The Bradley Effect & Other Fears to Scare You at Night

The Bradley Effect is a term coined by scholar Charles Henry in his effort to explain why LA Mayor Tom Bradley was polling so well during the 1982 California gubernatorial race yet lost the actual election. Bradley, Henry concluded, was getting misleading information from the polls because he was black and because some white voters were really uncomfortable with two things: 1) voting for a black guy and 2) admitting they were uncomfortable with voting for a black guy.

So be encouraged by the latest polls, but don't let them make you complacent.

If you're not doing so already, an activity with a relatively high utility to awkwardness ratio is calling voters in swing states. You can sign up at My Barack Obama (worst political website nickname winner for 2008: myBO.com), which has a good system and relatively painless script for calling voters. You can do it in small chunks of spare time if necessary. I've been calling Ohio, and I don't think I've convinced anybody to vote for McCain.

If you actually live in a swing state, you have more choices. Knocking on doors is a big one. Helping the local Democrats organize voter turnout is another. Just do something practical.

Let's not give them any reason to rename it the Obama Effect.

Lame Bedfellows

So the New Yorker's latest issue has a caricature of Michelle & Barack Obama on its cover. She looks like a cross between Sister Souljah and Angela Davis, and he looks like Osama bin Laden. There's an American flag burning in the background.

Obviously--obviously!--this is a satire of all the untrue rumors about Obama that range from the (should-be) benign (Obama = Muslim) to the clearly insane (Obama = al Qaeda sleeper). It's well done and kinda funny.

Naturally, nobody involved in the major parties' campaigns admits to having a sense of humor about it.



An Obama spokesman told reporters, "The New Yorker may think... that their cover is a satirical lampoon... But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree." John McCain weighed in on the issue himself, calling it "totally inappropriate" and adding, "I understand if Senator Obama and his supporters would find it offensive." Heck, even Michael Bloomberg said, "We all have to watch very carefully what we say — our attempts at humor, our attempts at informing people — because some of what we say can be misinterpreted and do real damage."

Isn't it bad enough that during a presidential election our candidates' debates involve no real debate and that their policy positions have about as much detail as a 4-dpi image? Are we supposed to sacrifice our senses of humor too?

Well, as far some are concerned, yes. But the really annoying thing is that I'm convinced that neither McCain nor Obama is truly offended by these cartoons. There's no way that anybody who has even the vaguest idea what the New Yorker is would legitimately believe that the cartoonist was being serious. And it's a pretty funny drawing. I'm almost positive that both candidates responded as they did solely in order to put position themselves as centrists.

By claiming to be offended, Obama gets to take a swing at a lefty publication and remind people that, indeed, he isn't a terrorist and that his wife doesn't hate whitey. And John McCain gets to present himself as a racially sensitive kinda Republican who's wiling to agree with his opponent on matters of principle when their principles overlap.

Except here the principle they share is "I really want to get elected." And, of course, to bore us silly in the process. Only it's the kind of silly that we're not allowed to laugh at, apparently.