Why is Saying McCain's Adopted Daughter is Black Considered a "Slime"?

[Dunvegan]

I've read many threads on how identifying McCain with having a Black daughter (he did adopt a Vietnamese daughter) is considered a "slime campaign."

No one seems to say, "So what? Whatever race his child is it's a non-issue."

What is said usually is, "No...it's terrible McCain's accused of having a Black child out of wedlock. But he doesn't have a Black child. His adopted daughter is Vietnamese."

Being multi-cultural (Irish-Catholic, African-American, Native-American) here, I'd like someone to help me out to clarify what people are saying.

If McCain's adopted daughter was indeed Black, does that an "Ooooo, heinous scandal!" make?

Is saying his daughter is Black a slime...but having a Vietnamese daughter is NOT a slime?"

[kath]

1. Hello?!! He's a REPUG, and Repugs are racist.

Therefore, to such an audience, it certainly is a "slime".

[EFerrari]

2. IIRC, the smear was that she was a child he fathered

out of wedlock.

[NYCGirl]

3. It's because either it would not have been conceived with his wife, or

his wife conceived the child without McCain. Get it? I guess the GOP thought the voters in the south would have a problem with that.

[Cats Against Frist]

4. The scandal is that it was purposely used in a push-poll

and whispering campaign. It's not a big deal that his daughter is black, at all. The reason the whole thing is important is because the REPUBLICANS tried to slime him, and make the slime extra-thick, by letting on that his daughter was black. In answer to your question, yes, making her black was a factor -- but only because the knuckledraggers to whom it would make a difference care about the color of one's skin.

[blm]

5. The smear by Bush operatives was that McCain fathered a black child with a

prostitute, and he talked his wife into adopting her.

I know - I was living in SC at the time it happened. The Bob Jones Mafia there spread this.

[no_more_rhyming]

6. Chocolate, right?

[trotsky]

7. I don't think you quite understand.

The slime campaign that the Bushies orchestrated against McCain was asking voters in South Carolina essentially, "Would your opinion of John McCain change if you knew he had fathered a black child out of wedlock?"

I.e., the infamous "push poll." Designed to take advantage of the traditional Republican pushbuttons of marital infidelity and racism.

The reason this slime worked well is that McCain's adopted daughter, who appeared with him at many campaign events, was indeed Vietnamese and had darker skin. So any person who had heard this push-poll question would immediately remember it, and (if the Bushies gambled right) put 2 and 2 together.

It really doesn't matter what race his daughter is. But the Bushies used her darker skin to smear McCain.

[petepillow]

8. what's slimy is that, to the people it's aimed toward, it somehow IS bad

and the fact that the repug machine recognize this kind of hateful small-minded bigotry in their constituents and feed off of it just shows how slimy they are.

and even if someone who isn't a complete racist rethug slimenut, they might think hmm, that's odd, he must have had a "secret" child out of wedlock, and maybe the reason he kept it a "secret" is because he's a racist bastard who doesn't want anyone to know he's fathered a black child.

it's playing on the bush-lovers' prejudices, rather than disassociating from those prejudices. the ulitmate SLIME move, if you ask me.

or perhaps i'm rambling and sleepy and confused....

[cali]

9. Actually, his daughter is of Bangladeshi orgin n/t

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

10. All would be a slime imho

In SC, as I understand it, the repukes alledged that McCain had a black daughter out of wedlock. I think what is happening is that people are clarifying all the lies in this statement. McCain adopted a child. The child was Vietnamese, not black. I'm sure the reason that "black" was used instead of "Vietnamese" was because of the state where these lies were launched, where the former would be more inflammatory to the racists than the latter. Don't ask me why-racism is not logical.

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. Ay yay yay

It is not a slime in principle. It was a slime campaign given the racist Republican base, and the tawdry imagery of McCain sleeping around with poor young black women. Gimme a break. You don't understand this? Puh-leez.

