This week, so much has been said about the death of beloved NY Times columnist Molly Ivins, a conscious, confrontational and passionate voice that will be dearly missed. As a writer, who has been inspired and goaded by Ivins to always ask ‘what don’t people want to see’?, this column is devoted to her.

On January 2nd I called a close friend who is fairly astute in matters of political war-fare and said “get ready, the Barack attack is about to begin”- not that clairvoyant powers were necessarily warranted to make this observation.

Not long before that, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer issued an on-air apology to Obama on his show, ‘The Situation Room’, saying "we had a bad typographical error in one of our graphics. We were doing a piece on the hunt for Osama bin Laden … Unfortunately there was a graphic, instead of saying where is Osama, it said where is Obama. We want to apologize for that bad typo.”

Typo? Interesting. The last time I checked on the keyboard, the “b” key is four keys away from the ‘s” key and on a different row. Unfortunate? That’s one way of putting it.

It might have been easier to swallow if on January 10th, while reporting on President Bush’s new Iraq strategy, CNN hadn’t also obsessively flashed images of Barack Obama in a swimsuit and repeatedly teased viewers with the headline “Politician overexposed. A possible presidential candidate making a splash in a swimsuit”.

Are you catching this?

It wasn’t just the “play” on words that suggested foul play but the accompanying video clips of unidentified females commenting on his physique; “A little flabby, I'm sorry to say” and another was “He looks gorgeous.” Fair and balanced new reporting as always.

Cut in between these profound summations, the headline urges us to stay tuned: “Obama in a swimsuit, ahead in the NEWSROOM”. All this from the News station that lays claim to being “the most trusted name in news.”

The photo in questions was of course of Barack Obama swimming in the ocean while vacationing over the holidays with his family in Hawaii. That’s it.

Why was “the most trusted name in news” obsessed with barraging the airwaves with the half clad wetter-than-wet Obama image and soliciting critique from women as to his attractiveness? Perhaps those in charge of Tennessee Senator Bob Corker’s campaign could shed some light. Who can forget the campaign commercial plastered over the airwaves last fall wherein a scantily clad blonde white woman coyishly solicits African American Harold Ford Jr. to “call me”.

This commercial was a clear and successful attempt to delegitimize Ford, who previously admitted to attending a Super bowl party at the Playboy mansion. Sensing that Ford was closing in on his lead in the Senate race, Corker ran the ad relentlessly just weeks before the election. It worked. Corker won. Playing into subconscious fears about black male sexual deviancy was just what was needed to tip the vote in Tennessee. Too bad there are no sign-in sheets at Washington strip clubs so we can fairly assess who's obsessed with what before they obtain keys to the executive washrooms.

The black male depicted as over-sexed and without moral compass is nothing new. White men have been promoting this idea for longer than our national conscience will allow us to recall. The KKK’s very formation depended on the proliferation of this idea. Emmett Till died because of it.

Following the Obama swimsuit frenzy on January 22, "Fox and Friends" issued a correction—but not an apology--on the fictional story they aired claiming that Obama attended a radical Islam school while living as a child in Indonesia. But Fox was not the only offender in disseminating this misinformation. Fellow Democratic hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton has helped raise speculation last week by suggesting that the Illinois Democrat concealed his prior Muslim faith and education.

As it turns out, the school in question, the Basuki School in Jakarta is a "public school" with no particular religious agenda. Shame on Ms. Clinton for aiding and abetting in rumor and speculation about something as volatile as religious extremism.

In the past couple of weeks, much has been written about the attacks on Obama. Lynn Sweet, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times penned a piece called “Barack Attack Unfounded”. And several days ago, New York Times columnist Lynette Clemetson wrote a much circulated piece called “The Racial Politics of Speaking Well” wherein she recounts the minimizing of Barack Obama by fellow Democrat and presidential hopeful--or perhaps ex-hopeful--Senator Joseph Biden.

Of course Biden’s condemnation came in the form of ‘faint praise’ in that Biden credited Obama with being the first “mainstream” African American who is ‘articulate’, ‘clean’ and “nice looking”. Wow. Clean AND articulate? When was the last time you heard a politician compliment an opponent saying they were ‘clean’, as if that were an accomplishment or somehow a trait that were worthy of notice?

Of course these are code words used by whites when we mean to say “for a black man” he speaks pretty well, takes a bath or looks good in a suit—although Biden managed to resist giving a thumbs up on how the black candidate filled out his swimming trunks.

Until recently Obama defenders characterized the slights as attacks from the “right.” Thanks to Senators Biden and Clinton, we can all face reality now.

What we are witnessing has no political party affiliation and no gender. It’s not the far right, the far left or even in between. It’s about race. Plain and simple.

And as Molly Ivins would encourage us to do; let’s all face the white elephant in the room in plain and simple terms.

We are afraid of the dark. Especially when he has an education is ‘well spoken’ and looks good in a bathing suit.

BC Columnist Molly Secours is a Nashville writer/filmmaker/speaker and co host on several radio programs at 88.1 WFSK at Fisk. Her websites are mollysecours.com and myspace.com/mollysecours. Click here to contact Ms. Secours.

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