NASHVILLE, TN — A recently-discontinued political ad run by the Republican National Committee (RNC) references the fact that Democratic candidate for the Senate Harold Ford attended a Super Bowl party thrown by Playboy in early 2005. In so doing, the ad features a white actress talking about meeting Ford at the party and depicts the young model imploring Ford to “call me.”Is the ad simply “tacky,” as Ford’s opponent said or was it subtly “racist,” as many Democrats have claimed?

As the model in the ad is white and Mr. Ford is black, representatives of Ford’s campaign and of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have suggested that the ad is “racist,” and intended to inflame Tennessee voters by suggesting an interracial relationship between Ford and a white model.

Ford’s opponent, Bob Corker, described the ad as “tacky,” and called for its removal, but has thus far dodged questions when asked if he thought the ad was, in fact, racist.

RNC representatives have defended the ad, saying that it raises a legitimate point about Ford, given his public statements regarding his Christian faith and his “values-based” agenda.

In its rush to explore the race angle, the national media appears to have missed the most obvious implication of the ad: there is something inherently “wrong” about attending a Playboy party.

Harold Ford, on the other hand, has not missed that implication, at all.

Appearing on the Situation Room on CNN, Ford decried the ad as a “smut peddling” ad, repeatedly expressing his dismay to Wolf Blitzer that the Republican Party would try to smear him with such “smut” and “filth.”

Then, appearing on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Ford delivered a classic bit of political misdirection by noting that he had “never been to the Playboy mansion.”

Nobody ever said that Ford had been to the Playboy Mansion, of course; Ford’s comment is just one of those technically-true-but-ultimately-irrelevant sorts of things that our elected officials are fond of saying, especially when they cannot simply deny something outright.

Whatever one thinks of the ad, two things are clear; 1) the creators of the ad felt that pointing out that Ford attended the “sexy” party would damage him politically; and 2), Ford must have seen some potential for damage there as well, because he has gone out of his way to distance himself from the party and to suggest that the claim itself is not true, while not directly denying attending the party.

On the other side of the coin, while the RNC is enthusiastically noting every perceived excess of Ford’s on the website FancyFord.com, the RNC may not be as eager to address its own connections to adult industry, minimal though they are.

For one on-point example, Federal Election Commission records show that Playboy CEO Christie Hefner is a donor to the RNC, having given the RNC $500 back in January of 2001.

Hefner is a bipartisan donor, though; since making her contribution to the RNC, Hefner has donated significantly more money to the DNC, as well as a $1,000 contribution made directly to Ford’s campaign, according to AccuracyInMedia.com.

So why raise the Playboy issue if Playboy supports both parties and both parties seem no less willing to take Playboy’s money than any other campaign donor’s cash?

The ad has nothing to do with Coker being “anti-porn” himself or the RNC itself being truly anti-porn; the ad is simply part of a calculation that many of Tennessee’s voters, particularly in rural areas of the state, cannot abide by a senator who hobnobs with Playboy Bunnies – even fleetingly.

The “Call Me” ad has now been pulled from the air, a fact that the RNC says has nothing to do with the controversy or criticism, claiming that the ad had simply “run its course.” Besides, the RNC has a new ad now – and a new damning, adult industry-related claim to go with it.

In a new ad spot called “Shaky,” the RNC claims that Ford “took cash from Hollywood’s top X-rated porn moguls” and “wants to give the abortion pill to our schoolchildren.”

Are the new ad’s claims true?

It doesn’t matter.

The strategy is the same, whether the specific claim is true or untrue; associate your opponent with adult entertainment business, or any aspect of less accepted forms of sexuality, particularly when running in an area perceived to be “socially conservative,” and let traditional stigmas do the rest.

Will it work in Tennessee? Time will tell, in a little under two weeks.