You Know What's Freakin Hilarious...Bigotry

[we vs us]

So wait.  Who's saying that disagreeing with Obama's policies is racist?  Please cite instances of places or times that that's happened.  Has Obama said that?  Has his administration?  Has someone in the media?  Has it been the occasional poster on dKos?  The occasional poster on Tulsa Now?

I ask this because we're treating it like's it's actually happened and I'm almost positive no one anywhere has said opposing Obama is racist.  No one, that is, but Beck, Rush, Hannity, etc.  I think it's a meme pushed exclusively by the Pretty Right Wing Hate Machine, and has no basis in fact. 

Can you prove me wrong?

[Red Arrow]

So wait.  Who's saying that disagreeing with Obama's policies is racist?  Please cite instances of places or times that that's happened.  Has Obama said that?  Has his administration?  Has someone in the media?  Has it been the occasional poster on dKos?  The occasional poster on Tulsa Now?

I ask this because we're treating it like's it's actually happened and I'm almost positive no one anywhere has said opposing Obama is racist.  No one, that is, but Beck, Rush, Hannity, etc.  I think it's a meme pushed exclusively by the Pretty Right Wing Hate Machine, and has no basis in fact. 

Can you prove me wrong?

I excluded the race card from the hatred for W as I don't remember it being an issue.  The Petty Left Wing Hate Machine hated W because they could.   I personally don't think opposing Obama is being racist but it is somewhat of an issue that comes up.   I was quoting Az.

[Hoss]

So wait.  Who's saying that disagreeing with Obama's policies is racist?  Please cite instances of places or times that that's happened.  Has Obama said that?  Has his administration?  Has someone in the media?  Has it been the occasional poster on dKos?  The occasional poster on Tulsa Now?

I ask this because we're treating it like's it's actually happened and I'm almost positive no one anywhere has said opposing Obama is racist.  No one, that is, but Beck, Rush, Hannity, etc.  I think it's a meme pushed exclusively by the Pretty Right Wing Hate Machine, and has no basis in fact. 

Can you prove me wrong?

Great NIN reference...

[we vs us]

Great NIN reference...

I was hoping someone would catch it.  Of course, to be honest, the Right Wing Hate Machine ain't particularly pretty . . .

No, I was really talking to Conan, who's repeated that several times.  That it's racist to oppose Obama.  And I just don't know where that idea would've started if not on the right wing.

[azbadpuppy]

I was hoping someone would catch it.  Of course, to be honest, the Right Wing Hate Machine ain't particularly pretty . . .

No, I was really talking to Conan, who's repeated that several times.  That it's racist to oppose Obama.  And I just don't know where that idea would've started if not on the right wing.

Being assumed a racist just becase you may disagree with Obama's policies is a common accusation lately by the conservative groups. It has no basis in fact. Actually, I believe it comes from trying to deflect from the real racist issues.

[dbacks fan]

Archie Bunker was a bigot. Actually he was an "Equal Opportunity Racist", he hated everyone.  

Unless you were a WASP.

[Red Arrow]

And I just don't know where that idea would've started if not on the right wing.

How typical, don't know the answer to something undesirable so blame it on the right wing.

The following is plausible (borrowed from Myth Busters) but not necessarily true:

The right opposes Obama on the basis of his vision for America.
The left doesn't believe it is possible to oppose that view.  (Typical that either side fringes cannot understand the other.)
Since the opposition cannot possibly be based on ideas, it must be because Obama is (half) black.
Therefore, opposing Obama is racist.

A few vocal rabble rousers get some media attention and everything goes down hill from there and no one can prove where it originated.

[Red Arrow]

Archie Bunker was a bigot. Actually he was an "Equal Opportunity Racist", he hated everyone.  

Unless you were a WASP.

I thought Archie hated Catholics and Jews too.  That would make him an "Equal Opportunity Bigot" as well as an "Equal Opportunity Racist".

[we vs us]

How typical, don't know the answer to something undesirable so blame it on the right wing.

Well, no.  I blame it on the right wing  because 1) I can't come up with an instance where it was genuinely stated or insinuated outside of internet chat rooms and 2) it fits the right wing MO these days, which is plant as many (ACORN) believable (Jeremiah Wright) or unbelievable (New Black Panthers) racist memes (Shirley Sherrod) into the national conversation as possible so as to keep those predisposed to that sort of message permanently incensed. 

The following is plausible (borrowed from Myth Busters) but not necessarily true:

The right opposes Obama on the basis of his vision for America.
The left doesn't believe it is possible to oppose that view.  (Typical that either side fringes cannot understand the other.)
Since the opposition cannot possibly be based on ideas, it must be because Obama is (half) black.
Therefore, opposing Obama is racist.

A few vocal rabble rousers get some media attention and everything goes down hill from there and no one can prove where it originated.

