Think Progress: Allen on Macaca incident: ‘I should have never called him anything but yellow shirt.’

Think Progress

Allen on Macaca incident: ‘I should have never called him anything but yellow shirt.’

In 2006, then-Sen. George Allen (R-VA) seriously damaged his re-election campaign when he was caught on video disparaging a young Indian-American as “macaca.” “This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt,macaca, or whatever his name is. He’s with my opponent,” Allen told a crowd of supporters. Asked about the incident while speaking in Florida yesterday, Allen said that he “screwed up” and “should have never called him anything but yellow shirt“:

“I screwed up,” Allen said. “It wasn’t an intentional thing, if I had any idea that they’d make such an issue out of a non-existing word … I should have never called him anything but yellow shirt.”

Allen continues to claim that macaca was “a non-existing word,” but the fact is that macaca was a pejorative epithet that existed before Allen used it.

Politico: Club segregation enters N.C. race

Politico

Club segregation enters N.C. race

The husband of North Carolina Democratic Senate hopeful Kay Hagan is a lifelong member of an exclusive country club that didn’t admit its first black member until 1995, Hagan’s campaign disclosed Tuesday. 

Charles “Chip” Hagan III, a businessman and former Democratic county leader, “supported opening up membership” at the 1,000-member Greensboro Country Club — but remained a member for years despite his opposition to the club’s de facto segregation policy, Hagan spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan told Politico. 

Kay Hagan, who is counting on strong support among North Carolina’s black Democrats to unseat Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole, has never been a member of the club herself, Flanagan added. 

“Chip supported broadening the membership to include African Americans and others,” she said. “Though it took longer than it should have, Greensboro County Club fully desegregated in 1995 and remains so today.

…

The vast majority of black leaders in the North Carolina back Hagan, who pushed through a $1.5 million state grant for an international civil rights museum in the state senate and recently voted for a bill banning cross burning and the display of nooses. 

Greensboro was one of the last all-white clubs in the area to integrate. In the mid-1990s, members claimed they had never received an application from a black person, even though African Americans make up about 35 percent of the local population — and the city was site to groundbreaking civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s. 

The first black member to be sponsored was Robert J. Brown, a former aide to Richard to Nixon, according to press accounts at the time. 

Flanagan said Chip Hagan “has been a member his whole life” and inherited the membership from his father, a well-to-do former Marine Corps general and local attorney. She maintained that the candidate herself isn’t a member, despite a recent Raleigh News & Observer report that “the family belongs to the Greensboro Country Club.” 

John Randall, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has bankrolled anti-Hagan ads, demanded to know why the Democrat didn’t demand her husband leave the club, which is located near the family’s house. 

RedState: Kay Hagan Supports Atheists and Segregationists. Only in North Carolina, Folks.

RedState

Kay Hagan Supports Atheists and Segregationists. Only in North Carolina, Folks.

Yesterday, I pointed out how Kay Hagan and the Godless America PAC are connected.Hagan is running against Senator Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina.

To review: Godless America PAC wants to get all references to God off the money, out of the Pledge, and end Christmas as a federal holiday. One of their leaders got Kay Hagan to go up to Massachusetts for a big fundraiser with a bunch of atheists.

The Country Club didn’t allow black members until at least 1995. According to Michael Riley, writing in Time on June 25, 1990, “”Signs of separation persist in the city’s neighborhoods, nightclubs, gazes and words. A perspiring black man, nattily dressed in suspenders, white shirt and a hat, pushes a mower across a lush lawn just yards from the elite, whites-only Greensboro Country Club.”

Jack Scis, writing in the News & Record on April 6, 1995, noted, “Greensboro Country Club may join other clubs in admitting African-Americans.”

This year, in The News & Observer, Kay Hagan told Rob Christiensen, “The Hagans sent their children to the private Greensboro Day School and the family is a member of the Greensboro Country Club, which she said is racially integrated.”

Hagan just failed to leave out that she and her husband were members well before the County Club started letting black people through the front door. And you can get on Nexis yourself. You’ll find no record of Kay Hagan ever standing up publicly against the policy.

But you will find Hagan standing up with a bunch of atheists at a Massachusetts fundraiser held in her honor who want to get rid of Christmas and take “In God We Trust” off our money.

It’s all about priorities.

Dork Nation: Don’t Look at Tennessee

Dork Nation

Don’t Look at Tennessee

Many are trying to make predictions on how the Presidential elections will turn out by making comparisons to Harold Ford Jr’s unsuccessful bid to win a Senate seat in 2006. I think it’s a bad comparison. Schaffner at pollster.com takes a look at some exit polling data on “late deciders” anyway and concludes there to have been no Bradley Effect in effect..

Of the things weighing down Jr’s campaign, race was probably less significant than having the last name Ford and being from Memphis. People knew “Ford,” but perhaps not as many knew Harold Ford Jr. I think folks were still trying to see whether or not there would be some kind of fallout from his family members legal troubles. There’s also the fact that late in the campaign, many progressives and Kurita fans were still pondering whether to pinch the snout and pull the lever for Ford or waste one on Lugo. Or abstain.

Nashville Post Politics: What Does Her Race Have To Do With It?

Nashville Post Politics

What Does Her Race Have To Do With It?

Harold Ford, Jr. takes John McCain to task for not denouncing an ad from his 2006 Senate Race:

While I am disappointed in McCain’s about-face, I am not surprised. When I ran for the Senate in 2006, my opponent, Bob Corker, also found himself trailing in the October polls. His campaign and the Republican National Committee launched a series of false and vicious character attack ads, including the infamous “call me” ad, in which a scantily clad white woman looked at the camera and said, “Harold, call me.”

