Depending on where you live, you're spared this. For this election cycle, and most, I've been on the West Coast. Washington and California are solidly blue, so we don't get a lot of election ads. In Washington, we were excited and surprised to even get visits from the Democratic candidates in the primaries, as usually our caucus is too late. But now I've moved to Wisconsin, and evidently everything has changed.
Wisconsin isn't really a swing state anymore either, but it was recently. That allows us to get the occasional campaign ad, and a lot of the 527 ads. And recently, about three times an hour, we get treated to a particular ad from the National Republican Trust.
Don't get me wrong. I might disagree with a political ad, but of course, I support the right to post them. It is when they lie, and get vicious, and attack other people's culture and race. And make no mistake, this is what the National Republican Trust has done.
The ad is a direct attack on the Reverend Wright, and Senator Obama. It is vicious and underhanded. As I've pointed out in the past, Wright is enmeshed deeply in the black tradition. His remarks weren't at all racist, but were deep in the prophetic tradition of Judaism and Christianity, as expressed in the Old Testament. Sure, he went overboard in claiming that the US government gave AIDS to blacks, but considering our history with syphilis, it wasn't that far off the mark. But in general, what the Reverend Wright said, and the way he said it, is no different from what you find in black churches across this nation.
Perhaps one of the funniest parts of the ad is when the Republican Trust bleeps out the word "damn". They want to make us thing the Rev. Wright said "fuck" instead. Or maybe they are unaware that the word "damn", when used in this way, is not cussing, but a legitimate use of the word within Christian theology? Are they perhaps that clueless about the basics of the Christian faith?
Thus, at the very least, the continued recent attacks by the Republican Trust reveal that they know nothing of the Black Preaching Tradition. In truth, they reveal an attack on another culture, a "foreign" culture to the whites at Republican Trust. This attack is as despicable as overt racist attacks, and indeed, is difficult to distinguish from them. Blacks are okay, as long as they don't think differently from "us", or don't make us have to see their differences. They certainly have nothing to offer us in their manner of thinking, their preaching, or their style of Chrsitianity. Or so is the underlying thinking of these commercials from Republican Trust.
Well, I agree. I don't like being forced to listen to something I disagree with, that I find morally repugnant and racist. I don't expect the Republican Trust to be forced to sit in the church while Jeremiah Wright preaches. So why am I forced to watch these commercials every time they come on the air, three times an hour?
So this is what I've begun to do. Every time the commercial comes on, I contact National Republican Trust, at nationalrepublicantrust.com/contactus.html, and tell them just what I think of them. I tell them they are racist, and I want nothing to do with them. I suggest that they go somewhere else to peddle their racism, because it has no place in my home or my country, and is not something that real Americans believe.
And I invite you to do the same. Let's put a stop to this. I'm not speaking of positive commercials, or even negative ones. But the ones that are over the top, that are viscious slander or racist- start responding. Every time one of these comes on the air, contact the 527, and demand that they pull their commercial off the air. Maybe we'll begin to get through to them. At least we'll strike a blow for truth and justice, and maybe, one day, make that the American way.
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