Appealing to Our Tribalism

Andrew Sullivan has an insightful post (for a beltway guy, anyway) about the nefarious games being played with Obama's identity. During Clinton's first tour through the national spotlight, I was too young to form an independent impression of her. Entering this campaign season, I was willing to give Hillary a chance on her own terms, but her willingness to appeal -- sometimes subtly and sometimes not -- to the citizenry's most superficial biases and fears makes me want to vomit. I expected as much from some right-wing nutjobs, but to see a supposedly enlightened liberal do this to a promising member of her own party is simply disgusting. I am not filled with racial paranoia, but I grew up in a very racist environment in the Deep South seeing and hearing the ugly side of hatred against blacks, a hatred which is rarely aired on the national stage in a frank manner. I know that there are a lot of people out there who hated or mistrusted Obama before they ever heard him speak a word. And many others were just waiting for an excuse. Ask yourself this: If he were a 60 year-old white guy named Bill Smith, would this mud stick in the way that it has? Would it be slung in this way, with these overtones, at all?