I don't believe for a second that most Republicans are racist, but any steps the GOP makes to reject leftwing hyperbole that equats them to not caring about the interests of minorities are damaged by idiots like Doug Fanelli. To think, in the era of Bernie Madoff I'd be more worried dealing with the old, white guy:
In the spot, which ran over the weekend on a Fox affiliate in central Florida, Fanelli stands between a middle-aged white man and a younger, swarthy fellow. "Does this look like a terrorist?" he asks, gesturing towards the white man. Then, pointing to the darker dude, he adds: "Or this?"
"It's time to stop this political correctness in the invasion of our privacy," Fanelli says, an apparent call for racial profiling in the searching of those deemed to be potential terrorists.
In an interview, I asked Fanelli if the message of the spot was that darker people are more likely to be terrorists.
He said it wasn't, claiming that the ad's point was that people from countries like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Syria "require a higher level of security."
"You can be light and from those countries," he said, adding that the actor who played the terrorist in the commercial agreed with him.
I expect MSNBC to have a field day with this one and rightfully so.
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