Syndicate This BlogQuicksearchCalendar
|
Tuesday, March 30. 2010Another extremist who flunked logic
Missouri hatemonger runs racist radio ads... to get elected to U.S. Senate
New York Daily News A Missouri man is counting on write-in votes - and racist radio ads - to catapult him into the United States Senate.Hmmmm... Jews control the media, yet he was able to get this ad run. Seems to me like an Elder of Zion is falling down on the job. Friday, February 5. 2010"Naaah...You Ain't Got The EJICASHUN to Vote!"
And then, something really odd happened, mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country. People who could not even spell the word "vote," or say it in English, put a committed socialist idealogue in the White House, name is Barack Hussein Obama. Tom Tancredo,speaking yesterday at the first Tea Party National Convention How was Barack Obama, our first black president, elected? It was the lack of literacy tests says former Republican representative Tom Tancredo, to hoots and cheers from his audience of Tea Partiers. Of course, anyone familiar with the history of civil rights in this country knows that literacy tests were for years used in the American south to prevent black voters from voting. So, either Tancredo and his audience are unaware of this and therefore have no business denigrating other Americans for lack of education -- or they are aware of this, and consider the voting policies of the Jim Crow south something to emulate. This nostalgia for the days before the 1965 Voting Rights Act is especially interesting given that we’re seeing, at the same time, a systematic effort at historical revisionism coming from the right (via Jonah Goldberg) in which famously racist movements like the Nazis and the Klan are depicted as the products of liberalism. Wednesday, January 13. 2010“Troubling Racial Schisms…”
The first year of Obama's presidency has brought the country face to face with troubling racial schisms… Washington Post 1/12/10 Unbelievable. The Washington Post has published a piece on the “racial divide” in America since President Obama was elected. It expends roughly 1,100 words talking about polling data, Harry Reid’s recent comments about Obama’s skin color, and the “storm” created last summer when Obama described a police officer as acting “stupidly” in the Harry Gates case. Nary a mention of the overt racism evident at the Tea Party rallies. Not a peep about the birther movement, the uptick in gun sales resulting from Obama’s election, the resurgence of the militia movement, the invocation of secession last summer, Glenn Beck accusing President Obama of having a “deep-seated hatred of white people…” No, the writers decide to concentrate on overblown kerfuffles surrounding statements by Democrats. The fact that the word “troubling” cropped up early in the piece should have tipped me off. “Troubling” is, like “disturbing,” and “deplore,” a word typically used by “serious” Beltway writers when they want to soft-pedal something horrible. These words may have been used at some point by Beltway writers to describe atrocities committed by Islamic terrorists, but I’ve yet to see an example. They tend to sprout up in the American press around news stories about, say, American troops sodomizing prisoners with light tubes or a sitting president incorporating torture as policy. That they're appearing in this context is a measure of just how bad things are on the "racial divide." I’ll bet if I were to ask the writers directly about the Birther movement/Tea Party racism, they’d hasten to assure me that they “deplore,” such things. Absolutely deplore them! Cowards. Saturday, January 9. 2010"How I Spent My Christmas Vacation," By Charles Murray
Last night, having been struck by how polyglot Paris has become, I collected data as I walked along, counting people who looked like native French… Charles Murray, Racist and Neo-Eugenicist co-author of The Bell Curve on how many (ahem!) non-native-looking French people he counted on Paris streets on December 22nd. The Enterprise Blog “Polyglot?” “People who looked like native French?” Why whatever could he mean? HT to Sadly No. Wednesday, December 23. 2009Variations on a Theme
