Dog-Whistling Dixie

By JAMES TARANTO
April 3, 2008

Note: We're getting a bit stir-crazy recovering from the broken leg, so we've decided to take tomorrow off and venture out into the world. Assuming we manage to avoid further injury, we'll be back Monday.

Dog-Whistling Dixie

With Barack Obama's "postracial" appeal having proved illusory but Democrats likely to nominate him for president anyway, the party faces a difficult problem: how to persuade Americans to vote for the spiritual protégé of a man who espouses crackpot anti-American and antiwhite views.

One response, born less of strategy than of reflex, is to claim that opposition to Obama is racist. A pair of recent posts by prominent Angry Left bloggers show just how intense is the desire to impute racism to the other side, and how far they are willing to depart from logic to do so.

The first post, titled "John McCain's Racist Dogwhistle in Meridian, Mississippi," went up last Friday on the blog of Matt Stoller. He faulted McCain for planning a speech this past Monday in the Mississippi town where, as the candidate said in his speech, "I was once a flight instructor . . . at the air field named for my grandfather during my long past and misspent youth."

According to Stoller, though, that wasn't the real reason McCain went to Meridian:

Meridian, MS, is 40 miles from Philadelphia, MS, the place where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. . . .  Meridian itself is significant because one of the civil rights workers was actually from the town.

Stoller was echoing his elders, including former Reagan adviser Paul Krugman, who have spent years smearing Ronald Reagan for giving a speech--a "racist" speech, Stoller baselessly calls it--seven miles from Philadelphia in 1980, when Stoller was 2½ years old. (We wrote about this in November.) McCain's planned speech, Stoller wrote before the fact, "clearly looks like a dogwhistle to racists within the Republican Party."

Stoller suggests that it is invidious for a politician to give a speech within a 40-mile radius of Philadelphia, where the three civil rights workers were murdered; and that it is also invidious for a politician to give a speech in Meridian, because one of the murdered activists, James Chaney, was born there. By this logic, it would also be invidious for a politician to give a speech in any of the following places:

• New York City, where the other two murdered civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were born. (In fact, as David Brooks noted in November, that racist devil Reagan followed up his 1980 Philadelphia speech by flying to New York, where he addressed the Urban League.)
 
• Within 40 miles of Memphis, Tenn., where Martin Luther King was assassinated 40 years ago tomorrow.
 
• Atlanta, where Dr. King was born.
 

Actually, a politician would probably be well advised to steer clear of Mississippi altogether, since Memphis is right on the state line and Medgar Evers, another civil rights activist, was both born and assassinated in the Magnolia State.

Once McCain gave the speech, Stoller sheepishly updated his post: "I was probably wrong on this incident, it doesn't look like a dogwhistle." (Presumably he means it doesn't sound like one.)

Some commentators have given Stoller credit for his honesty, but we'd like to dwell on the metaphor instead. A dog whistle is also known as a silent whistle, because it emits a tone at a frequency too high for humans to hear, although it is within the audible range for canines. A racist dog whistle, then, is a speech that sounds innocuous to the normal human ear but that racist "dogs" are able to recognize as an appeal to them.

What does it tell us about Matt Stoller that he is able to detect whether the "racist dog whistle" has been blown?

Wait, it gets worse. According to The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias, McCain doesn't even need to dog-whistle Dixie in order to be making appeals to racism. Yglesias opines that for McCain merely to talk about his military record is "the best way I can think of to try to take advantage of older people's potential discomfort with the idea of a woman or a black man in the White House that doesn't involve exploiting racism or sexism in a discreditable way" (emphasis his).

This is a bit confusing, since it implies that Yglesias believes there are creditable ways to exploit "older people's" purported racial prejudices. Besides, as blogger Tom Maguire points out, anyone who is disinclined to vote for Obama because he is black probably won't have too much trouble ascertaining that McCain is a person of pallor.

