Obama Waffles Denounced but Conference Content Ignored

The boxes of Obama Waffles for sale at the 2008 Values Voter Summit were certainly racist and offensive, and conference organizers did the right thing by shutting down the sales booth in their exhibit hall. It was alternative journalists, including those working for Political Research Associates and People for the American Way, that first alerted the mainstream media to the offensive caricatures on the boxes with online posts from the conference.

While reviewing the caricatures, this post will also analyze the "humorous" text on the waffle box, and compare it to the content of conference speakers at the Values Voter Summit. Was the Obama Waffle box an anomoly in this Christian Right event?



The booth was open for business around noon on Saturday when the story broke. Boxes of Obama Waffles for selling for $10, and business was brisk.



Here are photos of two of the advertising panels at the booth. It was hard not to see the stereotyping.:





Is there a White racist subtext woven into the history of the Christian Right? While many Christian Right leaders have made efforts to involve Black pastors and stressed racial reconcilliation, there is little talk of racial justice that would require institutional changes in America. The scholar of religion Randall Balmer revealed in his recent book that the energy to build the Christian Right in the late 1970s, often attributed to anti-abortion sentiments, was actually triggered by fears that segregated White Christian private schools would have their tax exempt status revoked by Jimmy Carter's Internal Revenue Service. Read more here

Other racist stereotypes about Blacks were featured on the Obama Waffles box:

Rev. Jeremiah Wright made an appearance on the side:



The caricature of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright includes “Popular Sayings: ‘God***America’ and “Made in the US of KKA”

There is a side panel recipe for “Barry’s Bling Bling Waffle Ring” that features a “Recipe Rap” that begins with “Yo, B-rock here droppin’ waffle knowledge” with the rest of the ditty written in such an irritating White caricature of Black rap that even a White 1920s vaudeville blackface crooner would be embarrassed.

The Obama Waffles box also includes stereotypes (reflecting fears) about Mexicans...



Under the caricature of Obama as a Mexican, there is a recipe card for “Open Border Fiesta Waffles.” The recipe card depicts a perforated border between the U.S.A. and Mexico. The text under this says the “greatest danger of all is to allow walls to divide us.” At the Values Voter Summit there was a breakout session on “The Double Threat To Our National Security: Illegal Immigration,” featuring Colin Hanna, president of Let Freedom Ring, a group calling for a high security border fence between the U.S. and Mexico. The workshop pulsated with fears that immigration by Mexicans was bringing in waves of crime and disease—and perhaps a few terrorists.

The recipe card on the Obama Waffles box including ingredients such as goats milk and jalepeno peppers, and advises as a “Tip: While waiting for these zesty treats to invade your home, why not learn a foreign language.” The “Recommended Serving” is “4 or more illegal aliens.”

Conference lead-off speaker Lou Dobbs, a vociferous anti-immigrant polemicist, posed for a picture at the booth while holding a box of Obama Waffles. He is reported to have said "My wife will love this," or something similar. Hard to confirm since the original photo and quote have vanished from the Internet.

There also were stereotypes (reflecting fears) about Muslims...

The box top features Obama with stereotypic Muslim headgear and the admonition: “Point box toward Mecca for tastier waffles.”



At the Values Voter Summit there was a breakout session on “The Double Threat To Our National Security: Radical Islam,” featuring Frank Gaffney, President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy. According to Right Web:

Gaffney says that today's main threat to peace and security is "Islamofascism," which is a terms he says "makes clear that the war is about much more than Iraq and Afghanistan" and includes those countries—namely, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, North Korea, China, Cuba, Venezuela, and South Africa—which provide direct or indirect support for the Islamofascists "in their death struggle with us" (Jim Lobe, "Neo-Con Superhawk Earns His Wings on Port Flap," February 26, 2006). Read more here

Gaffney’s presentation at the Values Voter Summit echoed these xenophobic assertions.

The environment?

The side panel recipe for "Barack’s Belgium Beauties" suggests that “Environmentally conscious consumers should pay two ozone-offset carbon credits to Al Gore’s GreenWorld Fund. On the bottom of the box, is a “Clip&Save” coupon for “8 Al Gore Green Perks.”



At the Values Voter Summit, there were suggestions that global warming was an over-rated concern, if not a liberal hoax.

Throughout the conference, speakers brought up criticisms of Barack Obama similar or even identical to the text on the Obama Waffles box, ridiculing Obama for talking about being a "citizen of the world," or mispeaking about "57 states." Stopping abortion was a central issue at the conference, and the box text, written as if by Barack Obama, reads "When Michelle and I mix up a batch for our family, we only use eggs gently coaxed from their mothers to assure the hen her freedom of choice."

