The NYT’s Michael Luo wrote up a nice little fluff job today on Floyd Brown and his gang of scum-chumming operatives that in the end is little more than a free advertisement for Brown in his search for right-wing sugar daddies.
See, for instance, his description of Brown’s ads:
At the heart of the effort is a Web site, ExposeObama.com, that has featured two Web advertisements, one on Mr. Obama’s record on crime and the other on his religious background.
My, isn’t that benign. It somehow manages to neglect pointing out the fairly naked dog-whistle race-baiting that is contained within those ads — as we noted, anyone watching them can see that there’s a larger, underlying theme: they’re all about associating Obama with black criminality and supposedly lax liberal policies to "blame" for it, or conversely about his supposed "Muslim background". It’s all about scaring white suburbanites while giving them the cover of hand-wringing about his "judgment."
But then, the NYT isn’t alone — in general, most of the mainstream media have been content to describe the ads as being about the cover "issue" that gives them plausible deniability, while simply pretending that the fairly obvious dog-whistle components of the ads simply don’t exist.
Similarly, the story paints Brown as a semi-legitimate, otherwise mainstream sort of political operative just running another 527. But in fact, ExposeObama is a fringe operation headed up by a far-right nutcase who was disbarred in Washington state for promoting phony "Patriot" tax-conspiracy scams. Which may actually be one of the reasons that Brown is having trouble attracting serious money.
Though that hasn’t stopped him before. The story does note one of Brown’s sleazier episodes:
In 1992, CBS News reported that, while trying to substantiate a rumor of a romantic affair involving Bill Clinton, Mr. Brown hounded the family of a young woman who had committed suicide. Mr. Brown insisted to the network that he had a right to be aggressive in his research.
But there are boundaries even Mr. Brown is unwilling to cross. He said many potential large donors had lost interest after he explained to them that certain harder-hitting advertisements that they favored were not possible through a 527.
If these ads were even "harder hitting" than his current batch, you’d have to assume that they were indistinguishable from your average David Duke ad. But readers of the piece are left to assume that these are just "tougher" — without any sense just how ugly they already are.
Best of all, it makes plain to all those potential sugar daddies out there that Brown is ready to roll, and he just needs some dough. Hint hint, wink nudge.
I’m sure Floyd Brown is grateful. You can’t buy advertising like that.
Related posts:
- Republican Health Care Politics and Right Wing Thuggery
- Latest Right Wing Obscenity: Smearing Murdered Census Worker as “Pedophile”
- Right-Wingers Trash Ted Kennedy While His Body is Still Warm
- Midnight in the Garden of Trash and Hypocrisy: South Carolina Gets
SmuttySmuttier - Frank Luntz Defends Increasingly Incendiary Right-Wing Rhetoric: “They’re So Afraid”
Spotlight
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About Firedoglake
Advanced search
Why don’t they just come out and use the “N” word. Can’t. Have to hide behind their code words. Muslim. Liberal. Angry. Foreign. Exotic.
Forkery.
“Ready to Attack Obama- If Money Arrives” is the headline??? Wow David. It’s so blatant a shill piece for the wingers to open their wallets. I am appalled at how brazen it is.
Oh give ‘em time, Mary. I think the over/under on explicit use of the “N” word by one of these a**hats is mid-September at the latest.
Good grief! The NYT article actually attempts – very hard – to make this nutcase slime ball seem respectable.
I expect voodoo any minute now.
Why should Obama’s, or anyone else’s, religious background be of any interest? I’m assuming, of course, that he hasn’t joined a cult and signed away all his riches.
That the NYT celebrates such irrelevance is disturbing, even if this guy weren’t a racist.
David, I have to disagree.
There is nothing dogwhistle-ish and nothing fairly naked about those ads. They are blatantly, obviously, and ridiculously racist on their face.
All that is missing is the hood over over the narrator’s head. But I suppose you have to leave some things to the listener’s imagination.
So they can imply that he is not really a Christian but a Muslim?
I thought the red states per capita had a higher rate of gun death than Chicago but when you just focus on raw numbers without context then Obama and Chicago’s gun death rate become the issue crime and big cities are GOP code for African American.
Maybe he is a Mustian. Or a Christim.
They don’t really care whether or not he’s a Christian since they wouldn’t recognize one if it bit them. They care that he is black – racism
first, last, and always.
Yup.
“Heathen” always has a nice ring to it.
I think Obama should counter this by going Biblical on them something about how a rich man has as much chance of getting to heaven as a camel does of passing through the eye of a needle.
On Healthcare when I was hungry and sick you didn’t feed me when I was in prison you did not visit. But Lord we never saw you hungry,sick or in Prison well that which you do to the least of my brothers even the Black ones is that which you do onto me!
” Pulp Fiction” Sam Jackson quoting the Bible while shooting people Biblical!
True but they can tell their neighbors its his religion and not his race which offends them racism is so out this decade!
Dr. Murphy is upstairs!
Good News Under Bad Rulers: Citizen Power Delivers When Our National “Leaders” Sell Us Out
John McCain has 8 ? homes but there are homeless on the streets, banks are throwing people out of their homes even as John McCain prepares to bailout the banks with tax payer money ( I want McCain on the record denying that)
Anyway didn’t J.C say something about giving up all you own if you would truly follow me?
Sure that is to extreme for most people but isn’t having 8 homes more than a little too extreme the other way
(other way code for EVIL)
More than the “N” word, it’s the “M” word.
By the way, David – that was wonderful this morning.