“Members and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures.”
–Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a 20-page memo to House GOP leaders.

That Captain Obvious winner shows up in Peggy Noonan’s WSJ column “Pity Party.” This where the real spin begins, as she distances herself from the rest of the apologists and GOP cheerleaders for Dear Leader for the last seven years. She’s the one with 20/20 vision about the disastrous political bind the Republicans are in. The Democrats aren’t the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead.

For all their fractious fighting, they’re finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They’re busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They’re frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

…Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they’ve publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply.

And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have the country, the troops will rally in the fall.

“This was a real wakeup call for us,” someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. “We can’t let the Democrats take our issues.” And those issues would be? “We can’t let them pretend to be conservatives,” he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

While she’s angry at how the GOP has failed her, she underestimates the capacity of denial and blame-shifting of these clowns in an attempt to save their personal political fortunes.

I say watch the former Bush faithful. If there’s one thing the GOP is good at, it’s the taking the long view of how to make a comeback. Look at what else Davis says to Noonan — after the jump.
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I don’t care how hilarious rapist / murderer-releasing, Christian Reconstructionist- supported, Man-On-Dog wannabe, former Arkansas governor, and Baptist minister-without-a-theology-degree Mike Huckabee thinks he is, this isn’t funny. We’ve already seen the yahoo vote unapologetic about the fact that they’d never vote for a black man — and plenty of them have an NRA card.

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

After all, look at what a Freeper posted yesterday in response to the marriage equality ruling in California. These folks are sick.

38 posted on Thursday, May 15, 2008 1:37:53 PM by Lancey Howard

Related:
* Noose found at Secret Service training center
* Dallas: weapons screening halted at Obama rally
* Other posts on the security breach

And I thought Bush’s lie that he gave up golf in solidarity out of respect for U.S. soldiers killed in the war was the winner of the dumbassery remark of the year. Boy was I wrong.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula points to an incredible statement by the movie critic, right-wing Clown Hall writer and radio show host. First, I love PZ’s opening.

Did someone declare this National Flaming Racist Idiot week, and I just didn’t notice until now? You have got to read Michael Medved’s latest foray into pseudoscience: he has declared American superiority to be genetic, encoded in our good old American DNA. Because our ancestors were immigrants, who were risk-takers, who were selected for their energy and aggressiveness. Oh, except for those who are descended from slaves.

Oh yes, Medved did, friends. I guess the best thing we can say about the following statement is that he probably wasn’t emitting the spittle Pat “A Brief for Whitey” Buchanan did yesterday when he was on Hardball. Medved even makes the gutsy move of explaining that the DNA shaped by our borders and risk-taking requires governing by Republican policies:

The idea of a distinctive, unifying, risk-taking American DNA might also help to explain our most persistent and painful racial divide - between the progeny of every immigrant nationality that chose to come here, and the one significant group that exercised no choice in making their journey to the U.S. Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.

…Senators Obama, Clinton and other leaders who seek to enlarge the scope of government face more formidable obstacles than they realize. Their desire to impose a European-style welfare state and a command-and-control economy not only contradicts our proudest political and economic traditions, but the new revelations about American DNA suggest that such ill-starred schemes may go against our very nature.

Wow. Talk about junk science — so now Americans are a “race”? Holy smoke, this is incredible. Actually, Medved’s working from the same playbook as Buchanan — slavery was a good thing for the darkies, after all, those bringing the slaves over as cargo didn’t have genocide on their minds, they needed that cargo alive because good hard money was paid for them.

Estimates remain inevitably imprecise, but range as high as one third of the slave “cargo” who perished from disease or overcrowding during transport from Africa. Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of these voyages involves the fact that no slave traders wanted to see this level of deadly suffering: they benefited only from delivering (and selling) live slaves, not from tossing corpses into the ocean. By definition, the crime of genocide requires the deliberate slaughter of a specific group of people; slavers invariably preferred oppressing and exploiting live Africans rather than murdering them en masse.

H/t, Oliver Willis.

As we’ve seen this election cycle, there’s a desperation seen in the MSM talking heads and newpaper columnists, even some blogs, to declare Barack Obama’s success a post-racial triumph in this country — that racism is rapidly becoming a distant memory.

First, take a look at this lovely T-shirt being sold at Mulligan’s Bar and Grill in Marietta/Cobb County, Georgia (h/t Jeremy from Cobb).

Marietta tavern owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he’s peddling, featuring cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with “Obama in ‘08″ scrolled underneath, are “cute.” But to a coalition of critics, the shirts are an insulting exploitation of racial stereotypes from generations past.

