The above banner has the folks over at Mediaite in an uproar. You see, according to them, the caption “Obama Isn’t Working” has myriad meanings.
To start:
- It’s on a black canvas, which signifies that all blacks are at the bottom.
- It’s emblazoned with white letters over the top, which means white supremacy.
- It’s in all caps, and when taken together it means white capitalism uber alles.
- Last but not least, “Obama Isn’t Working” is a crypted statement directed at all black men as a “nasty racial stereotype about black men.”
But Timothy Christopher, the author of this tear jerking observation, didn’t just shoot from the hip. He took a scientific approach and surveyed others to see if there was validity to his reaction.
Just to be sure it wasn’t just me, though, I asked several friends about the banner, and four out of four pointed out, unprompted, the stereotype of the “lazy,” “shiftless” black man. One of the people I called was cable news fixture Goldie Taylor, who, upon hearing my description of the banner, said “Are you kidding me? You have got to be kidding me.” She also noted the multiple meanings, and the unmistakable stereotype it evokes, but didn’t think it was intentional. “That’s what happens when you don’t surround yourself with a diverse array of people,” she said. “Maybe if Mitt Romney’s experience was more diverse, or the people he surrounds himself with, somebody would have looked at that banner and realized how it could be offensive to some people.”
Riiight. Kind of like Obama’s reelection team?
That is hardly the kind of meaningful confirmation needed for validation, especially when the people you ask wouldn’t even admit they separate colors from whites while doing their laundry. On second thought, maybe that explains the high number of pink shirts wore by the left.
Meanwhile, President Obama said he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Obviously a direct attack on Romney’s unforgivable lilly-white, suburban existence — and by extension a “nasty racial stereotype about white Republican men.”
Hey, I guess some stereotypes are just too obvious to bother with.
Thanks Mediaite for lobbing a giant softball right in the wheelhouse. You folks over there really need to step up your game.