Seriously, Arizona. Fuck off and die.
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Seriously, Arizona. Fuck off and die.
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[…] have to agree with John Cole. Wow. Stay classy, […]
scarshapedstar
It’s got nothing to do with the fact that the children have dark skin. The teabaggers are simply concerned about their Muslim upbringing.
MattR
To repost my comment on this from a previous thread:
Probably the worst part about that is the fact that “Faces in the mural were drawn from photographs of children enrolled at Miller Valley”.
russell
yeah, ‘cos we all know that white people lived in AZ long before any spanish-speaking brown people showed up.
Emma
Christ on a Harley. Words fail.
Cat Lady
I hope John McCain is proud. These are Sarah Palin’s flying monkeys.
Jenn
There’s a special place in hell for people like that. Bastards. I hope the kids are young enough that they’ve been sheltered from this shit. I really hope there’s not a bus stop or something in front of this mural, where the kids are HEARING this shit fly about themselves. Goddamned BASTARDS.
FormerSwingVoter
It’s time to stop acting like these people have any worth as human beings whatsoever. Funny time is over.
It’s time to burn the fucking GOP to the ground.
acallidryas
I am just so thrilled that we live in a post-racial society. Can you imagine how much worse this would be if people were still racist?
Seanly
I got nothing except that there are some extremely fucked up white people out there.
AhabTRuler
Jenn@6: Um, according to the article, people were yelling epithets while the kids were helping to paint the mural. Stay classy, AZ.
Ash Can
I can’t wait to hear Jan Brewer insist that this incident had nothing whatsoever to do with racism, and that it hurts her to the quick to hear anyone make that accusation, since her own father died fighting the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama.
Bill Section 147
If only they had thought to give the children depicted in the mural little Israeli flags and posed a few of them in prayer to shining-white Jesus. Then it would be a cherished symbol of everything that is right with America.
Trinity
Words fail.
Legalize
South Carolina: “Well played, Arizona.”
daveNYC
That’s the level of crazy that will have me moving to NZ if the 2012 elections look to be going poorly. God knows that other countries can suck, but incidents like making the kids in a mural more white are (IMO) a sign that if the people behind them had their way they’d come up with a more permanant solution, if you know what I mean.
I’m a Jew in New York in the financial industry. I figure I’m about third or fourth on the list of people up against the wall.
celticdragonchick
My God.
What the fuck is happening in this country.
By the way…check out South Carolina…
*********************************************
It sounds like South Carolina State. Sen. Jake Knotts’ “raghead” comments last night are even worse than first reported.
Not only did he refer to Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley as a “raghead” during an internet political radio show taped in a bar — but Knotts called her a “f—ing raghead” afterward, according to a report from the Free-Times.
“She’s a f—ing raghead,” Knotts reportedly said.
Knotts says he believed Haley has been set up by a network of Sikhs and was programmed to run for governor of South Carolina by outside influences in foreign countries. He claims she is hiding her religion and he wants the voters to know about it.
“We got a raghead in Washington; we don’t need one in South Carolina,” Knotts said more than once. “She’s a raghead that’s ashamed of her religion trying to hide it behind being Methodist for political reasons.”
Haley is of Sikh descent, and is now a Christian.
Knotts also reportedly suggested that Haley’s father is sending letters to India bragging about Haley’s candidacy. Knotts: “We’re at war over there.”
“We need a good Christian to be our governor,” he said. “She’s hiding her religion. She ought to be proud of it. I’m proud of my god.”
Knotts says he believes Haley’s father has been sending letters to India saying that Haley is the first Sikh running for high office in America. He says her father walks around Lexington wearing a turban.
“We’re at war over there,” Knotts said.
Asked to clarify, he said he did not mean the United States was at war with India, but was at war with “foreign countries.”
**************************************************
Un-fucking-believable.
bobbo
Gotta love the Arizona Republic headline, “Altered Mural Fuels Racial Debate.” Not “Racists Demand All White Mural.” Balance, people.
scarshapedstar
Maybe the Tea Party will call their next convention the Nurembag Rally?
Violet
Wonkette is right:
Yep.
licensed to kill time
@Ash Can: Zing! good one.
The Dangerman
I’m surprised that they didn’t just make the artists paint the Hispanic kids holding their immigration papers and the African American kids holding their long form birth certificates.
Urza
Just for curiosities sake, has anyone found a photo of the mural? Before or after, just like to see what got the sheet heads ticked off.