“It’s time to put an end to this,” said Rich Pellegrino, a Mableton resident and director of the Cobb-Cherokee Immigrant Alliance. It was among the organizations planning to gather outside Mulligan’s Bar and Grill Tuesday afternoon to protest the “racist and highly offensive” shirts.

Just down the street from Marietta’s famous Big Chicken, Mulligan’s has carved a provocative niche in an increasingly multicultural area, thanks to its owner’s ultra-conservative political views. If you live in Marietta, it’s impossible not to know what’s on Norman’s mind, as he posts his views on signs in front of Mulligan’s. Among his recent musings: “I wish Hillary had married OJ,” “No habla espanol — and never will” and the standard “I.N.S. Agents eat free.”

“I’m saying out loud what everyone in this town whispers,” Norman said.

…Norman said those offended are “hunting for a reason to be mad” and insisted he is “not a racist.” Why picture Obama as Curious George? “Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears, he looks just like Curious George,” Norman said.

Not a racist. I guess he doesn’t do Klan night riding on the weekends, so in his mind he’s free and clear of that label. Even sadder, he’s donating the proceeds to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I wonder what the MDA thinks of this?

More below the fold.
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Last night in another thread, I commented again about how poorly Hillary Clinton has been served by her hired campaign guns. Of course, the senator has stuck her foot in her mouth on her own as well, but nothing compares to this. From a new USA Today interview, she manages to top any dog-whistle race-baiting that her husband put out on the campaign trail with this naked appeal.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

Wow. Just. Wow. That didn’t blow by without comment, even in the article.

Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Clinton’s comment was a “poorly worded” variation on the way analysts have been “slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms.”

Is that another variation on “misspoke”?

You see the problem and beauty of Senator Clinton’s statement is that it boldly embraces the undiscussed fear in this Reagan Democrat demographic, the people who do consider race a major factor — concern that white privilege is being threatened, that somehow Barack Obama as president would exact retribution against “hard working white Americans” for past or present institutionalized racism. You know, like this candid Kentucky voter:

I’ve talked to people-a woman who was chair of county elections last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for a black man.” Patrick said he wouldn’t vote for Obama either.

Why not?

“Race. I really don’t want an African-American as President. Race.”

What about race?

“I thought about it. I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That’s my opinion.”

The frame is specific — that’s why Clinton referred to hard working white Americans. What happened to “blue collar Americans?” Oh wait, there are a lot of hard working black and brown blue collar/working class Americans, and many of them they voted for Obama, so she had to slice that demo down to the bottom line. Dog whistles no more.

I want to believe that it wasn’t a purposeful slip of the tongue because it’s too painful to contemplate that the black vote is now perceived as a “problem” because it skews to Obama, and because there are more white voters who have a problem with him based on his race, we have to nail that demo.

Remember, the black vote has been the most reliable Democratic vote, not the Reagan Democrats. Black voters don’t turn out for Obama solely because he is black. I’ve blogged before about this bizarre train of thought — if the affinity vote is so powerful we would have seen a bum rush for Alan Keyes. What Clinton is saying is not inaccurate (polls slice and dice this way), but its use here is inappropriate and inflammatory. It’s because the last core demo left for her to appeal to is resistant to Obama for reasons that have little to do with policy differences, or 3 AM readiness. She’s brought the microtarget out into the light and it’s one many of us don’t want to face talking about, with a different name — scared white people.

She is naming her remaining trump card, and considering our country’s pitiful history of not frankly dealing with or discussing race — aside from painful, fumbling defensive fits and starts — we’re left to deal with the fallout of a “poorly worded” statement, lacking a sufficiently stocked toolbox to deal with the ramifications of courting a vote with implicit and explicit biases.

The question never explored is why are these people scared more about a black president (regardless of political viewpoint) than the prospect of a McCain presidency and four more years of failed economic policies that have left this very demographic high and dry? What do we want to do about this as Americans? Apparently nothing, that’s a third rail topic and there’s an election to win.

Naming it means acknowledging problems we haven’t dealt with, and exploding the myth of a post-racial America. Barack Obama may be the first post-racial candidate because of his personal heritage, but the United States of America is nowhere near “post-racial” when it comes to politics.

Those of us eagerly waiting for the day when same-sex marriage is finally legalized across the land owe a debt of gratitude to Mildred Loving, whose 1967 case (Loving v. Virginia) resulted in a landmark Supreme Court decision that broke down a major social and legal barrier - interracial marriage.

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.

Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

…Richard Loving died in 1975 in a car accident that also injured his wife.

In a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, Loving said she wasn’t trying to change history — she was just a girl who once fell in love with a boy.

