My little politics blog

sozobe wrote:

I've been skeptical of the "Hillary campaign makes Obama look blacker" thing I've been seeing for the past couple of days, but this doesn't look too good:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/5/131156/5021/187/469677

Her people probably figured it would reflect a little badly on her, but at the end of the day; he's still black, and they succeeded at making people talk about it. The word "scumbag" is getting ever closer to the tip of my tongue. I wonder what Blatham thinks about this…

Thursday, March 6, 2008 15:59 EST
Was Obama's skin darkened for Clinton ad?
Perhaps the most potentially incendiary discussion in the blogosphere this week has been over the question of whether Hillary Clinton's campaign deliberately doctored an image of Barack Obama for use in an attack ad, taking debate footage and making Obama's face darker and wider.

In the Daily Kos diary that started it all, diarist Troutnut wrote, "In case you needed yet another reason to despise Hillary Clinton and her vermin strategists, she's now running an ad blatantly lying about Obama's subcommittee. Her ad includes debate footage heavily doctored to make Obama blacker ... I'm not accusing Hillary of technically being a racist. But she is cynically exploiting racism to further her personal ambition, and it's part of a pattern. She's doing it to a fellow Democrat who's virtually certain to be the nominee."

Markos Moulitsas, the man behind Daily Kos, has endorsed the allegations, writing, "There was a concerted effort by Clinton's ad people to make Obama look darker, more sinister, and with a wider nose. The evidence is indisputable."

Personally, I'd avoided discussing the issue because, in my amateur opinion based on limited graphics experience at various publications, this looked to me pretty innocent, but I wanted someone with more expertise to weigh in. That's what the people at Factcheck.org did Wednesday. In their judgment, the Clinton campaign is not guilty of the charges. Here's the bulleted list of conclusions they prepared:

The Obama frames from the ad do appear darker than other video of Obama from the same event.
However, the YouTube copy of the ad, on which the bloggers base their conclusions, is darker overall than other copies of the ad. We obtained a digital recording of the ad as it actually appeared on a Texas TV station, and it is lighter.
Furthermore, our analysis of the Obama frames, using Photoshop, shows a fairly uniform darkening of the entire image including the backdrop. It is not just Obama's skin color that's affected.
Also, nearly all the images in the ad are dark, including those of Hillary Clinton. And dark images are a common technique used in attack ads.

Factcheck also writes, "Others will speculate about the Clinton campaign's intentions and motives, as they already have. But without further evidence to the contrary, we see no reason to conclude that this is anything more than a standard attempt to make an attack ad appear sinister, rather than a special effort to exploit racial bias as some Obama supporters are saying ... We're not mind-readers, so we can't say whether or not the makers of this ad intended to engage in 'race-baiting' or were 'using racism to win' as some Obama partisans are claiming. Based on evidence at hand, we find those claims to be unsubstantiated. And the many potential differences between source footage, encoding manipulations, and other variables only make it less likely that any such attempt could be proven."

(The Factcheck piece goes into much more depth than this and contains multiple video and image comparisons that need to be seen to be fully understood. If you're interested in the subject, I recommend reading the whole thing.)

In an interview, Moulitsas stood by the allegations. "It's clear that it hasn't been debunked, clear that it's true that they darkened his skin and widened his face," Moulitsas said. He alleged that Factcheck was not working off a good copy of the video. "All you have to do is look at the text ... It's washed out and blurry in the Factcheck one," Moulitsas said. "Either they've been duped or they've changed it."

Moulitsas e-mailed Salon a link to a post at Democratic Underground that compares frames of a video posted by Factcheck and the video available on the Clinton campaign Web site and alleges Factcheck used a doctored video. In the post, blogger berni_mccoy writes, "It is clear that Fact Check is COMPLETELY WRONG on this issue and they have either BEEN DUPED or are DIRECTLY FALSIFYING the 'facts'."