Both John Kerry and Michelle Obama had a role to play

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The mainstream media missed the real story of the Obama Waffles...that the text on the box was offensive, but so was the content of the Values Voters Summit itself.


-Chip Berlet

One Liners

Kate O’Beirne:
Selection of Sarah Palin sounded the death knell of modern American feminism.



Ramesh Ponnuru:
Liberal media elites don’t know they’re biased because fish don’t know they’re wet.

Phyllis Schlafly Touts Republican Platform

Phyllis Schlafly outlined the Republican Platform to the thousands of attendees, who applauded her claim that this was the most conservative pro-life and platform ever.

Lou Dobbs Opens Values Voters Summit

Newscaster Lou Dobbs, known for his fiery anti-immigrant stance, primarily presented a calm and placid speech to the 2008 Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC this morning. Avoiding immigration, Dobbs targeted "orthodoxy" in the "liberal media," stating that the exclusion of the views of people of faith in the media was "outright censorship."

Dobbs also was critical of Hollywood stars who were attacking Repulican VP candidate Sarah Palin.

Report on the Christian Right and the 2006 Elections

Running Against Sodom and Osama:
The Christian Right, Values Voters, and the Culture Wars in 2006
by Chip Berlet and Pam Chamberlain
October, 2006

This will put the upcoming Values Voters conference in perspective

Slideshow from last year

A taste of the visual scene from Values Voters 2007

Values Voters Summit 2008

It's time for the 2008 Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC. This is the premiere Christian Right organizing event billed as educational but essentially serving as a way to mobilize voters.

PRA will be there and filing reports here on this blogsite. Stay tuned.

Details regarding the Values Voters Summit, September 12-14, 2008, are available here

Quotes of Note from the REAL Women's Voices Conference

Authentic women's leadership is about inclusion and love (which is) especially important given Hilary's model of leadership. Marjorie Dannenfelser, President, Susan B. Anthony List.

I love Tammy Wynett. I love standing behind the men who are defending life. At Susan B. Anthony we advocate a strong offense and a strong defense. We have to raise women up and we have to defend the men who are threatened by women moving into the arena of politics. Marjorie Dannenfelser, President, Susan B. Anthony List.

The truth is that women have always been against abortion. Wanda Franz, President, National Right to Life Committee. [One wonders, then, who it is who has been having them -- KHR]

The ability to have an abortion goes against everything that is natural in our natures as women. Wanda Franz, President, National Right to Life Committee.

The explosion of sonograms has allowed medicine and science to pair up with morality and religion. Kellyanne Conway


Reflections and analysis when I return from the road. In the meantime, enjoy the snippets.


The Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale,
Executive Director

Sinful, Secular, Subversive, Satanists

As a progressive Christian it was disheartening to hear from a variety of conference speakers that people like me are not real Christians. I am apparently part of a vast liberal conspiracy that promotes Sin, Secularism, Subversion, and Satan. Who knew?

Some speakers made this view quite clear, while others used more subtle language. As noted in an earlier post, Starr Parker slipped in a cite to the work of Christian Reconstructionist R.J. Rushdoony, who wants to impose the laws of Leviticus, which include the death penalty for homosexuals, adulterers, and recalcitrant children.

And from what I heard, as a person who opposes the war in Iraq, I am apparently not a real Christian, nor a real American---and if I caught the drift…I'm not even a real man. Therefore (goes the subtext and full text) I must hate America and love Islamic terrorism.

The sum total of this set of assumptions is that I am consciously or unconsciously working on behalf of Satan and the Whore of Babylon, who is obviously Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.

And it is still more than a year to Election Day.

--Chip Berlet

Romney’s Online Supporters Offset Huckabee’s Onsite Landslide

A hush fell over the room as FRC President Tony Perkins announced that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney had won the 2008 Values Voters Presidential Straw Poll, edging out former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee by a mere 30 votes. Libertarian Ron Paul came in third, followed by former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson. Silence soon gave way to grumbles. Someone at the front of the room said aloud, “Sounds rigged.”

Over the past two days, nine Republican presidential candidates have addressed the roughly 2,000 Christian Right activists assembled here in Washington, DC. Judging by audience response, Huckabee had Romney beat. Turns out, he did – at least here at the Summit.