“It wasn’t my doing,” Loving said. “It was God’s work.”

Last year was the 40th anniversary of the landmark ruling. Mrs. Loving said this:

“When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn’t to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.

…Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.

…I am proud that Richard’s and my name are on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”

Here is her full statement, via Freedom To Marry..

So does the clock at left stop? I didn’t receive a response from Sen. Dole’s pitiful Constituent Services Letter Generator^TM. No autopen-signed missive to help me pretend that I heard from my senator.

What I did receive this afternoon was a fax from Communications Director Hogan Gidley of the Elizabeth Dole campaign regarding the petition that I delivered last Friday on behalf of 1265 readers of Firedoglake, Pam’s House Blend, and BlueNC. The petition requested that the North Carolina senator ask Linda Daves of the NC Republican party to stop running the color-aroused anti-Obama ad called “Extreme,” which tries to draw some sort of connection between Dem gubernatorial candidates Bev Perdue and Richard Moore (both endorsed Obama) and Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

What was Dole’s response? I have no idea, since the response is from Mr. Gidley, there’s no way for me to know whether my senator actually read the petition. The letter I received is an exercise in predictable spin; it doesn’t address the NCGOP’s ad or her party’s involvement and endorsement of playing to people’s biases. Gidley:

Thank you very much for delivering the petition. As Senator Dole’s campaign spokesman, I would like to take the opportunity to respond. The political advertisement that you reference has nothing to do with Senator Dole’s campaign, nor does she plan on refereeing third party political advertisements.

So state parties can run amok. I guess it’s hands-off for Liddy.

What the Dole campaign laughably calls for, in letter to NCDP party chair Jerry Meek from Dole consultant Mark Stephens (the second page of the document), is for the NC Democratic Party not to run any advertising against Dole, to tell her Dem opponent to refrain from anti-Dole ads, and to tell the national party not to run third party ads against her! Oh, this is rich!

Stephens to Meek:

the Dole campaign extends an offer to enter into a written agreement with the North Carolina Democratic Party, your national counterpart committees in Washington, as well as the eventual Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate to disallow political party advertising in North Carolina. This will prevent the circumstances that you have described from happening in the contest for U.S. Senate.

Alrighty then. So if they cannot use traditional bottom-feeding ads, they propose no one runs any ads, even comparison of record ads, which do inform voters. Take their ball and go home. Well we know the GOP cannot run on its failed ideas, and Elizabeth Dole has a miserable Bush rubber-stamp record, so it’s no surprise that we received a non-starter response like this.
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…Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama, according to the numbers. The mainstream media has been focused like a laser beam on Barack Obama’s slippage in the blue collar white working class vote because of results in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It’s part of the assessment of the electability factor.

The curious thing is that little attention has been paid to the support of black voters for Hillary Clinton, which has fallen off the cliff. This piece puts the hard facts out there. (NYT):

Have white Democrats soured on Obama? Apparently not. Although his unfavorable rating from the group is up five percentage points since last summer in polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News, his favorable rating is up just as much.

On the other hand, black Democrats’ opinion of Hillary Clinton has deteriorated substantially (her favorable rating among them is down 36 percentage points over the same period).

While a favorable opinion doesn’t necessarily translate into a vote, this should still give the Clintons (and the superdelegates) pause. Electability cuts both ways.

If Hillary Clinton should defy the odds (and the current math) and secure the nomination, she would be hard-pressed to defeat John McCain without the enthusiastic support of black voters, stalwarts of the Democratic base.

And the collapse isn’t because of the affinity factor — blacks voting for Obama solely because he’s black. When a majority of whites abandoned the former president during Monicagate, blacks were among his most steadfast supporters. In this election cycle, that loyalty has only garnered a perceived slap in the face. More below the fold.
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Uh huh. Here’s yet another reason why there is distrust out there about law enforcement “protecting and serving” everyone equally.

Los Angeles Police Department officials announced Tuesday that they investigated more than 300 complaints of racial profiling against officers last year and found that none had merit — a conclusion that left members of the department’s oversight commission incredulous.

It is at least the sixth consecutive year that all allegations of racial profiling against LAPD officers have been dismissed, according to department documents reviewed by The Times.

I’m sure the vast majority are claims that cannot be proven since you have to prove the officer’s intent to say, pull over a black driver more often than a white one. But the LAPD has a sorry history, and that makes it difficult for some to believe the outcome of the report.
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I can’t believe the MSM has spent all this air time on a pastor who isn’t running for president. Oh, OK, yes I can. Since Obama “divorced” Wright in the press conference yesterday, my question is whether the bar for the media will move even higher. His former pastor’s ego was obviously bruised from the (quite frankly, sensitive) rebuke of his past comments that he received from the presidential hopeful in Obama’s A More Perfect Union speech.

