# Clinton campaign wants you to know that Senator Obama is a negro
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [March 6, 2008, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303 "2008-03-06T07:10:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2008, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303/1 "2008-03-06T07:10:59Z")
[Why yes](http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1980380/posts)
[he is!](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/04/obama-skin-tone-darker-in_n_89829.html)
> [@](#):
>
> I’m surprised Hillary didn’t paint big red lips on him and stick a slice of watermelon in his hand.
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### Author:  [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2008, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303/2 "2008-03-06T07:26:45Z")
I wouldn’t put it past the Clinton campaign, but dude, Free Republic? Seriously?
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2008, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303/3 "2008-03-06T07:54:04Z")
Good grief. Somebody fiddles with the contrast button to get a better image quality, and suddenly it’s a conspiracy?
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### Author:  [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2008, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303/4 "2008-03-06T09:10:10Z")
If it’s really as bad as the way that it comes across in the Huffington Post link, that was no accident. But whose ad is it?
**And isn’t it ridiculous that one shade is thought by some to be preferable to the other?**
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### Author:  [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2008, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303/5 "2008-03-06T11:40:34Z")
[QUOTE=GuanoLad]
Good grief. Somebody fiddles with the contrast button to get a better image quality, and suddenly it’s a conspiracy?
[/QUOTE]
If it were actually a better image quality I might agree, but it’s debatably not. Plus someone sucks at using the crop feature if they had to [stretch the image horizontally](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/5/205538/4450/779/470102) to make the cropped area fit the square they wanted, and somehow I don’t see that being what happened. I don’t think they’re being hand-wringing racists but they’re trying to make him look “bad” in one way or another, a not-too-uncommon tactic in political ads.
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### Author:  [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2008, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303/6 "2008-03-06T12:58:00Z")
Does anyone have a link to the ad itself and not a still image from the ad?
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### Author:  [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2008, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303/7 "2008-03-06T13:21:36Z")
Well, bless my lucky stars!
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### Author:  [@zuma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zuma)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2008, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303/8 "2008-03-06T13:31:03Z")
This is conspiricy theory central lately
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### Author:  [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2008, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303/9 "2008-03-06T14:22:38Z")
[QUOTE=Zebra]
Does anyone have a link to the ad itself and not a still image from the ad?
[/QUOTE]
Following the link I posted (mind you there are a lot of links in it), there’s [this link on Sen. Clinton’s website](http://www.hillaryclinton.com/video/145.aspx). A friend said that her campaign had at first denied it was their ad but I don’t have a link handy for that claim.
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2008, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303/10 "2008-03-06T16:19:36Z")
There may not be anything to this, but if the news stations start running with it it could get ugly.
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### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2008, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303/11 "2008-03-06T16:39:03Z")
If you don’t like Free Republic, here’s the same story on DailyKos.
[http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/5/131156/5021/187/469677](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/5/131156/5021/187/469677)
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### Author:  [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2008, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-campaign-wants-you-to-know-that-senator-obama-is-a-negro/440303/12 "2008-03-06T16:52:17Z")
\>Good grief. Somebody fiddles with the contrast button to get a better image quality, and suddenly it’s a conspiracy?
There is a world of subtlety here, isn’t there? It would be excessive to conclude that image grayscale was politically motivated, but it might also be excessive to be confident that it isn’t.
Maybe this is one of those cultural moments when the meaning ought to be quite clear and yet it’s damned hard to say.
Wasn’t there a controversy along these lines when two magazines had pictures of O. J. Simpson on their covers after the murders? I think maybe Time and Newsweek, and I think they were obviously using the same picture, but on one of them O. J.'s skin tone was much darker and on the other much lighter. How did that get resolved? Dit it turn out there was an intentional manipulation coincident with whatever racial overtones the situation had at that time?