Obama supporters for change. . . Of a Japanese TVCM
06/29/2008 @ 6:00 pm
News about the following TV commercial for a company named EMOBILE has gotten Obama supporters the world over up in arms.
The voice over has the monkey giving in a speech in which he promises that EMOBILE is committed to change. Obama supporters claim that the monkey is a racist reference to Barack Obama.
Another example of how naive the Obama camp is. They do not take into consideration how the monkey is revered in Asian culture. The Obama camp is clearly clueless when it comes to understanding other cultures outside of their own.
June 29th, 2008 at 8:33 pmIt is unfortunate that this strain of American-style racial identity politics has emerged in Japan in connection with such an innocuous commercial. (This is not to suggest that real examples of racism - like with respect to that magazine that was being sold awhile back in convenience stores - should not be addressed.)
Some commentator elsewhere also made a relevant point: Imagine how awful the monkey in the commercial feels now about being compared to Obama. Poor fellow. (Half kidding…)
June 29th, 2008 at 11:00 pmI’d have to say that monkeys in Japan are like cows in the U.S. If it were a Japanese commedian in blackface, that’d be bad, but this is just a monkey.
June 29th, 2008 at 11:06 pmAlso, I think a monkey face routine is commonly done on politicians in the U.S. Here’s one on Bush. I remember something similar being done to Clinton.
Why didn’t anyone cry racism then?
June 29th, 2008 at 11:17 pm“Why didn’t anyone cry racism then?”
Because for many Democrats Obama is the second-coming, and anything that could possibly be negative that might refer to him is heresy.
Basically such Democrats are forming a cult around Obama and it’s causing them to lose their common-sense. That or they’re racists themselves because they associate the concept of racism with the skin-colour of the “victim”.
And for the benefit of any Democrats out there - Obama isn’t the first politician to run on a platform of change.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:20 amThe original article refered to Obama supporters, not the Obama “camp”. I hardly think that Barack is upset or losing any sleep from this commercial. Every candidate is going to have supporters that are overly sensitive. Hilary’s supporters cried about her poor treatment by the American press and I think they were seeing something that wasn’t there.
If there was a commercial like this with a skeleton talking instead of a monkey, don’t you think that some of McCain’s supporters would be upset?
July 1st, 2008 at 6:36 am