Some of what Wright said at the National Press Club was clarifying and on point:

Maybe this dialogue on race, an honest dialogue that does not engage in denial or superficial platitudes, maybe this dialogue on race can move the people of faith in this country from various stages of alienation and marginalization to the exciting possibility of reconciliation.

Other parts added nothing positive to the dialogue showed a public unraveling of the id. Wright felt dissed, and took it before the cameras, damaging his own credibility — and he either doesn’t seem to realize it — or care.

I see clips from the NPC appearance and wonder what’s next — Rev. Wright lobbying for additional 15 minutes of exposure to “play the dozens” with Barack Obama? I’m sure the media would be down with that too. And that’s because they never dig deeper to see what’s really beneath the surface.
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Your tax dollars at work for the protection and security of white privilege — keeping those Negro agents in their place. Mind you, these are the folks charged with protecting the president, and currently, Barack Obama.

The U.S. Secret Service has placed a white agent on leave after an African American employee reported finding a noose hanging at the service’s main training facility outside the nation’s capital.

The service has acknowledged “an allegation of misconduct” at its J.J. Rowley Training Center in Beltsville, Md., and that an employee last week was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation. The employee is a veteran agent with the service, according to fellow agents.

The noose was found by an African American officer in the uniform division of the service during the week of April 14, according to those familiar with the alleged incident. That division protects the White House and surrounding grounds. He reported the incident to his supervisor and it was sent up the chain of command. He declined to comment for this story.

…The alleged incident happened as U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson is expected to decide next month whether to sanction the service for failing to turn over evidence in a long-running lawsuit alleging that the service created a racially hostile atmosphere that tolerated discrimination.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Atlanta native Reginald G. Moore, alleges that the Secret Service routinely discriminates against black agents seeking promotion in favor of white agents who scored lower on promotional exams.

Nearly 60 black agents have submitted sworn statements to the court in support of the lawsuit’s allegations.

Related:
* Dallas: weapons screening halted at Obama rally
* Other posts on the security breach

Linda Daves of the North Carolina Republican party apparently wields a lot of power. When Senator Elizabeth Dole was asked to condemn an anti-Obama color arousal ad, this was her response:

Dole said in an interview she didn’t want to get involved.

“I am concentrating on getting my work done here in the Senate, and I’m just not going to get into refereeing a third party political ad that has nothing to do with my race,” she said.

You can do something about this - we’re planning to give Liddy a special delivery. Read on.
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[UPDATE: I wanted to elevate a comment I made downthread since it adds to my thoughts about problem-solving. It’s below the fold.]

I was clearly way out of the blogfeedback loop — I missed the controversy over Amanda’s book. I’ve been so bogged down here in NC primary fever over at my pad (prez and state races), the Day of Silence, a family member in the hospital and — can you believe this — the day job, that people obviously thought I was simply ignoring this pot boiling over on the homebase stove over the color-aroused use of native savage images from “classic” comics.

I think Skippy emailed me about it last week, and left me some links and I promptly filed the email away and moved on to cover the Obama Town Hall in Raleigh.

Well since the train has already left the station — with Amanda’s forthright, all-laid bare apology already out there, all I can say is yes, those images are inappropriate, and certainly would have been called out if, say, someone on the right used them in a tome. The difference, since Amanda obviously wasn’t attempting to promote a white supremacy theme in the book, is the blind spot of white privilege, in this case Seal Press, which has an apology on its site.

Please know that neither the cover, nor the interior images, were meant to make any serious statement. We were hoping for a campy, retro package to complement the author’s humor. That is all. We were not thinking.

As an organization, we need to look seriously at the effects of white privilege. We will be looking for anti-racist trainings offered here in the Bay Area. We want to incorporate race analysis into our work.

As folks know, I discuss race matters a lot and this deserves some attention because this kind of blind spot occurs all the time, and it’s not only in the context of race (or, as we also see in the imagery, gender). The blind spot is that some white progressives, in their zeal to believe we are a post-racial society, in this case the publisher, just assumed everyone only sees camp in the images.

So you might ask, what did I think when I looked at the comic book white Barbie doll -proportioned warrior chick opening a can of whoop-ass on the savage negroes?

Hmmm. I’ll just think “aloud,” — since we’re all friends here, of course — and I’ll give honest-to-dog answers (I guess this is a peek into my brain, so apologies in advance).