[Cleita]

12. Because it's important to Republicans.

They are racist, sexist and bigoted, so McCain having an adopted daughter a shade darker than him sends them clucking away. To them it's as important as Monica's dirty, blue dress.

I'll tell you, if we could wipe out racism in this country, you wouldn't have a bunch of neo-cons in charge of this country. This is what they do, appeal to the racism and other fears the provincial, white Americans have, and that's how they win.

The neo-cons didn't want McCain in the White House representing them so they threw this out to the electorate and it worked.

[emulatorloo]

13. Point One: Karl Rove is not "Politically Correct"

and he created this "McCain fathered an illegitimate black baby" to appeal to the baser instincts and prejudices of his republican base.

[Connie_Corleone]

14. She's not black.

It's used as a smear to imply that McCain had a baby out of wedlock with a black woman. It's to make racists mad and not vote for McCain.

[papau]

15. Bush/Rove intended the revelation being planted to slime McCain.

You will have to ask the GOP - meaning Bush and Rove and the RNC folks that did the phone calling - as to why they thought it was slime and as to why they thought it would be an effective sliming when used in a GOP Presidential primary in the South.

Perhaps the GOP's view of how they get votes in the South - who there supporters are and how they think - may be a little "stereotyped"?

[Dunvegan]

16. Thanks much for the analysis...

If his daughter is from the Indian sub-continent...her skin could be very pigmented. Therefore the ease in push-polling racists.

Was this push-poll before or after the infamous photo of McCain hugging *?

(Edited to say: I don't mean to sound disingenuous...but sometimes if you are a member of a minority, you want a "sanity check" to see if you're not filtering this through you own personal experiences incorrectly. Thank you all for the forthright answers. That's why I love this place.)

[watrwefitinfor]

23. The push-poll was in the run-up

to the South Carolina Primary in - what year? - 2000 I think.
They called me. I didn't know what a "push-poll" was but what
they said was enough for me to cuss them out and slam down
the phone. It was easy to tell exactly what they were up to.

Wat

[Garbo 2004]

32. The poll was before SC primary when McCain was running against Shrub

in 2000. The Hug scene was in 2004 when McCain was on the campaign trail with Bush.

[muchacho]

17. it is, because it's targeted

for the racist intended demo that the designed lie was meant to mobilize it is a negative (slime).

Asians are see as less divisive along racist lines. The GOP plays to people racial fears - Blacks are the first line of that tactic, hispanics are next.

Evil, but effective to use to get the ignorant to do your bidding.

[AverageJoe]

18. It's only a slime to people who are horrified by the idea

The * campaign was playing to the knuckle draggers (i.e. their rank and file). This is a horrible tactic. If you're bright enough to see that having a child whose ethnic background is different from your own isn't a negative thing, you're bright enough not to be a republican.

It's the same principle as calling Kerry "French." In the reality-based world, being French is neither better nor worse than being of any other nationality. But to the knuckle draggers, it is like calling him a foppish coward.

The republicans are the real slime.

[jonnyblitz]

36. I wonder if it worked on the intended audience in south carolina.

where the tactic was employed.

[liberalitch]

19. She is a beautiful child..... and a person of color....

but what does that matter?

[rniel]

20. Ok then why

Call voters up and say did you know john mccain had a black baby.

Unless.....

Don't you get it.

[PA Democrat]

22. Yes. The Bush campaign push polled the question

with Republican voters in the South Carolina primary asking something to the effect if the fact that John McCain fathered a black child out of wedlock would affect your vote. The question was aimed at racists who would care about such things.

The truth was that McCain's daughter was adopted and was not his biological child. I would think that any parent would not want something said about their child which could result in teasing and hurtful remarks.

