In Love With Racism

The media, like their political partners the Democrats, is in love with Racism. It's their favorite topic, their favorite trick to make a routine story exciting. To throw around a cliche accusation, they politicize race in order to sell papers. I, for one, am bored with their lack of imagination and angered by the double standard.

In yesterday's Financial Times, for example, there was a poorly conceived op-ed piece by Clive Crook called Now It Is Time to be More Ordinary.

Leading by example in the quest for ordinariness, Crook's column lacked understanding of the dynamics that threaten Barack's candidacy.

His greatest electoral weakness will probably not be inexperience, nor the fact that he is black. Washington's most experienced politicians have little to boast about and voters know it. Racism exists, but he came through the Wright storm stronger. The charge that sticks is vagueness. Appealing as the message of change and hope may be to a country with a low opinion of its politicians, it will not be enough. He will be challenged to make his policies - on Iraq, on Iran, on the economy and healthcare - more detailed and specific.

While he's correct that racism isn't going to cost Barack the election (of course it isn't - he presents no evidence that it will, so why is he even talking about it?), Crook doesn't get what will. And the suggestion that Reverend Wright has in any way improved Barack's chances is a complete misrepresentation. Wright, and Barack's links to a slew of questionable radicals, is the campaign's Achilles heel.

But back to the racism. This column touches on race, a bit, but isn't about race. Yet, on the front page at the very top, where there are a series of boxes teasing stories within the day's Financial Times, was one teasing this column. And it said something like (I don't have it in front of me), "Barack is black, and he can still beat John McCain." This stoking of race as the theme for the campaign misrepresents the election and race in America for the amusement, and the sales goals, of the Financial Times. Isn't that racist?

Why does racism play center stage for liberals and their subsidiary, the media? Tricking blacks and other minorities into thinking that Democrats are good for them is based on minorities perceiving themselves in danger in a racist world and in need of the band-aids offered by liberalism. The dependency is so strong that minorities don't notice the damage done by the so-called assistance offered by the Democrats.

While liberals argued that the cold war was a set-up pushed by conservatives because having an enemy served their needs, liberals run a cold war against racism without regard for the magnitude of the threat.

But race in this country registers about as strong as many bigotries - sexism, religious bigotry and ageism come to mind.

Ageism is defined as prejudice against the elderly, based on the idea that they're slower, less competent--or perhaps just closer to death. Indeed, according to a survey done by the Pew Research Center, Americans are a lot less comfortable voting a man in his 70s into the Oval Office than they are voting for a woman or an African-American for president.

Barack Obama thinks nothing of using language designed to remind listeners that John McCain is old. Why is this trick greeted by admiring chuckles when similar inferences about Barack's race or Mitt Romney's religion, to a lesser extent, would be met with appropriate outrage?

John McCain has a demonstrated record of vigor--one might say even youthful vigor -- in tackling tough issues on Capitol Hill. Always well briefed, the Arizona senator puts in long days and reads the legislative fine print in a way one wouldn't necessarily expect from a senior citizen.