Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Wednesday, January 22, 2014

RACE FOR THE CUCKOO BANANAS


President Barack Obama:


“ 'There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president,' Obama said in the article by David Remnick, appearing in the magazine’s Jan. 27 edition. 

 'Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black president,' Obama said in his most direct comments on how race has affected his political standing since he’s been in office."


The wingnut blogsphere went berzerk.  Google and read for yourself. I haven't the stomach to link to their rot.

President Obama made an evident statement that has nothing to do with blaming anyone or anything.  He spoke a truth.  And that should be the end of it.  But the rightwing noise machine will have none of it.  They've misquoted, misrepresented, and plain lied about what he said, hence the controversy.  It's all so witheringly predictable.

Charlie Pierce of The Atlantic explains the knee-jerk reaction from the howler monkeys of the rightwing noise machine:

"If that isn't the perfect Barack Obama quote, I don't know what is. Some people hate the idea of the black man in the White House, but some people think it's cool, and so it goes. Not only is it the perfect Barack Obama quote, but it is the perfect illustration of the rhetorical limitations that have been put on this president simply because he is the black man we elected. For lack of a less historically freighted term, the president is our common property in the most ordinary times, and these are far from the most ordinary times. From the start, and partly as a result of his own rhetoric, this president has worked within limits much tighter than those within which any of his predecessors have worked. Anger -- real, righteous anger -- never has been an option for him. Occasionally, it has leaked out -- when he called out the Supreme Court, "Continue, Governor." -- but that generally has resulted in a swift stampede toward the fainting couches. Throughout his presidency, I have thought of that moment in The Great White Hope, the one that the exiled Ali once made James Earl Jones re-enact on the streets of Manhattan, where the Jack Johnson character shakes his fists at the sky, and bellows at his distant, cowardly tormentors, "Here...I...is!" That kind of moment for this president always, always had to be subtext, lest it make people nervous about the person on whom they had bestowed this great blessing. He could never be Truman, threatening to kick a newspaper critic in the 'nads. He could never be LBJ, goddamming his way to legislative victories, one after another. He had to be conciliatory. He could not be the Angry Black Man. After all, we white folks let him be president. Where was the gratitude there?" 




Ta-Nahisi Coates, one of The Atlantic's best writers, forcefully and perceptively cuts through the b.s. while talking about the kerfluffle over Richard Sherman of the Seattle Seahawks. Coates' words explain why so many people went cuckoo bananas over the simple truth President Obama said in his interview in The New Yorker:


"And then there is us, ashamed at our own nakedness, at our humanity. Racism is a kind of fatalism, so seductive, that it enthralls even its victims. But we will not get out of this by being on our best behavior—sometimes it has taken our worse. There's never been a single thing wrong with black people that the total destruction of white supremacy would not fix."

7 comments:

Shaw Kenawe said...

When the right isn't calling PBO a racist or "playing the race card," it's suggesting President Obama is a messenger of Satan. This crank was featured on Bill O'Reilly's show on FAUX NOOZ, the country's leading cable news station. He wasn't a guest on some obscure talk radio show in East Podunk. He was featured on one of cable's biggest star's show:

"Obama Is The Anti-Christ Warm-up Act, Says Bill O’Reilly Guest
By Amanda Marcotte
Tuesday, January 21, 2014 12:43 EST

Holy crap, this might be a whole new level of the right wing just giving into their anger and panic over the fact that Americans were willing to elect a black Democrat as President twice in a row. Bill O’Reilly brought this religious crank, Robert Jeffress, on the basically argue that Obama is the opening act for the Anti-Christ. I mean, he clearly wants you to believe that Obama is basically the Anti-Christ, but he knows that argument sounds crazy. So he, uh, tries to dial it down by saying, no, he’s just the warm-up act. Of course, that still means he believes that the Anti-Christ is coming and that Obama works directly for Satan, but in nutty Christian talk, saying Obama is merely a horseman of the apocalypse instead of the big boss is taken for moderation."

Anonymous said...

"How about a 'Public Servants' that says..."If You Are A 'Extreme Conservative' Then You Are No Longer Welcome'!"

