Race and Politics: OW Hubris Watch
If you use a non-Arab actor to portray a terrorist in a campaign ad, in lefty fantasy land that means Bush Introduces Racism to Campaign 2004. Seems to me that maybe those who assumed he was an Arab have an issue.
It’s racist to use a non-Arab who may or may not resemble an Arab (from the snippets of the ad I saw, I could only make out eyes and hair, not enough to conclude race at all).
This represents the tone of the coming campaign.
March 13th, 2004 at 3:32 pm
The point is that the actor looked like an Arab or brown guy or whatever. There was no reason to have that person there. There were four images on the screen, someone waiting in line at airport security, an airplane taking off, someone in a gas mask and a sinister-looking brown guy. They could have put a picture of Osama bin Laden or Saddam or could have simply portrayed something other than a terrorist, like emergency services personel. Do we really need to feed the perception that brown guys are terrorists?
March 14th, 2004 at 9:04 am
Sorry manish, don’t buy it. He looked hispanic to me.
March 14th, 2004 at 4:53 pm
This reminds me of when Star Wars Ep. II came out. Arab groups and Hispanic were both angry that the bad guy, Jango Fett, was brown, and therefore was portraying either Arabs or Hispanics as Evil.
Of course, the actor who played Fett is neither Arab nor Hispanic. He’s a Maori from New Zealand.
March 15th, 2004 at 1:29 am
Thib…agreed that was silly
SU..I can tell you from personal experience that I’ve been mistaken for hispanic, usually even by Mexicans. People such as yourself who are more worldly (for lack of a better word) aren’t the problem. It doesn’t matter if the guy looked Arab or not when the commercial is shown to you. It’s people who are less informed who are the problem. One one occasion last year, someone basically told me that A-rabs like myself were responsible for 9-11. The truth of the matter is that I don’t look the slightest bit Arabic..unless you think that all brown guys are the same.
March 15th, 2004 at 9:31 am
Maybe instead of attacking the bush admin, effort should be made to attack the ignorance of people who are less informed?
Just a thought.
March 13th, 2004 at 12:21 pm
Walid Horton? Sure, whatever.
Wow. More than eight months left before the November presidential election and already a couple of energetic stalwarts in the BeatBush™ crowd — by way of an ad parody (coupled with a more conventional media-friendly tactic) — are painting the…