According to full results released online by FRC Action, Huckabee won 51% of votes cast by conference attendees, compared with Romney’s distant second-place showing of just 10%. This might have been a landslide victory for Huckabee, but voting in the straw poll was open to anyone who paid $1 to join FRC Action. Many voted online. Of the 1,595 votes cast for Romney, only 99 – just over 6% – were cast at the Washington Hilton, where the Values Voters Summit is being held. Thirty-one percent of votes cast for Huckabee came from conference participants.

Discrepancies in the voting patterns of onsite and offsite voters affected the fortunes of other candidates, as well. Anti-immigrant crusader, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), came in fourth among onsite voters, but ranked eighth in the final tally. And Ron Paul, who came in third in the final numbers, ranked only ninth among voters at the Hilton.

Romney’s win has already prompted allegations that his supporters engaged in online ballot “stuffing.” It’s unclear what the fallout will be, but dissatisfaction with the voting process could damage Romney’s already tentative relationship with conservative White evangelical Protestants, many of whom are concerned about his Mormonism and his recent conversion to anti-abortion politics. One Huckabee supporter, dismayed at the poll results, said, “I’d like to know how he became governor of Massachusetts.”

– Tarso Luís Ramos & Chip Berlet

Rushdoony’s Star Turn

Christian Nationalism – the assertion that the United States was founded as a Christian nation – is openly celebrated at the Values Voters Summit. By contrast, Christian Reconstructionism – which requires the imposition of Biblical law – is generally kept under wraps or veiled in coded references at public Christian Right events. On Friday, however, conservative pundit Star Parker cited the founder of Christian Reconstructionism, R.J. Rushdoony during a tirade against moral relativism. Conservative commentators often claim that critics of the Christian Right exaggerate Rushdoony’s influence. In fact, Reconstructionism helped to spark the New Christian Right and its tendency towards Dominionism – the idea that Christians have a mandate to take control of secular society.

– Tarso Luís Ramos & Chip Berlet

Civil Rights: Whose Legacy?

It is common at Christian Right political rallies for conservative African Americans to denounce any comparison between the LGBT marriage equality struggle and the Civil Rights Movement, or even the assertion that gay people have civil rights. At the 2006 Values Voters Summit, Rev. Dwight McKissic stated, “To equate civil rights with gay rights is to compare my skin with their sin.” Not to be outdone, in her remarks on Friday Star Parker opined, “Affirmative action is developing into nothing other than promotion of sodomy.”

It is also common, however, for the Christian Right – whose base is overwhelmingly comprised of conservative White evangelical Protestants – to wrap itself in the legacy of the African American freedom struggle. On Friday, Sam Brownback lauded 19th Century British abolitionist William Wilburforce for his campaigns to end the African slave trade and to improve British “manners.” He compared these efforts to the Christian Right’s quest to end abortion and renew American culture. But it was the day’s closing speaker, American Values president Gary Bauer, who made his movement’s claim on the Black freedom struggle explicit.

Bauer railed against the Supreme Court’s infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, in which the court ruled that no slave was a U.S. citizen and, therefore, the enslaved Mr. Scot had no standing to sue for his freedom. Bauer said the decision, “released a poison that is still with our society today,” and argued that 1973’s Roe v. Wade was based on an identical denial of the voice of the very “people” with the most at stake in the decision – the unborn.

Bauer and other speakers’ frequent references to Republicans as “the Party of Lincoln” obscure the historic opposition of most conservative evangelicals to the Civil Rights Movement and integration of all-White Christian academies, as well as their continuing hostility to affirmative action and other public policy initiatives aimed at counteracting the effects of historic and ongoing structural racism.

– Tarso Luís Ramos



Gary Bauer

Moynihan’s Star Power

Adding an air of authenticity to the Moynihan revival, Star Parker presented herself as a kind of living demonstration of social conservatives’ every stereotype of poor African American women. Striding onstage to the strains of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman,” Parker laid bare her personal history as a sexually promiscuous, unwed, drug-using, criminal youth. Parker’s self-portrait depicted something presumably even more repugnant to this audience than the single mothers of Moynihan’s disdain: a mother who murdered several of her unborn children. But Parker’s story is one of redemption from what she called the “black hole” created for herself and countless other African Americans by libertine values and Liberal public policies.

From these depths of poverty and despair Parker offered a single avenue for her own and others’ salvation: spiritual awakening. Presenting government as a cause of poverty, but never as an instrument for its elimination, Parker relieved the assembled thousands of overwhelmingly White social conservatives from any responsibility to act – aside from expanding the culture wars, which she heartily encouraged.

– Tarso Luís Ramos



Star Parker


Photos copyright 2007, the Public Eye