Poll Dancing

I'd like to point out some news today that got eclipsed by a white, upper middle class, college educated male who had a problem with the IRS and flew an airplane into a building that housed the IRS and left a manifesto behind and who matches the FBI's definition of terrorism, but wasn't a terrorist, but just happens to match a CNN poll of folks who make up the Tebaggers.

Nope, I'm not going to point that out at all. I just want to point out what CNN didn't in their article about their own poll; Teabaggers are 80% white.

Color me surprised. Not.

The teabaggers' constant claims that they cross party and racial lines has always been a cover for the facts; they didn't object to Bush trashing the Constitution, they didn't object to Bush taking a surplus and driving it into deficit due to tax cuts for the rich, they didn't object to illegal wars, they didn't object to torture, they didn't object to anything ... until the new sheriff, umm Obama, was in town

Now for some brain bleach:

T for Texas, Tea for Tennessee ... or ... Add It Up ... and/or ... Hand Jive

Updated for Colbert Report and math fix

So 600 incoherent mouth breathers show up for a teabagging convention, (quick aside: teabagging and mouth breathing seem to be incompatible, but what do I know ;-), and it makes the news 24/7. Srsly!?

Sheesh, there were more people at the my local watering hole on a Monday songwriters' night.

Let's do some math: 600 attendees @ $550 each = $330,000. The Quitta from Wasilla, Falin' Palin, AKA Moosealini, reportedly charged $115,000. So over 1/3 of the proceeds went to an already rich person. The rest went to the for-profit company that put the event, and the participants, on (minus hall rental, advertising, &c.). Nice teabagging there Clem.

Why isn't that the news?

2 notable things about this tiny gathering:
1) Former Congressman and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo's frankly racist and xenophobic opening speech. A low light from the prepared speech (that differed from the actual speech):

because we don’t have a civics literacy test to vote, people who couldn’t even spell vote, or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House named Barack Hussein Obama.

I remember when 'literacy tests' were stuck down. It's a good thing for him that literacy tests aren't required to have children, otherwise 'uncle daddy' and his daughter/his sister (it's Chinatown, Jake) couldn't have spawned the minuscule crowd.

His whole speech, live not prepared, consisted of dog whistles. No wonder the 600 rode into that valley of wealth.

2) My personal favorite, Caribou Barbie had to write "budget tax cut" on her palm to remember her talking points in a PRE-SCREENED Q&A after her speech!


And no, I'm not kidding.

Wow, the apple didn't fall far from that tree!

It's kinda like seeing a 2 year old in full camo with an M16. It'd be funny ... if the switch wasn't set to full auto and the safety wasn't off.

Update:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sarah Palin Uses a Hand-O-Prompter
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

Now for the title songs:







Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

At their (Glenn) Beck and call

Wow, some folks really want their country back:

Army reservist beaten in front of child

A man beat an Army reservist in front of a Morrow Cracker Barrel, yelling racial slurs at her as he kicked her in the head, Morrow police said. The assault happened in front of the woman’s 7-year old daughter, who stood there, crying, witnesses told police.

Hill said she told West she was an Army service member and she did not want any trouble.

West threw her to the ground and hit her in the head with his fists and feet, police said. During the exchange, witnesses said West could be heard screaming racial slurs towards the victim.

According to Hill's report, and confirmed by many witnesses, West screamed out racial slurs before punching her in the face. "He said, 'You're an fucking black nigger bitch,' is what he said," said Hill

Gosh, can't we all just get along? Nope. I can't. As long as racists exist in our our country I can't get along with them.

While it's progress that the police showed up and arrested him, I'm wondering why no one in the Cracker Barrel tried to intervene? Oops, my bad, Cracker Barrel pretty much describes why no one stepped up.

Update: As a commenter pointed out the Cracker Barrel manager said he did intervene. After witnesses saw her being punched, thrown down, and kicked in the head. Southern chivalry indeed.





Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Can't put it off another day

A clueless Ilya Shapiro from the non-partisan libertarian Cato Institute goes all post racial:

Although her selection represents the very worst of racial politics — she is not a leading light of the judiciary and would not have been considered had she not been a Hispanic woman — her career achievements show that the American Dream endures. While in this world it is rare for an underprivileged child from a minority group to attain a modicum of professional success — let alone reach its pinnacle — in America it happens again and again.

Um, yeah. Since Thomas, Alito, and Roberts-especially Thomas! were such "leading lights of the judiciary". Seems like Mr. Shapiro is looking at Sotomayor through his 'Latina' lenses, holding her to higher standards than the . . . men. Hmm, maybe his lenses are 'male'.