It isn't too much to ask for Byrd to step off for that great klavern in the sky before the Senate vote that may force this nation to accept government-rationed health care. Even a nice coma would do. Confederate Yankee 12/20/09 Aside from the nastiness of the post, what’s especially striking is the weirdness of a blogger who’s embraced the term “Confederate” waxing righteous over Byrd’s long-renounced membership in the Klan. It’s a version of projection that’s become endemic on the right wing blogosphere. Confederate Yankee was, after all, one of those right wingers who, shortly before the last presidential election, grimly invoked (ahem!) “urban Democrats” rioting if Obama lost, even as he offered the following charming vignette from a pawnshop, where I strongly suspect most, if not all of the customers were white: I overheard one of the guys behind the gun counter say that gun sales among the shops in the area were up about 35-percent. Later, when he wasn't as busy, I asked him why he thought that was. His answer was simple, and perhaps predictable. As the right edges closer and closer to overt, even violent racism, we’ve begun to see a weird attempt at historical rebranding. Not only the Nazis, but the Ku Klux Klan are counted in some quarters as liberals -- the Nazis because their party name included the word “Socialists,” the Klan because they were (at one time at least) predominantly Democrats. Mentioning terms like “dixiecrat” and “southern strategy” just seems to confuse them, which causes them to repeat themselves at a higher volume. The fact that, over sixty years ago, Senator Robert Byrd was in the Klan, an association he has since renounced, is perceived as somehow trumping the fact that, just thirty years ago, the GOP was involved in a successful effort to bring the racist wing of the Democratic party over to the Republicans. Which is why Senator Jesse Helms was not a Democrat. One of the most consistent practitioners of this form of doublethink is, of course, Free Republic. Yes, yes, I know, it’s bottom-feeding, but really, if you want a detailed view of the thought processes and rationalizations of the far right, there’s no better place to visit. Freepers in particular seem incapable of mentioning Byrd’s name without bringing up the Klan, which makes the recent thread on a Seattle Times article entitled, “White Americans' majority to end by mid-century" pretty interesting. I visited Free Republic, and then visited the white supremacist website Stormfront to compare and contrast posters’ reactions to the same news. Then I did a little mixing and matching. The quotes from Stormfront are from both a recent posting about the decline of the white majority, and another published in 2007. The Free Republic quotes are all from a recent discussion. Lest anyone accuse me of cherry-picking, I should emphasize that the quotes from Free Republic are not anomalies. They reflect the tenor of the entire thread. Readers, see if you can tell who’s who without resorting to Google or clicking on the link: ... if they get rid of us, who will pay all the taxes and bills for everyone else? Friday, November 6. 2009STILL No Racists or Bigots Round Here...
In a speech on Sept. 22, 2001, he said that among his first responses to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America was a "sickening feeling in my stomach about what might happen to race relations and religious tolerance on our own soil. ... One has to wonder whether the seemingly irresistible forces of racism, nativism and scapegoating which has [sic] recurred so often in our history can be effectively restrained." Washington Times 10/25/09 As some readers may recall, a little more than a week ago there was an outcy on the right about federal district court nominee Edward Chen. He was, we were given to understand, a “biased radical” because, among other things, just after 9/11, he’d dared to express concern about a racist, anti-Arab backlash. Which, you see, is just a horrible, unwarranted slur upon the American people, who would never, ever engage in racist scape-goating after a national tragedy, no matter what those mired-in-the-past nay-sayers may have to say about the internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. And now, in the wake of the horror at Fort Hood, when a Muslim American went on a shooting rampage... Comment on a CJR posting on the Fort Hood killings: It's simple, kill all muslims everywhere. They are trouble everywhere they exist throughout the world. They commit essentiall all the terror. They kill their own children if they