Short Bus Bully
Civil War part Deux is a comin’…
Quiddity
From the Arizona Republic article:
So now we have right-wing radio not just influencing office holders, but as officeholders.
celticdragonchick
@daveNYC:
I think it may be time to start updating passports and such, in case something really goes badly wrong in 2012. Considering the news this morning that we may be entering a double dip recession, I would not count on this president being a two term administration (and he admitted he knew that may well be the deal when he was inaugurated).
We are looking hard at Canada.
freelancer
Someone hasn’t been reading their Book of Mormon. Get on that shit, or fuck off and die.
maya
It was the next logical step after wind chimes and pinatas were banned by the Sun City HOA.
El Cid
It’s about damn time we make Crayola bring back the “flesh tone” crayon like it was for all us good Caucasian. The damn coloreds can have their burnt sienna or maroon like they used to.
And what the hell are the damn Arizona schools doin’ anyway, fillin’ up the classroom with these primitive darkies anyway? We Real Americans don’t pay our taxes so these monkey mud kids can fill up the halls having babies and dealing drugs when children are trying to learn.
celticdragonchick
@Violet:
I’m not laughing any more. I’m
waitingcringing for the next Oklahoma City.Hunter Gathers
How long until Chunky David Brooks or the assclowns at Reason come out to defend this? Me thinks they will blame it on the kids, not all of them being smart or motivated enough to be born to lily white WASPs with large stock holdings. Nobody would scream racist bullshit in Ayn Rand’s America.
El Cid
@Violet: If the Klan tries burning down some Latino neighborhoods, they’re going to quickly learn that they’ve learned a few things about fighting back in their years.
MattR
@celticdragonchick: Despite its current length, I am still adding names to the waiting list of people in line to be my faux spouse when I take advantage of my dual citizenship and move to the Great White North. I was assuming it would be for health care purposes, but it may end up being to escape the crazy.
PS. If anyone here wants to be considered for the list, please fax me your credenzas.
AhabTRuler
SBB@23: The numbers wer agin’ ’em last time, the numbers are agin’ ’em this time. The south will lose again.
Jennyjinx
Is this the part of our culture that defines us as “real Americans”? Are we supposed to be calling elementary children racist names and taking their faces off of school murals? Is that was “real Americans” do?
Fuck, I’m sick of these assholes. They’re like a virus. The kind that makes you want to gouge out your own eyeballs and ear drums. Don’t we have a vaccine for these idiots?
celticdragonchick
@MattR:
That.
Third Eye Open
Note to my Canadian friends: I am no shirker, I have picked cucumbers in 100-degree heat, I speak English fairly well, and I love cake donuts. I enjoy hockey and curling and high-ABV beer. I enjoy winter sports and John Candy.
All I need is a place to stay for a few months and some help with my “ehh’s”. I promise I wont cause any trouble, and I wont dip into your stash.
Your friend,
Me
Mark S.
@Quiddity:
Eric son of Erickson is a city councilman for whatever bumfuck city of Georgia he lives in.
@Urza:
This was the only picture I could find of it.
J
@El Cid: Spot on, but your spelling is too good.
Perhaps Arizona should change the name of its chief elected official from ‘governor’ to ‘grand wizard’ or ‘kleagle’.
Violet
@Jennyjinx:
Yep:
There’s your Real Murkins right there. Bonus: according to the article, a lot of them are former Hillary supporters.
Citizen_X
Here are a few pictures of the mural that’s riling up the Klansmen, and here’s a bit more background on the subject.
The “controversy” doesn’t look any better in context.
PS: as the Wonkette commenters remind us, Billy Jack was set in Prescott. Shit’s changed since then, huh?
sukabi
@Jennyjinx: yes, lead-based, high velocity vaccine.
celticdragonchick
@AhabTRuler:
It won’t just be the South this time.
Have you looked at the crazy in Indiana? Ohio? ARIZONA??
The Gods-damned culture war is threatening to go all the way at some point, and it will be in every state to some degree. This time, it may well kill the nation as we know it for good.
We will have only ourselves to blame.
Robert Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy: How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet
Urza
http://gawker.com/5555807/arizona-elementary-school-whitens-faces-of-black-and-latino-students-on-school-mural
Picture if anyone wants to see. There is a white girl kneeling and a hispanic boy looking at her and she’s winking at him. I think the real problem is the black boy got the front and center position and he looks happy. Not sure if thats a boy on the bike, but if its a girl it means there’s a white and black boy and 2 white girls with no white boys anywhere in sight, which goes along well with the 15% of interracial marriages in the country last year I guess.
edit: Mark S seems to have beaten me to it with even more actual photos and not just the artist conception which is slightly different.
Now i’m wondering if its the native american or the raccoon that set the sheet heads off most.
