Yes, this isn’t racism. If someone sees racism, they are reading into things that aren’t there. It’s still a bad choice as an ad because it is something that people are likely to misinterpret as being racist.

What I think is interesting is this: remember when someone made that collage of Bush pictures next to monkey pictures where they are making the same face? Try to do the exact same thing with Obama and see how far it goes. It would be taken as something racist.