Matthew Yglesias explains her qualifications to Shapiro:

I think this is a revealing moment. Sotomayor has the normal qualifications for a Supreme Court justice—she shares the president’s political views, she lacks a record of inflammatory legal writing that would prevent confirmation, the has experience as an appellate judge, she went to fancy schools. Insofar as her background was a consideration in selecting her, which it undoubtedly was, this is also totally normal. Presidents have always sought various kinds of regional, religious, and ethnic balance in the courts. Much was made out of Samuel Alito’s Italian American ancestry, and obviously Thurgood Marshall was initially put on the court in part to make a symbolic statement about civil rights and Clarence Thomas was appointed to replace him in part out of a desire to fill Marshall’s old seat with an African-American. There was a tradition of a “Jewish seat” at various times, etc.

Then he explains race to Shapiro:

But even more revealing is that even if Sotomayor’s selection were somehow out of the ordinary, the idea that picking one appellate judge rather than another for a promotion could possibly be the very worst of racial politics is ludicrous. At its very worst, racial politics in the United States involved the systematic disenfranchisement of millions of people, their subjection to pervasive social and economic discrimination, and the maintenance of the apartheid system via the threat and reality of state-sponsored terrorist violence. At its very worst, racial politics in the United States involved persistent filibustering to prevent the federal government from doing anything to curb widespread lynching. At its very worst, racial politics in the United States involved a violent rebellion that sought to dismantle the country in the name of chattel slavery and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

But despite that long history, broad swathes of the American right remain persistently and willfully blind to the problem of discrimination against non-whites. Their view is, essentially, that racism emerged as a problem sometime in the year 1967 and that the problem consists of white people being unduly burdened by efforts to remediate something or other.

Best last paragraph ever, Thanks, Matt.

The Chambers Bros. explain race to the country in 1968:



To this day I'm not sure which brother, Willie or Joe, is singing lead here. But it's clearly one of the best R'n'B/Rock vocals ever.

Ain't no smilin' faces, Lyin' to the races

Bumped and updated:

Officer who sent 'jungle-monkey' e-mail: 'I am not a racist'

The Boston police officer who sent a mass e-mail in which he compared Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to a "banana-eating jungle monkey" has apologized, saying he's not a racist.

Hey, some of his best friends are "banana-eating jungle monkey[s]."

And just because he cried when he offered his non-apology apology i.e. "I am not a racist. I did not intend any racial bigotry, harm or prejudice in my words. I sincerely apologize that these words have been received as such."

That's no reason to think he's a racist! After all, it's all the "banana-eating jungle monkey"[s] who are practicing reverse-racism that have caused this problem.

He cried because he might lose his job, health insurance and retirement. Dude, man up! You said what you think, own the words. That's what free speech is all about.

But free speech also means that citizens don't have to pay your bigoted, racist, stupid, stupid, (did I mention stupid), salary, or your retirement, or your health care.

Gosh, if Congress enacts health care reform you and your family will still have health care.

And then you can holler your bigoted screed from whatever street corner you want to.

And you and your family will still have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

BTW, I know a place:




Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey

Updated to add the title I forgot to put on last night. Sometimes things get lost in the crush of cross-posting and the rush of life.

Yesterday was great weather, great wind, so I played hooky and headed out to the lake. On the way I stopped at a chain liquor store for a 6 pack and ice. I was waiting in line behind a black couple at the cash register when I noticed the clerk give a hard time to the folks in front of me.

The clerk was just plain rude from the get-go, hassled him about his ID, made him produce 3 ID's, and then questioned his significant other about hers. The clerk eventually, grudgingly, accepted their cash.

Me, I'm thinking the clerk was just having a hard day or was habitually rude, except when I got to the counter she was all sunshine and happiness and accepted my credit card with no problem and no request for my DL or anything that would prove it was my CC.

It was obvious, blatant racism on the clerk's part.

There is nothing I could say to the clerk. There's nothing I could say to the couple.

But I know the mangers of this chain and I said something to them. It was probably an exercise in futility, (ya just can't fix stupid), but she's going to be out of a job, and probably will blame black people even more.

I really hate this crap. There's no win/win in racism, it's all just lose/lose.

Here's some brain bleach from the same band from the title of this post.




Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

And if you don't watch out, This boogie man will get you

(Colored Spade starts at 7:50)

I haven't visited Rick Moran lately, but i just discovered he's still capable of shooting his rhetoric in the foot, as always, with no hint of awareness.

In re: the Gates/Crowell contretemps,, he gives a really great windup:

The facts of the case are a fascinating example of how race divides America. Police, as authority figures, have a notorious history in African American communities — sometimes deserved, sometimes not. It appears from unimpeachable eyewitness accounts that in this case, despite Sgt. Crowley being an expert in how to avoid racial profiling and diversity training, the perception on the part of Professor Gates was that he was being singled out for being black.