dare to think differently. They are sub human. Earth does not need them. From comments on the story at Foxnews (via Newshounds) “The shooter at Fort Hood is a Muslim with a Muslim name (Malik Nidal Hasan, he acted out of hate for the USA and Christians. Our President has a Muslim name (Barack Hussein Obama). We never hear of him and his family attending church. I may be wrong but it makes me wonder just who the hell we have in the White House.” “How is it some of you think professional Muslims are not terrorists. They are among us, eating at our feasts and attending your kids’ soccer games. They expect to dominate our nation. They practice uninhibited childbirth as ONE aspect of the HAMAS charger for indoctrination and infiltration of western culture” From Free Republic: If you're Muslim, you are identified and deported. Period. (In response to a sane Free Republic poster who pointed out that most American Muslims are not jihadists) When you can point the “good” ones out, please do so. Stalin said “to make an omelet you have to break some eggs”. I say “If you want to make sure no omelets are made you have to kill some chickens”. I’m all for considering the constitutionality of deporting and killing Muslims once they are all deported or dead. From The comments section of Atlas Shrugged: The more we bury our heads in the sand to the truth that it is Islam that inspires these heinous crimes, and the more we don't do what needs to be done to outlaw this evil religion, the more they will be emboldened to kill us. I think it is time for the backlash to begin! "The Arabs are savages who just don't want to use their mind." Ayn Rand Comments on a Military Board to the story about anti-Muslim backlash at Fort Hood. My daughter says that one of these muslim creatures is a TEACHER at her school. That will keep me awake at night. We need to start changing our policies towards these dirty bags. The only good muslim in America is a dead muslim. A muslim's first loyalty will always be to Islam and fellow muslims so you can never trust them. Nope. No racists or bigots or scapegoaters here… Thursday, October 15. 2009Another "Non-Racist" Heard From
“I try to treat everyone equally,” he said. Except that he refuses to issue marriage licenses to interracial couples. The latest winner in the “I’m not a racist, but...” sweepstakes is Keith Bardwell, Justice of the Peace in Hammond, Louisiana, who insists he’s just thinking of the children. They just won’t be accepted by either black or white society, and anyway, those kinds of marriages are unstable, and Mom and Dad will divorce and the kids will end up at the grandparents. And besides, he finds it “rather confusing” that “99 percent of the time” the couples consist of a black man and a white woman. But racism? Naaaaah! It’s never about racism! Saturday, September 26. 2009"White Culture?"
“What? What is the white culture? I don’t know how to answer that that’s not a trap.” Glenn Beck Interviewed by Katie Couric In short, he doesn’t know how to answer that without revealing way, waaaay too much about his own racism Glenn Beck's reaction to Couric's very pertinent question is a type of racist dodge frequently countered online. Somebody will spout racist rhetoric, stopping just short of the proud announcement, "I'm a racist." If they're asked directly "are you a racist?" they respond exactly the way Glenn Beck does -- by refusing to answer. That way, they maintain deniability while not alienating all their closet racist readers, who know exactly what they mean. Thursday, September 17. 2009Edging Ever Closer...
I used to comment that some of the yahoos I debated online were apparently looking forward to the glorious day when they could take their “Kiss Me, I’m a White Supremacist” t-shirts out of the closet and wear them in public without fear of being hissed and booed off the street. These were the ones who, if asked directly, would neither deny nor admit that they were racists, and were frequently saved from doing so by various online conservatives, moderates (and even a few infuriatingly naive liberals,) who would react to the question by scurrying to the defense of the yahoo. So long as the online racist never used the “N” word or uttered the words, “yes, since you ask, I am a racist,” the onus would fall on whoever was rude or “confrontational” enough to ask the question invoking the “R” word.
