This is a real radio ad currently running in Arkansas in support of Republican Congressman French Hill on radio stations targeted to the African American community. I don’t even have words to describe it. pic.twitter.com/vpzt1nGPlc
— (((Ben Tribbett))) (@notlarrysabato) October 18, 2018
One shockingly racist ad is currently making its way across the FM waves in Arkansas–targeted at African-Americans in an attempt to pit them against white women and Democrats in order to protect a seemingly-endangered GOP incumbent.
The advertisement starts out simple and deceptively innocent enough.
“What do you think about what’s happening in Washington?” a woman’s voice calmly asks.
Amidst some poor-editing-inspired background noise, another woman booms out her response. She’s definitely got some opinions. In half-a-beat, the second woman launches into a vehement defense of the GOP as well as the previously obscure Republican representing Arkansas’ 2nd congressional district.
The race-baiting voice lays it on thick:
Our Congressman French Hill and the Republicans know that it’s dangerous to change the presumption of innocence to a presumption of guilt–especially for black men. If the Democrats can do that to a white justice of the Supreme Court, with no evidence, no corroboration, and all of her witnesses–including her best friend–say it didn’t happen? What will happen to our husbands, our fathers or our fathers when a white girl lies on them?
The first woman finds her voice again and supplies the answer.
“Girl, white Democrats will be lynching black folk again!”
Allusions to the Brett Kavanaugh controversy are obvious. Multiple errors of fact, law and context abound in the second woman’s comments about the presumption of innocence.
Notably, there is no such presumption of innocence during a Supreme Court nomination hearing and there never has been–that’s a legal standard strictly confined to criminal trial. Additionally, there were in fact, multiple pieces of evidence–and corroborated evidence–supplied by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford (and by Kavanaugh) during the controversy. But, of course, that’s not really the point here.
The ad goes on to employ more and more race-baiting as each small collection of seconds painfully passes.
Woman number two returns. And makes her first bit of commentary seem a bit tame by comparison:
Honey, I’ve always told my son, ‘Don’t be messing around with that. If you get caught, she will cry rape.’
The first woman then brings it on home for two-term Congressman Hill and the GOP’s long, storied and proud tradition of running racially divisive advertisements as elections enter the final stretch.
“I’m voting to keep Congressman French Hill and the Republicans because we have to protect our men and boys,” she says. “We can’t afford to let white Democrats take us back to bad old days of race verdicts, life sentences and lynchings when a white girl screams rape.”
The ad ends with the disclosure of the dark money group that paid for it: Black Americans for the President’s Agenda. According to OpenSecrets, this hitherto unheard of Political Action Committee has raised over $140,000 during the current campaign cycle.
French Hill faces popular Democrat state representative Clarke Tucker in this year’s election.
[image via Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit]
Follow Colin Kalmbacher on Twitter: @colinkalmbacher
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