On the October 26 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country, MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan argued "I don't take" a Republican National Committee (RNC) ad against Tennessee Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr. "as racist at all," because "Harold Ford is a guy that likes Playboy bunnies. Almost all of them are white." As Media Matters for America has noted, the ad, which was released October 20, features a scantily clad white woman posing as someone who "met" Ford "at the Playboy party" who, looks into the camera, purporting to address Ford, an African-American, asking him to "call" her. As the Los Angeles Times noted, "Critics said the ad ... plays on fears of interracial relationships to scare some white voters in rural Tennessee." Former Republican senator and Secretary of Defense William Cohen, on the October 23 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, said the ad made "a very serious appeal to a racist sentiment," and NAACP Washington Bureau chairman Hilary O. Shelton also has denounced the advertisement.
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