Of course, Gates had no idea that Officer Crowley had such a stellar reputation or possessed such tolerant credentials. All he knew was his experience as a black man in America and his assumption that if he had been white, the police would not have asked for his ID.

We’ll never know if that assumption was correct. Just as we’ll never know if the anonymous woman who called the police after seeing Gates try to break into his own home would have done so if she had glimpsed a white man trying to do the same thing. We can assume the best or the worst from all involved and, within the context of our flawed understanding of each other, assure ourselves that we are correct.

The point being, all the actors in this little drama have their perception of the incident colored by what divides us. The actions of everyone were programmed by the rules under which we currently interact as white and black Americans. Gates felt his dignity attacked — an anathema to whites who can’t understand how he could fail to appreciate the police looking after his property. For his part, one might wonder how much more patient Crowley could have or should have been with Gates before arresting him.

Wow. Reasonable. But just as Tourettes' Syndrome will result in a nice person unable to control their speech and mannerisms, Moran just has to revert to his own programming with absolutely no self-awareness:

No doubt he acted professionally. But even with someone as evenhanded as Crowley apparently is, the nagging suspicion that if Gates had been white he would have somehow been treated differently is hard for many to shake. That is the trap that history has set for us and is one from which we refuse to release ourselves.

"No doubt he acted professionally . . . evenhanded . . . " yep. Because as a white guy who has experienced reading words about racisim, he believes that the white cop (on of 'his' people) is de facto evenhanded and professional. As a guy who can pay lip service to the idea that racism may have actually occurred, to fall victim to his own programming and bias is sadly amazing to behold.

And predictable.

The toss-off line about property deserves further unpacking:

Gates felt his dignity attacked — an anathema to whites who can’t understand how he could fail to appreciate the police looking after his property.

Here's a translation: . . . an African-American could fail to appreciate the police looking after his property.

Dude, many African-Americans remember clearly when the police made sure they (African-Americans) were property. And I'm sure most black folks, when pulled over for DWB (driving while black) are thankful the cops are looking after city streets, which are their (as citizens) property.

And a sadly large number of whites still appreciate police hassling black folks, because 'they' are always up to something, like trying to steal jobs through affirmative action, or complaining that their ancestors were slaves while modern white folks had nothing to do with that so they just dont' want to hear about it.

Post-racial my ass. But in the end, Moran does speak truth:

the nagging suspicion that if Gates had been white he would have somehow been treated differently is hard for many to shake. That is the trap that history has set for us and is one from which we refuse to release ourselves.

Indeed. I just wish you really got it as someting other than an intellectual exercise.

A commentor at Moran's post adds this:

Gates is 5′7″. He walks with a cane. He is 59 years old. He was dressed in business casual attire. It was broad daylight. He had no weapon. He was carrying no burglar tools. No getaway car was parked outside. No one was inside the house crying for help.

Veteran cops develop an instinct for this. Crowley did not believe Gates was a criminal. Not unless Crowley is an imbecile.

Since when did conservatives start believing that the police have unlimited powers to arrest any and all who vocally disapprove of them?

If Gates had been white and holding a hunting rifle every conservative in the country would support him. But he was black. So conservatives pull a 180 and support unrestrained police power.

A large portion of the conservative community still rants and raves over FBI attempts to enter David Koresh’s compound — a compound where there were stockpiles of guns and allegations of child abuse. And don’t tell me it’s just because of the fire, the FBI didn’t start the fire, the FBI and ATF were trying to enforce legal search warrants.

This is racism in action. Pure and simple. Crazy white people with guns? They’ve got a right not to be hassled by cops. Black scholars in their own homes? Not so much.

Yep.

No reason to get excited . . .

Among all the feigned outrage and angst from folks both left and right clutching their hankies because Obama said the Cambridge cops acted stupidly, one fellow makes the most sense twice.

Take it away, Ta-Nehisi Coates, first with this:

It's worth watching Obama's statement. I really can't begrudge him--his priority is health-care. Me, on the other hand, I'm pretty exhausted. What follows is the raw. Not much logic. Just some thoughts on how it feels.

I feel pretty stupid for going hard on this, and stupider for defending what Obama won't really defend himself. I should have left it at one post. Evidently Obama, Crowley and Gates are talking about getting a beer together. I hope they have a grand old time.

The rest of us are left with a country where, by all appearances, officers are well within their rights to arrest you for sassing them. Which is where we started. I can't explain why, but this is the sort of thing that makes you reflect on your own precarious citizenship. I mean, the end of all of this scares the hell out of me.

(Emphasis mine)

And then this (the last graf is the money quote):

Chris thinks Gates that by calling the officer a racist, Gates bears some of the responsibility for the incident. He goes a bit further in responding to an e-mail:

In my mind there is no equivalency here, but the reader does raise a good point: there is, and never will be, a white equivalent to the N-word, but "racist" - when unsubstantiated - comes close.

Chris is good dude, and a smart writer. But I think, even in its hedged, qualified form, this is quite wrong. I think we'd all agree that if my spouse gets mad and calls me a sexist, and I fire back by calling her a bitch, I've gone somewhere else. I think we'd agree that if a gay person, without proof, calls me a homophobe, and I fire back by calling him a fag, I've ventured into another league. We are not "close" in terms of the level of our offense. The question then becomes, why is it different for "racist"?

My only answer is that it's because we, again, equate racist with "immoral." Michael Jackson once called Tommy Moottola, a racist. From what I know, it was unsubstantiated. The only way I can close the space between that, and Mottola, say, calling Jackson a nigger, is to think of racist as the equivalent of rapist, or child-molestor.

Again, I think this makes sense, if you believe racism to be the province of societal pariahs, not people who hawk their wares on MSNBC. But if you believe that we live with it every day, that the worst part of racism is how it hides in the hearts of otherwise decent people, than this is rather puzzling. If you've had friends who've looked you in the eye, and said something racist, you may feel differently.

This is say nothing of history, obviously. I think when we have black people driving slaves and perpetrating terrorism, when we have the Nation Of Islam hunting Jeff Sessions, all while yelling "Get the racist!" we will be close. When whole blocks start relocating because they suspect a racist has moved into the neighborhood we will be close.

Indeed.

At this point I think it's pretty clear Crowley arrested Gates because he didn't want to look like a pussy in fron of other cops. If this was exacerbated by Gates being a black man getting in Crowleys' face, we likely can't know. But in the end, Crowley really looked like a pussy at best, or a thug at worst, for arresting an older gentleman who, as Ta-Nehisi points out above, "sassed him".

And Crowley's reaction when asked on camera about Obama's comments:

"Well, I didn't vote for him"

takes on a racial tension all on its own, I think. The way I heard it was:

"Well, I didn't vote for one of them"

Maybe I'm wrong, but the whole thing is really tawdry and sad. Racism not only still exists, but flourishes in this country. To deny it is to deny gravity and air. They exist.

And when I feel my finger on your trigger I know nobody can do me no harm

Stay classy, Idaho:



Kids chanting "Assassinate Obama" on the school bus. Seriously, 2nd & 3rd graders. Good for these parents for speaking up.

Of course, this could happen anywhere. There are racists right here in blue Los Angeles.

Bastards.

I'm proud to be an Okie . . .

From Collateral News; Why Whitey Can't Vote:

When a guy with an 'obama monkey' joins a McCain-Palin rally in Johnstown, PA and nobody addresses him you get an idea of what's happening. The clip below shows a cross section of racist remarks throughout the american hinterland.

Hard to believe they live in the same country I do.

He hit me and it felt like a kiss

OMG! Oh noes!

A poor, sweet, helpless McCain volunteer was beaten and scarred by a black, big, black, scary, black, Obama supporter. Drudge shouted it to the heavens:

PITTSBURGH -- A 20-year-old woman who was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield was also maimed by her attacker, police said.

Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard tells Channel 4 Action News that the victim was robbed at knifepoint on Wednesday night outside of a Citizens Bank near Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street just before 9 p.m.

Richard said the robber took $60 from the woman, then became angry when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on the victim's car. The attacker then punched and kicked the victim, before using the knife to scratch the letter "B" into her face, Richard said.

Richard said the woman refused medical treatment after the assault, which happened outside the view of the bank's surveillance cameras.

The robber is described as a dark-skinned black man, 6 feet 4 inches tall, 200 pounds with a medium build, short black hair and brown eyes. The man was wearing dark colored jeans, a black undershirt and black shoes.

Except, not so much. From KDKA News:

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― Police say a campaign volunteer confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter B in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker.

At a news conference this afternoon, offiicals said they believe that Ashley Todd's injuries were self-inflicted.

Todd, 20, of Texas, is now facing charges for filing a false report to police.

Todd initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield and that the suspect became enraged and started beating her after seeing her GOP sticker on her car.

Police investigating the alleged attack, however, began to notice some inconsistencies in her story and administered a polygraph test.

Authorities, however, declined to release the results of that test.

Investigators did say that they received photos from the ATM machine and "the photographs were verified as not being the victim making the transaction."

This afternoon, a Pittsburgh police commander told KDKA Investigator Marty Griffin that Todd confessed to making up the story.

Todd told investigators that she didn't remember what happened.

Police say they do not believe any other people were involved; and her friends believed the story about the attack.

According to police, investigators working on the interview process detected several inconsistencies in Todd's story that differed from statements made in the original police report.

Pittsburgh Police Public Information Officer Diane Richard released a statement earlier today, saying: "Because of the inconsistencies in her statements, Ms. Todd was asked to submit to a polygraph examination which she agreed to do."