Contacted by Salon, Factcheck.org director Brooks Jackson denied that the video his site posted was in any way altered, and charged that the Democratic Underground post was comparing apples to oranges. Factcheck had posted several different versions of the video taken from various sources -- YouTube, the Clinton Web site and a high-quality version recorded by the Campaign Media Analysis Group. It's Jackson's contention (one supported by the wording of the DU post) that the DU poster compared the high-quality CMAG version with the version available on the Clinton site, explaining the difference. "This guy who's falsely accusing us of doctoring the video just didn't pay attention," Jackson said. "His mistake was that the video on our site that he thought was the Clinton video isn't. He never asked us, he never called us, he made an assumption that was simply wrong. And this is a mistake a lot of hothead partisans make when they're trying to substantiate their own biases and beliefs."

Update: Factcheck director Jackson e-mailed to let me know that the site has updated its original post on the matter. In the update, Factcheck says it has corresponded with two of the DailyKos bloggers who kicked the allegations off, including Troutnut. Factcheck writes:

The two Kos bloggers who originally posted the story contacted us separately with thoughtful e-mails arguing generally that the matter deserves serious discussion but not challenging the substance of our article. Both said they found no fault with our conclusions about the charges of racism. Troutnut said he didn't "contest [our] assertion that the netroots' accusation of race-baiting is 'unsubstantiated.'"

In its update, Factcheck also says that the video comparison at DU "is actually evidence that supports what we said in the first place: Versions of the Clinton ad from different sources show different shadings, and the YouTube version on which the 'racism' claim rests is the darkest of the lot."

On the Red Phone
Posted March 6, 2008 | 09:00 PM (EST)

Here's an idea for an Obama ad: a montage of Clinton's Sybillish personalities that have surfaced during the campaign with a solemn voiceover at the end saying, "Does anyone want this nut answering the phone?"

How is it that she became the one who's perceived as more equipped to answer that 3 a.m. call than the unflappable Obama? He, with the ice in his veins, who doesn't panic when he's losing or get too giddy when he's winning, who's as comfortable in his own skin as she's uncomfortable in hers. There have been times in this campaign when she seemed so unhinged that I worried she'd actually kill herself if she lost. Every day, she reminds me more and more of Adele H., who also had an obsession that drove her insane.

A few weeks ago, I started to feel sorry for her. Oh Christ, let her win already...Who cares...It's not worth it. There's not that much difference between them. She can have it. Anything to avoid watching her descend into madness. So I switched. I started rooting for her. It wasn't that hard. Compromise comes easy to me. I was on board.

And then I saw the ad.

I watched, transfixed, as she took the 3 a.m. call...and I was afraid...very afraid. Suddenly, I realized the last thing this country needs is that woman anywhere near a phone. I don't care if it's 3 a.m. or 10 p.m. or any other time. I don't want her talking to Putin, I don't want her talking to Kim Jong Il, I don't want her talking to my nephew. She needs a long rest. She needs to put on a sarong and some sun block and get away from things for a while, a nice beach somewhere -- somewhere far away, where there are...no phones.

In this election we have two candidates who will manipulate the truth and one, Senator Obama, who will tell it.

Last night on Tucker Carlson's show, I said that Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and Senator McCain have never had to answer that proverbial 3 a.m. crisis phone call; only a commander in chief has shouldered that unique burden.

You can watch what I actually said. The full transcript of this portion of my interview is below.

Rather than acknowledge this indisputable truth, Senator Clinton's campaign chose to edit selectively and thus grossly distort my words in a video it sent to reporters and posted on Youtube. Senator McCain's campaign also misrepresented and manipulated my statement.

The Clinton Campaign's post March 4th message is to forget about the delegate count and nominate Hillary because she can win the big states Democrats need in November. That argument simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Here's why:

1) Most of the "Big States" she has won are not battleground states in the fall. New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and California are solid blue states where Obama would do as well or better than Clinton in a general election against McCain.

2) Of the states she's won so far, the big exception to this rule is Ohio. Ohio is in fact a critical battleground state where Hillary has demonstrated that she has a leg up among lower income whites and older voters. But the polling also shows that in a general election, Barack offsets this advantage in Ohio among young voters and college-educated independents. In a McCain-Clinton match up the later group could gravitate heavily to McCain in Ohio.