[yurbud]

21. the point was who it was said TO: racists who would see it as a negative

[SoCalDem]

24. Her skin color was the topic of a BUSH push-poll in SC

Callers asked.."Did you KNOW that McCain has a BLACK daughter? ..It was to insinuate that the girl was an out-of-wedlock,cross-the-racial-divide dalliance. In FACT she is from INDIA, and was adopted by them when they saw her on a trip abroad..

Push polls work for narrow minded bigoted people..that;s why they target them and call them every election cycle.. they want these folks to go out and tell all their neighbors "whut-they-heered"..

[applegrove]

25. Racist swiftboating. But McCain is over it. He now does whatever

Rove asks.

[Skidmore]

30. And he never once uttered one word to defend that child or

his wife as they insinuated that she possibly could still be abusing medications. For this reason alone, I will not consider anything the man says.

[applegrove]

33. I think McCain has just figured out how diminished he has been in our

eyes. Many people would have voted for him in 2000. He was well liked. Now - with the exception of two things (Indian exploitation & torture) - he is not the same man.

[REP]

26. Bridget is Bangladeshi

Others have explained how the Bush campaign sprad the rumour that she was the result of an affair with a black woman. Here's a picture of McCain and his family; Bridget is noticeably darker-skinned:

[DesertRat]

29. Wow that's a old picture

My son graduated from high school with one of the sons two years ago. McCain also has children in their 40's from his first marriage.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

27. She's Bangladeshi, not Vietnamese.

And it was a "slime" in that Bush was trying to connect with the racist Bubbas in the South Carolina primary, hence the rumors of the daughter being a black bastard child.

[Greeby]

28. Look how it was done

It was a phone campaign to Republicans in South Carolina who were gonna vote in the primary, and they made use of the N word, I'm told.

This is, after all, the state that kept sending Strom Thurmond back to the Senate for nearly 5 decades

[sbj405]

31. It's slime, because ( on top of being a lie) they did it knowing that

saying "black" vs any other race would cause a negative reaction with a certain percentage of the population in the location they did it. No nice way to say it but racism is alive and well in the US.

[tenshi816]

34. His adopted daughter is Bangladeshi, not Vietnamese. n/t

[dsc]

35. It is the out of wedlock part

Though in a state like SC where the rumor was started it might be a bad thing.

[Toots]

37. Democrats did not say that and he wasn't running against Democrats

It is completely a Republican Scandal...

[Jade Fox]

38. They meant it as such....

The GOP slimer machine was directing that comment toward their racist constituents, knowing it would make them less likely to support McCain.

It IS a non-issue to those who aren't racist. However, many conservatives ARE racist, and the GOP knows that and was attempting a back-handed appeal to those racists when they started the rumor that McCain's daughter is Black.

[CBHagman]

39. Also, the media puts forth the myth that Bush is nice.

I truly can't count the number of times that I've heard or read some reporter or pundit proclaiming how "likeable" he is, or how he was "a popular wartime president" (The Washington Post's phrase for about 18 months after 9/11), or how no one can doubt that Bush's faith is sincere. :eyes:

The reality that Bush's campaigns, at least since his initial gubernatorial race, have always relied on negative campaigning, including smears and outright mendacity, with the surrogates generally taking over the smears, the better to keep Bush supposedly above it all. :eyes:

Karl Rove comes out of the Lee Atwater school of dirty campaigns, and some of us remember that Lee Atwater eventually reached some sort of deathbed repentance. What I don't understand is how the media appears to have failed to really examine how much the Bush system owes to Atwater and how divisive it has been, disastrously so, in this country.

To sum up:

Nice people do not employ Karl Rove.

If Bush were really pro-veteran, he wouldn't have his veteran opponents (McCain, Gore, Kerry) smeared each election, nor would he countenance how, say, Max Cleland was treated.

His wife wouldn't have tacitly approved the smears (something Laura Bush did in a Time magazine interview in 2004).

I sincerely hope we all live to see Bush get his comeuppance AND the country get a collective backbone/working pair of eyes.