Indeed. How does this matter in big-picture reality, besides underscoring the idiocy of College Republicans? This is how, from Fox News Executive VP John Moody:

Less than two weeks before we vote for a new president, a white woman says a black man attacked her, then scarred her face, and says there was a political motive for it.

. . .
Part of the appeal of, and the unspoken tension behind, Senator Obama’s campaign is his transformational status as the first African-American to win a major party’s presidential nomination.

That does not mean that he has erased the mutual distrust between black and white Americans, and this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election.

If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting. (emphasis added)

When you lose Fox, you've lost the base.

Update: Headline at Drudge now:

SHE MADE IT UP!

Fuck you, Matt Drudge. You are officially a has-been right-wing hack.

Bastard.

That Old Blackface Magic

A couple of years back, I was a racist.

Well, not really...But a highly publicized work of mine trafficked in racist imagery, and by doing so utterly devalued a larger point that I was attempting to make. For that error in judgement, I alone am responsible.

At the time, this circumstance sufficed to provoke some whose agendas I agreed with (and some with whom I did not) into a heated discussion of my character and motivations.

Most of this dialog was as accurate as any conjecture could be regarding an individual cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, yet although some words that were 'intended to wound' indeed left their mark I eventually healed up and moved on, resolving to learn from the experience and avoid a repetition of the same lack of sensitivity toward others.

Since that time, I have noticed that in spite of the publicity surrounding that event (a brief, but rather loud ballyhooing not only within the then-limited confines of the blogosphere, but also within numerous organs of the mainstream media), others continue to insist on using that same imagery replete with its historically negative connotations whenever they wish to disparage something or someone whom they disagree with.

One could draw a simplistic conclusion from this, I suppose - that, given a chance not to dabble in exponentially hurtful material, some insist on their right to be ignorant, racist fucks regardless of the consequences.

I find it a somewhat discomfiting fact in the West that some of the so-called 'visual pundit' class appear all too willing to continually use 'blackface' (and this time,on a black man) as a marginalization stratagem toward denigrating an individual's well-reasoned philosophical choice - and when pressed on it, find themselves completely unable to justify said usage. Qu'elle surprise!

To imply that one is a traitor, and purblindedly ethnocentric, merely for casting their own lot between two starkly opposed alternatives, shows a philosophy distinctly bereft of the critical thinking skills needed to survive the oncoming hard times brought about by years of deliberately malfeasant Right wing governance.

Good luck with that evolutionary strategy, assholes.

Do unto others what has been done to me

One of the best and earliest indicators (to a public not completely sunk in a miasma of their own stupidity) that George Bush and Karl Rove were craven opportunists capable of any act was their willingness to use base personal calumnies in the form of innuendos, not against an opponent themselves, but instead their families.

The racist attacks levied against then-candidate John McCain's adopted daughter in 2000 as a dog-whistle stratagem for electoral success were most effective, achieving the desired result of push-polling low-information voters in a conservative, race-sensitive environment to a negative conclusion regarding McCain, who at the time appeared to be a popular choice based on his national service records and public perceptions of character.

At the end of the day just another 'mission accomplished' for a crew of larcenous scumbags bent on looting the national exchequer upon taking office - A pattern which, if one bothers to glance at the Bush family history with a critical eye, might lead to the conclusion that this shows a genetic predisposition to crime.

Now, let us move forward to today - 2008, where we read that the Republican Presidential candidate, John McCain, the man whose daughter was so callously slandered by opponents seeking an easy win to commence their depredations, has engaged the services of one of the individuals who slandered him almost a decade ago in an attempt to bolster his standings.

I refuse to acknowledge the necessity of this act, saying as strongly as it does that there is no moral center remaining within McCain, no polluted Rubicon left to cross when a man who appears so desperate to be perceived as a 'family values' candidate will engage the services of those who used the innocents within his charge as an element of a calculatedly racist smear campaign.

"At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

I hear their gentle voices calling Old Black Joe

It's been quite a week in John McMaverickypants' campaign, what with his latest insulting ads.

Oh hell, here's the first:



Celebrity? Young, vacuous, slutty white women? Of course, serious Villagers like Ross Douthat don't see it that way:

That's the takeaway, so far as I can tell, from this Josh Marshall post, which starts with the dubious claim that this McCain ad - which Ramesh and John Weaver rightly call childish - is actually playing on white America's subliminal fears that Barack Obama wants to sleep with promiscuous white starlets, and proceeds to the claim that any pundit (like Milbank, say) who uses the word "presumptuous" to describe Barack Obama is just playing along with the McCain campaign's vile attempt to caricature Obama as an "uppity young black man whose presumptuousness is displayed not only in taking on airs above his station but also in a taste for young white women."

