In the category of “not news” is this revelation from a Harvard sociology professor in the New York Times that he was able to see shocking racism in Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m. phone call” ad:
I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad?s central image ? innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger ? it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn?t help but think of D. W. Griffith?s ?Birth of a Nation,? the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society.
I submit that the reason Prof. Patterson “couldn’t help but think of” that caricature of American Racism Past is not because this ad is in line with that movie, but because of whom he is and what he studies (“I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery”).
In reading this piece, I was reminded of Monty Python’s “Communist Quiz” sketch, which concludes thus:
Presenter: Karl Marx, your final question, who won the Cup Final in 1949?
Karl Marx: The workers’ control of the means of production? The struggle of the urban proletariat?
Sometimes, the answer depends on whom you ask.