In an Ohio general election, Obama's ability to attract independents and mobilize young and minority voters will trump Clinton's advantages among non-college whites -- a group that will break heavily for either Barack or Hillary against the "free trade" McCain.

...Unless the Democrats have a strong nominee who can demonstrate that he or she won fair and respected the rules, what happens then will be nothing short of a civil war within the Democratic Party. And steps must be taken now to avoid that type of internal bloodletting.

In 2004, the District of Columbia City Council, daring the Democratic Party to further disenfranchise tax-paying residents who lack voting rights in the U.S. Congress, voted to hold the first primary election in the country. What happened then is relevant to what's happening now.

...

Talk about drama. The Rev. Al Sharpton was on the ballot, along with first black woman to ever serve in the U.S. Senate, Carol Moseley Braun. Here I am, a black woman, taking on two black candidates who would have greatly benefited from the District of Columbia's being first in the nation. Yes, I took some hits that left scars, but rules are rules. It's more important to protect the integrity of the process than to be blinded by loyalty to one's own.

I believe the DNC had no choice in 2004 but to enforce its rules. Therefore, regarding Florida and Michigan, I believe that in spite of the risk of alienating millions of voters in states that could ultimately decide the election this fall, Howard Dean and party officials must also stick to the rules.

With two-thirds of the primary contests already completed, the DNC cannot allow the Florida and Michigan delegates to decide the nomination. It would be wrong. And it would be dangerous.


The democratic process is the product of years of evolution to produce a fair and open system. Allowing two electorally vibrant states to disregard the rules without penalty will jeopardize the integrity of the process and the ability of both major parties to put in place nominating rules that are fair, inclusive and consistent with precedent. It will open the door to disregarding rules governing equal division, an open process and representation goals. Besides, if this were about a state party's disregarding the equal division rule, there would be no debate. So why treat the timing rule differently?

...

The bottom line is that we need to think this through and talk with officials from those two states who are willing to come up with a workable alternative that does not ask the DNC or the nominee to act as if nothing happened. This issue is bigger than who we select to lead our party. It's about whether rules should govern us through the process or be ignored to manipulate the process.

Laws and rules are not suggestions. When we decide to break the laws and rules governing our society, we do so knowing that we risk paying the price for it. Florida and Michigan elected officials as well as party leaders knew the price for breaking the rules. If they don't pay it, there will be no rules governing the 2012 election process. There will only be suggestions and chaos.

"That's not the kind of campaign we're running here,"

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said, "Sen. Obama decries such characterizations, which have no place in this campaign."

Does anyone not love Larry David?

Quote:

On the Red Phone
Posted March 6, 2008 | 09:00 PM (EST)

OCCOM BILL wrote:

sozobe wrote:

I've been skeptical of the "Hillary campaign makes Obama look blacker" thing I've been seeing for the past couple of days, but this doesn't look too good:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/5/131156/5021/187/469677

Her people probably figured it would reflect a little badly on her, but at the end of the day; he's still black, and they succeeded at making people talk about it. The word "scumbag" is getting ever closer to the tip of my tongue. I wonder what Blatham thinks about this…

Once again, I'm a little alarmed at how much our biases or fears effect our emotions, perceptions and thoughts (and on how modern political campaigns, via modern media, operate in the realm of emotions far, far moreso than the realm of rationalism). This election is shaking the foundation of a bunch of my assumptions/certainties on self and on others. And this issue is a wonderful example.

About three weeks ago, the three main cable news networks (cnn, msnbc, fox) were carrying an Obama speech and each were using their own separate camera feed and broadcast system. As I flipped back and forth, it was immediately evident that the Fox image was considerably darker. It made his face darker along with the faces of everyone cheering behind him. Do I have to tell you what I suspected? I seriously considered mentioning it here. I didn't. I hope I didn't because of an awareness of the tenuousness of such a claim but I'm not even sure if that was the reason.

Internal links to the piece available at source site.

Of course.


I can't quite get a grip on things yet. I'm very, very annoyed that whatever happened in Texas is being uncritically called a "win" for Hillary.