Jules Crittenden » Race-Baitism

Jules Crittenden » Race-Baitism

Good post on the use of the racism charge. I have two things to add.

First, it should be called playing the racism card. That is the most sensible and accurate term. Why will no one listen to me?

Secondly, the incriminating emails from journo-list have been defended by Solon on the grounds that the tactics talked about do not appear to have been actually employed. But that misses the point. The media did act as if they had been on journ0-list and had employed their strategies. Rove and other conservatives were called racists for bringing it up and the main-stream press was remarkably incurious about Reverend Wright and Obama's connections to him. But the most damning piece of evidence is that the McCain campaign ignored the story. They did not want to be tagged as racists. The misdeed of intimidation is not lessened because the intimidation worked.

The value of the Journo-list revelations is not that we see the actual planning of the specific actions taken by that set of journalists but that we get to see the thinking of mainstream journalists whey they think no one is listening.