TN-09: Ooops, One More Dive Into the Dumpster

Yesterday I discussed the ad from Nikki Tinker, the challenger in the TN-09 primary on Thursday, which made a visual linkage between Steve Cohen and a KKK rally. I assumed this was the Tinker campaign’s closing argument, ending the campaign on the most distasteful note possible.

Well, I was wrong. They’ve released another ad. In a race that’s been about gender and race, they’re back where they started: religion.

CHILD’S VOICE: “Now I lay me down to sleep…” ANNCR: “Who is the real Steve Cohen anyway?” CHILD’S VOICE: “I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” ANNCR: “While he’s in our churches, clapping his hands and tapping his feet…” CHILD’S VOICE: “If I should die before I wake…” ANNCR: “He is the only senator who thought our kids shouldn’t be allowed to pray in school.” CHILD’S VOICE: I pray the Lord my soul to take. ANNCR: “Congressman, sometimes apologies just aren’t enough.” TINKER: “I’m Nikki Tinker, and I approve this message.”

Note the narrator’s remarkably ham-fisted emphasis on “our” churches. (Cohen is Jewish.) Nice anti-Semitic dog-whistle… although it seems the Tinker campaign accidentally grabbed the bullhorn instead of the dog-whistle on the way out the door.

30 thoughts on “TN-09: Ooops, One More Dive Into the Dumpster”

  1. is anybody else picking up on her horrendous racist//anti-semetic hate spewing?  I hope she is never elected to public office in her life, let alone Congress.

  2. How can they morally and, in the case of Maxine Waters, financially support someone like this? Identity politics is old as time itself, but there was to be a line.

  4. I’m Glenn Magus Harvey, and I DISAPPROVE of your message.

    You take back that trash rhetoric NOW, or I threaten to anti-endorse you in all of your future political aspirations.

    And I though Republicans were the only bigots going around…how ironic this is coming from a female minority candidate.

  8. that Republicans can try and use to turn Jewish voters away from Obama. But somehow I don’t think Tinker worried about anyone but herself.

  10. I really understand how Tinker probably feels that it is kind crap having a 60% black district and it being represented by someone who is white.  As a minority (gay totally counts), I can see how she’d be annoyed by this (once the white man gives you something, they come and take it away type of feelings I’m sure) but you dont run a campaign on racism and anti-semitism.  Absolutely disgusting.

    Furthermore, I think him trying to join the CBC is indicative of him being a huge supporter and a great ally to the black community of Memphis.  He is a solid progressive voting how they want and if he makes it through this primary, the district should just stop bothering him and realize, they have a white guy as their Congressman who is doing a damn good job.

  12. Politico

    The freshman lawmaker, facing a racially tinged primary battle Thursday, was hit earlier today by an ad that questions his religious convictions. And Wednesday afternoon, he literally hit an Armenian-American photographer who had been trailing him.

    In a must-see video provided by WHBQ-TV, Cohen is seen getting up and confronting the cameraman and shoving him out of his house.

    “Nikki Tinker is supported by the Armenians, and these are her Armenian photographers who have been harassing me last night and continue to harrass me,” Cohen told the group of reporters before the confrontation. “And they should be out of here. They have gotten in my face, and I don’t want these people in my house.”

  13. Tell Emily’s List that being pro-choice doesn’t excuse anti-Semitismm — or any other anti-. Emily’s List knew BEFORE it endorsed Tinker what was going on and moneyu from Emily’s List helped to fund this garbage. Log onto http://www.emilyslist.org/ an e-mail your disgust.

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