AZ Mtn Dog
I live in Prescott and this is not the first time councilman Blair has swung his stick at this pinata. He is the guy who riled up 11 people to complain about a US Census banner that was in Spanish, causing the city to remove it.
I am deeply embarrassed by his antics.
Frank Chow
“The question is why do you all hate Real Uhmerika so much? Arizona ain’t no United Colors of Benetton and that’s the truth.”
I fear this is the beginning of something far worse than repainting murals.
taterstick
Speaking as a South Carolina native and current resident, THANK GOD FOR ARIZONA!!
Tonybrown74
This is really upsetting (to me). I feel that as a country, we are regressing and I don’t even know what to do about it.
MattF
Given that we’ve now got a Kenyan soshalist Pres-o-dent, and that he’s been looking somewhat successful lately, it’s not surprising that the racists have started going public. It’s not surprising, although I wish it was.
peach flavored shampoo
I’m surprised there’s not more vigalante justice going on….like a chapter of the Crips to come in and write down all the license plates of the racists and….ya know….”fix” the problem.
EdTheRed
Once again, Public Enemy was right.
celticdragonchick
@taterstick:
Did you read the post above about the SC state senator calling the President and his opponent “fucking ragheads”?
There is still hope for SC to pull ahead…but Arizona is giving it a real good shot.
Urza
@peach flavored shampoo: I could totally back reverse racism like that, and it might put the gangs to a semi decent social use.
Joe Bauers
Wow. I was just talking with the missus about my fears that between the oil gusher and the possible double-dip recession, that the Stupid Bastard Party would be swept back into power in November and unleash an orgy of investigations and impeachment proceedings that would effectively end the Obama administration and this brief respite from reactionary conservative rule. As part of that discussion we again talked about how the only thing keeping us in this horrorshow of a country was inertia and family relationships, and how that may not be enough for much longer.
But stuff like this and that asshole state senator in South Carolina calling Haley and Obama “ragheads” (and other things, but this is what’s on my mind today) really makes me afraid of what this place has become, in a visceral way that makes me think we ought to just get on a plane tonight and get as far away as we can.
God help us all.
MattR
@Urza: The black boy in the center is actually Mexican.
@Citizen_X: My grandmother had nothing but good things to say about her time living in Prescott, but that was way back in the Billy Jack days. She would be appalled by the way things have changed.
@Joe Bauers: The silver lining of the horror show that is the current right wing is that it just might allow Obama to win a second term whereas a more competent/sane opposition party would have a better chance of taking advantage of the conditions that Obama has faced.
Jennyjinx
@peach flavored shampoo:
They would, but they’ve been detained until they can provide their “real” birth certificates.
Punchy
I didn’t know there any Blacks or Hispanics in Arizona.
EdTheRed
What’s a smiling face when the whole state’s racist?
Also, too.
vtr
Isn’t there just one Republican somewhere – just one – with enough decency to call these idiots out? Isn’t there just one who’s put up with enough of this mendacity? This is a serious question. Is the entire party so depraved?
The Dangerman
@Citizen_X:
From your second link:
Forcing diversity down their throats? WTF?!! Since they don’t want diversity, I suppose what they want is … white only?
Urza
@Joe Bauers: Joe, before you decide to go, just remember that if too many of us get disgusted and leave, there’s a few minor issues to worry about for the rest of the world. Like do you really want to leave THOSE people in charge of all the nukes without an adult in the room. Or let them decide its ok to drill anywhere they want without the gubmint getting in the way of freedom.
Can we organize a mass migration to America for the purposes of stabilizing the crazy. Even better if the settlers could go to places to dilute the extra strength idiocy.
Erik Vanderhoff
If we just give Arizona back to Mexico, there won’t be an illegal immigration problem there anymore.
Jennyjinx
@celticdragonchick:
I live in SE Ohio and, um, yeah. You’re right about the crazy. That fucking virus has infected my work place, my neighborhood and my family. I’m beating it back as best I can, but I’m out numbered here.
slag
@Citizen_X: Best part of that article:
I’m just disappointed he didn’t tell us about all the black friends he has.
Mark S.
Sometimes we bring heartache on ourselves:
MattR
@slag: Actually, he did in the paragraph before.
Lev
Umm, people, Arizona is the most racist state outside the South. Has been for a long time. Let’s not forget about their not celebrating MLK Day back in the early 1990s. Sure, a lot of people have moved there since and changed things a little bit. But most of those people are still there.
I don’t really think America is falling apart. I think the wingnuts are falling apart.
Sheila
“If a state has no enemies it has no boundaries.”
