October 27, 2006
The national media are hellbent on injecting race into the pivotal U. S. senate contest in Tennessee . A recent ad by the Republican National Committee was a spoof which poked fun at Harold Ford, Jr.'s voting record, past comments and, yes, flirtation with Hugh Hefner's Playboy bunnies. Ford, who originally dodged the issue of partying with the bunnies, later acknowledged that he had hung out with the bunnies at a Playboy party at the Super Bowl. I guess it all depends on what “bunny” means.
Tennesseans saw the ad and their critiques ranged from brilliantly funny to campy to tacky. It wasn't until the rip-and-read reporters of the national media deemed the ad “racist” that anyone in Tennessee even gave the race angle a thought. What drew their fire was the blond bimbo in the ad who “represented” the Playboy bunny without actually saying so. At the end of the spot, she holds her hand to her ear like it's a telephone and says, “Harold, call me.” And what was so racist about that? “It is a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African-American men and white women,” Hilary Shelton, head of the Washington NAACP office, told the Los Angeles Times.
Is that a fact? Well, what would they have said had the bunny been black? “The Republicans are exploiting black women,” I'm sure would've been the cry. The fact of the matter is my eyewitnesses tell me every single one of the Playboy bunnies Ford was flirting with at the party were white. Is there anything wrong with that? No. Harold Ford, Jr. is an eligible bachelor. The irony is the NAACP is afraid of this “powerful innuendo” of the image of a black man dating a white woman when Harold Ford, Jr. has dated at least one white woman, namely Julia Baugher, a former sex columnist for the Georgetown University school newspaper.
According to the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis , Ford promptly dumped the Georgetown sophomore once their relationship was made public in the Washington Post. If the national media were looking for a racial angle, this should've been it. Why did Ford cut off the relationship with Ms. Baugher? One can only speculate that he didn't want that kind of news trickling down to his constituents back in Memphis . Perhaps he thought that bit of news might jeopardize his standing in his mostly black district. Racism? You bet, but not the kind the national media like to sink their teeth into.
They've been feverishly trying to make the case that if Tennessee doesn't select Ford for the senate seat then it must be because Tennessee is a racist state. However, the results will prove that far more whites will vote for Ford than blacks will vote for his opponent, Bob Corker. Again, it's in part because of race but not the kind of racism that makes national headlines. To the liberals who control the big newspapers and television networks it doesn't play into their stratagem. You'll notice that nary a word has been spoken about Maryland voters being racists if they don't vote for Republican Michael Steele, the state's black lieutenant governor.
If the voters of Tennessee reject Harold Ford, Jr. it will not be because he's black. It'll be because of his liberal voting record. With a lifetime rating of 19 out of a possible 100 with the American Conservative Union, Ford's record puts him in the same philosophical neighborhood as Senator Diane Feinstein of California and Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana . That's not the kind of senator Tennesseans want to send to Washington .