Well, it looks like those t-shirts are about to come out, and the yahoos can barely contain their excitement. Some of them are coming out of the gate just a bit early, but the signs for them are plainly encouraging. On Fox Nation, in the midst of messages denouncing the notion that racism has made a comeback, one poster has proudly declared “I am proud to be a racist!” and the only response so far has been from a liberal who had wandered onto the site. (And in the finest online tradition, it’s the liberal who's been subsequently denounced – not the avowed racist.) The right-wing is all atwitter and ablog about an incident on an Illinois school-bus related more to garden variety schoolyard bullying than race, but oddly silent about a black woman, an army reservist, being beaten in public by an insanely hateful white man screaming racial epithets at her. The overt racism of the overtly racist signs waved at many “Tea Parties” is being blandly dismissed by beltway Republicans. All shame has departed. Any and all pretense is probably the next thing out the door. A nice little preview of upcoming attractions was offered by Rush Liimbaugh the other day, (via Media Matters) when he asked the following: “Can this nation really have an African-American president? Or will the fact that we have an African-American president so paralyze politically correct people in the media that the natural scrutiny and process through which all of our presidents are put through and vetted do not occur because of the fear in the State-Controlled Media of themselves being called racist and the desire to be able to call everyone else racist. In other words, we have a blank slate. We have a president here who is not scrutinized, who is not examined. There is no attempt to be suspicious of power anymore. So is it possible that we really have an African-American president? Or does having an African-American president paralyze the process by which people with that kind of power in our representative republic are kept, quote, unquote, honest? See, it’s not that Rush is a racist! Oh mercy no! It’s just that black Americans, and their liberal enablers, just aren’t ready to have a president yet. They just can’t handle it, just don’t understand the need to vet the president, and they “paralyze the process by which people with that kind of power in our in our representative republic are kept quote, unquote, honest.” You can almost hear the faux regretful sighs as these born again racists shake their heads and say, that, well -- it’s sad, really. Yes, racial equality was a good-hearted experiment, and we gave it our best shot, but alas, African Americans just aren’t ready for it yet…. That’s probably the argument that’s next on the horizon from certain quarters, and like most of what comes from Limbaugh and that ilk, there’s nothing new about it. I remember being taught, in my grade school days in the Jim Crow south, how awful it was during Reconstruction that so many black people ran for office and won before they were ready to take on the responsibility. D.W. Griffith’s notoriously racist film, Birth of a Nation even includes a scene in which black legislators guzzle whisky and prop their bare feet on the desks.  Watch for it. Because this is how these people see our president. Wednesday, September 16. 2009President Carter states the obvious
Carter again cites racism as factor in Obama's treatment
CNN Former President Jimmy Carter reiterated Wednesday that he believes racism is an issue for President Obama in trying to lead the country.Team Obama will repudiate Carter and claim racism has nothing to do with this is 3...2...1..... Saturday, September 5. 2009What To Call It
”Thinking about my kids…sorry…” (begins to tear up) “…in school. Having to listen to that really upsets me.” [On CNN, A Right Wing Mom weeps at the prospect of her children having to listen to a speech by the president.] I’ve seen this kind of paranoia and hysteria before One summer back in the ‘60s when I was a kid in the Deep South, I was visiting the house of a friend. It was about mid-afternoon and we were playing in the backyard when my friend’s mother came out and called us inside, her voice so tense that we immediately dropped what we were doing and obeyed. Once we were in, she told us, with an unconvincing effort at nonchalance, to go into the den and play some board games. We went into the den, but we didn’t play any games. Instead, we sat there on the sofa listening, frightened, to the sound of her hurrying about the house, locking doors and windows. I wondered if there had been a tornado warning. We didn’t often get tornados in that part of the country, but I’d heard about it happening occasionally. Except she wouldn’t be closing windows if it were a tornado… Later, I learned what it was all about. There had been a snafu with transportation at a high school that had been the site of a summer student event of some kind. I don’t remember exactly what it was -- perhaps a practice or a game for the sports team, perhaps a fundraiser. The buses originally scheduled to take the students home weren’t