“What will undo any boundary is the awareness that it is our vision, and not what we are viewing, that is limited.”
James Carse
TR
Next, they’ll be demanding that they whitewash the faces of the actual black and Latino kids in the school.
Fuck you, Arizona.
Scott P.
I can understand the sentiment, but understand that there are a lot of people more directly affected than you who don’t have the option to get on a plane and get far away. If the choice is fight or flight, I’ll go with fight, please.
MarkJ
@ Hunter Gathers
It will take about 5 minutes for them to turn this around and blame the kids who are having their features whitened for being the real racists.
This is why the GOP is actively trying to make the economy worse – it fuels the crazy.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Cid:
It’s all good, just as long as the Italians and the Irish and the Pollacks and the Papists and all the other mongrelized rabble understand that once we’re done dealing with them darker folk, you’re next under the microscope. No more flying Irish flags on St. Patrick’s day for you, Mr. Paddy O’Terrorist. Nosirreeee bob! Come to think of it, back in the good old days Benjamin Franklin wasn’t so sure that Germans really qualified as “white people”. How’s that for originalist intent?
Martin
Wow, congratulations Arizona. You’ve now established a pattern of taking that racism kept quiet in people’s homes and institutionalized it, bringing it out in the public square. Good luck shoving this genie back in the bottle, it’ll take a massive reversal just to slow it down.
Take a page from Kentucky that put forward a legislative proclamation that the Civil Rights Act should be supported in full, just because of the idiotic ramblings of a guy simply *running* for office. Problems always take 20x as much work to solve as they took to create – just ask BP.
celticdragonchick
@The Dangerman:
I wonder where I have heard that before…?
Oh yeah. The same assholes who hate my marriage and stalk me and my wife periodically.
It is no coincidence I was price shopping for a Ruger P series automatic in .40 S&W two days ago. I can see the writing on the wall.
TR
@Citizen_X:
Oh, dear Lord, I’d kill for a real-life sequel to that now.
maus
@Violet:
Give me a break, the vast majority of “PUMAs” were and are not sincere Hillary supporters. They don’t know a single thing about her beliefs and hate her husband.
El Cid
@Citizen_X: Holy shit! How can you damn cultual reltivist libruls not look at that mural with the Afro-Mexican horror figure in the middle and not see an Kenyo-Aztlan takeover of Real Amurka? CAIN’T YOU OBAMABOTS USE YER DAM EYES NO MORE?
scav
Talk about holding back the tide by shrieking at it. Is that mural magic so that by depicting minorities they suddenly pop into existence like Pinocchio or the Velveteen Rabbit? Or maybe more like Bilious and The Verruca Gnome.
Jon H
Remember, you can’t spell Arizona without “nazi”
celticdragonchick
@Jennyjinx:
I hear ya. Hang in there if you can.
R-Jud
@Urza:
Yeah, I live in a nice European country with real castles and socialized medicine, and I am still planning to move back home to fight this shit… um, somehow. Don’t give up, people. In the last 50 years we’ve made the US a more just society than even the Founders were willing to allow.
joe from Lowell
Obviously, John, they aren’t lightening those figures’ skin because they’re concerned about keeping the border safe.
They’re lightening those figures’ faces because they’re concerned about the deficit.
licensed to kill time
It’s a really nice mural. I find it incredibly sad that anybody could get so worked up about faces on the mural looking just like the kids in the schools…I mean, WTF, over?
I guess it goes hand in hand with re-writing history books and the bible and questioning Obama’s birth certificate and and and…just deny reality and create your own, fashioned in your own image/preferences/prejudices.
Just tap your heels together 3 times and keep saying “There’s no place like Real ‘Murka, there’s no place like Real ‘Murka”. That’s their plan, I guess.
demo woman
The story is heartbreaking.
slag
@MattR: Of course he did! I should have known. I am now fully satisfied.
J
And we pride ourselves on coming so far. It’s like the return of the No nothings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing)
The Tea baggers share with their know-nothing ancestors a gift for picking the names by which they will be known and–ever so rightly–held up to ridicule.
freelancer
Damn you, Rogers, this number keeps popping up more than the numbers in LOST:
(a commenter at Prescott’s newspaper):
J
Yikes! meant, of course, Know Nothings!
celticdragonchick
@joe from Lowell:
Minor repair…
Face
I’d give a $100 for someone to force him to name those families on the spot. Methinks he’s full o’ shit.
celticdragonchick
@licensed to kill time:
My minor is American History.
Don’t get me started (cough cough Texas cough)
Jenn
@AhabTRuler:
Yeah, it looks like my edit to that effect didn’t save.
