Seriously? Seriously?

I am not a big fan of the myopic politicos that run around college campuses. Usually though, I expect them to be students, not professors.

I am not a big fan of Hillary's fear-mongering Red Phone ad either. But this editorial, in the New York Times no less, is probably the most ill-intentioned, poorly researched, patently ridiculous piece I've read in a long time. (As someone who reads college newspapers, I already set my bar fairly low.) Patterson's editorial criticizes the Red Phone, out of all things wrong with it, as racist. His logic yields such gems as:

when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan

Oh boy, from Clinton to the KKK in less than one sentence. Major props. Professor Patterson, do you really believe what you're saying in this editorial? If so, I think "spending [your] life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery" has warped your sensibilities quite a bit. Leaving the ivory tower for some fresh air may help.