Last week, President Barack Obama spoke directly to the American people about his health-care plan. Despite the fact that his foes had been literally screaming at the top of their lungs to drown him out for the entire second half of the summer — and even during the speech itself — voters heard him, and now a majority of them approve of his handling of the issue.
During the last moments of the semifinals of the U.S. Open on Saturday night, Serena Williams was called on a questionable foot foul, which sent the famously testy player into a tailspin. She appeared to spew a stream of profanity and possibly even threaten the line judge, which cost her a penalty point and thus the match.
Conservative Internet aggregator Matt Drudge, whose bludgeoning of the truth is almost brilliant in its simplicity, saw an opportunity here. You take one strong, angry black person (Serena Williams), find the scariest picture you can find of her. Then, you run a similarly aggressive old wire photo of the black person you’re actually afraid of, and run it alongside. To make it even more clear, Drudge took the threatening quote from Serena Williams and paired it with an innocuous quote from Barack Obama which isn’t even in the article that it links to. To put a period on the whole thing, Drudge used only the ominous words “Scare Tactics … ” to link to another article about the president and health care.
What’s funniest about this is that the linked “Scare” article is actually a piece in which Obama warns voters against the scare tactics of his conservative critics. You know, tactics like playing on the fears of white conservatives about scary, angry black people who dare to talk back.
It’s just all so obvious, even for Drudge. We can’t wait until he finds a way to tie in a picture of an addled Kanye West at the Video Music Awards stealing the microphone away from the innocent, delicate, lily-white Taylor Swift.
Related: Swift! And hilarious. Kanye West interrupts Obama.