I caught a portion of NPR’s Latino USA the other day, that seemed to imply that Latino activists were pissed off at Obama for sending troops down to the border, to the degree that they might not vote for him. I don’t know if the snippet I heard was an accurate representation of the sentiment out there, or if that sentiment is widespread, but if it is: eyes on the prize, folks. The Dems sure as hell aren’t perfect, but the alternative is frightening.
By God, if these racist motherfuckers want a culture war, let’s give it to them. And let’s fight tooth and claw to keep them out of Congress this November, never mind the White House in 2012.
Svensker
@Citizen_X:
Some of the comments are astounding: “it’s a ghetto mural; politically correct crap being rammed down the community’s throat; enough with this diversity; it’s the worst school in the area and why do we (nice white) people have to look at those ugly pictures?” Good grief.
I really don’t like America very much anymore. So maybe the wingers have a point. Maybe they HAVE changed what it means to be “American” at this point so much that I no longer want to participate in their rancid society.
Dracula
This appears to be great news for John McCain
adolphus
I’m as disgusted by this as anyone, but is anyone else a little amused that one of the mural painters is named “Wall.”
That’s just some quality naming..
Bad Horse's Filly
Sigh. When I thought my day couldn’t get any worse. Makes me ashamed to be caucasian.
celticdragonchick
@Face:
I saw a study somewhere that actually tried to gauge those “I have some black friends!” statements from casual racists.
Unsurprisingly, the African Americans had very different opinions of the relationships.
slag
@joe from Lowell: Possibly. But it seems to be the relative size of the brown kids they object to the most.
Smaller Brown Kids, Smaller Government
El Cid
Man, Republicans and TeaTards are obsessed with the notion that Democrats, particularly Obama, are ramming some huge, dark thing, some massive package, down their unwilling throats.
Wonder what that means?
Josh
Things like this really bring into focus what the stakes are.
A lot of times I’ll just sigh, exasperated, and think about just giving up and sliding into apathy.
For the life of me I don’t understand why there is so much vitriol. I don’t understand what motivates people to hate this way. I can’t comprehend the thought patterns that lead to the current race situations.
I just don’t have any words right now. I can’t tell if it’s a defense mechanism to keep myself sane or if it’s because I’m giving up or if it’s because I’m so enraged that I can barely keep from typing in all caps.
@celticdragonchick
I’m very sorry to hear about your problem with stalkers, and how you feel threatened by them. I can’t imagine the process that leads a person to do things like that.
My only assumption is that something in the water is making people insane.
elmo
@Ash Can:
So.
Much.
Win.
asiangrrlMN
I can’t even snark about this because it’s just breaking my heart.
fucen tarmal
who can blame the grand wizards of white flight, they moved to arizona from where ever thinking it was the ultimate way to get away from those people on the east coast and midwestern cities….they didn’t count on another those people, or that some of the old those people would show up…
they have to draw the line somewhere….seeing those people faces in a picture they have to pass every day? that is simply intolerable!
Silver Owl
There are days when I wonder if the United States can survive that bat shit crazy white conservatives without an all out violent backlash against them. They keep pushing and pushing their hate relentlessly.
QuaintIrene
Exactly my thought. But, expecting crickets. Why comment on this when there’s so much more to be said on why Obama isn’t weeping every day over the oil spill?
That principal is gutless. ‘Controversy’ my ass.
me
Here they come, here come the bastards.
NR
Clearly, this calls for calm, reasonable bipartisanship.
maya
See that? I diversed it.
Mary G
One of the comments on the az.com site says since there’s no audio or video of people yelling the racist slurs, it didn’t happen, just like Jim Clyburn lied about being spit on outside Congress.
I’m glad I’ve seen the Grand Canyon, because I’m never setting foot in Arizona again. I was thinking about moving there for the lower housing prices and my arthritis, but I’d rather stay in California.
Just appalling.
demo woman
How long will it be before John McCain issues a statement.
celticdragonchick
@Josh:
I appreciate the sentiment, although there isn’t much to be done about it except to be aware of one’s surroundings and try to be careful. After two particularly harrowing incidents at bus stops in Indianapolis a couple of years ago, I no longer use public transportation of any sort. It is too dangerous.
As for why people do what they do?
Hell if I know. I am a transgendered woman, and anything about sex or gender brings out an insane amount of cultural baggage that can be deadly toxic in the wrong context. Many people do not like that kind of challenge to their world view, and feel that I have to be punished or even killed because they see me as a challenge.
(You have no idea how often I am immediately assumed to be a pervert child molester or beastiality freak of some sort. Their vile assumptions then give them permission to act out violently.)
