Marsha Blackburn’s latest campaign ad has it all: stilted acting, unnatural movement and a ton of racist bullshit. In the ad, the Republican U.S. senator and leading gubernatorial candidate sits in a restaurant near a basket of fortune cookies and says she’ll protect Tennessee land from China and hunt down communists. She scowls at a camera and crumbles one cookie at a time (an inefficient way to destroy the famously brittle treat). The crushed fortune cookies for some reason reveal pro-Blackburn messaging, so it’s also hard to tell whose side the cookies are on.
But Blackburn, like all racists, doesn’t operate on logical consistency. She wants voters to be afraid of China and to believe the communists are coming for Tennessee land — and will reinforce it all with stereotypical imagery. The ad ends on a gong (groan) and shot of a waving lucky cat statue.
Never mind that the fortune cookie was likely created in the U.S. by Japanese immigrants; or that the restaurant she’s in clearly was redecorated for the ad. (Internet sleuths believe the commercial was shot in Nashville's Elliston Place Soda Shop; the Scene called the restaurant multiple times but no one picked up, and an attempt to reach out via Instagram went unanswered. The business has yet to respond to comments on any of their social media pages asking about the Blackburn ad.) There aren’t any details about loopholes she plans to close, or any evidence about an upcoming land-grab by China.
Trump-loving John Rose and liberal Jerri Green share one thing: wanting to beat Marsha Blackburn
But the goal of the ad isn’t policy — the goal is to blast voters with racist imagery and hope it entertains the basest of her supporters.
This type of Sinophobia has been Blackburn’s shtick for a long time. Just reviewing my inbox, there are press releases dating back to 2021 whinging about China — like “What Deal Did the NBA Cut with Communist China?” In 2020, when anti-Chinese racism was heightened during the pandemic, Blackburn came under fire for tweeting: “China has a 5,000 year history of cheating and stealing.” In 2024, she smashed plates to show she was serious about “breaking China” — which was criticized by members of Tennessee’s Asian communities. Perhaps Blackburn could perform prop comedy for Proud Boys instead of sitting in the U.S. Senate.
U.S. Rep. John Rose, Blackburn's long-shot challenger in the Republican primary, is echoing her rhetoric with his own Red Scare ads about land-buying. As the Nashville Banner fact-checked, China owns less than 1 percent of U.S. farmland. Knoxville TV news station WBIR confronted Blackburn about the claim, and she insisted that farmers have told her they’re worried about it. And while there is a Chinese-owned coal mine in East Tennessee, Blackburn has said little on the operation. State Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) even suggests Blackburn “shielded” the 2013 purchase by fighting against EPA regulations.
There’s a consensus that the governor's race is Blackburn’s to lose, and she certainly seems to think she doesn’t need to campaign in person to win the race. A boatload of money from a TikTok investor buoyed her war chest, and heightened the irony of all this. The racist Red Scare ad feels unnecessary from the frontrunner. But there’s little reason to expect better from a senator who prefers to revel in hate rather than talk to her own constituents, which includes not only Tennesseans who have deep roots in the state, but those whose families arrived here from across the country and even the globe.
