Fancy Ford Outrage

So there's a new website, from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, making fun of Harold Ford Jr and boy are the liberals howling! (Go to comments for links to more outrage.)

Some are calling it a racist site, and making all kinds of contortions to prove the point. They have a picture of white Playboy bunnies! Well, there aren't that many black Playboy bunnies, are there? And the F-Unit (nickname courtesy of Chris) does go to the Playboy mansion.

Washington and New York gossip columns talk about Ford's taste for cigars and fine living, and WDIA's talk shows are full of disparagement for Ford's purported preference for white blondes.

But, as usual, the Lefties' outrage is late and selective. Yours truly has already blogged on this whole subject in July of last year! It's all there, documented with links and everything. Harold the Lesser likes the high life.

And what of it? His father and grandfather both worked very hard to propel Junior into the upper reaches of American society. He was given a private school education and went to an elite East Coast prep school. His father got him a job where he used to work.

He's got about as much to do with the "Memphis street" as I do. He's been content to not worry about it because to the constiuency that elects him to Congress he's a symbol of the black man getting ahead. He is their dream.

But no, to the Left it seems that if you point this out you must be comparing him to a pimp, the only model of black success they seem to know. F-Unit was brought up to transcend the color line, and he has. That's fine. But you can't have it both ways, as the Fancy Ford site points out. You can't "keep it real" to your poor voting audience and live a color-neutral high life on the down-low. Someone will -- and now has -- point it out.

As I noted in comments at the Flypaper Theory, what worked for the Ninth Congressional district won't fly for Tennessee as a whole. Ford now needs lots of white voters. They'll look at this double standard and turn away. This "black on the ballot, white in Washington" life is hypocritical. Pointing that out isn't racist, it's saying the emperor's son has no clothes, or rather very, very fine clothes indeed.

Of course, the press will botch the story. They'll pick up the liberal outrage and, rather than investigate the story and report Harold's double life, will blithely ignore that and just report the one-way outrage, as if that's the story. The focus will be the charge of Republican racism, and not Harold's hypocrisy. You watch.

Longtime Ford watchers and Tennesseans have known this was coming. Heck, I've even mocked Junior on this:





What really kills me is the perceived hypocrisy of Republicans for daring to confront Ford on charges of high living. Because, you know, Democrats all live in modest homes, just-enough-to-live-on salaries, and practice chaste, moderate lives.

After all, he didn't learn it from his father, who lives on an exclusive island in Miami, Florida, far from his "home" in Memphis, where he never bothers to visit any more. Or from, say, Ted Kennedy or John Kerry, both ultra-wealthy elites; or the Clintons, or well... lots and lots of Democrats!

And anyway-- You want real gossip on Ford? Try Vaginal Cream Davis and his/her juicy story:

On the last night of the convention I went to this party on the Beach in the People's Republic of S' Aunt Monica at the exclusive Jonathan Club. I got to make out with this good looking mulatto representative from Tennessee named Harold or Henry Ford Jr. or something like that. It was fun to really get down and have some brother-to-brother, dinge on dinge love. Honey I was partaking in the ultimate revolution.

It's been on that website for years now. I first saw a link via a commenter on Thaddeus Matthews blog. He should be glad that one's not getting general circulation!