ELECTION 08: The Bradley switch for Obama – on, or off?

When interviewed by Larry King, Michelle Obama said she believed that the Bradley effect was not in play for her husband’s campaign. This is open to question. The famed effect, much-mentioned since Barack Obama secured the nomination, runs thus: in 1982, Tom Bradley, an African American then mayor of Los Angeles, was running to be governor of California. Polls during voting put him clearly ahead (King recalls 65 per cent of voters claiming allegiance), but his Republican opponent won a narrow victory. Why?

Bradley was not an unpopular man – he served LA as mayor for twenty years. Assuming the problem was not the polling, why would people claim to support him, and then not do so? The obvious answer is unspoken racism, one perhaps subconsciously fuelling some of the increasingly hostile Republican rallies of late (speculation, understand). Also, when asked a socially sensitive question by a pollster – especially in a city as defined by race as LA – some will want to give the more socially acceptable answer, even if you’ve just emerged from the privacy of the voting booth having done the exact opposite.

This is not necessarily racism; said voter might just prefer the other guy (or gal), as is their right. When people are quizzed about their TV viewing habits, they claim to like documentaries, but the viewing figures (except the more celebrity focused polemics on the British terrestrial channels) don’t bear this out. Entertainment always wins over fact, in TV. As such with politics, especially in troubled times, people will choose the safer option. The question is, which is safer? A 72-year-old white man with extensive experience and an irascible nature – or a younger black man with a flair for nuance, from a party that isn’t so closely associated with the current economic downturn?

One alarm bell for Obama rings from the primaries, when Hillary Clinton frequently led the popular vote; Obama fared better in the closed debates of the caucuses rather than the open voting. It was in the latter where Clinton, with her blue collar spunk, would fire up the electorate. The United States isn’t California, and this isn’t the 1980s – but Obama remains truly untested at the ballot box or Clinton wouldn’t have been so successful.

UPDATE: It was , of course, off.

A black face at the front of BBC4?

Reports from TV industry bible Broadcast provide a curious insight into the method of selection for BBC channel controllers. The job of BBC4 controller, long a sandbox for schooling BBC2 heads (Roly Keating being a current example) is reportedly being ‘downgraded’ to a less senior position – thus allowing ‘some’ black and minority ethnic (BME) candidates to apply. This is quite something when one considers the BBC’s equal opportunity policy:

“The BBC is committed to promoting equal opportunities for all, irrespective of colour, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origins, gender, marital/civil partnership status, sexuality, disability or age.”

The new role would involve the head of BBC4 reporting to that of BBC2 and, when one considers the reality of white, middle-class TV executive land, is more pragmatic than patronising; opening up the market beyond the same old names might prevent another Crouches, or a 72nd season of My Family. Still, the BBC might want to think twice before appearing to imply that black people are only capable of tackling simpler tasks (‘Yessir, Mr BBC2 sir, right away sir!’) – or Broadcast in their reporting, which didn’t bat an eyelid at this detail.

Will Ferrell, as Two Face – he’s not fighting Batman, so is he half black?

Blackface really appears to be creeping back into acceptability. Will Ferrell has signed on for a comedy called Two Face, about a racist who ‘develops split personalities’. From a narrative point of view, this must surely involve him becoming black at some point. How else will he overcome his prejudice, but to take a walk in the shoes of that which he fears? Along with turns like Robert Downey Jr’s in the upcoming Tropic Thunder and Kevin Bishop blacking up for his new comedy series on Channel 4, has society become less sensitive to such things? It may just be a blip, like Soul Man and Short Circuit 2 in the 1980s (we’ve covered this before).

According to a recent report, white people seem to think everything is fine – whereas ethnic minorities regard themselves as being represented by stereotypes. The difficulty on both the big and small screens – but especially in the naturally melodramatic soap – is that, because of the low proportion of ethnic characters, they tend to take on all the storylines deemed ‘relevant’ to their skin colour by writers. Thus the same black woman will have several children by different fathers, suffer discrimination in the workplace and be viewed with suspicion by the police.

