And Months and Months We Have Yet to Go...

[Content Note: Racism; birtherism; Othering.]

This is a pretty cool campaign advertisement I thought you'd like to see:

Male voiceover, fast-talking, over black-and-white images of Barack Obama with random text highlighting phrases in the narration appearing onscreen, in the style of local adverts for personal injury attorneys: Who is Barack Obama? We know less about this man than any other president in American history. What's he hiding?! His autobiography is full of fictional characters, but there's a lot more than that! If you try to look into his past, you run into a brick wall. His college records at Columbia—sealed! His college records at Harvard—sealed! We don't know what his thesis papers were about, because those are sealed, too! His selective service record is sealed! His records as an attorney are sealed! He has a Connecticut social security number, and we can't get answers about that, either! And no one—I mean, no one!—has seen an actual, physical copy of Barack Obama's birth certificate!

The fact is, if we don't know who Barack Obama is, we shouldn't even have him as a candidate for president. Let's disqualify Obama before the Democratic National Convention! Call today to sign the Demand to Disqualify Obama. Call 1-800-617-7709. We need 10,000 signatures from every Congressional district to boot this guy off the ballot and have the Democrats nominate someone else! Unless he can tell us who he is, the Democrats need to put up another candidate! Call 1-800-617-7709 now to sign the Demand to Disqualify Obama! Paid for by the Conservative Majority Fund.

What a neat advert!

I think the thing I like best about it is how honest it is. No, wait—it's probably the part where they talk about how we don't know anything about sitting US President Barack Obama, who is definitely a mystery to all of us. I heard his Secret Service code name is "Unknown Quantity," because they know so little about him they couldn't think of anything else.

Anyway! This supercool campaign—which is FOR SURE not racially motivated (yes it is), and does not rely on racist tropes about people of color being inscrutable, undeserving, sneaky, Other (yes it does), and does not hold Obama to an absurd and nonsensical standard by ignoring things like how attorney records are "sealed" to protect clients (yup!)—will probably have loads of success. I mean, what could possibly stop this train of principled smartness?!

And when the Conservative Majority Fund is successful, as they will definitely be, I can't wait to see who the Democrats nominate to replace candidate President Barack Obama. I'm going to guess Hillary Clinton, who might be capable of beating Mitt Romney even harder.

[Via TDW.]