What scares me even more is when my wife is confronted at her job or I find out that a staff member at our son’s school hates our guts and it is transferring over to our kid.
The Dangerman
href=”#comment-1809126″>QuaintIrene:
Anyone that does this runs the risk of being primaried from the TeaTards.
Self-preservation (which explains why I might go gun shopping, too).
robertdsc
I guess Arizona should change its state motto to the following:
14 Words
Fuck Arizona.
Josh
You know, this reminds me of a study by U of M on the levels of empathy that college students have today as opposed to a decade or so ago, and they found that the measure of empathy is down 40%.
There were many contributing factors, but I think it’s just the over-competitive environment coupled with extreme levels of stress.
My natural inclination is to be an optimist, and to have a large amount of hope that things will get better with time–if only I work towards that goal. “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” right?
It seems lately that people are just becoming more and more unhinged and it is frightening. I can’t have a discussion with anyone of a different opinion without being labeled something.
I can’t but help isolating myself more and more as I see more and more of this shit.
Cacti
Pima County is quickly becoming the lone island of sanity in this State.
elmo
@celticdragonchick:
My partner and I have been together 19 years, and we live in the rural South. I have had occasion to step out onto my porch with a shotgun in hand. At one in the morning.
They left, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget that feeling.
fucen tarmal
@peach flavored shampoo:
the crips were a business, multilevel marketing, you need to make it a financially beneficial enterprise…however, on instinct, the blow back that would result from anything like that would make it highly unlikely, or prohibitively expensive to engineer.
Josh
@celticdragonchick:
I’m stricken by your account in a profound way possibly because of my brother. Without going into any details, I’ve been there for him when he’s had to describe similar incidents (although he’s a cosmetologist so it isn’t like it’s hurting him professionally).
It hurts to hear him talk about that kind of stuff.
Honestly, I just—I seriously don’t know what to say.
And that bothers me.
Short Bus Bully
Hate to say it, but this shit has totally ruined my day. The thought of what those parents must be going through watching their children’s faces get whitewashed is a brutal, ugly thing. If that was my kid I’d be murderously angry.
Give us some Tunch pics to bring this day back to even plz.
taylormattd
@joe from Lowell: win.
Comrade Dread
Yeah, so? I remember plenty of ***hole racists tolerating and being friendly to some folks of darker persuasion because they ‘knew their place’.
The same bastards would be first in line to fetch the shotgun if one of their ‘friends’ tried to date their daughter/sister/cousin/whatever.
Try Blythe. Same climate, but you’re on the California side of the border.
Mark S.
@vtr:
See Limbaugh, Rush. Seriously, he’s the leader of the GOP, and he’s made his ridiculous amounts of money mostly by racist dog whistles.
Urza
Maybe its to early in the day and they haven’t noticed yet, but Chuck Todd in place of Tweety and no one else yet today has mentioned this story. Crap Nucklehead Network either. If it doesn’t at least get a mention by the end of Maddow it’ll be dissapointing.
elmo
@Comrade Dread:
Not sure that would help. I don’t know Blythe itself, but I do know the Eastern California high desert pretty well, and it would give South Carolina a run for “most backwardest hillbilly rednecks anywhere.”
I grew up in Eastern San Diego County (near El Cajon). When I was a little girl, a black family moved in down the street, and a cross was burned on their lawn. Tom Metzger was from San Diego county. Tim LaHaye is from San Diego county.
Just being on the California side the border doesn’t necessarily help.
Richard Head
As a native Alabamian, I am happy that people will probably soon stop thinking of George Wallace in relation to racism…
Ed Drone
@freelancer:
Now, where have I heard that figure before? Hmmm…
I still say it’s interesting that we now have a ballpark figure for “some of the people all of the time.”
Ed
Jay in Oregon
@Face:
It’s interesting that he states that he knew four families; it’s a common trait of liars to be overly specific about relatively minor details of the story.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@slag:
They want to shrink the brown kid until he is small enough to drown in a bathtub!
moe
Ya… Shame on Paul McCartney! Outrageous!
Right Boehner?!
Gravenstone
Prescott. I spent a summer in Prescott nigh 30 years ago. Most famous aspect of that hole was “Whiskey Row” – a mile long strip of nothing but bars and liquor stores. Needless to say, I’m hardly surprised at this little slice of racist “charm”.
Ed Drone
Now, which name should we use? Is So. Carolina going to become ‘E. Arizona.’ or will Arizona become ‘SW Carolina?’
And
— That’s a familiar number, isn’t it? What I call the actual measure of “some of the people all of the time.”
Ed
[I tried to post that last part already, but it didn’t “take,” I guess.
fucen tarmal
carizona
DMG
@freelancer: That’s part of the problem here, I think. The city council election in my small city just outside of Phoenix had record turnout – about 10,000 votes out of about 25,000 registered, or something like that. The numbers don’t get much better in statewide elections.
burnspbesq
@demo woman:
Hope you’re not holding your breath waiting for that statement. You could hurt yourself that way.
Uriel
@Svensker: Yeah- I hear you. At this point I’m about to just give in and say, “fine, have you’re god damned country back. I really don’t like the way its looking lately anyways.”
celticdragonchick
@elmo:
I know exactly what you mean.
@Josh:
The fact that you are there for him to talk to is a blessing. Don’t worry about what to say. Listening is good.
burnspbesq
@elmo:
This. “Liberal California” is limited to San Francisco, Alameda, Los Angeles, and Santa Clara Counties. The rest of the state is the western outskirts of Lubbock, Texas.
maus
@Svensker:
Exceptionalism for exceptionalism’s sake.
maus
@burnspbesq: “Liberal Seattle” is similarly restricted to the higher populated city area, not the Glenn-Beck loving burbs.
Xenos
@celticdragonchick: My wife and I and our five kids are moving to Europe next month, for business reasons. I am beginning to wonder if we are ever coming back. I don’t recognize this place any more. Either I never really appreciated it, or it is really going rotten in new ways.
DonkeyKong
The chocolate milk pogrom comes next!
“Moo is for mooslims!” -Random Sunburnt Teabagger
bumper
@celticdragonchick: just an fyi: Rugers are manufactured in Prescott (at least some are, don’t know if the model you are interested in is though…)
Northumbrian (formerly Doonhamer)
I’m not a frequent poster, but I do love to come here every day and read the wit and snark served up by the front pagers and their loyal commentariat.
My partner and I have lived in Tucson for ten years now; we’re fortunate enough to live in Raúl Grijalva’s district.
My current job has me traveling to Plano, TX every few weeks, where I work with a bunch of programmers and developers, many of whom seem to be conservative white Christian evangelical males. On my last visit, I got to hear how much they thought AZ was getting a raw deal from the fallout of S.R. 1070 and what a great law they thought it was. I push back a little, but as they’re the client, my boss would be kinda furious if I told them what I really thought of their attitudes.
Today my partner and I are celebrating thirteen years together. I’d been in a good mood all day until I came here and followed the link to the story at the Arizona Republic, and then made the mistake of reading the comments there. What a buzzkill.
Fortunately, I came back and read through the entire comment thread, laughed out loud a few times, and feel a bit better now. Thank you.
Time to go celebrate. Have a good evening.
The Other Chuck
@burnspbesq:
What about all the limousine liberals in Marin?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
This has been here for a long time, it’s just you guys had the good fortune not to have to see it. This is the stuff that has long been simmering under the surface in folks, who because they were too weak to handle being called racist, have held their tongues when the weren’t around people who they knew shared their views. The fact that all of you are horrified and shocked by casual racism isn’t an indication of the country regressing. On the contrary, it is a sign of just how far we’ve come.
FYI Xenos, racism is a serious problem in Europe.
phoebes-in-santa fe
These are very scared, very ignorant people. They are terrified because the little they do know about the world around them tells them that they will soon be a minority in their own country. This TeaBagger bull-shit is a last-ditched effort to try to hang on to their positions and place in American society.
I am actually less scared about the future than I would be if we were NOT the big melting-pot we have come to be. Take a look at Germany in the 1920’s and 1930’s. There were the German Christians – the vast majority of the population – and the German Jews, a much, much smaller percentage of the population, albeit a fairly prosperous one. The German Jew was easily identified and persecuted as “The Other”.
In today’s America, there are so many “Others” that it will be difficult to pick one group out. You think the blacks are going to persecute the Hispanics or vice-versa? The Asians against the Jews? Hell, there are so many “mixes” that very few people are identifiable anymore. While to the average White Christian Republican that sounds pretty bad, it’s actually safer for the rest of us.
I was shocked – and obviously pleased – when Obama won the presidency by the margin he did. Those voters are the American future. We just have to get them motivated to vote in November and in 2012.
Maybe I have a Pollyanna attitude about this, but, please remember all the bullshit going on last summer with “Death Panels” and Town Halls mob scenes? “Oh, dear”, the Beltway pundits all said, “Health care won’t/can’t pass”. Remember when Scott Brown won election in Massachusetts? Again, “oh, Health Care Won’t Pass”.