Handling all these race ‘issues’ under the hat of one character naturally creates a stereotype, but often through the best of intentions. The answer is just to cast people as people, and let the ‘issues’ drift over them – but the conventions of ‘addressing the audience’ on a mass market scale are such that this cannot happen without an angle. How will they understand it otherwise, reason executives. The problem is that our media doesn’t reflect real life, it only presents a slanted version of it – and perhaps if we stopped expecting to see reality in a box or on a wall, we’d all be a bit happier.

Tintin and the mixed race police team

Rufus Norris’s stage production of Hergé’s Adventures Of Tintin, currently running at London’s Playhouse theatre, will doubtless have come under the scrutiny of politically correct mandarins. The adaptation is of Tintin In Tibet, the plot of which concerns the ginger newshound’s search for his close friend, Chang, in the Himalayas.

Deftly avoiding the pitfalls of stereotype (unlike Tintin’s sojourn in the Congo, which played with images familiar to the imagination of Boris Johnson), this is actually one of Hergé’s most highly regarded works, and his favourite – it was published in Tibetan, and caused the ginger hack to receive a ‘Truth of Light’ award from the Dalai Lama, for services in bringing the country’s plight into the public eye. High praise, indeed. Still, Tintin seems keen to further rehabilitate himself in anticipation of his feature film debut. A glance through the promotional video for his previous stint at the Watford Palace theatre even reveals that one half of Thomson and Thompson is now black.

Publishers were reportedly concerned over Lindsey Gardiner’s plans to feature a dragon toasting marshmallows with his own flames in her latest book. These were removed on the grounds of ‘health and safety’. This makes perfect, 100 per cent sense. After all, many children have their own dragons and would be keen to employ them in such a fashion. Imagine the damage to bedspreads up and down the country – there’d be singed fringes and tears before bedtime as youngsters cajoled their scaly firestarters into melting marshmallows into the cocoa. Imagine the chaos.

The danger in this is that we slowly turn entertainment into ‘edutainment’, imbuing everything with a social message. You can see it in drama – the knack Spooks has for inventing new and increasingly bizarre splinter groups that-definitely-aren’t-everyday-Arabs to carry out terrorist acts in the series. Or comedies that are designed to reflect social and ethnic minorities, rather than to be funny. Perhaps we should simply be honest about the whole thing and bring back public information films – just lay the message straight on the line, then leave entertainment to be what it wants. The trend in publishing for re-inventing the 1950s, even reprinting them is all very well, but it is just that – a trend triggered by financial reward, not a fundamental shift in attitude. Obviously there is a need not to be unnecessarily offensive, but there is a line between this and being prescriptive. It’s a fine line but it’s worth finding.

Wail to the chief: Racism at the Redskins?

The University of Dakota’s college football team is nicknamed ‘The Fighting Sioux’ and, unsurprisingly in these politically correct times, the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) has taken great offence. The college fought back, and recently won a three year reprieve for the nickname. The condition is that the tribes must accept it. So, where does this leave the NFL’s Washington Redskins? The term must be the Native American equivalent of the N-bomb.

Cash may be the key – the Redskins are the second most valuable sports franchise in the United States, behind only the Dallas Cowboys, although you have to wonder where the money went after their abysmal 2006 season. Washington finished bottom of their division, with five wins and 11 losses. Perhaps the lawyers were eating up all the money?

The team’s signature song, Hail To The Redskins, is remarkable in itself. Watch out for the casual appropriation of scalping in the lyrics.

Hail to the Redskins
Hail Vic-tor-y
Braves on the Warpath
Fight for old Dixie

Scalp ’em, swamp ’em — We will take ’em big score
Read ’em, weep ’em, touchdown – we want heap more
Fight on, Fight on — ‘Till you have won
Sons of Wash-ing-ton. Rah!, Rah!, Rah!

News Hour tends to celebrate examples of the politically incorrect, but something about the tone of this sits uncomfortably with us. Still, does turnabout make fair play? A high school Native American basketball team was set up with the title ‘The Fighting Whites’, using a 1950s businessman as a mascot. The problem was, the whities loved it, embracing the slogans and merchandise either as college kitsch, or a reminder of a time seen by many as a golden-era: the 1950s, when domestic bliss reigned, men smoked pipes and women loved it. (Or so they say.) One can’t help but feel that the mascot might have been more effective were it actually offensive to white people. Perhaps the American equivalent of a lager lout?

Of course, the problem with turnabout is that it’s harder to offend a majority.