[journalist3072]

40. What's more, George Bush PERSONALLY approved of the plan to trash McCain..

From Time Magazine, 11/20/2000:

In a suite at the Greenville Grand Hyatt that afternoon, Bush's top aides came together to save the campaign, but they were really plotting a murder. It was the Bush high command, with its South Carolina auxiliary: Rove; spokeswoman Hughes, as well as Warren Tompkins, a longtime G.O.P. operative in the state; state attorney general Charlie Condon; Lieutenant Governor Bob Peeler; and former Governor David Beasley. As a participant put it later, this was the moment "we decided to take the gloves off."

The trick was to try to cast McCain as a phony, take a guy with a consistently conservative voting record and paint him as a dangerous liberal, suggest that the war hero was somehow un-American, or at least un-South Carolinian. Out came the antipersonnel weapons: "He's not one of us," and "He doesn't share our conservative values," and "He's outside the mainstream." On McCain's lack of "conservative values," Rove piped up to say, "We have to get in his face on that. He's vulnerable." Added Tompkins: "He's an insider. When I hear this populist stuff, it makes me wanna throw up."

But who could put out the message, given Bush's promise to be a uniter, not a divider? Several outside groups, including the National Right to Life Coalition, Americans for Tax Reform and the National Rifle Association, stepped right up. "Right to Life will do radio; A.T.R. will do TV ads," said one of Bush's South Carolina advisers. Even though coordinating with third-party groups is illegal, the discussion explicitly revolved around the idea that these groups could be counted on to do whatever it took--whether it was running ads, passing out literature or making phone calls--to destroy McCain and save Bush.

Briefed later that day in his hotel suite, Bush agreed to the battle plan. The next 18 days would be the ugliest of his political career. In the heart of the Confederacy, phone callers and leaflets attacked McCain's wife's drug addiction, made racial attacks on McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter and warned of "McCain's fag army." Bush won the state by 11 points.

[CBHagman]

43. Thank you, Journalist.

:hug: I only had books, rather than articles from sources like Time, with information on the plot against McCain, and I wanted to pass this information on to friends in South Carolina. It's too late to save us from Bush, but I'd like to disabuse a few people of their notions regarding him.

[journalist3072]

47. You're welcome, but no need to thank me at all. I am more than happy

to help spread the word on Bush. What he did to McCain in South Carolina was absolutely disgusting, and everyone should know about it.

What's even more sickening, is how McCain now treats Bush: like they are bossom buddies. Why does he not uphold his family's honor?

Most men in politics will say "I am fair game, but leave my family alone." How McCain could even tolerate the folks that did what they did to him, is beyond me.

[Catherine Vincent]

41. They did the same with Clinton.

As if having relations with a black woman is the worse thing to do. You know...playing to the racists out there. Remember the made up rumor that he fathered a child from a black prostitute? Tabloids even found some ex-prostitute to pose for pictures with her child that was from some white guy. Probably paid her money to say it's Clinton's child. Freepers were saying how the kid looks like Clinton and everything. :eyes:

[Beelzebud]

42. To normal people it's not. To racist scum in the south, it is.

*Not all people in the south are racist scum*

Just the ones that ARE racist scum. :D

[Name removed]

44. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Beelzebud]

45. Read my disclaimer before you jump down my throat.

I was only speaking to the racist scum that live in the south, where those calls, and smear, were made. If you live in the south, and ar not racist scum, then you shouldn't take offense.

I know you southerners love the south, but frankly, i'm sick of the "south will rise" mentality that comes from there. This smear campaign was done in the south, where they knew it would be effective...

[loudsue]

46. DUers need to do their own "push polling" in the 2006 elections:

Something to the effect of:

Would you vote for < republican candidate "x" > if you found out that he/she was involved in the Abrahmoff bribery scandal, that has siphoned off your tax dollars to go to special interests connected to the mafia?

It's time for some payback.

:kick::kick::kick: