A rural county pining for a racist past
Ah, good memories
With all the polls it feels like there’s been a sea change in how America sees race, or maybe not. Maybe it’s W’s 22% approval rating skewing the numbers, because there are obvious still some serious misconceptions and racism playing big in the election. Interviews in the ‘bootheal’ region of Missouri (only a few hours South of me here in St. Louis, where Obama drew 100,000 people under the Arch last week) show that indifference, mixed with the old school racism and ignorance, is still alive and well. My favorite part is:
“But Douglas’ cousin Ronnie Johnson is voting for McCain. Or rather, against Obama.
He is reluctant to explain this at first — “You don’t want to know why,” he says.
The others on the porch goad him. And Johnson, a lanky 20-year-old white man who works as a meatcutter at a grocery store, starts to talk about an issue that has persisted throughout the campaign: race.
It is not just that Obama is black, Johnson says. He has heard that Obama is Muslim. (Obama is Christian.) He also has heard rumors that Obama refuses to salute the American flag, and that Obama has promised that black men will have more rights than white men. (Independent fact-checking groups say these rumors are false.)
So Johnson is voting for McCain.
“He’s white,” Johnson says.”
And we wonder why W was elected twice. Someone save us…
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Tea partiers: You get mad now?
another solid argument from a 'tea bagger'
Since the health-care debate brought out the worst in the tea party protesters, we’ve seen a shift from fear mongering, to the disgusting behavior of last weekend that included bigoted, racist name calling, spitting on on elected officials and finally vandalism and death threats. If it weren’t clear before, the ‘movement’ has truly showed us what is behind their manufactured anger, and it ain’t health care. Case in point, how can people be mad now, when they weren’t mad when the previous administration that just walked all over the constitution, sent us into a war with a country that never attacked us and raised the debt to record highs? Well as I tried to figure out how to condense my thoughts, who would have thought Rosie O’Donnell would have covered it so well, with a post on her blog titled We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, Now you get mad!? One of her readers was able to succinctly break down the blatant hypocrisy of this whole affair, providing a perfect platform for a tea party rebuttal, but don’t expect that, instead lets expect more gay bashing from those cowards. I’m reprinting the post here (just like the DailyKos did) because it needs more exposure, so please pass it on. After that, follow-up by reading Frank Rich’s Op-Ed titled The Rage Is Not About Health Care for more rational of what is the true driver for this behavior, it gives us a lot to think about.
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Mar 29, 2010 | Categories: commentary, obama, politics, rant | Tags: barack obama, bigots, congress, dailykos, death threats, democrats, fear, fear mongering, name calling, obama, politics, president, protest, racism, republicans, rosie o'donnell, taxes, tea baggers, tea party, vandalism | View Comments