But you can see where all this is going. If Obama is the Democratic nominee, the liberal message will be that a vote for McCain is a vote for racism. Our guess it that this will not be a winning campaign strategy: Most nonblack voters will be put off by this kind of crude moral intimidation.

If McCain wins, liberal mythmakers will insist it is because America is a racist country, and their logic will be as airtight as Stoller's and Yglesias's. Whether for political reasons or out of their own moral vanity, those who claim they want "racial reconciliation" are all too eager to practice divisive, if stupid, politics.

Get That Lady Some Ambien!

Hillary Clinton's "3 a.m." ad--which imagined a president being awakened in the wee hours to deal with a foreign-policy crisis--was very effective in highlighting Barack Obama's lack of experience, though many, this columnist included, thought it also highlighted John McCain's strength relative to Mrs. Clinton. Now, the Los Angeles Times reports, Mrs. Clinton has another "3 a.m." ad, this one aimed at McCain:

The new spot, which will air across Pennsylvania before the April 22 Democratic primary, says that McCain would do nothing if faced with a mortgage crisis or the collapse of financial markets.

"John McCain just said the government shouldn't take any real action on the housing crisis; he'd let the phone keep ringing," an announcer says. "Hillary Clinton has a plan to protect our homes, create jobs. It's 3 a.m., time for a president who's ready."

This is far from an original observation, but there's a big difference between a foreign-policy crisis, which may require immediate action, and an economic crisis, which, no matter how severe, surely can wait until sunrise. Mrs. Clinton's equating the two types of crises raises the question of whether she is serious when it comes to foreign policy.

Department of Poultry Mezmerization

"Sen. Barack Obama said Wednesday he would give Al Gore, a Nobel prize winner, a major role in an Obama administration to address the problem of global warming," the Associated Press reports from Wallingford, Pa.:

At a town-hall meeting, Obama was asked if he would tap the former vice president for his Cabinet to handle global warming.

"I would," Obama said. "Not only will I, but I will make a commitment that Al Gore will be at the table and play a central part in us figuring out how we solve this problem. He's somebody I talk to on a regular basis. I'm already consulting with him in terms of these issues, but climate change is real. It is something we have to deal with now, not 10 years from now, not 20 years from now."

This comes on the heels of suggestions from various commentators, including Time's Joe Klein, that the Democrats shove Obama and Hillary Clinton aside and nominate Gore for president--because, we guess, favoring a white guy isn't racist or sexist if you're a Democrat.

Just one question: Has anyone actually read Gore's autobiography, "The Assault on Reason"? We've perused parts of it recently, and it is a weird, weird book. Gore is clearly a bright man, and he knows a little about a lot, and he ties together brain psychology, climate science, history, media criticism and who knows what other topics (we're only on Chapter 1) to produce a stream of consciousness that probably will appeal to partisan Democrats but to anyone else is just incredibly odd. Here's our favorite passage so far:

When I was a boy growing up on our family farm in the summers, I learned how to hypnotize chickens. You hold the chicken down and then circle your finger around its head, making sure that its eyes trace your hand movement. After a sufficient number of circles, the chicken will become entranced and completely immobile. There's a lot you can do with a hypnotized chicken. You can use it as a paperweight, or you can use it as a doorstop, and either way, the chicken will sit there motionless, staring blankly. (What you can't do is use it as a football. Something about being thrown through the air seemed to wake the chicken right up.)

It turns out that the immobility response in animals is an area that has received some scholarly attention, and here is one thing the scientists have found: The immobility response is strongly influenced by fear. A fear stimulus causes the chicken's amygdala to signal the release of neurochemicals, and controlled experiments show that they make immobility much more likely.

No, I'm not saying that television viewers are like hypnotized chickens. But there may be some lessons for us larger-brained humans in the experiences of barnyard hens.

Come to think of it, Gore may be uniquely qualified to serve as secretary of agriculture.

