What Would Durkheim Do?

From Countdown on August 4. Keith is discussing McCain's "celebrity" attack ad with Jonathan Alter of Newsweek:

OLBERMANN: What about when it backfires because it seems like the celebrity ad continues to echo and Bob Herbert of the “New York Times” was on this network pointing out something—I don‘t know that anybody noticed before, this morning—that not only in that McCain ad were there two underdressed blondes mixed with the black guy in the ad, but there are also images of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Washington monument, and the Victory Column in Berlin, as Bob Herbert put it, “phallic symbols”—three phallic symbols, two blondes and Barack Obama.

So, this is not just a sexist ad anymore, this is what they used against misogynation [sic], isn‘t it? This is what they used against Harold Ford.

ALTER: Well, to suggest that somehow, you know, Obama is going to —

OLBERMANN: He‘s going to wind up dating those women. That‘s the idea.

ALTER: Yes. And that‘s the oldest and deepest, you know, racist canard in American history, really, is that, you know, the slave is going to come after the wife of the plantation owner.

It is pointless to ask whether or not McCain himself is racist. The Republicans' campaign strategy certainly is. It is the politics of racial resentment — page one of the Republican campaign playbook for forty years. If McCain isn't a racist, he's a cynical political opportunist.

Don't expect this to ease up before November. It is going to get much, much worse. As Alter said on the show, there is a "smear gap" between the parties. Alter explains:

The Republicans are very, very good at this, at taking trivial issues and using them to cut. The Democrats don‘t do it nearly as well.

The sad thing is that American voters keep falling for it.