Posted by Pam Spaulding March 31, 2008 in Uncategorized, Boggles the Mind, Bad Ideas, Race
* Freepers turn on Condi Rice over comments on Obama’s speech on race (Pandagon)
* Condi lauds Obama for opening the discussion about race (Pandagon)
Woohoo! Lou “fear of the Brown Menace” Dobbs unleashed a torrent of spittle about race — and he doesn’t like the fact that Condi Rice brought it up either (join the Freepi, Lou!). You see, Lou doesn’t see a problem with race relations in this country — he feels the problem people have talking about it is the fault of those “cotton-picking” people. Watch:
As Josh Marshall said:
As someone who’s done some TV I certainly know that all sorts of things can come out of your mouth when you’re ad-libbing. But in this case, when Lou Dobbs is railing against African-Americans like Condi Rice and Barack Obama for having the temerity to say that race is still an issue in America and the first adjective that pops into his head to describe them is “cotton-pickin’”, we think it deserves a little tweak.Related:
* Freepers turn on Condi Rice over comments on Obama’s speech on race (Pandagon)
* Condi lauds Obama for opening the discussion about race (Pandagon)
H/t, Sportin Life.
24 Responses to “Lou Dobbs is mad at Condi the race troublemaker”
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Somebody better warn Dobbs but quick - there may be a black agitator in his washing machine!
“Cotton—…ridiculous” is going to be my new insult. Mostly applied to textiles and Q-tips, of course.
Obama’s speech is really flushing out the barely concealed bigotry on the right. I’m hoping that things like Dobbs’ “slip” will encourage people to take the problem more seriously.
I wonder how he’s going to handle the noted rise in non-race-matched coupling that I’m beginning to notice in advertizing since Obama took a stand?
I mean, I know so many mixed race people. No mystery how they got that way and yet (outside of Hawaii), I’ve only very rarely seen an ad that doesn’t race match.
I wonder how he’s going to handle the noted rise in non-race-matched coupling that I’m beginning to notice in advertizing since Obama took a stand?
Actually, I believe his wife in Mexican-American, FWIW.
(He married long, long before he became a professional bigot)
Freudian slip?…
…or maybe there’s not enough oxygen way up there on the top of his white privilege pedestal?…
I stopped taking him seriously when he started using that stupid American-flag backdrop.
He didn’t say “cotton-picking”! He only said “cotton-pi-”!
Maybe it was “cotton pinpoint” or “Cotton pince-nez” or “cotton pickle”.
The fact he caught himself makes the bigotry funnier.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
Caren - agreed, especially since it popped up in the middle of an expressly racist rant. FLAT OUT racist sentances are OK, but better not use that dog whistle!!
That’s beautiful when it all comes together like that.
Oh come on. You think WhiteyMcwhiteness actually doesn’t say this in private? Folks, the Villagers really do live in little enclaves of like-minded people and do not deign to notice the servitors or waitrons.
Have you not heard of mail-order brides? Let’s an old or greasy geezer marry well up on the looks scale. US dollars used to be worth something and if the homeland was getting cannibal, well, NY suburbs are better. A friend once designed a marriage matrix with looks, wealth, status and intelligence as the indices. Pretty much the money and status trumped (bad pun) the other two. Why else do 20 yo cuties date slovenly fat granpappy?
I have nothing against America as a whole, but “the most progressive country in the world”? That’s a hell of a stretch. Call me when the majority believes in evolution.
Yes, Mold, we know this.
That’s why it’s funny.
Dobbs is in the middle of a rant about how racism is no more and there’s no need to discuss it or even think that there’s any problem about discussing it. Then he nearly busts out with a blatant racist statement, which, of course, negates his entire rant.
It’s funny (and sad). He’s trying to convince us not only that he’s not racist, but that no American is anymore. And he can’t even make it 2 minutes without flubbing and showing the lie.
Were that it was true…
That’s just…I mean…Do people really SAY that expression outside of the way-off-Broadway production of Porgy & Bess?
No way.
“Do people really SAY that expression outside of the way-off-Broadway production of Porgy & Bess?”
Unfortunately, I’m related to people who I’ve heard use that phrase…
No, Mike, I have the Most Ignorant Relatives in America, and indeed they do not say this.
I’m not sure I even know WTF it means. I get that ‘pickaninny’ is a racial slur, but my only exposure to the term was in a really interesting course I took as an undergrad called The History of Whiteness in America.
Presumably ‘cotton-pickin’ pertains to the picking of cotton, which is associated with sharecropping, which is associated with blackness.
However, see above for my authority on this, some of the Most Ignorant Relatives in America got that way by, wait for it, pickin’ tobacco and/or cotton rather than attending school.
(One of the many reasons I’m grateful that my granddad came down with life-threatening appendicitis while scuttling coal, the job that paid better than pickin’ anything, is that the Peabody company paid for surgery then fired him. Thus beginning my parent’s journey Up North where they have schools and all, and freeing me from the pickin’ activity.)
Wonder what Lou’s family did once they came over here and found out that pickin’ taters is not a way to keep body and soul together…
I used the phrase when I was a kid, completely unaware that it had any meaning other than “goddamn.” My dad grew up in a white ethnic Chicago neighborhood near where they threw rocks and bottles at Martin Luther King, so I’m sure he grew up using the word and didn’t think to jettison it when he opted to settle in an integrated suburb. It hit me in my 20s that it might have racist connotations.
However, the American Heritage Dictionary merely defines it as an adjective “used as an intensive.” “Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?” Sure, Dobbs just wanted to intensify his description of them as “leaders.” Mm-hmm, that’s the ticket.
So what are the odds the Dobbs even apologizes, much less gets the Imus treatment?
Odds are practically nil, paul, since CNN scrubbed the “cotton-pi” from the transcript.
I grew up saying cotton-picking, as in “not one cotton-picking minute.” Alas, that was long ago in the country and I’m working on getting that, and other such language, out of my vocabulary.
I, too, grew up saying “cotton-pickin’,” and hearing it said in company too polite to bust out the Anglo-Saxons, and never considered until now the implications of it.
I am sorry it didn’t occur to me until now to consider it. I am able to say that it’s not an epithet I use at all these days, having long since decided to dispense with weak pejoratives like “dad-burn” and power straight on through to our Anglo-Saxon heritage when I need something strong.
So my first reaction was “Cotton-picking? That’s it? That’s what the flap is about?” and my second was “Oh. Well, shit.”
So there’s been some result of our dialog on race, at least for me personally.
Of course the rampaging irony is that Dobb’s schtick would be non-existent if it were not for all of us crazy, job-stealing, cotton-picking, crime-spreading, leprous brown people. Without us, he’d just be some neighborhood’s cranky old douchebag trying to keep the kids off of his lawn.