running, so many of the kids would have to walk back to their own neighborhood, which could take some them through the area where my friend lived. This was still the age of segregation. The school in question was a black school. What had sent my friend’s mother into this scurrying panic was the fact that black teenagers might walk down the street past their house. There is much that I find familiar about the right-wing reaction to President Obama. The horror a black person – in particular a black man – could inspire in the racist south was and apparently remains so over-the-top it would be comic if it didn’t also inspire over-the-top violence. We have never seen an American president treated with the kind of dehumanizing revulsion we’re seeing from the right today. We have also never seen such an open flirtation with violence against a president. Right wing websites barely even bother to hide the intent behind the increased sales of guns and ammo that have come in the wake of President Obama’s election. It’s hard to imagine many people seriously claiming in living memory, as some have today, that bringing loaded guns into the vicinity of a past president – even a past liberal president – was acceptable. The ironclad rule that permeated the Jim Crow south was simple. Black people were treated differently. They were not accorded quite the same level of that famous southern courtesy. A white man did not rise when a black woman came into the room nor, (as the Rosa Parks case made famous) offer her his seat on the bus. A black man was not called “Mr. So-and-so.” He was referred to by his first name, if not by the word “boy” or – if he were older, “uncle.” Sure, black people theoretically had the right to vote, but they were not treated the same as white people were when they attempted to register as voters. Black kids were not treated with quite the same tenderness accorded to white kids. When integration finally began to be enforced, there were white adults – presumably churchgoing people who had long ago been taught the difference between right and wrong – who lined up to scream threats, insults and curses at frightened schoolchildren. Of course, a crime by a white person against a black person was not, as a rule, prosecuted with quite the same vigor as would be a crime by a black person against a white. Even an atrocious, barely concealed crime, a lynching, by many whites against a single black citizen, was very likely to go unprosecuted and unpunished. And those whites perceived as “nigger-lovers,” as traitors to their race, were offered much the same treatment. So, when I see parents snatching their children away and keeping them out of school because the president is going to make a speech to them; when I see not only loaded weapons being openly brought to presidential speeches, but the act of doing so actually defended by presumably responsible adults; when I watch a sick, desperately ill woman being mocked and heckled in public because she’s perceived as a defender of the president’s healthcare reform package, I know what I’m seeing, and I know what to call it. As does every other educated, intelligent person of my generation and background, whether they’re willing to admit it or not. Sunday, August 30. 2009CNN’s Retrospective on New Orleans’ Race War: Bleh
Listen to these shocking comments by Hurricane Katrina survivors days after the storm: Wayne Januk: “We Shot ‘em!” (Woman off-camera) “They were looters!” CNN Anderson Cooper 360 It’s nice that Anderson Cooper did this follow-up on the case of white vigilantes targeting their black neighbors in the New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers Point just after Hurricane Katrina. Too bad CNN decided to excise as much of the racial content as they could get away with. That “shocking” quote by middle-aged white New Orleanean Wayne Januk is not even quite the half of it. For some reason, CNN didn’t use this more shocking, damning, and to-the-point clip from the same interview: Wayne Januk: “It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota! If it moved you shot it!... I am no longer a Yankee! I earned my wings!”“ But you wouldn’t know about this from watching the CNN piece. Instead, we’re shown what a white, well-off Algiers Point resident named Vinnie Pervel says on his front porch. Then we’re shown what black shooting victim Darrell Harrington says. Then we’re shown what the doctor who treated him says. Then we’re shown what Wayne Januk says. Januk is questioned about the vigiliantism and his crack about “pheasant season in South Dakota,” – but apparently not about that bit about the “N” word and “earning his wings.” If he was asked about it, his response – which I think many of us would be very interested in hearing – was not included. In short, it’s not just He Said/ He Said journalism. It’s He Said/He Said journalism with the most damning and to-the-point quotes cut out. When I see this kind of flabby reporting, a Bible quote comes to mind: 'That which is neither hot nor cold will I spew out of my mouth” Wednesday, July 15. 2009The Next Generation of Republicans?
