Job candidates Bee, Sea, and Dee apply for a job. If I hire Bee because he’s black, and it so happens that he is also the best qualified candidate for the job, is my action racist?
Horton was a bad guy, one that was able to rape and attempt murder because of Dukakais’ policies. The fact that Atwater thought the selection of Horton was racist does not make it invalid, if sufficent independent facts exist to support it.
He did not “simply continue it.” He actively vetoed an attempt to stop it. Its negative effects after his veto are thus fairly imputed to him.
What of it? Sargent was not a presidential candidate. His foolishness in instituting the program was evident, but hardly relevant.
And was Gore’s use of Horton racist as well? Or did it only become racist after Atwater got hold of it?
The two are not, in this case, mutually exclusive. The persuasive aspect of the ads would be heightened most by the depiction of the most dangerous criminal. In this case - rare though it may be - the truth and the political value happily coincided (at least for opponents of Mike Dukakis, be they Democrats such as Al Gore in the primaries or Republicans in the presidential race itself.)
If you later admit that you chose on the basis of race, as the Bush campaign personnel did in the links you were already given, then yes. Sheesh squared.
For pity’s sake, we’re talking politics here. Atwater appealed to racial fears based on raw political calculation. Or are you saying that that is an acceptable tactic?
As are any positive effects you fail to mention.
But he was the creator of the policy, not Dukakis. The policy was also in the mainstream of corrective-systems policy of the time, as the cases of Gov. Reagan and the US federal system I pointed out to you make clear.
You’ve had time in just the last few hours to do enough research to become an expert on corrective system policies? You’ve concluded it was foolish based on what? Or have you simply accepted Atwater’s campaign propaganda as true when even he himself did not? Come on.
To be “ultra clear” here, as you like to say, Gore did *not * use Horton himself. He criticized the policy in general *without * mentioning any names. You’d have known that if you had read any of the material that several of us have taken pains to provide you. The choice of Horton as poster boy was the Bush campaign’s, with strong encouragement from the fiercely anti-Dukakis Lawrence Eagle-Tribune (again, read what you’re given).
It was intended to appeal to racism. The people who did it have *told * us that was their intent. Why are you denying it?
If the color of WN’s skin was incidental, and he was genuinely the “best” candidate for the argument against Dukakis, why show his photo? Wouldn’t a rundown of his crimes be sufficient? Maybe a sensational newspaper headline of the crimes? Interviews with the families of the victim?
The photo was to an expedient shortcut to tap into the latent bigotry of those who would be effected by it. Sure, some people might’ve seen him simply as a criminal, but the conscious effort to play up his race was to pander to the fears of those who associate the worst type of criminal element as the type who conveniently share his features.
No, I do not think that that makes your action racist. But the assumption in your question is that the “job” in question is value-neutral.
But the Republicans who produced the Horton ad in 1988 were not hiring a black man to work in a factory or play with kittens. The “job” in question was to scare the living s*** out of white voters. They chose the best candidate who would not just illustrate that furloughs are a bad idea – Al Gore made that case without reference to race, as George Bush did after the Horton ad – but who would also inflame a deep-seated and irrational fear in many whites that black people, in general, are ruthless criminals. That act is, at the very least an act of racial intolerance, but more likely an act of flat-out racism.
Bricker, I agree with you on the substance of the issue. Furloughs were a terrible idea, and Dukakis was flat-out wrong to not stop them. Even if the Massachusetts legislature hadn’t have passed a bill (which Dukakis wrongly vetoed), in my view, it would have been incumbent upon a responsible governor to put an end to furloughs by whatever means at his disposal. But that does not mean that it is okay to use a race-baiting ad to make that case.
Actually I agree that the two are not mutually exclusive. My understanding of your objection was that truth was the deciding factor. Since we know nothing about the #2 candidate, i.e, what color he was or how heinous his crimes, it is all speculation anyway. If the # 2 guy were white, and his crimes only slightly less heinous, but he looked like a bookkeeper, does that affect the persuasive aspect of the ads?
I must say, until this thread I never knew that Atwater actually said it was intended as an appeal to racism. But I guess if he did, it can’t be denied.
Which is a shame, because I’d seen the Horton issue raised even before the 1988 campaign. I distinctly recall a Reader’s Digest article about the Massachusetts prison furloughs in 1985 or 1986, with Horton pictured.
It was a real issue, but I guess I can’t deny that it was raised for the wrong reasons.
Incidentally, have any of Dukakis’s successors done away with the furloughs? Or are they still there, unnoticed without a presidential campaign spotlight, until another Horton-esque atrocity happens?
Dukakis actually signed legislation to eliminate them in 1988.
Of course, this was after the citizens of Massachusetts got so angry at the program that they forced the issue onto the ballot. Dukakis was also running for president at the time, and didn’t want the issue hanging over his head.
It was a reversal from his earlier veto of the elimination of the program, which was effected in 1976.
So, amazingly enough, he shares some small credit for getting rid of the program, and I’ll give him his due there. Of course, if it weren’t for his original veto, the program would have been eliminated twelve years earlier, and Willie Horton and other criminals wouldn’t have been on furlough to rob, rape and kill.
The Readers’ Digest article is copied on one of the links I gave earlier.
Atwater deserves better treatment than he’s received in this thread, really. He apologized for his conduct and asked forgiveness for conduct while literally on his deathbed.
No. Bush knew that he had no prayer of getting significant black support no matter what he said or did, therefore the ad was in no way aimed at black voters. The intent was to scare white voters. And it worked.
Larry McCathy, the man who designed the Horton ad, was initially worried about using the mugshot of Horton because it would be too inflammatory. He then snuck in the picture in the second version of the ad – the one that actually aired – because it made Horton look like “every suburban mother’s greatest fear.”
I find it astounding that anyone would dispute that “suburban” is codeword for “white.”
A good point but in my opinion inner city blacks are already all too familiar with criminals such as Horton and seeing him in a commercial just isn’t going to have as much (if any) impact. Middle class blacks perhaps might be more likely to be frightened by Horton’s ilk but still I believe that on viewing the ad would have been more likely to conclude it was race-baiting for white fears.
If, in fact, “suburban” means “white” – something I think will surprise my neighbors, inasmuch as the ones across the street appear to be black and the ones to my left are evidently pretending to be Asian – that is still not germane to my central point: the selection of Horton was absolutely accurate by race-neutral criteria. True, or false?
Again, I have to wonder if reverse racism is in play here.
If Willie Horton looked scary, it’s because he was a scary individual. Nobody forced him to look unkempt, and scowl at the camera during the mug shot.
Nobody forced him to rape and kill either.
Put Bill Cosby or Michael Jordon in an ad, and nobody’s fears are aroused. Indeed, both of these men were highly successful commercial product spokesmen.
What’s the deal here, except the perpetual bleat of the continuously aggrieved?
Gawdamighty, how sheltered is your gated community anyway? “All-American” is another. On the other side, we have “Urban” (check your local hip-hop radio station to see how it’s marketed) and “inner city”.
False, because the decision to *create * the ad was *not * race-neutral, as I trust you now recognize.
Maybe - but are you oblivious to the raw political calculation evident there? Black voter turnout is much lower than whites’, and there are far fewer of them. They are notably in the minority in the swing states where advertising is targeted. The means of reaching the target market was pretty damn obviously chosen on the basis of who that market would be receptive to - and yes, quite as obviously, a scare tactic using a well-dressed white guy wouldn’t work as well as the retouched shots of a thuggish-looking black guy.