At the 2008 Values Voter Summit, held September 12 through 14 at the Hilton Washington in Washington, D.C., guests and speakers were able to purchase "Obama Waffles" mix in boxes that featured stereotype caricatures of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama sporting big lips and bulging eyes on the front of the box and wearing what appears to be a Muslim or Arab headdress on the top.







The 2008 Values Voter Summit is sponsored by FRCAction, the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council; in fact, Web browsers trying to access the 2008 Values Voter Summit domain, valuesvotersummit.org, will be redirected to a site within frcaction.org, the Website complex of the lobbying wing of the Family Research Council, which has the domain frc.org.

Depicting Obama on the box front in a caricature strikingly similar to the old Aunt Jemima stereotype of African-Americans shown at right, the Obama Waffles are the brainchild of Bob DeMoss and Mark Whitlock, both of Franklin, Tennessee. Whitlock's links to Focus on the Family are described in the sidebar of his blog, along with a narrative of his other links to commercial Christianity. Bob DeMoss is featured at the Website of Nelson Ministry Services, where he is claimed to have been "...a youth culture specialist for Focus on the Family for seven years" and is described as "...one of America's leading authorities on pop culture."

Although Republican presidential candidate John McCain opted not to attend the 2008 Values Voter Summit, his picture and name are displayed on the main page of the conference Website, as seen in the screen capture below.



The "Confirmed Speakers" Web page features a veritable Who's Who of extremist conservatives and assorted Right-wing luminaries, including Newt Gingrich, Gary Bauer, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Bill Bennett, Ken Blackwell, Chuck Colson, Tom DeLay, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved, Gov. Mitt Romney, Phyllis Schlafly, and many others. At the bottom of that page, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Sarah Palin are shown as "Invited Speakers."

Media inquiries about the racist implications of the imagery on the boxes of Obama Waffles seem to have been behind Summit organizers' decision to finally halt sales of the product at the convention, but Whitlock and DeMoss are still selling the item via the Website of their company, West Wing Waffles, LLC. At the site, they claim that the Obama Waffles mix is "selling... like hot cakes!"

Despite ending sales of the Obama Waffles at the 2008 Values Voter Conference, the Family Research Council has not publicly and categorically apologized for having the West Wing Waffles booth open at the conference from Thursday until sometime on Saturday, nor have Whitlock and DeMoss been compelled to remove from their personal online profiles their past and current relations with Focus on the Family, which was once the parent organization of the Family Research Council.

Of course, it is to be hoped that the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family will move in a timely manner to resolutely distance the two Christian organizations from West Wing Waffles, LLC, and its owners. Although that hope will likely not be fulfilled, the good news is that the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family will, by their lack of clear, public repudiation of racist, anti-Obama imagery, unambiguously establish where two major voices of religious extremism stand on bigotry as a Christian family value.


The Dark Wraith encourages the Right-wing of the Republican Party to be sure it has sufficient voter support to carry a national election on a platform of intolerance tethered to Dominionist apostasy.