Yesterday, Jindal finally issued a statement. “I oppose all racism and all racist comments," he said. When the governor’s spokesman was asked, as a followup, whether Jindal still supported his chosen candidate as chairman of the Young Republicans, there was no response. Left unsaid was whether Jindal regards any of Shay’s comments as racist.The Daily BeastIt should come as no great surprise to anyone that the chairman of the Young Republicans – Audrey Shay – has established herself as, if not a racist, someone who cheers on racism. After a friend on her Facebook account posted ““Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist… Muslim is on there side [sic]… need to take this country back from all of these mad coons… and illegals,” she responded, “You tell ‘em Eric! lol!” The Daily Beast has pointed out other “troubling” posts by Shay that include saying that Obama is “anti-American” and: Posting and endorsing a conspiracy-theory video that attempts to prove that Obama believes he can only “ensure his own salvation” and “fate” if he helps African Americans above whites, complete with Barnum-esque captions (“LISTEN AS HE ATTACKS WHITE PEOPLE”). The Daily Beast begins its July 13th piece on Shays by asking “Why won’t the Louisiana governor and other top Republicans denounce the Young Republicans’ new chairman, who's accused of spreading hate on Facebook?” I should think the answer is obvious. Top Republicans like Jindal are keeping quiet because the return of overt racism to the mainstream suits the Republicans. Wednesday, July 8. 2009A Matter of Complexion
There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club," President of the Valley Swim Club in Pennsylvania explaining why a group of predominantly black campers were asked to leave. The story is depressing enough. The comments are worse. Saturday, May 30. 2009Remember THIS Guy? Well...
A sequel to an exchange from several months ago on TYT has come up.
Actually, it’s a prequel, which makes it even more interesting. Back in February, we saw a conversation between Cenk Uygar and Marcus Epstein that included the following quote from Epstein: I don’t know, I’m just simply saying, I’m not a…you know, uh, but…I’ll say this, you know, you’ll, you’ll, um, if someone suggested and I don’t think this, I’m not saying this, but let’s say if there was some sort of ..um…you know…genetic or natural reason and which I’m not saying is the case, I would be, you know, I would be called a racist, I would (garbled)…and you know, this is a…and all people who have come to this conclusion, such as, say, James Watson…um, who said, or Charles Murray and I don’t know if they’re right but certainly this is the guy who invented DNA…uh…not invented discovered (crosstalk) and he said “I think there might be genetic reasons for the problems that face blacks…” Marcus Epstein to Cenk Uygar, on reasons for the presumed (by Epstein) higher crime rate among blacks in general 2/27/09 Compare this blur of words to the crisp, succinct prose from the Factual Proffer of a court case involving Mr. Epstein (here described as “defendant”) On July 7, 2007 at approximately 7:15 p.m., at Jefferson and M Street, Northwest, in Washington, D.C., defendant was walking down the street when he encountered the complainant, Ms. [Redacted], who is African-American. The defendant uttered, "[N*****]," as he delivered a karate chop to [complainant's] head. Ms. [Redacted]'s [redacted] attempted to detain defendant, but defendant was able to escape. Ultimately, the defendant was stopped and arrested by Secret Service officers. from the Factual Proffer (Via Media Matters) In short, Marcus Epstein strongly implies to Cenk Uygar that black Americans are more prone to criminal behavior because of some “um…you know….genetic or natural reason” -- two years after being arrested for physically attacking a black woman and calling her a “n*gger.” Epstein, by the way, is Executive Director of Tom “La Raza is JUST like the Klan” Tancredo’s Team America. Especially interesting, in light of this 2007 incident, is Epstein’s recent Townhall article on “The Tyranny of Hate Crimes.” Sooo, according to some prominent conservatives: belong to a Latino Civil Rights organization and point out that an experienced Latina judge is likely to have insight into discrimination cases that a white male judge would lack -- racist. Belong to an anti-immigrant organization, physically attack a black woman while calling her “n*gger,” then, two years later, invoke Charles Murray and genetics while explaining the relationship between African descent and crime -- not a racist. This tells us all we need to know about what people like Tancredo mean when they use the word “racist.” |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
