In the spot, which ran over the weekend on a Fox affiliate in central Florida, Fanelli stands between a middle-aged white man and a younger, swarthy fellow. "Does this look like a terrorist?" he asks, gesturing towards the white. Then, pointing to the darker dude, he adds: "Or this?"Yep, just like as an African-American, I would want all African-Americans pulled over and always searched at airports and at the workplace and at schools and government buildings constantly including myself so that I feel safe. After all, one of us might be a criminal. How wonderful for Fanelli to speak for the entire swarthy community!
"It's time to stop this political correctness in the invasion of our privacy," Fanelli says, an apparent call for racial profiling in the searching of those deemed to be potential terrorists.
In an interview, I asked Fanelli if the message of the spot was that darker people are more likely to be terrorists. He said it wasn't, claiming that the ad's point was that people from countries like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakisan and Syria "require a higher level of security."
"You can be light and from those countries," he said, adding that the actor who played the terrorist in the commercial agreed with him.
Fanelli, who said he had piloted a flight bound for Washington on September 11th, when the city was attacked, added that Middle Easterners should want profiling for their own safety.
I'm sure the additional hours that would add to my day of being humiliated and constantly assumed to be a lawbreaker because of my appearance is a small cost to pay for Fanelli feeling safe.
It's lke the GOP is trying to lose to Grayson or something.
The guy on the left looks more like Tim McVeigh, Ted Kacinski, Eric Alan Rudolph, a member of the KKK, and any number of known terrorists.
ReplyDeleteThis commercial confuses me.