Dear Senator Graham:
I am surprised that you would accuse Barack Obama of injecting race into the presidential campaign after John McCain ran his Paris Hilton "celebrity" ad. As a fellow citizen of a Southern state, I remember my history well enough to remember what happened to Emmett Till when he dared speak to a white woman. I am not ignorant of Richard Nixon's infamous Southern Strategy, capitalizing on JFK and LBJ's courageous commitment to civil rights, a strategy the GOP continues to count on to this day. More recently, I remember well the "call me" ad used to defeat Rep. Harold Ford. To pretend that an ad with two white blond celebrity women juxtaposed with a black candidate is not racially polarized is to ignore several hundred years of Southern history. For yet another conservative white Southern Senator -- from South Carolina, no less, "first to secede" -- to pretend that the sordid history of the Confederacy, Jim Crow, and "segregation forever" are now no more than a historical footnote is shameful. And to whitewash the GOP's racially charged appeals to the white electorate -- particularly in the South -- by pretending that by responding to such ads it is Barack Obama "who is dealing the race card from the bottom of the deck" is so deeply cynical that it can only be described as in the worst tradition of Southern racial politics.
Sincerely,
Bill Day