* “That looks like a Marvel comic book - I wonder if the artist is Jack Kirby…or maybe John Buscema?” (my brother and I collected comics back in the day)

* “Man, I need to pull out that awesome Jonny Quest DVD I got for Christmas (original series please, not the later crap) — I think some of those episodes have ethnic and racial stereotypes just as heinous as this!”

* Uh, oh…this is the sh*t that hit Amanda’s fan.”

What does the above mean? I have no idea; you all can armchair analyze, I’m just glad the dust is settling on this one. What’s most important is that people need to keep discussing race in an open and honest way, instead of sweeping it under the rug or automatically running to defensive corners.

Interestingly, I was on the air today discussing how we have trouble taking on productive conversations about race. More below the fold.
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[UPDATE: Is it on or off? John McCain clearly doesn’t know how to control bigot eruptions in his own party — first there was an announcement by Charlie Black that the ad was pulled by the NCGOP; state party chair Linda Daves says it’s still a go for the color arousal show. A number of local stations are refusing to run it.]

If you want to know how far to the right the Republican party is in North Carolina, look no further that this bottom-feeding video. It is an ad supposedly about Dem gubernatorial candidates Bev Perdue and Richard Moore (both endorsed Obama). They are trying to link that support to Rev. Wright (again!) to generate color arousal.

The bottom line is that the GOP wants Hillary Clinton as an opponent. They know they can run a successful campaign against her, so this is their attempt to stir the pot. And as Barack Obama said, all the race-baiting that the Clintons have tossed out there so far is just a warm up compared to what’s coming from the Republican machine.

Well that time is now. Echoes of Jesse Helms tactics…(and we’ll see that classic after the jump):

“Narrator: For twenty years, Barack Obama sat in his pew listening to his pastor.

Jeremiah Wright: And then wants us to sing God Bless America. No, no, no. Not God Bless America, God (censored) America.

Narrator: Now Bev Perdue and Richard Moore endorse Barack Obama. They should know better. He’s just too extreme for North Carolina

Chairman Linda Daves: The North Carolina Republican Party sponsored this ad opposing Bev Perdue and Richard Moore for North Carolina Governor.”

Extreme? Please. And it’s not just Dems reacting with alarm to this ad. John McCain has told the NC GOP to cease and desist - and the wingnuts here in this state will have none of it.

McCain urged state party leaders to withhold the advertisement, calling it “offensive.”

“This ad does not live up to the very high standards we should hold ourselves to in this campaign,” McCain said in a letter e-mailed to state GOP chairwoman Linda Daves.

GOP spokesman Brent Woodcox argued that despite the ad’s overwhelming focus on Obama, the spot is targeted at Democratic gubernatorial candidates Richard Moore and Bev Perdue, who have both endorsed the Illinois senator.

“We have a great relation with the RNC and we fully support John McCain for president,” Woodcox said. “But this is an ad about two North Carolina candidates for governor. The ad is going to run.”

All that said, this “outrage” by McCain allows him to distance himself from the race-baiting and smears, but the filth gets out there anyway. That’s your preview playbook for the fall. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Let me tell you all a little something about the Republican party in North Carolina. It’s below the fold.
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Billionaire BET founder Robert L. Johnson, who has publicly done little more than make an ass out of himself in public as a supporter of Hillary, continues down the familiar bottom-feeding path of race-baiting, this time by lifting the wisdom of Geraldine Ferraro.

“What I believe Geraldine Ferraro meant is that if you take a freshman senator from Illinois called ‘Jerry Smith’ and he says I’m going to run for president, would he start off with 90 percent of the black vote?” Johnson said. “And the answer is, probably not.”

“Geraldine Ferraro said it right,” Johnson added. “The problem is, Geraldine Ferraro is white. This campaign has such a hair-trigger on anything racial it is almost impossible for anybody to say anything.”

Last time I looked, 90% of the black vote alone won’t elect you President of the United States. And it’s balls to say the Obama campaign has a hair-trigger on “anything racial” (definition, please?) when the Clinton campaign and its surrogates have not hesitated in playing upon the worst fears in people in regards to race, a topic that is rarely engaged on any rational level. Why Bob Johnson himself didn’t mind conjuring up stereotypical imagery himself back during the primary in South Carolina.

See below the fold.
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Atrios catches a moment of internet hilarity:

Funniest line quoted in the post linked below:

“I would never want to use a search engine aimed at middle-aged, suburban white guys like me; I want the world.”