Your plausible progression is plausible . . . but still no one can point me to where it's been said that opposing Obama is racist.  No Democrat, no media figure (outside of the usual rightie suspects), and no one of any national or even statewide prominence has said anything of the sort.  We are only talking about it because the right media has opined that that's what's happening.  But it's not. 

And I'm literally begging you and everybody else:  prove me wrong.  Prove to me that someone of consequence is pushing this as a governing strategy and I'll believe it.  Until then . . . well, it's just your exceptionally well-tuned antennae picking up the daily talking points from the typical approved sources.

[nathanm]

I think what happened is that when some of the tea party protesters were called out for the racist things they were putting on their signs and saying to media at the rallies, they claimed that the left said that opposition to Obama is racist.

Edited to add: Actually, no. They latched on to Carter saying that some of the opposition to Obama was about his race (in response to the racism displayed by some at the tea party rallies in 2009) and claimed that the left said that all opposition to Obama was racist. Another example of exactly what is on display with Breitbart and Sherrod, actually.

"When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds," the Democrat who served from 1977-1981 told students at Emory University.

"I think people who are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happens to be African American.

"It's a racist attitude, and my hope is and my expectation is that in the future both Democratic leaders and Republican leaders will take the initiative in condemning that kind of unprecedented attack on the president of the United States," Carter said.

-- http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/15/carter.obama/index.html

That's when I remember it getting started, anyway.

Edited again to add: Browsing the Google seems to show a bunch of right wingers saying that lefties say "all opposition to Obama is racist" and a few left wingers saying that nobody said that. Not proof, but an indication of where the truth probably lies.

[dbacks fan]

I thought Archie hated Catholics and Jews too.  That would make him an "Equal Opportunity Bigot" as well as an "Equal Opportunity Racist".

WASP

White
Anglo
Saxton
Protestant

WASP

No association with the Irish Cathlolics, unless you had a death wish in the 70's to travel to the Catholic region of Belfast and claim you are a Protestant.

[Red Arrow]

WASP

White
Anglo
Saxton
Protestant

WASP

No association with the Irish Cathlolics, unless you had a death wish in the 70's to travel to the Catholic region of Belfast and claim you are a Protestant.

I know what WASP stands for.  That's why I found it difficult to include Archie's hate for Catholics and Jews as part of being racist.  There are a lot of caucasian Catholics.  They are not all Hispanic.

[dbacks fan]

I know what WASP stands for.  That's why I found it difficult to include Archie's hate for Catholics and Jews as part of being racist.  There are a lot of caucasian Catholics.  They are not all Hispanic.

Protestant and Catholic are polar opposites, hence the IRA (racist) and the Catholics (racist) in Northern Ireland since before the US was even thought of. Where did I relate bigotry to racism? My comment about Archie Bunker was the fact that he was a bigot not a racist. He hated everyone that was not of his kind. Racist singles out a particular race. Bigotry is a disdain for all types. Archie hated all types and races, that's why I made the reference as an equal opportunity racist. IT WAS TOUNGE IN CHEEK!

[Townsend]

So should the racist thing about opposing Obama be changed to the way it was in the W administration and just say "If you oppose the president you're un-mur-i-can."?

[Conan71]

So wait.  Who's saying that disagreeing with Obama's policies is racist?  Please cite instances of places or times that that's happened.  Has Obama said that?  Has his administration?  Has someone in the media?  Has it been the occasional poster on dKos?  The occasional poster on Tulsa Now?

I ask this because we're treating it like's it's actually happened and I'm almost positive no one anywhere has said opposing Obama is racist.  No one, that is, but Beck, Rush, Hannity, etc.  I think it's a meme pushed exclusively by the Pretty Right Wing Hate Machine, and has no basis in fact. 

Can you prove me wrong?

The most blatant example was former President Carter with his supposition that race was an issue in conservative white people opposing health care reform.  Polls showing nearly 40% of people outside the movement believe the Tea Party(ies) are racist movements is another (an article I quoted and cited in an earlier post).  And did you really not see what Rachel Maddow did in the Rand Paul interview as trying to paint him as a racist and connect that to all Tea Partiers?

No less than Keith Olbermann has fanned those flames after the 2010 SOTU speech, here's his reaction to conservative pundits response to the speech:

""...But our winners, these guys, assessing not the speech but the president himself. Eric Erickson, "cocky"; John Stossel said he hoped the president would admit he was, quote, arrogant. Jay Nordlinger, "looks arrogant whether he is arrogant or not"; Mark Thiessen, "defensive, arrogant"; John Hood, "flippant" and "arrogant." Glenn Beck, "like a punk."

Here's a little secret: gathering sadly from witnessing it my whole life even from some in my own family, when racist white guys get together and they don't want to be caught using any of the popular epithets that are in use every day in this country about black people, there's a chance one of them or worse still a white guy who doesn't get it, might wander in and hear the conversation. When there's a risk even in saying uppity or forgetting his place, the racist white guys revert to euphemisms and code words and among the code word that they think they're getting away with are ""cocky, flippant, punk, and especially arrogant."

