his mother is Asian, he respects her and does not want her identity erased for whatever reason. Tiger does really well on his talent alone. The man would never stoop to claim the role of a professional victim as he has too much dignity.

Oprah Winfrey is not well-known outside America but Britney and Paris are. Oprah is a fairly chubby sob-sister who is always going on about diets, although she was seen recently in Italy gorging herself on some delicious desserts. Anyway, she'd be a ridiculous choice - not lithe enough, not young enough.

Joan, you are a sensible person. Do you really believe Obama was not playing the race card against McCain? He talked about this very same thing a month ago, and now 3 times in one day. I really don't think there is any other way to interpret it but to believe he is trying to paint McCain as a politician who will use Obama's race against him. He and his campaign did the same thing with the Clinton's and got away with it. I'm a very strong Clinton supporter and was appalled at the way they were portrayed. I think it's very smart for the McCain campaign to call him on this early. Obama has been very subtle with these charges, I think that's why the media is giving him a pass. But I'm not going to. I've seen this show before, I just hope he's not successful at it this time. It seems to me you can't say anything about Obama without people making it about race. Flashing images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton has nothing to do with race (as some have charged) they were just trying to show that Obama is all style and no substance. And I think they have done this very effectively. I think that's why this ad is resonating so strongly. The truth usually does.

Obama and his supporters have played the "race card" loudly and often from the very begining of the primary season. Everytime Hillary Clinton who close in "racism" was charged often by lying about what the Clintons said or distorting their words.

What is denied by the Left is that the accusation of racism may or may not be serious in the general election but in Democrat primaries it is hard to imagine a more devastating charge.

Thanks for that fluffy People Magazine post, cos god knows dithering twits like you know first hand about racism the most.

Oprah Winfrey is not well-known outside America but Britney and Paris are.

Is McCain's ad running outside America?

You should spend less time trying to sound academic and more time not being a dope.

"The Clintons learned the hard way that there's a high cost to being careless with racially charged references -- or even innocent references that could be misconstrued or distorted to seem racially charged. "

In other words, they learned that the Obama camp will seize anything you say as evidence of your racism, no matter how cheap and sleazy the inference, to score some political points. You'd think the obviousness of this implication would hit Joan, but like a good white liberal she can't bring herself to admit the essential race demagoguery of the Obamma campaign.

The accusation that the Paris/Britney ad has a racist subtext collapses when you consider what would have been the subtext if the campaign had used vacuous black celebrities instead: if they had, the (accurate) cries of racism then would have been audible on the moon. So it's clearly a "heads I win tails you lose" argument from the Obama side, which pretty much describes his entire exploitation of the race issue.

If you want my guess, the McCain camp aired the childish, but nonracial ad with the full expectation, based on the Clinton experience, that the Obama campaign would seize on it the way they did in the primaries, but they would then turn the tables on them, unlike Clinton.

There is plenty of anti-Obama racism on the Internet and airwaves, and Obama was clearly trying to tie McCain and his ad to it. Most Americans are not racist, and they don't like people who fling the word around recklessly. I dislike both candidates, but if Obama wants to win this, he's going to have to stop playing this dangerous game. It may not be beneath him, but it is beneath the country.

maureen just tries to hard, and what she finally deposits just adds up to a pound of lard.

The problem with your theory is that no one in the Obama campaign has suggested the "Celeb" ad was racist.

Otherwise you're spot on.

You seem to come from a position that McCain and Obama colorwise are on even steven ground, I'm not too sure that that argument is really all the way sound.

Good point about Tiger Woods. He is almost universally admired because he avoids racial issues and everybody knows that his immense talent and concomitant success is based on innate abilities and a lot of hard work to build them into star performances. On the rare occasions when he mentions race, people listen. Of course, golf isn't the same as politics. If anything, breaking into a world composed almost entirely of white men, including many who belong to clubs that officially or unofficially do not allow blacks, is harder than breaking into politics, where the courts have insisted that districts be gerrymandered so that minorities can attain fair representation in Congress.

But give Oprah a break on eating - I'm not a huge fan of hers, but I know that even big people can enjoy sweets every once in a while. If I travel to Italy I'm going to sample tiramisu every chance I get, calories be damned.

If anything, breaking into a world composed almost entirely of white men, including many who belong to clubs that officially or unofficially do not allow blacks, is harder than breaking into politics, where the courts have insisted that districts be gerrymandered so that minorities can attain fair representation in Congress.

As evidenced by our rich history of black presidential nominees...