Sometimes a Column Is JUST a Column

I caught Bob Herbert on "Morning Joe" this morning doing a live follow up to his New York Times Op-Ed piece on the John McCain ad that compares Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

Herbert claims it's a racist ad.

He took his claims one step further by alledging that the images of the Victory Column in Berlin and the Washington Monument were phallic symbols deliberately juxtaposed against images of famous Caucasian women to play on the latent (and not so latent) fears of miscegenation held by whites.

BTW, during the interview, Herbert at first identified the Victory Column as the Leaning Tower of Piza until someone corrected him.



While I think the McCain ad presented a valid argument, the use of Spears and Hilton images diminished the substance of the point it was trying to make. However, to call it racist is just ridiculous.

I'm surprised that Herbert didn't make more out of the fact that, at one point, the ad displays the words "Obama: NO OFFSHORE DRILLING" in big letters.