Atrios’ title, of course, is “The World Was Created Just For You.” And the post he’s referring to is a good one which is talking about a bad one, and contains this about the apparent controversy about web sites and portals targetting the black community:

There is something that it is like to be black in the United States. It is overlaid and undergirded with a lot of other ways it is like to be American, human, male, female, geekish, jocky, rural, urban, suburban, young, old, native-born, immigrant, educated, not, so forth. But it is a thing. If there is something it is like to be something, the culture is going to reflect, support and exploit that, online and off.

I’d add to that something which is already implied in the above but deserves to be overt: There is something that it is like to be white in the United States. The importance of this understanding is, in its way, the reverse of the above quote - There is something that it is like to be white in the United States and it is overlaid and undergird with a lot of other ways to be American - but it is a separate thing. Or it should be. Functionally, rhetorically, popularly, it’s not enough of a thing, and that’s the whole problem. “White” and “American” don’t occupy the same space in my matrix of being but the culture wants me to believe they do - that’s privilege.

If I choose not to, or more specifically if I fail to choose to, I never have to differentiate the two, and in so doing I exercise privilege - I even discriminate - against those given no choice in the matter.

Check this out - McCain was booed in Memphis today.

The imagery in this video is thought-provoking. Here is McSame, who is not only getting booed at a ceremony for voting against the national holiday celebrating the accomplishments of Dr. King, and he’s standing up there with a black man holding an umbrella over him. Nice touch.

I guess he’s still evolving. Read Rock’s rundown of the spinning going on, Martin Luther King, John McCain and The Hate McCain Cannot Hide.

Also:
* Honoring Dr. King - McCain’s sorry record
* Color of Change fact sheet on McCain’s civil rights record

John McCain is going to appear in Memphis today, on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination. That's worthy of a brass balls award as the Arizona senator has a long history of opposing civil rights legislation, including the federal MLK holiday, something he voted against as a Congressman in 1983. He now says he "evolved" and regrets that vote.

In 1983, when I was brand-new in the Congress, I voted against the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King. That was a mistake, OK? And later I had the chance to … help fight for … the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King as a holiday in my state."

The good folks at Color of Change have a fact sheet up on McCain's civil rights record. It's questionable whether his evolution is occurring at even a glacial pace. Decide for yourself as you read the items below the fold.
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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.

Did I call it or not? You’ll recall that the denizens of the Free Republic were huge fans of Condoleezza Rice - in fact there was a draft Condi in 08 movement there. However, I was certain once she commented positively about Obama’s speech about race, the love affair would be OVER in the swamps. These are the mild, straightforward comments that landed Dr. Rice in the conservative dog house.

“Black Americans were a founding population,” she said. “Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together - Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That’s not a very pretty reality of our founding.”

As a result, Miss Rice told editors and reporters at The Washington Times, “descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that.”

“That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today,” she said.

Miss Rice declined to comment on the campaign, saying only that it was “important” that Mr. Obama “gave it for a whole host of reasons.”

She wasn’t claiming victim status, she was simply making a statement of fact that opening up an honest conversation about race is necessary — and that it is difficult to do so.

See the Freeper filth below the fold; I think the reaction should tell black folks in the GOP where they stand should they dare to acknowledge the existence of white privilege in this country. You can be at the highest levels of government, work hard for your wealth and join that country club, but in the end, you’re still an uppity nigger if you mention the obvious legacy of this country when it comes to slavery, Jim Crow — or even suggest that our country needs to move forward by talking about it, not denying it.
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Students at the Bronx High School of Performance and Stagecraft watch and discuss Barack Obama’s speech on racial reconciliation and how it relates to their lives. Listen to these young people.

A teacher took the time to draw these young people out and make it a safe environment to bring up hard issues and he facilitated a healthy discussion about becoming politically engaged.

Why is something so simple so difficult for adults? We should be embarrassed at so much of our population’s lack of interest in thinking through our biases and bridging these divisions. How does it get stamped out of us?

I think it speaks volumes that a Bush loyalist like Condi Rice, because of her heritage, sees Obama’s speech on race much differently than her colleagues. I have wondered what she (or Colin Powell, for example) would say publicly about Obama’s speech and — the need to discuss the country’s problems with race that this campaign has laid bare. She referred to the legacy of slavery as the country’s “birth defect.” (The Washington Times):

“Black Americans were a founding population,” she said. “Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That’s not a very pretty reality of our founding.”

As a result, Miss Rice told editors and reporters at The Washington Times, “descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that.”

“That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today,” she said.

Miss Rice declined to comment on the campaign, saying only that it was “important” that Mr. Obama “gave it for a whole host of reasons.”