I say BRAVO!

Paula said...

Here's some major cuckoo bananas:

Our Lady of the Magic Dolphins aka Peggy Noonan said, A martini a day keeps the pink elephants away!

And Glen Beck wonders why there's still racial animosity... Hey Glenn, it's because you promoted it!

Uncle Remus said...

Cuckoo Bananas say:” 'It Is Our Responsibility As a Nation' to Remember that Obama was born in Kenya”!!

The stories of the Kenyan usurper are "too often lost," Cuckoo Bananas have said.

Oh come on now, what’s going on here! ! Gimme a break.

It's been over once, like a fried egg, and nobody alive is responsible for it. The Cuckoo Bananas simply cannot stop playing the Stupid Card!

More evidence that we have a splitting headache. Gawd I'll be glad when the Cuckoo Bananas don't have a soapbox known as the Wingnut blogs to PREACH their crap.

Just Saying It Like It Is said...

Uncle Remus,

Very funny. But there's a lot of truth in that babbling of yours. I guess you're just trying to make a point with humor, which we could use these days.

Stevie

Ducky's here said...

A now the last in the Bob McDonnell story :

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- A federal indictment says officials at dietary supplement maker Star Scientific Inc., which is central to a gift scandal involving former Gov. Bob McDonnell, discussed using Virginia state employees as test subjects for one of their products.

The indictment filed Tuesday charges McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, with corruption after a monthslong federal investigation into thousands of dollars in gifts the Republican is accused of getting from the company's CEO.

Court records say Star Scientific's Jonnie Williams, identified as "JW" in court records, met Maureen McDonnell and a senior state health official at the governor's mansion in August 2011. He discussed having state employees use Anatabloc as a control group for research studies.

The indictment says a research scientist consulting for Star Scientific sent Maureen McDonnell an email with a similar suggestion, which she forwarded to her husband.
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That's right folks, he wanted the state to provide the subjects for his drug study. Keep an eye on this one. It appears they were very bad boys.

Anthony C. said...

Before the b grade Hollywood actor turned up to play the role of the President and read his daily script provided by his VP and Neo Con team, who have all either been brought into disrepute or recanted their entire philosophies, a middleclass family consisted of 1 member of the household, doing an average job that paid enough money to put his or her kids through college, buy a home, a new car every couple of years, a decent holiday break, all the mod cons of modern life and to even save money for a retirement or investment nest egg.

Corporations used to value their employees and American corporations didn’t have their head office located in a post office in a tax haven nation.

Along came trickledown and America went from being the largest creditor nation in the world to the largest debtor nation by the time the script reading actor had finished his role of a lifetime.

By the end of his 8 year leading part in White House Playhouse Theater, income had stagnated for all but the very rich and well connected and the wealth inequity gap had tripled.

Having tasted the ballooning effect of their incomes, CEOs started devising new and more novel ways of accelerating the wealth gap and declared silent class warfare while the middleclass tightened their belts and a second member of the family had to join the workforce to maintain parity with their former life style. (The end of the June Cleaver era had come to America).

As the full trickledown reality played its course that gap widened until CEO’s and the top 1% saw the wealth disparity favor them 500 fold over 3 decades and the middleclass measure remained flat, in income, with more hours needed to maintain a valid lifestyle and ideas like family holidays almost a thing of the past, American workers became the longest hour workers in the entire developed world and least rewarded for the amount of hours they put into their jobs.

Companies started to export jobs to cut jobs as the middleclass market expanded into formally 3rd world countries, removing a stream of revenue meant for the maintenance, upkeep and planning for the future of the nation which included the safety net and pensions.

Fast forward to the Bush43 era and the job of starving the beast reached its culmination when the national treasury was looted on a pretext of war that was nothing more than largesse provided by tax payers to corporate war profiteers.

You and I paid corporations to empty our nation’s savings, our savings and many of us lost loved ones who went to war and the middleclass began to collapse.

A wasteful war of lies can find money but feeding the poor victims of a failed economic policy, not so much.

Idolatry of the new radiant rich has broken the world and morale of the people, worship of the unscrupulous has become a religion and the gilded calf is the new God.