This ad was not racist, Tennessee voters are not stupid, and nearly everyone outside the state is missing the point.
Those in Tennessee who vote their own race aren't likely to be persuaded by a winking Hustler Juggs High Society faux Playboy bimbo, and less so by the beating of kettle drums. Why do the Republicans need to remind anyone that Ford is black, when the Democrats are already going out of their way to do it for them? The Ford campaign has made an official cliche out of the phrase, "first black Senator from the South since Reconstruction."
An outside observer who watched last week's national coverage of the race for Tennessee's Senate seat could be forgiven for imagining that some Appalachian yokel, smacking himself on the brow, just realized for the first time that Ford is black. "Golly momma, you 'member that nice boy from Memphis we met uptown? Turns out he's one of them damn nee-groes after all. Beats anything I ever seen." But they could be forgiven only because of the complete failure of the national media to convey the true complexity of this race.
Tennesseeans are much more sophisticated than that, and to give the Devil his due, so are the Republicans. Northern Democrats, in their quest to vanquish their old enemy of Southern racism once and for all, have underestimated both their Republican opponents and the very voters the Ford campaign is trying to court. Race is not the intended target of the television ad featuring the tart's husky plea to "call me." Democrats are so busy chasing after ghosts in white sheets that they can't see the ad's real flesh and blood undertone. For the true swing voters in this election, it's staring them directly in the face.
The Corker campaign is going after Ford's family, or more precisely, his lack of one. Harold Sr., Jake, Isaac, John, Ophelia? No, not that family. Where is Mrs. Harold Ford Jr.? Where is Harold Ford III? The young bachelor will need both of them at his side if he wants to compete with these two:
The second target of the RNC ad, which, again, the Democrats have completely overlooked, is Ford's religious credentials. Let's not forget that Ford is the first candidate in history to film an ad from inside the sanctuary of a church.
Thanks to the RNC ad, Ford was forced to admit that, yes, he went to a Superbowl Party hosted by Playboy. "I was there. I like football and I like girls." The trip from the church sanctuary to the Playboy Superbowl party is not the one the Ford campaign intended to make, and the forced march into relative bacchanalia reinforces the notion of Ford as a slick politician who, as the ad points out, "looks good on TV."
Adding literal insult to figurative injury, Tennessee conservatives are not likely to be impressed by charges that they are both racist enough and stupid enough to change their vote on the basis of "jungle drums." The Ford family has a long and well-known history of bushwhacking Republicans with the race card, most famously when Harold Ford Sr. made reference to "East Memphis white devils." As is often pointed out by Ford's supporters, it's Tennessee's conservative vote that Ford seeks.
The fact that the memories of these old battles are still fresh in the minds of Tennessee's conservatives is demonstrated amply enough by the recent outbreak of debate over whether the elder Ford called someone a "cracker." He was in fact speaking about a tracker for the Corker campaign, but the black-on-white frame is clearly in play.
From the perspective of Tennessee conservatives, the bewildering accusation from the Ford campaign that these ads are racist is just the most recent in a long line of intances where, from their point of view, someone named Ford played the race card on them, not the other way around. The difference between the national narrative of white on black racism and the local narrative of black on white racism, to the conservatives of the Volunteer State, can in their minds be chalked up to -- you guessed it -- liberal media bias.
The media is indeed biased, but the bias is not liberal. This is a local race in Tennessee, but the national media is applying a national frame, and a largely outdated one at that. It remains to be seen what the result will be, or if there will even be one at all. But if there is anyone in East Tennessee who didn't already know Harold Ford Jr. is black, they just found out.
I just learned that Ford refused to call the ad racist at the debate last night, and what's more, he gets the real point of the ad himself. From an esteemed emailer, Ford just said this on Fox News:
"What Tennesseans will get is a Jesus-loving, gun-supporting believer that family should come first, that taxes should be lowered, and that America should be strong. When Tennesseans send us to the Senate, that's what they'll get in my votes, and that's what they'll get in the kind of leadership that we have not had in the Senate over the last six years."
Interestingly, when asked about the bimbo ad, [Ford] said, "I don't think it has anything to do with race" but called it "smut," an offense to the family values of TV viewers.
Do you hear that, yankees? Give Tennesseeans a little more credit next time, will ya?