Every major news organization and independent ad-checking group ruled the ad a smear and deemed it way over the line. But that didn’t stop John McCain from coming to Tennessee and campaigning for my opponent while the “call me” ad and other smears were broadcast across the state. Not once did McCain speak out against that ad as he did about the smear against John Kerry. In fact, the first manager he hired for his 2008 presidential campaign was Terry Nelson, the person who produced the “call me” ad.

What exactly is the point of inserting the word “white” in the above sentence? Is Harold Ford suggesting that the ad contained some sort of racial code?

Because back in the day, Ford himself said he didn’t think “race had anything to do with that ad.”

…

The language in an op/ed like this one is very carefully chosen and reviewed. Can we really pretend to assume that the word “white” was just a descriptive adjective choice? Or must we conclude thatFord was trying to send the message that he now agrees with the popular media myth about the “Call Me” ad?

Which is it? Was the ad racial code or not?

UPDATE: From just this week:

As Harold Ford Jr. told me in Nashville: “If Barack were not African-American, they’d be doing this.”

Open Left: Conservatives Unmasked

Open Left

Conservatives Unmasked

The increasingly virulent tone at McCain-Palin rallies has led to a growing realization within big media that a sizable portion of the Republican base are angry bigots. See The Washington Post, The Politico, and The New York Times for recent reports of this nature. My question is: why did it take so long for these outlets to finally make this realization? As I have written for three and a half years now, the conservative cultural supremacist message is so not-subtle that non-whites and non-Christians vote for Democrats at collective 3-1 rates. Mass demographic voting patterns of that sort do not take hold unless there is a very clear, long-term message in the most prominent political narratives in our country. In our country, the conservative backlash message has been clear: we are out to stop those freaky different people from taking power in America. Consider the latest ad from Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell: Now, none of this is overtly racist, in that it avoids the uses of epithets. However, it is all identity based, and engages in a lot of racial codes. This is the conservative platform, and its messages are not subtle: we will protect you from those people who are different. As I have argued on numerous occasions, most recently here, the message is so not subtle that non-whites and non-Christians vote for Democrats at 3-1 rates. What I really don’t understand is why the McCain campaign and other Republicans think that, after attacking Obama in just this why for several months, that just making those attacks louder and more frequently will somehow work. At this point I’m pretty sure everyone knows that Obama is black. Further, if these attacks were so fruitful to Republicans, then why do they have fewer seats in the House right now than Democrats have had in eighty years, and why are Republicans staring massive at increasingly large deficits in the House, Senate and White House? These attacks don’t work anymore because demographic trends indicate the “others” conservatives are attacking are collectively becoming the majority in America. At some point, they are going to have to deal with this fact, and come up with a new message for America rather than “we hate people who are different as much as you do.”

Red County: Harry Reid Plays Race Card with Radio Host

Red County

Harry Reid Plays Race Card with Radio Host

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Facing South: Election 2008: NC Senate race robo-callers send voters a mixed message

Facing South

Election 2008: NC Senate race robo-callers send voters a mixed message

In the last week, Kay Hagan — Democratic challenger to Sen. Elizabeth Dole for North Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat — has been hammered by critical robo-calls from two operations:Freedom’s Watch, a non-profit founded by GOP operatives in 2007, and the Free Enterprise Alliance, an offshoot of the Associated Builders and Contractors, whose PAC is the third-biggest contributor to Republicans in the country.

But instead of calling North Carolina voters, maybe the anti-Hagan robo-callers need to get on the phone and talk to each other. Because on at least one of the key issues Hagan is being attacked over — immigration — the two groups are sending voters a mixed message.

Last week, Freedom’s Watch — which, as a tax-exempt, non-profit 501(c)(4) organization is not legally allowed to coordinate its efforts with a Senate campaign — started the robo-surge with a call that attacked Hagan for being soft on immigration:

“We all know illegal immigration is a serious problem across America, and in North Carolina, we’re playing host to as many as 500,000 illegal aliens,” a male voice says. “So what does Kay Hagan think about that? She opposes a program to find, track and deport criminal illegal aliens.”

The robo-call ends by telling the listener to call Kay Hagan and tell her “you want her fighting for North Carolinians, not illegal aliens.”

But don’t pick up the phone just yet — Hagan’s other robo-callers, the Associated Builders and Contractors, probably wouldn’t like it.

The ABC has backed a slew of calls that attack Hagan on unions and oil drilling. But with an estimated one out of four construction workers in the country being an immigrant, the ABC has been a fierce opponent of legislation to get tough on immigration.

Swing State Project: MS-Sen-B: GOP Goons Move Race to Bottom of the Ballot

Swing State Project (9/9/08)

MS-Sen-B: GOP Goons Move Race to Bottom of the Ballot

Over the objection of state Attorney General Jim Hood, the state sample ballot to be used in the November general election will have the U.S. Senate race between Ronnie Musgrove and Roger Wicker at the end of the ballot.Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann recommended to Gov. Haley Barbour today during a meeting of the state Election Commission that the special election between Musgrove, a Democrat, and Wicker, a Republican, be placed at the end of the ballot.

Barbour approved the recommendation.

All in all, this is a pretty brazen move designed to discourage first-time voters — many of which are expected to be African-American Obama Democrats — from casting a ballot in the state’s hotly-contested Senate special election. Barbour and the boys really went to great pains in order to hide this race at the tail end of the ballot.

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