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/olbermann-assail-obamas-critics-as-racist/

Here's an interesting story about the seedy underbelly of the American media establishment:

"To conservatives, it is a pulling back of the curtain to expose the media's mendacity.

To liberals, it is a selective sliming based on e-mails that were supposed to remain private.

But there is no getting around the fact that some of these messages, culled from the members-only discussion group Journolist, are embarrassing. They show liberal commentators appearing to cooperate in an effort to hammer out the shrewdest talking points against the Republicans -- including, in one case, a suggestion for accusing random conservatives of being racist."

"Spencer Ackerman, then with the Washington Independent and now at Wired.com, wrote: "If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them -- Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country?"'

It goes on:

"When Suzanne Nossel of Human Rights Watch said McCain's selection "can be spun as a profoundly sexist pick" because McCain valued gender over experience, Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones wrote: "That's excellent! If enough people -- people on this list? -- write that the pick is sexist, you'll have the networks debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket."'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/23/AR2010072301786.html

"We now know, from their own words, that liberal media types have been working in concert to publicly label opposition to Obama as race-driven.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama's relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama's conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, "Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists."

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6830/pub_detail.asp

From the left wing blogosphere:

"Since the election of Barack Obama, the Republican organizing principle has been to obstruct every political initiative of the president. In doing so, they hope to divide and frustrate the loose coalition that elected the president, turn off the average voter to electoral politics, rally their right-wing constituency with anti-government and racist rhetoric - and thus put themselves on a fast track back to political power. Don't let anyone tell you that elections don't matter!

As outrageous as this is, it isn't out of character. The GOP was always an amalgam of the most conservative sections of corporate capital and other like-minded elements in the body politic. Its modern variant, however, is dominated by the most reactionary and racist sections of that amalgam. And as we know only too well from experience, this grouping commands the loyalty of an organized grassroots constituency, controls a far-flung media apparatus that manufactures its worldview and mobilizes millions, and prefers authoritarian rule when in power.

In the unemployment extension standoff, this right-wing juggernaut went into action, evoking the specter of rising federal deficits, attacking the "tax and spend" Democrats, appealing to racist susceptibilities of white people, insisting on spending cuts, urging its constituents to raise hell, and employing the filibuster to trump majority rule."

http://peoplesworld.org/the-barbarians-are-at-the-gates/



"A University of Washington survey this spring found race, alongside politics and the size of government, to be key issues energizing the tea-party movement. One highlight: Respondents who believe the U.S. government has done too much to support blacks are 36 percent more likely to support the tea-party movement than those who are not.

The tea-party movement tries to hide behind limited government and restrained spending, classic — and in my view, unassailable — conservative tenets. But what separates this movement from the traditional Republican Party is the former's virulent anger directed at anyone who is not white, straight and Protestant.

Examples abound but most disturbing is Kentucky GOP Senate hopeful Rand Paul's criticism of the 1964 Civil Rights Act because he didn't think government ought to tell private restaurant owners who they can and cannot serve. That's an old argument used not just by opponents of integration efforts in the 1950s and '60s, but further back by slave owners who argued the federal government had no right to tell them what to do with their "property."

Perhaps the NAACP is looking for relevancy amid changing political dynamics. The tea-party movement ought to be looking for credibility among its many not-so-credible members. If this movement wants to move closer to the rational political milieu, it must get rid of the bigots. The GOP can recite chapter and verse about the danger of trying to hold onto all elements of a party while trying to keep the tent from crashing down.

Tea-party leaders argue that any racism is the responsibility of a few bad actors, not the larger movement.

One leader, Jenny Beth Martin, told CNN: "There certainly are people who have been involved in tea-party events or call themselves tea-party leaders who have done these things. And we've said we're not going to put up with it."

Say it again Jenny. And again. And mean it.

Racist elements

Rather than trying to sell mutton as lamb, the tea-party crowd has to acknowledge its racist elements and excise them. Absent the bigotry and opposition to Obama because of his skin color, real and legitimate concerns about the president, from his embrace of a stimulus spigot that doesn't seem to have an off switch to his fluctuations on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, would rise to the level of serious debate.

Lynne K. Varner is a columnist for The Seattle Times. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services."

http://www.vindy.com/news/2010/jul/21/tea-party-bigotry-disturbing/?newswatch

"It's all about Obama. The racists are tortured by the idea that no matter what they do (even if they impeach him), the list of Presidents will always include a black man. This drives them insane. If you could give Andrew Breitbart and his ilk one gift, it would be to eradicate from history the fact that America elected Barack Obama."

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/22/call_the_white_racists_what_they_are/?ref=c2

And not a single one of these was a quote by Hannity, Rush, Beck, O'Reilly, etc.

Need I go on?