The Audacity of Hype

From the Politico, here's a wonderful example of Barack Obama puffery:

Even as he fends off Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination contest, Senator Barack Obama is already turning his attention to the general election, and to an ambitious plan to reshape the American electorate in his favor.

Bringing new voters to the polls "is going to be a very big part of how we win," said Obama's deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, in an interview. "Barack's appeal to independent voters is also going to be key."

Hildebrand said the campaign is likely to turn its attention and the energy of its massive volunteer army this fall on registering African-American voters, and voters under 35 years old, in key states.

"Can it change the math in Ohio? Very much so," he said. "If you look at the vote spread between Bush and Kerry in 2004--we could potentially erase that."

Ho hum, he's preparing a general election strategy. But according to Politico, it's "an ambitious plan to reshape the American electorate"! Last month he gave a speech designed to control the political damage resulting from a dubious association. But as we noted, the Associated Press described this as single-handedly confronting the nation's racial divide head-on!

If he steps in a puddle, the headline will read "Obama Walks on Water."

A Crazy Time to Be a Kid

We're generally an optimistic sort, but a couple of stories in today's Washington Post have us worried about the future of America. The first one, which appears on the front page, is infelicitously titled "For Little Children, Grown-Up Labels as Sexual Harassers":

In his seven years, Randy Castro has been an aspiring soccer player, an accomplished Lego architect and a Royal Ranger at his Pentecostal church. He also, according to his elementary school record, sexually harassed a first-grade classmate.

During recess at his Woodbridge school one day in November, when he was 6, he said, he smacked the classmate's bottom. The girl told the teacher. The teacher took Randy to the principal, who told him such behavior was inappropriate. School officials wrote an incident report calling it "Sexual Touching Against Student, Offensive," which will remain on his student record permanently.

Then, as Randy sat in the principal's office, they called the police.

"I thought they were going to take me to prison," Randy said recently. "I was scared."

Obviously if a kid behaves inappropriately in school there has to be some sort of discipline, but this is nuts:

Days before the incident, at a routine meeting with district officials, principals had been reminded to report threats and assaults to the police. "There was some confusion as to what level of threat and assault we were talking about," said Ken Blackstone, a school system spokesman.

Some officials and students said Potomac View administrators made an announcement that a new district policy required them to inform the police of student misbehavior. But Blackstone said there was no new policy. After the meeting, he said, principals were confused about when to call police. "As a result, there were too many calls that may not have been necessary because of people wanting to comply with the initial request."

On the front page of the Metro section, meanwhile, appears an article about adults who want to shield kids from the circus:

The moral debate--whether it's good or bad for kids to see circus animals doing tricks--is a serious parenting issue to some.

"To see a bear ride a bicycle, it is ridicule. You're really just laughing at that bear," said Mel Levine, a renowned pediatrician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has written numerous books about child behavior and the way children learn. "So the question is: What's the message you're giving to kids when you take them to the circus and they laugh at animals? I think to laugh at animals is to devalue them."

And laughing at animals as they do unnatural tricks can transfer to human relationships and to the playground, Levine said.

"Why do we want an ape to act like a human? Why not have an ape act like an ape?" he asked. "There is an implicit message of intolerance. I don't think it's a long distance from ridiculing animals to laughing at other people. Then you have kids singling out and laughing at the fat kid. Or it can lead to racial intolerance."

We guess this is a typical middle-aged lament, but we don't remember the world being this crazy when we were growing up. It makes us wonder if, 20 years hence, America will be filled with hopelessly neurotic and dysfunctional people in their 20s.

But we said we're an optimist, so we prefer to think of it this way: Just the law of averages makes it unlikely that today's kids will be crazier than today's adults.

Has Britain Gone Soft?

It's been 26 years since Argentina, then under military rule, invaded Britain's Falkland Islands, provoking a war that the British won. Now, Agence France-Presse reports from Buenos Aires, Argentina's democratically elected leader is making belligerent noises:

Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands . . . is "inalienable," President Cristina Kirchner said Wednesday.