There are ties that bind, despite a gulf of political differences — when you see this issue of race relations raised by Barack Obama and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — people of conscience should take note that we should stop playing political football with this issue and start doing the hard work to heal this, rather than engage in a downward spiral of denial and no-so-veiled vitriol (you hear that, Pat Buchanan and Bill Kristol?).

This is not helpful. A fan of winger Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, Instapunk, used Barack Obama’s invitation to discuss race to unload this bile:

However much they may scream and protest, black people will know what I mean when I demand they concede that the following people are niggers:

- Jeremiah Wright
- O.J. Simpson
- Marion Barry
- Alan Iverson
- William Jefferson
- Louis Farrakhan
- Mike Tyson . . .

You see, you’ve just given life to the suspicion that black people in America are, and have long been, a fifth column — unanimously hating the very country that has afforded the highest standard of living ever achieved by black people in human history. We’re teetering at the edge of believing that you’re a secret society, a massive collection of sleeper cells just waiting for your chance to do serious harm to the rest of us. You’ve made it possible for us to believe that. Because you’re never outraged by what the worst black people do. Because you continue to make excuses for what should be inexcusable to everyone.

Sigh. A Fifth Column. Does this mean I’m missing my copy of the Uppity Negro Manifesto? Once I get my copy, do I cross reference it with my copy of The Homosexual Agenda?
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Now that the Rev. Wright thing has provided an even better excuse for racists to start saying in public what they usually keep in private, I knew it was just a matter of time before the “blacks should be grateful” argument came out. Being a white person from an especially racist part of the country means you can index some of these nonsense arguments, since you hear white people speak them behind closed doors so often. Not that I’ve actualized any value from being able to predict all the favorite nonsensical tropes that racists trot out, but if I can wrestle one benefit away, it’s this: I can safely say that it’s a lot like the anti-choice nonsense. The assholes making the arguments are irredeemable and should be written off. But it’s still somewhat of a benefit to engage their nonsense and show why it’s nonsense for the benefit of people listening who may be naive and can be rescued before they turn into irredeemable assholes.

I mention this, because I read the most audacious version of “they should be grateful” at Lawyers, Guns and Money, where they link this guy who says:

Far as I am concerned, many Blacks in the US ought to be thankful that no matter how their ancestors got here they are better off in the US than in some shiitehole in Africa, eating scarps of bread, swatting flies and living in mud huts using arrows and clubs to hunt their food.

Now, it’s easy to dismiss this, and in a saner world, such a blatant racist should be dismissed. It’s easy to say, “The fuck?” and “You know, Africa is an extremely diverse and complex continent that can’t be characterized so simply.” But if you look beyond the surface of this ignorant fuckwittery, you realize this is another version of “The poor aren’t poor because they have color TVs.”

Grass huts and other racist tropes aside, it’s undeniable that large parts of Africa are desperately poor and war-torn. What I think is useful to remind people, though, is that the poverty and warfare in Africa is not inevitable, because the continent is rich in natural resources that should, in a fair world, leave many nations in Africa quite wealthy with a high standard of living for everyone. That this is not true for a lot of people has everything to do with, you guessed it, the history of Western colonization of the continent. Hell, that’s not even a distant memory—South African apartheid ended within most our memories, and in a sense, it didn’t really end, because the whites that controlled the economy managed to sneak out with their economic interests intact instead of doing what was right and letting the wealth of South Africa be for South Africans. The last scene in There Will Be Blood—you know, with the milkshake?—really tells you the whole story of the West’s attitude towards Africa, an attitude that has been held back some, but not enough. The U.S.’s willingness to instigate warfare and subvert elections when the people elect leaders who will take measures to reclaim the nation’s wealth for the people (socialists!) doesn’t limit itself to Central and South America, you know. We’ve propped up our share of murderous, graft-happy African dictators in the past, with the paper thin justifications of “oh noes, communism!”

Clearly, it’s nonsense to suggest that black individual Americans are sort of faced with this existential choice—here or Africa?—which makes little real world sense, like suggesting that I would somehow individually exist if various ancestors hadn’t migrated from various European countries to mingle their genetic material in the Western Hemisphere. But I bring up the point that the same colonizing forces that brought slavery to the U.S. brought economic destruction to Africa to make the larger point that the word “gratitude” should get nowhere near this discussion.

It’s gratifying to receive open and honest personal stories from readers about contentious issues we discuss here in the coffeehouse. Sometimes folks ask me for advice (I’m flattered, but I certainly don’t have all the answers!), other times they just want my perspective on how I might have handled a scenario.

As we’ve been discussing here for quite some time, race is probably the most difficult tooic for people to open up about, and I’ve received quite a few emails from people on the topic who asked for private responses.

