Uppity: adjective, informal—snobbish, arrogant or presumptuous

Collins Essential English Dictionary, 2nd Edition

Aug. 5, 2008--"Uppity" used to be the preferred term for Negroes who didn't know their place. There was a time when it was regularly applied to any number of black men and women who strived to be more than day laborers, nannies or sharecroppers.

The GOP, ever aware of the connotative power of words, has steered clear of the direct usage of that loaded term. When they speak of Barack Obama—a man in pursuit of the most lofty of prizes—they simply use the words that define the term. Snobbish. Arrogant. Presumptuous.

Obama's opponent, sensing an opening, launched a campaign ad last week, in which the underlying theme, "look at the uppity black man," will no doubt resonate with a certain segment of the audience. McCain's ad interspersed photos of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton—two icons of vapidity—with a smug-looking Obama surrounded by throngs of adoring white people (liberal Europeans).

Conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer summed up the sentiment that provided the basis for the McCain ad in a July 18 piece titled "The Audacity of Vanity," in which he criticized Obama for speaking at the Bradenburg Gate and ridiculed him as "a man of profoundly limited achievement." He went on to suggest: "For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is? We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when 'our planet began to heal.' As I recall—I'm no expert on this—Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas."

Suddenly, after eight years of George W. Bush, humility and achievement matter. Snobbish. Arrogant. Presumptuous.

For now, the greater public doesn't appear to be buying it. In the latest national CNN poll, about the same percentage—one third—of respondents believed both Obama and McCain were arrogant.

The fact that the mainstream media has embraced the uppity-Obama storyline is further evidence of the right's ability to advance whatever preposterous storyline it chooses, despite its persistent whining about the liberal media.

Republicans have long been able to win races by doing a better job of negatively defining their opponents with coordinated media attacks. What the right does particularly well is not just framing the arguments but coordinating the response to the fallout.

When Obama suggested that McCain was attempting to make him seem different and scary, McCain and his supporters wailed that Obama was "playing the race card."

That term, of course, has become the de facto line of defense for whites who want to immediately end any uncomfortable conversations about race. "Are you calling me a racist? You're calling me a racist!"

Interestingly, calling someone a racist has become a worse offense than actually being one. And thus the media will allow McCain and his defenders to have it both ways—play to racial sensitivities and express mock horror than anyone would have the audacity to question their motives.

But, just so we're clear, this is not an argument that McCain is a racist. One of the most fascinating political speeches I personally witnessed came April 18, 2000, when McCain returned to South Carolina to apologize for his failure to denounce the Confederate flag during his primary battle with George W. Bush months earlier.

Standing before the conservative South Carolina Policy Council think tank, McCain said, "I should have done this earlier when an honest answer could have affected me personally. I did not do so for one reason alone. I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles. I broke my promise to always tell the truth."