Community organizer = code

By GottaLaff

Thom Hartmann put us on alert today. He warned us that within a week, the Republicans will make the phrase "community organizer" their own, and it will be turned against the Democrats. They will use it as code for "black". And we all know that "black" = "scary". Therefore, Obama is black, and therefore, scary. Hartmann was begging everyone to let the Obama campaign know they should immediately make the association positive again, meaning "community organizer" = "good, productive, and safe".

How pathetic that this is even a conversation we have to have:

The four mocking mentions last night of Barack Obama's service as a "community organizer" have ignited a metapshereic debate about whether the term has racial connotations.

The McCain campaign says no: they insist that no one knows what a community organizer is, and whatever they think it is, it doesn't compare to being a mayor. [...]

Indeed, the Obama campaign knows that many Americans don't know what a community organizer does, and they've changed the way they refers to Obama's experience too. When he talks about community organizing now, he references his organizing work for churches. That embeds the work in a more familiar context. Inner city Catholics know what community organizers do, certainly.

So Obama is listening, apparently.

But community organizers tend to work with poorer folks, and there's some chatter among Democrats that it's a subtle way to highlight Obama's urbanity. Some Obama aides see it as a knock against the poor and their material needs.

Let's not be naive. It was an obvious slight, and it wasn't about his lack of experience.

I think it's a cultural trope, like when Rudy Giuliani (lacking, I might add, any sense of irony or awareness of his own life), referred last night to Obama's "cosmopolitan" background. It stirs up resentments. It makes elite Republicans feel comfortable with themselves. The audience repeatedly laughed; they got the joke. The question is: what was the joke?

There are no jokes, as they say. And if there are, they only succeed when both the joke teller and the audience think it's funny... the whole audience. Take it from a former stand-up comedian.

UPDATE: Community organizers are not happy.