The other day I received one from a reader named Kim in Vancouver, BC. While we think that in many ways Canada is more civilized and progressive when it comes to civil rights and tolerance, it’s pretty clear that racism is alive and well and definitely not discussed in the open in some circles. Kim was more than happy to share with folks here, so I’m posting it, along with the response I sent to her.

Hi Pam,

I came across your blog and your postings about blackface after coming home tonight upset about a Purim party I attended. This party, open to the Jewish public and held at Vancouver’s Jewish Community Centre, was to celebrate the Jewish carnival-like holiday of Purim, where people dress up in costumes and dance all evening. There are events for children as well.

I was shocked to see five adults there wearing full blackface and Afro or Rasta wigs. I went up to the lady at the ticket desk, confirmed that she was one of the organizers of the event, then asked her opinion on how best to express my dismay. Should I speak to the people directly, talk to the Rabbi, or …? She was confused by my question. She didn’t understand what blackface was or why it’s offensive. When I tried to explain (I’m not black, so my knowledge was limited to memories of certain blackface Looney Tunes cartoons being banned and Al Jolson and basically that blackface has been considered offensive since at least the 1950s), she protested that that’s just my opinion. (Um, no, even the Looney Tunes people realized it’s wrong.) She also said I shouldn’t bother telling the people their costume is offensive because they won’t listen to me. I asked her how she knew what they would say, then gave up. She clearly felt I had no reason to be upset.

Kim continues below the fold.

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We all know Fox is a GOP propaganda organ rather than a news network, but they really have jumped the shark spending precious air time deconstructing the “ethnic” significance of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s beard. Yes, this is the best they can do when discussing the impact of the former Clinton cabinet member’s endorsement of Barack Obama. (Media Matters):

When I saw Richardson’s beard for the first time, what came into my mind is that he looks great with it, not whether he looked Hispanic enough. It certainly is more becoming than Al Gore’s post-2000 facial fur.

I guess these Faux folks are so color aroused that their implicit biases just take over.

I was on The Mike Signorile Show (SIRIUS OutQ - channel 109) on Friday to discuss Obama’s speech about race relations, and the impact of race on politics and culture — along with our lack of ability to discuss it in a productive manner. While we are doing a pretty good job here on Pandagon (see the comments in the recent post on Pat Buchanan’s outlandish column), I think that is the exception, not the rule.

Here is the audio. Use the player below or click here for the MP3

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While progressives and average Americans who think Barack Obama’s speech presented a difficult challenge wring their hands worrying about appearing to be racist if they broach the subject in any significant way, the depth of the problem at hand is clear when we have folks on the right like Pat Buchanan just laying it on the line with this mind-blower.

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

…We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Thanks, Pat. We’ve gotten the old “lift up” message, all right. How could people like Buchanan listen to the same speech and walk away with this level of vitriol in their heart and purposeful ignorance of history? Our country suffers an incredible sickness when it comes to race relations. The point of Obama’s speech is that we all have work to do, and share responsibility in opening up an adult dialog. The above does nothing to advance understanding, and shows no desire to do so either.

I love Dave Neiwert’s comment on Pat’s “A Brief for Whitey” essay. It’s below the fold.
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The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
– presidential candidate Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union,” delivered in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008

On Sunday, before Barack Obama gave his A More Perfect Union speech, I wrote about what was likely to be addressed regarding Rev Wright’s non-productive recorded comments that raised a political ruckus last week, so click over to read my thoughts on that topic.

Obama addressed the impact of what was said — and how it was said — in a way that was thoughtful, personal and direct. This was really two speeches though — one was his response to the political storm over Wright, and the other was distinctively different and spoke to me — a brave cracking open the door on the larger questions about our country’s complex, pathological issues with race.

I knew I wouldn’t see the speech live (I was on a panel at Take Back America in DC). I decided that I would avoid reading blogs about the speech, or watch the talking heads do the punditry after the fact. While in the airport waiting on a flight back home to NC, I sat and read the transcript. I didn’t watch the video — I wanted to absorb the message devoid of delivery and presentation. I am writing this still not having read any MSM coverage or blogosphere reaction to the speech.

When I read it I wept. The tears were of sheer relief, particularly because of the above quote.

More below the fold.
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UPDATE: Here is the speech, “A More Perfect Union.” The transcript is below the fold.

Barack Obama was in Philadelphia today and delivered a speech about race, religion, and with it, cultural differences and perceptions. The dustup over the contentious comments by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Obama’s church, who stepped down from his religion advisor role in the campaign after inflammatory recorded comments of Wright’s sermons surfaced cast a pall over the campaign — and the Right ran with it.
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