Is the term racist or misunderstood?Fox News isn’t the only media outlet hurling racial stuff at Sen. Barack Obama these days. Check out what the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung published about the Democratic nominee: a photo of the White House under the headline “Uncle Barack’s Cabin.” The headline is a play on the 1852 book by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which talked about the brutality of slavery. It also stereotyped Blacks and provided the source of “Uncle Tom” as the term for an African-American who is ashamed of his race. Surprisingly, the Berlin-based daily, founded 20 years ago, is best known for its unwillingness to offend. But, the day after Fox News ran a graphic of Michelle Obama (with the racially offensive caption, “Outraged Liberals: Stop picking on Obama’s baby mama,” the left-leaning Die Tageszeitung, called Taz for short, had German readers scratching their heads. Gary Smith, who heads the private American Academy in Berlin , told SPIEGEL ONLINE Thursday that the cover left him “speechless.” He said, “Uncle Tom’ is a racial slur, and the Taz editors clearly sacrificed substance and principle for an unreflected laugh,” he said. “A journalism that prides itself on treating stereotypes with irreverence needs to think harder about its own deployment of stereotypes and racial allusions. There are countless ways to address the issue of race in this year’s election more intelligently.” But the editors of Taz defended their decision. “The headline is intended to be satirical,” deputy editor-in-chief Reiner Metzger told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a book that all Germans know and which they associate with issues of racism. The headline is supposed to make people think about these stereotypes. It works on many levels.”