It matters because it was intended to inflame racial hatred, nothing more. The McCain camp is willing to use bigotry, sex and hate to solidify the votes of the lowest, most hateful, most racist demographic in this country.
Apparently you missed how racist it is intended to be. That’s ok, it means you either haven’t been exposed to really sick racism, or it’s really hard for you to imagine anyone sinking to the level they had to sink to in order to do this.
But here’s the context the ad was done in that you apparently didn’t get, and why it is so very despicable:
The more racist members of our country still believe that the races should be kept separate. They also believe that blacks should know and keep in their place. Black men who look at their white women deserve to be strung up.
This isn’t history, this is how it still is in many parts of this country. These folks have never really gotten over forced segregation. And there are still millions of them in this country.
There’s no question that Obama won’t get any of their votes, but McCain wouldn’t necessarily get their votes either. Just because he’s a Republican isn’t enough. He’s way too liberal for most of them.
But the GOP knows how to get the racists riled up when it needs to. That’s what the "Willie Horton" ad was about, and Jesse Helm’s "Hands" ad and Ronald Reagan’s Cadillac driving welfare queen. Blatant appeals to bigots to remind them of how they have been victimized by blacks, and to make them feel like the blacks will take what is theirs if they aren’t vigilant.
For a week now, all the McCain and GOP blowhards have been repeating the "Obama is arrogant" line. Obama is overstepping. Obama is forgetting his place.
This is all code for, "the n****r is getting uppity".
Once they injected the "uppity n****r" meme firmly in the media, what did the McCain camp do next? They show the uppity n****r with two sexually provocative young, blond, white women.
This had NOTHING to do with popularity or celebrity. That was the excuse for the talking heads so they could keep replaying it over and over and over. A smiling Obama and two white blond girls.
Now, this may be hard for you to believe, because you may not think this way - either because you’re not that racist or you’re not so ethically challenged that you would ever do such a despicable thing as make an ad that is only intended to incite hatred and racism. But you didn’t do this, the McCain campaign, and the GOP smear machine, did this. And you better believe they would sink this low. They’ve been doing it for decades.
This wasn’t a mistake, of a misjudgment, anymore than it was a mistake for Bush to go to Bob Jones, to show support for a segregated college in the South.
No more than it was a mistake for Reagan to go to Philadelphia, Mississippi - where three civil rights workers were murdered in one of the 1960s’ ugliest cases of racist violence, to declare his belief in "state’s rights", code for legalized racial discrimination. Reagan was letting the South know he wouldn’t interfere in their suppression of blacks.
This is who the GOP is. This is what they do. And they don’t care who they hurt or if they damage this country.
Get it now?