006 election.
Although many whites did vote for Ford, they did not do so in large
enough proportions, and the state of Tennessee has a majority white
electorate. It is not clear that it was the attack ad itself that made
the difference; the rumors about Ford's financial dealings were also
featured in the post-election commentary.[14]
However, the notorious
campaign ad was widely circulated, not only across Tennessee but also
throughout the entire country.
It is not only black candidates who become the targets of racialized
sexual smear tactics in presidential campaigns. Any Democrat who is
successfully typecast as excessively "liberal" is in danger of being
associated with rapacious black masculinity. During the 1988 election
season, Governor Michael Dukakis from Massachusetts was the Democrats'
Presidential nominee. Dukakis, a white man of Greek-American descent,
was subjected to an attack ad in which he was blamed for the conduct of
William Horton.[15]
(The ad was produced by a political action committee
associated with the Republican Party.) Dubbed "Willie" by the ad, Horton
had been serving his custodial sentence in the state penitentiary for
murder. With Dukakis's permission, Horton was released on furlough—and
ended up committing rape and assault during his temporary release.
Already tagged as a liberal northeasterner by the Republicans, Dukakis
was relentlessly linked to Horton's crimes. The Republican candidate,
George H.W. Bush, denounced Dukakis as a "card carrying member of the
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)," and highlighted Dukakis's
opposition to capital punishment. For the many white voters still
influenced by the nation's deeply engrained sexual-racial script, the
implications were devastating: a Dukakis administration would be much
too permissive on crime. It would take its orders from the radical wing
of the civil rights movement, and it would usher in the much feared
return to the excessive racial egalitarianism of the 1960s. The return
of black power would mean the emasculation of the white man and the
endangerment of white women. Dukakis lost to Bush in a landslide.
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