Um, no. One of Ross' commenters schools Ross:

If the McCain campaign burned a cross on Obama's lawn the usual suspects would say there was nothing racist about it and that it was just making a positive statement about Christianity and alternative energy sources.

The usual suspects swore up until the bitter end that Macaca Allen was not a racist. They lauded the despicable Jesse Helms when he croaked and insisted he was no racist.

Indeed. Many more of Ross' commenters share similar views.

Even David Gergen, hardly a Liberal pundit, gets the intent behind the McCain ad:

"There has been a very intentional effort to paint him as somebody outside the mainstream, other, 'he's not one of us,'" said Gergen, who has worked with White Houses, both Republican and Democrat, from Nixon to Clinton. "I think the McCain campaign has been scrupulous about not directly saying it, but it's the subtext of this campaign. Everybody knows that. There are certain kinds of signals.

As a native of the south, I can tell you, when you see this Charlton Heston ad, 'The One,' that's code for, 'he's uppity, he ought to stay in his place.' Everybody gets that who is from a southern background. We all understand that. When McCain comes out and starts talking about affirmative action, 'I'm against quotas,' we get what that's about."

Yep. Here's the awful ad he's talking about, The One, in which Obama is presented to radical Christionists as the anti-Christ:



Jeez, how bad is this? Here's the full text of one of the Obama quotes edited out of any semblance of context:

"It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

Yeah. It's about America, not Obama. And it's Republican racism being used to disparage Obama.

In support of that argument is a commenter on the Huffpost piece about Gergen claiming race:

Gergen is from the south. Those of us that are of a certain age who grew up in the south can read between the lines. Obama elitist translated is Uppity. The two young white girls shown with him (Britney and Paris) translated is we all are afraid these black men are going to rape our women. Obama being a picky eater translated as who does he think he is someone needs to put him in his place. I am sorry that the south was ever that way. But it was and some people still feel that way and I think the message while subliminal was there.

Indeed.

Bastards.

I`ll lie again and again, and I`ll keep lying, I promise

In answer to the unspoken question "Does the McCain campaign really believe people are either stupid or ignorant enough to believe the lies we keep telling", clearly the answer is yes. From the Obama campaign "Fight The Smears":

The truth about Barack visiting military hospitals

Lie:

John McCain, his spokesmen, and his TV ads have all been politicizing our wounded heroes by making the false claim that Barack Obama snubbed wounded troops by not visiting them on his trip overseas because TV cameras would not be allowed to cover the visit.

Truth:

The Obama campaign originally planned a private trip (no media) to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany to visit wounded troops, but canceled it to prevent the perception of politicizing our troops.
Senator Obama was honored to meet with our men and women in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan during his foreign trip and has visited a combat support hospital in Baghdad as well as wounded soldiers at Walter Reed without fanfare. Barack Obama also called wounded troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center while overseas.

Even Andrea Mitchell, hardly an ardent Obama supporter, takes down this crap:



Yet this McCain smear will play well in Red states, where people believe Rush, Hannity, and Fox. Nice to see the Straight Talk Express of John McMaverickypants seems to have become really bent.


It will especially play well with people like this:

Over the weekend we’ve been following a story here in Clark County about a local couple who appear to be the target of racist vandalism simply because they dared to put a Barack Obama yard sign in front of their home. The Columbian ran a small item on Friday night:

Someone scratched the words “White Power” on a car belonging to a Vancouver family who recently posted an “Elect Obama” sign in their front yard.

On Sunday, Frank Wastradowski, who lives northeast of Southwest Washington Medical Center, noticed the vandalism on the side of his wife’s 1993 Plymouth. The letters, likely scratched with a key, were about 8 inches tall.

“It’s a hate crime and it’s time we get past racism,” he said.

Wastradowski said he won’t take the sign down, adding, “That’s my freedom of speech.”

Nice. Stupid. Ignorant folks like the car vandal just keep the fires of ignorance and stupidity burning.

Bastards.

No time to think about what to tell them, No time to think about what shes done, And she was

What can you say to this?

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?" Clinton said. "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it." (Here is transcript of her original remarks, clarifying her remarks and her explanation for them.)

Keith Olbermann said it best:

(via AMERICAblog)

Keith Olbermann's "Special Comment" about Hillary Clinton invoking Bobby Kennedy's assassination

Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Let's Talk About Sex

OK, now that I have your attention, let's talk about race ... and sex.

In a kinda sorta follow up to SteveAudio's post about the racist Curious George T-shirt and in light of the comments on that post, I'd just like to say: Misogyny is terrible, racism is worse.

Let me re-phrase: Misogynists are terrible, racists are worse. I suggest you read the post and read the comments, and read the links to the comments on other sites. I'll wait ...

... ... ...

Yep, those were awful, sexist, misogynist comments about Hillary.

