Politics: El Pussy Gato

Via Off the Cuff comes this disturbing item about the latest attacks by the Texas GOP on the state's Democratic senators. The McAllen (TX) Monitor reports that the state party has bought radio spots attacking one State Senator Juan Hinojosa which feature characters speaking in cartoonish Mexican-accented English.

This is such a typical back-handed racist thing. It's not necessarily a partisan issue, but one where the amazing enticement of greed brings the racism right out into the open. The battle over a Republican governor's efforts to balance Alabama's badly biased against the poor tax system has drawn a similar ad out of the woodwork. You've got to scroll down pretty far to find this paragraph:

Riley's opponents also have targeted black voters, airing a radio ad on stations with mostly black audiences featuring a man with poor diction warning, "Our property taxes could go up as much as fo' hundred percent," and blaming "Montgomery insiders who have been ignorin' us for years." The ad was paid for by a political action committee whose top contributors are the state's largest bank, a leading insurance company, two timber and paper companies and county farmers federations -- all of which supported Riley last November...

I'm glad that America is so race-blind.