12 years ago, this was an actual headline on CNN: “Obama as witch doctor: Racist or satirical?”
The posters, showing Obama wearing a feather headdress and a bone through his nose, have been popping up in e-mails, on Web sites and at Tea Party protests for weeks.
The image has stoked debate and cast attention on the rallies, which have drawn people Tea Party organizers describe as on the fringe and not representative of the overall movement. Their general viewpoint, leaders say, is that there’s been too much federal government intervention, particularly concerning health care and taxes.
The witch doctor imagery is blatantly racist, critics contend.
Others remind that presidents get made fun off all the time, and the election of a black president has only made racially charged political satire more sensitive.
While not denying the crudeness of the image, Tea Party organizers stressed that those who carry the signs are a few “bad apples.”
“That [witch doctor] image is not representative at all of what this movement is about,” said Joe Wierzbicki, a coordinator of the Tea Party Express, a three-week series of protests across the country.
There was a lot of argument at the time about this but, as you can see, the Tea Party people themselves knew very well it was racist. There were a lot of people in the media, however, who bent over backwards to excuse them.
Of course it was racist. We knew it, they knew it. It was the media that kept “asking” if it was.