Buy Or Don’t Buy

A couple weeks ago there was a big hullabaloo when Barack Obama made the following remarks on the campaign trail:

Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, ‘he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name,’ you know, ‘he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.’

McCain’s campaign countered with an accusation that Obama was “playing the race card” and, as campaigns tend to do, the two sides then went back and forth in an exceedingly silly fashion. It’s time I settled this. Speaking in my official capacity as someone who does look like the president on the dollar bill (uncanny!) I say: I was not offended. Controversy over.

However, since then I’ve noticed another disturbing trend, embodied in posts like this:

It’s clear he’s going to play the race card all the way to November, and maybe beyond. If you criticize him, you’re a racist, to one degree or another.

and this:

[...]it’s a good thing that people have finally stopped accusing anyone who asks Obama a mildly tough policy question of being a racist.

Let’s get this one straight, conservative friends. People have complained about racism in this campaign with varying levels of spuriousness, but no one has ever said that it’s racist to criticize or disagree with Obama. Nobody. Nowhere. I realize these kinds of subjects can be a little tricky, but luckily as an educated liberal white person, I’m pretty much an expert on what is and isn’t racist. So here’s a handy guide to Things People Say About Obama, and Their Varying Degrees of Racism:

• Criticizing Barack Obama on energy, abortion, gay marriage, Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, etc: Not Racist. Self-evident.

• Making shitty mayor Kwame Kilpatrick into Obama’s BFF: A Little Racist But Not Too Much. At first this looks like  a “They’re friends ’cause they have the same skin color! Get it?” deal. I’ll give it a pass because Obama kinda did bring it on himself by calling Kilpatrick “a friend and a colleague” in a speech once.

• Calling him ‘Barack Hussein Obama’: Not Racist. It’s gamesmanship! Come on, if John McCain’s middle name was ‘Adolf’ I know I’d say it every chance I got.

• Calling Michelle Obama “ungrateful” or a “quota queen”: Pretty Racist. Silly lady, not realizing the only reason she’s successful is because white people gave things to her.

• Describing Obama as “John Kerry with a Tan“: Not Racist. But not particularly apt either, especially considering how no one would confuse Kerry’s strengths (Congressional, foreign-policy and military experience) with Obama’s (audacity, hope, charisma).

• Sending this around: Really Racist. Bonus points for the captions.

I hope that clears things up.