And that's really bad, but racism is about both men and women. Men and women that were kidnapped and stolen from Africa and auctioned off as chattel in our country. Men and women that were considered as property, and even enshrined in the Constitution as 3/5ths of a person so that Southern states were equally represented in Congress.

There aren't groups in our country that want to kill women just for being women but there are groups in our country that want to kill black people, just for being black.

And if I were to put on my cynical hat I would say that Hillary should take the VP job, if offered, because Obama being assassinated, (and if he's elected I put the odds of that at 50/50), is the best chance she has of being President.

And that's why misogyny is terrible, racism is worse.

Times are very tough now, for a proud white man to live

The 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives us the right to free speech:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It also give us the right to be idiots:

Marietta bar owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he's peddling, featuring a look-a-like of cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with "Obama in '08" underneath, are not meant to offend.

Norman acknowledged the imagery's Jim Crow roots but said he sees nothing wrong with depicting a prominent African-American as a monkey,

"We're not living in the (19)40's," he said. "Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears — he looks just like Curious George."

No, we're not living in the '40s. Black people can vote, and one is the likely Democratic candidate for President. But for some, especially in the South, it's still the '40s, and the Bull Connor '50s.

Mr. Norman, you know God-damned well that picture is offensive, and you don't care, because you're racist. No other conclusion can be drawn. You're not clever, you're not funny, you're infantile and prejudiced.

There is one essential difference between Clinton and Obama that hasn't been talked about. And that is, while there are some who feel women are not as good as men, no one in today's society, except for sociopaths, hates women.

Yet there are still those in this country who hate black people. As fellow blogger darkblack pointed out to me, Obama is in far more physical danger than Clinton, for that simple fact. We've come so far, yet sadly, not far enough. We still have racist jerks like Mr. Norman.

(Note: Title lyric from the awful RaHoWa, a White Power band. I post them so you don't have to go look them up. Mr. Norman may not subscribe to all their tenets, but he's in good company with them, no matter how hard he denies.)

Lord have mercy on this land of mine, We all gonna get it in due time

We watched "A Conversation About Race" this morning on MSNBC (transcript here). This show followed the documentary "Meeting David Wilson".

In the Conversation, The Doll Test came up:

The Clarks' doll experiments grew out of Mamie's master's degree thesis and yielded three papers between 1939 and 1940. They found that Black children often preferred to play with white dolls over black; that, asked to fill in a human figure with the color of their own skin they frequently chose a lighter shade than was accurate, and that they viewed white as good and pretty, but black as bad and ugly. They viewed this as evidence of internalized racism caused by stigmatization.

How awful is this? Watch this and find out:



This is just horribly, cripplingly sad. One of the people on the "Conversation" panel was the wonderful Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, who had this to say about the Doll Test:

Legacy. When we talk about legacy, we're talking about an accumulation of time and history that works either for or against a particular consciousness of the people. And when we see America, when we see that, the internalized self hatred that you don't even think a doll that looks like you, that reflects your images are beautiful but beyond that, there is a moral assessment there, too.

What is the bad doll? What is the evil doll? And it's also associated with the darkness, the Dark Continent, the dark child, the dark person that I see in the mirror and so we begin to perform the pathology and act the self hatred.

There's a term called "soul murder" and one of the things slavery did, Orlando Patterson, a sociologist talks about social death, the walking dead, people who are physically alive but internally their spirits have murdered. And I think what we have to do here is to revive them. We have to bring them back to life and what you have to do is to educate at home. It's very critical that parents begin to transmit the virus of self-confidence. That's number one.

Barack Obama's speech on Race after the Clinton tried to ratchet up the Rev. Wright controversy was a good step toward discussing the topic in a rational and modern way. As good as it was, however, he had to be cautious, as too many white people would still be upset today that a Black person just won't 'get over it' or 'move on'.

Thankfully, Dr. Dyson has no such constraints:

I think that Martin Luther King Jr., 34 years old, invoked a vision of America that he said was deeply rooted in the American dream and what he did is narrate that dream against the backdrop of the nightmare and I think film interrogates some very serious issues that are resonant in not only African American life as Tom has indicated, but should be taken seriously as Brother Barnicle said in the mainstream.

And I think that it's incumbent upon us to deal seriously and honestly and openly with the issue with race. But let's be honest. Most of us can't. When we saw the rift, for instance, with the Jeremiah Wright comments, a Howard University graduate and a brilliant preacher, when he made those comments, it ripped the veil from many white Americans who had no idea that they had kicked out in politics the black church so that they subordinated their theology to their politics, began a black church which then became preoccupied with the conditions under which black people could be free, using their religion as a prism through which to view the landscape.

