Tiger spent years acquiring a skill in order to get rich; McCain married into it...

Because a black man is a black man is a black man.

Ah yes, looking into the heart of a Republican, we always see the same thing.

His followers do.

"...because we've got a whole party full of Fuzzy Zoellers!"

Tiger Obama

whatever, right?

but if he didn't mean the obvious, then ... what DID he mean?

So he compared one successful black man with another successful black man. Oooooohhh.

Um unless of course he meant that Tiger Woods is also of mixed parentage.

Either way, who cares?

Is there a point to this? Don't we have better things to be outraged about?

BTW I am an Obama supporter so save your flames

From the instant I heard this story, I thought that somebody on my team had said something that was so weird, so stupid and so counterproductive, it should have been "distanced" ASAP.

I don't think it was offensive, and it would be hard to twist it into something offensive. (Other equivalents: "That Rahm Emanuel is like a political Einstein!"; "That Hillary Clinton has all the charm of Julia Roberts!"; "Barack Obama has about as much charisma as Jack Kennedy!"; "Harry Ried is about as much of a political winner as Winston Churchill!")

I mean, if you want to attack somebody, you don't do it by comparing them to the most succesful public figure of the day, on the one week of the year where their magnificence is in particular focus due to a major event.

So, yeah, this was a manifstely stupid thing for a Republican to have said in the course of the usual campaign race-conscious craziness.

Sort of like this story from the Obama campaign:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0408/Obama_advance_Get_me_more_white_people.html

In the context, there is no other way to interpret the remark than Tiger and Barack are in the same box in this rube's brain. Not big racism...but small minded all the same.

As for Mathews comment, I saw him pushing that theme that the mistake is OK because it would be a "compliment" for young black men to be mistaken for Tiger Woods. Does Chris call all black men "Martin" and all black women "Oprah" so they won't ever be insulted?

If he had said, "You can have your Brett Favre..." it would have been fine, and it would have been a compliment to McCain. Fuzzy thinking at best, probably something creepier involving the old, "They all look alike to me," thing.

"I would have compared Obama to Jesus or Buddha

His followers do."

How clever! That must be only the 500th time you've made some version of that joke on the Salon letters page.

You really do live up to your name, Robot. Although, could I suggest that Broken Record would be an even better moniker?

Few things alarmed some corners of White America more than Tiger Woods donning the famed Green Jacket for the first time. Now, just as Woods made his way into a formerly exclusively white club, Obama is poised to do the same and clearly some people will reflexively recoil at that very idea.

...who referred to Obama as Osama. He stumbled and fumble and looked very much like he was drunk.

The Tiger Woods comment. Its like alot of the racial comments that have oozed out of the clinton campaign. Carefully crafted so they can hide behind a veil of innocence. Well anyone who saw the tape of that idiot on stage with McCain could tell there was more malice than ignorance. Then there's a dim-witted and grinning McCain hugging him. Incredible.

Tiger Woods: game-defining player who is not only far and away the best golfer of his generation, but a bi-racial person who broke into a sport that had been whiter than Kelly Ripa for so long...and made it his personal playground.

Furthermore: in the clutch time, Tiger does nothing but win...

So comparing Barack to Tiger? What wonderful honesty, Repubs!!

And come clutch time in November - well, let's hope McCain is a little more dignified than Fuzzy Zoeller.

**********

P.S. - Even our Phil Mickelson...a.k.a. Hilary Rodham Clinton...could beat your Fuzzy McCain.

She's no Tiger, of course...but she could still get the job done.

...because he's likely to win?

The comment makes absolutely no sense at all. We think this was suppose to be a racial put down because it was said by a Republican who is suppose to be supporting McCain. But it is so random, it borders on Dadaism.

I mean think of it: If you ask a random American would they rather meet Tiger Woods or Senator McCain, most would go for Tiger Woods.

Which Salon commentator likened this sort of comment to a dog whistle? Decent reasonable people are deaf to it, but for the people for whom the message is intended, it's loud and clear.

Is this really all that hard to follow? "Tiger Woods" is code for "black guy." You can twist it around and get all technical, and rationalize whatever you like.

And okay, sure, maybe it's more precise than that, maybe it means "suspiciously assimilated-seeming black guy." But a spade is still a spade.

Saying otherwise is like saying, "Well, the guy who caused panic when he screamed 'fire' in a crowded theater wasn't really at fault, because he didn't actually say that the theater was on fire, as such, in exactly those words..." Making that sort of argument obliges one's listeners to conclude that one is a complete tool.

Now what's interesting here is that this is a great example of exactly the kind of thing that Joan Walsh has been talking about in her own column, about how much more overt we permit sexism to be than racism — and also a great example of why the distinction she's trying to make doesn't matter as much as it might seem.

See, a sense of decency prevents mouthpieces for Republican bigotry from coming right out and openly pandering to racial prejudice, but does it really diminish the impact of what they're trying to accomplish?

Especially if putatively reasonable people have to scratch their heads and ask if, gosh, maybe we shouldn't just give the nice man the benefit of the doubt?

Now which form of discrimination is more insidious?