"The sovereign claim to the Malvinas Islands is inalienable," she said in a speech marking the 26th anniversary of Argentina's ill-fated invasion of the islands, located 480 kilometers (300 miles) off shore. . . .

In her speech Kirchner called for Argentina to strengthen its representation in international bodies to denounce "this shameful colonial enclave in the 21st century."

And Vice President Julio Cobos said in the southern city of Rio Grande that "we must recover this territory that is ours, that belongs to us."

It doesn't sound as though Falklands War II is imminent, but with Margaret Thatcher long since having left power, we do wonder if the Brits are tough enough to mount a defense if it comes to that. This detail is not encouraging:

Foreign Minister Jorge Taina said, meanwhile, that Argentina was awaiting authorization from Britain to allow families of Argentine military personnel killed in the war to fly to the islands for the inauguration of a memorial.

London is insisting the travel be carried out by ship, but Buenos Aires has pointed out that many of the relatives are elderly and would find a long return sea voyage too tough.

The British are allowing a memorial to an invading enemy on Falklands soil? What next, a Japanese army memorial in Honolulu?

Severe Tire Damage

"Wall Street Pulls Back as Oil Spikes"--headline, Associated Press, April 2

Beachfront Property for Sale in Idaho

"Earthquake Strikes Off Oregon Coast"--headline, KATU-TV Web site (Portland), April 2

They Should Have Left the Documents at Home

"Film Documents Blind Teens Climbing Himalayan Peak"--headline, CNN.com, April 2

Too Much Love

"Man Crowded Out of Home by Collecting Passion"--headline, Reuters, April 2

'Come Back in 2022'

"North Carolina Court Frees Inmate on Death Row for 14 Years"--headline, FoxNews.com, April 2

Hold the Mayo, Pending Arraignment

"Sandwich Man Arrested After Car Chase"--headline, Cape Cod Times (Hyannis, Mass.), April 2

Someone Set Up Us the Bomb

"China Pay Row Pilots 'Turn Back' "--headline, BBC Web site, April 3

Breaking News From 2006 and 2007

"Noted U.S. Hurricane Forecaster Expects Busy Season"--headline, Reuters, April 2

News You Can Use

• "No Benefit in Drinking Eight Glasses of Water a Day, Scientists Say"--headline, Daily Telegraph (London), April 3
 
• "Optimal Sex Takes 3 to 13 Minutes, Study Finds"--headline, FoxNews.com, April 3
 

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "Seinfeld Unhurt After Hamptons Car Wreck"--headline, Associated Press, April 3
 
• "Carter Hints at Supporting Obama"--headline, CNN.com, April 3
 
• "Richardson Endorsement Still Irks Bill Clinton"--headline, MSNBC.com, April 3
 

Mad Libs

The New York Times reports on the end of a peculiar provision in one state's constitution:

Wisconsin governors have long been allowed to sign off on budget bills but do some tricky erasing first. They could delete words, numbers, sentences, paragraphs or some combination of all of those, to create entirely new meanings never intended by the original authors--a legislative twist on the game of Mad Libs.

Like when Gov. James E. Doyle, a Democrat, scratched out some 700 words from a section of the 2005 budget bill, leaving behind just 20 words that, when stitched back together, moved $427 million from the transportation fund to education.

But on Tuesday, Wisconsin voters put an end to some of the governor's fancy editing power. Seventy-one percent of voters favored a referendum that read to outsiders like some indecipherable grammar lesson, barring the governor from creating "a new sentence by combining parts of two or more sentences."

Until 1990, Wisconsin governors could actually "cross out letters inside words to make whole new words." It's a fascinating story, but Times reporter Monica Davey gets it wrong when she likens it to Mad Libs, which involves filling in blanks, not crossing things out.

Unless the "mad lib" Davey has in mind is the Times's own Maureen Dowd.