And finally, what's interesting, I find that Brother Wilson's film and the question the ended with especially provocative, because I want to flip the script a little bit. Dubois said this, "People come to me all the time and ask what does it feel like to be a problem?" He said, "We have two warring ideals, two unreconciled strivings locked in one dark body whose dogged strength alone kept it from being torn asunder."

So I don't want to just simply ask the question, "What's wrong with black people?" We can look at the history of white supremacy, social injustice economic inequality and see that the hostility of American culture in one sense in terms of race has worked against the flourishing and proliferation of good social, stable societies for African American people.

The question we have to ask, what's wrong with the pathology of a people that would demonize human beings who otherwise have no other interest but living in existence and I think that's right.

And Tim Wise, also on the"Conversation" panel, followed with this:

When the producers did the pre-interview with me, probably like many of us up here, they asked me the question, what's wrong with black folks? And I thought what in the world are you asking me that question for. The question for me as a white man is exactly the one that Mike just brought up, which is what is wrong with the dominant culture?

My answer, sort of tongue and cheek to what's wrong with black folks to the producers was nothing that the end of white supremacy won't stop. And what I meant by that is that the system of white supremacy is at the root of both the internalized oppression and internalized inferiority complexes that some black and brown folks manifest.

But it is also, and this is important, at the heart of the internalized superiority that many of - I've been white a long time, you and Mike, a little bit longer, and in that period of time, what we all know is that we, those of us in the white community, exceptions duly noted, have been the ones who haven't wanted to have this conversation.

It's like having a book club with people, some of whom have read 400 pages and the rest of us have read the preface and now we're supposed to get together and have a conversation. And that conversation ends up sounding like this. Why can't we have white history month? Right? Which is absurd because we have several. They go by the tricky names of May, June, July, August, September and any other month that we haven't designated and so this is the problem.

Now, we as white folks have if we are willing to go back to it. A tradition of allied ship (ph) with black and brown peoples. We have a tradition of resistance in the abolitionist struggle, in the civil rights struggle. It is time for those of who are white to decide we're going to be in this skin, and we have no control over that, or whether we're going to be of this skin. We are in it, we are not of it, we are made of more than that and better than that and the question is can we stand shoulder to shoulder with black and brown folks, have this conversation, take ownership of our piece of it as they take ownership of theirs.

Back to the Doll Test, that this happens today in this country is a shame equal to any other in American infamy. Does anysensible person even have to ask why Rev. Wright said "God damn America!"?

Here's Nina Simone singing Mississippi Goddam:

Nobody Knows The Troubles I've Seen

For those of you who might be unfamiliar with my oeuvre, about a year and a half ago I was involved in a minor controversy involving one of my lesser works.

At the time Joe Lieberman, the primary subject of the piece, opined:

"This is one of the most disgusting and hurtful images that has been used in American history, it's deeply offensive to people of all colors, and it has absolutely no place in the political arena today."

Well! Certainly not a whole lot of ambiguity there, and being that the work didn't cast him in the most favorable light, on the whole an understandable response.

Of course, the fact that he was leafleting black churches with race-baiting flyers in a senatorial nomination race which he eventually lost got left behind in all the excitement, but I digress.

Let's move forward a bit, to Halloween of last year.

Julie Myers, niece of retired Gen. Richard Myers, and an assistant secretary of homeland security recess appointee tasked with heading up the nation's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, is part of a 3-judge panel grading employee costumes for a contest at the staff party, and who does she give the prize to?

A white guy in blackface. Wearing a fake rasta wig, and a striped prison suit.

Class, with a capital K.

Which was then compounded by the inept way that such an egregious bit of racist tomfoolery on the nation's dime was handled for the public's benefit...Lying about the status of the pictures taken during the event, claiming the photos were 'discarded' only to have them resurface after an FOIA request, feigning a lack of awareness that the employee with the costume in question was at work in the same full costume all day without reprimand, pretending that she didn't know the partygoer was wearing makeup, "Shocked...shocked and horrified"...The usual pantheon of bullshit trotted out by the half-bright when pinned in the blinding spotlight of their own revealed chicanery.

And what did Joe Lieberman, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security committee that allowed Bush's recess appointment of Myers to head up ICE, have to say about these sordid goings-on?

"Senator Lieberman regrets her lapse in judgment regarding the Halloween incident," spokeswoman Leslie Phillips said. "He is inclined to support her nomination, given the committee's review of her entire record, the fact that the union representing 7000 ICE employees supports her and her year's experience in office."

'Regrets her lapse in judgement'...?

Is that the same 'regret in one's lapse in judgement' that the state of Connecticut apparently feels about your return to senatorhood, Joe?

Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent who was his party's 2000 vice presidential nominee, is now viewed unfavorably by two of every three Connecticut Democrats polled during the Super Tuesday presidential primaries, according to exit poll data.

Putz.