This is it, the absolute ethical nadir of the Hillary Clinton campaign so far. To my mind sending out that 2006 photo of Barack Obama dressed in Somali garb during a visit to that country is scummy and reprehensible almost beyond measure. It is a a classic race-baiting tactic obviously aimed at latently racist rubes from Texas and Ohio who say they’re still on the fence.
Reacting to a headline on the Drudge Report (still up as I write this) claiming that aides to Senator Clinton had e-mailed the photo to reporters and editors, Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton team of “shameful offensive fear-mongering” with what is obviously an “attempted smear” that is seeking to inflame racial consciousness among those possibly pre-disposed to black-vs.-white thinking. This even outdoes what Bill Clinton tried to do in the lead-up to (and just after) the South Carolina primary.
Equally disgusting is a statement from Clinton campaign honcho Maggie Williams saying that “if Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed….Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely…this is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry.”
A statement like that coming from a woman of color should be enough to make anyone of any ethical conscience physically sick. The mentality behind the mailing of the photo is demonic in itself, but to try and lie your way out of it by saying the Obama campaign should be “ashamed”? Remember the name — Maggie Williams — and keep this in mind when she comes calling in months and years hence. For she is a liar, and the father of it. And she will have this statement hanging around her neck for the rest of her life.