You would think that grown people who truly believed in a Presidential candidate would know how to discuss issues or illuminate the voting populace; you would think that an incumbent President would have a little more dignity and not rely on or encourage campaign devices such as this.
As Slate puts it...
The GOP Minstrel Show
A white tycoon in blackface race-baits Teresa Heinz Kerry.
By Timothy Noah
Aug. 12, 2004
A new radio ad paid for by a nonprofit called People of Color United takes Teresa Heinz Kerry to task for playing up her African heritage. (She was born and raised in Mozambique.) As Thomas B. Edsall reports in the Aug. 12 Washington Post, the ad copy includes the following:
"His wife says she's an African American. While technically true, I don't believe a white woman, raised in Africa, surrounded by servants, qualifies."
What's interesting about this blacker-than-thou statement is that it's underwritten by a white man. People of Color United, although run by a black woman named Virginia Walden-Ford, got nearly half the money for its media buy from a Caucasian insurance tycoon named J. Patrick Rooney. Walden-Ford confirmed to the Post that Rooney gave the group $30,000 for a series of ads that are running in swing-state urban areas, and that the total ad buy thus far cost $70,000. Rooney, she said, was the group's biggest donor. All its funding information will eventually be public, but the law does not require People of Color United to file with the IRS before the ads go on the air. It will be interesting to learn whether a single person of color has written a check to People of Color United.
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