Obama and the Forty-Year-Old Virgin

Obama and the 40-Year-Old Virgin
by Joe Conason

Excerpt:
Regrettably but predictably, the success of Obama has revived traditional knee-jerk racism
on the American far right – and the latest examples are more blatant than latent.

In Michigan, right-wing operatives are seeking to aggravate white Democrats by linking Obama
to Kwame Kilpatrick, the mayor of Detroit who leaves office today in a deal with prosecutors.
A brief clip of Obama praising Kilpatrick last year, long before his indictment, is the centerpiece
of an inflammatory ad appearing on cable channels in Macomb County outside Detroit, where
white Democratic voters reside who may be susceptible to such appeals to prejudice.

Behind the ad is "Freedom’s Defense Fund", a Washington-based PAC that is actually the
front for a group of Republican consultants affiliated with an outfit called BMW Direct Inc.
They specialize in racial politics, having put together a dubious “Black Republican PAC”
that deploys African-Americans to attack Democrats.

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