Liberals Respond to McCain's Meridian Visit

This is hard to believe, but look at this from the left of the blogosphere. Their prejudice against Mississippi is clear, as is their desperation against McCain...also for more on the Reagan speech in Philadelphia, go here.

John McCain's Racist Dogwhistle in Meridian, Mississippi
by: Matt Stoller
Fri Mar 28, 2008 at 17:07

Oh, this is some dogwhistling. John McCain is kicking off his 'Service to America Tour' in Meridian, Mississippi on Monday, the tour designed to introduce America to his biography.

Meridian, MS, is 40 miles from Philadelphia, MS, the place where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964 and the city where Ronald Reagan kicked off his Presidential campaign in 1980 with a speech on states' rights largely seen as the political springboard for the emerging civil rights backlash. Meridian itself is significant because one of the civil rights workers was actually from the town. McCain also has some military history in the town, but there's a reason this is the first stop on the tour, and I don't think it's just because he was stationed there.

Now, McCain of course won't distance himself from Reagan's famous racist kick-off speech, and this clearly looks like a dogwhistle to racists within the Republican Party. I'm just wondering whether the press is going to cover the fact that McCain is kicking off his bio tour in the town where a famous civil right martyr was born and the place where the racist civil rights backlash kicked into high gear.

Michael Scherer, I'm waiting.

UPDATE: McCain's speech is here. I was probably wrong on this incident, it doesn't look like a dogwhistle.

Thanks to James Taranto for pointing this out and discussing over at WSJ. As usual, he dispatches the left's ravings with logic and wit.

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The Wall Street Journal Online
Dog-Whistling Dixie
By JAMES TARANTO
April 3, 2008

Stoller suggests that it is invidious for a politician to give a speech within a 40-mile radius of Philadelphia, where the three civil rights workers were murdered; and that it is also invidious for a politician to give a speech in Meridian, because one of the murdered activists, James Chaney, was born there. By this logic, it would also be invidious for a politician to give a speech in any of the following places:

• New York City, where the other two murdered civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were born. (In fact, as David Brooks noted in November, that racist devil Reagan followed up his 1980 Philadelphia speech by flying to New York, where he addressed the Urban League.)

• Within 40 miles of Memphis, Tenn., where Martin Luther King was assassinated 40 years ago tomorrow.

• Atlanta, where Dr. King was born.

Actually, a politician would probably be well advised to steer clear of Mississippi altogether, since Memphis is right on the state line and Medgar Evers, another civil rights activist, was both born and assassinated in the Magnolia State.

Once McCain gave the speech, Stoller sheepishly updated his post: "I was probably wrong on this incident, it doesn't look like a dogwhistle." (Presumably he means it doesn't sound like one.)

Some commentators have given Stoller credit for his honesty, but we'd like to dwell on the metaphor instead. A dog whistle is also known as a silent whistle, because it emits a tone at a frequency too high for humans to hear, although it is within the audible range for canines. A racist dog whistle, then, is a speech that sounds innocuous to the normal human ear but that racist "dogs" are able to recognize as an appeal to them.

What does it tell us about Matt Stoller that he is able to detect whether the "racist dog whistle" has been blown?

Sometimes you just have to laugh at the liberals. They would rather concoct conspiracy theories about race than recognize the real truth of John McCain's public service. What is the reason? They are afraid of McCain (see below).