GOP Candidate: Racial Profiling Is OK

Did you know that white people are never terrorists? It's totally true. So why do they have to get screened at the airport? That's the argument Dan Fanelli, who's trying to unseat Rep. Alan Grayson in Florida, makes in this new ad. “Does this look like a terrorist,” he asks, gesturing to a white guy in business casual attire, “Or this?” With that, a swarthy man in a black T-shirt walks on screen, as ominous James Bond-esque music blares.

Fanelli doesn't really mean to imply that dark-skinned people are more likely to wage jihad, he tells Greg Sargent of the Washington Post . He just thinks people from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other places not mentioned in the ad, should receive more scrutiny. “If the people that were doing this kind of thing looked like me … I would want to be examined more closely,” he said, adding that the “terrorist” in the ad agreed with him. (More racial profiling stories.)