DID Healthcare Reform pass, even with all those Tea Bagging dimwits campaigning against it? Um, yes, it did. Somehow, our representatives knew the right thing to do was to pass ACA, despite the bloviating from Tea Baggers.
THAT’S why I’m not packing up for Canada or New Zealand right now.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@bobbo:
The Arizona Republic is owned by Gannett, which is also USA Today. It’s not an Arizona company.
Also, two thirds of Arizona’s population lives in the Phoenix metro area, which is pretty evenly divided between blue and red voters. It’s totally gerrymandered, and the Arizona legislature makes it look like there are no sane people here, but in fact the population is pretty mainstream USA.
However, then there is rural Arizona. Prescott is a small, rather beautiful town in the mountains … and the area is largely inhabited by crazy, antisocial, antigovernment, lunatics. People live there because they don’t want to live in the real cities and have to get along with people who aren’t like them. Rand Paul types. David Duke types. And there they are, they moved up there to be away from the darkies and be against everything and there is nothing that can be done about them.
Well, except one thing, and that is to get Hispanic voter participation … registration and voter turnout … up in the 60+ percent range, where the white voter participation is, and start turning this state a nice shade of brown with blue overtones.
Easier said than done. Voter dynamics … all politics is indeed local. So I am renting a van in November to help drive people to the polls. We are going to do voter registration weekends. We invite all of you to come to Arizona and eat the world’s best Mexican food and join in the grassroots politics here.
Oh yeah, I said world’s best Mexican food.
kay
I think I’d object if the school changed my kid’s face so he or she would be acceptable to the people in this town.
I wouldn’t want it up there anymore, quite frankly.
That the school made the actual children depicted participants in their own rejection is just disgusting.
The school administrator should just admit he’s a coward who got intimidated by a radio host, and and take it down.
They shouldn’t have to take part in it.
Xenos
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I know that. Somehow it is less distressing to see it manifested in a different culture than to see it at home. It is like having a deeply dysfunctional family and needing to just get out, at least for a while. Everybody else may be dysfunctional too, but in new and perhaps less stressful ways.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@TR:
Actually no, nothing has changed in Prescott since Billy Jack.
What has changed is that Prescott is now exposing its hillbilly roots in an information society that sees everything.
Arizona is no more about the creatures who live in the mountains than New Jersey is about the creatures who live out in the Pine Barrens.
burnspbesq
@The Other Chuck:
Marin is, as the accountants say, not material (i.e., not big enough to be meaningful). Similarly, central Orange County keeps sending a Democrat to Congress, but that’s a blip – everybody knows that’s brown people voting for a brown person and therefore doesn’t really matter, and the rest of OC lives down to everyone’s stereotypical view of it (I hate my neighbors).
scav
Here, just as a break so that we don’t have to feel uniquely fucked up, the following conversation:
Alas, I must report that M Hortefeux has been fined 750 euros (and ordered to pay 2,000 euros to an anti-racism group. (bbc)
Derek
@Jay in Oregon:
Very interesting. Nice catch.
Derek
@burnspbesq:
Man. I agree.
maus
@Jay in Oregon:
“Are you calling MY MOM a liar?!”
Ruckus
Looked into leaving 5 yrs ago, NZ, BC Canada, many places in Europe. Problem was my age. Because these places have proper health care and retirement systems there are age cutoffs. The cutoffs vary by location but they are there. So I’m stuck here even if I want to go. Getting old does have it’s sucky bits.
People say to fight the problem, whatever it is, but it sounds like many feel like I do. The problem may not be getting worse long haul wise, but it sure isn’t getting better any time soon either. I just don’t think I have a lot more fight in me for something so basic as humanity. I really have no words for this anymore.
sunsin
@Lev: Word.
I’m a little amazed by some of you people. There is no time in the American past you could go to where these racist sentiments would not be widely shared. Where have you been living all these years? Do you seriously contend that it hasn’t gotten any better in the last fifty years? One or two jackasses start mouth-farting and you’re ready to run away. That’s not how the progress that has been made was made, it’s not how the victories that have been won can be preserved, and it’s not how the situation can be made any better in the future.
In the “good old days” they wouldn’t have to talk this way. Everyone would have taken it for granted.
Joel
The clowns behind this particular manuever deserve little more than mockery and condemnation. HOWEVER, it’s important to remember that they represent a hateful minority of the population and that the best way to defeat their rhetoric is to encourage their friends and neighbors to disregard those ideas. Painting said friends and neighbors with the same broad strokes isn’t going to help matters.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Lev:
To my knowledge, Arizona was, and remains, the only state which established a MLK holiday by popular vote. And wasn’t the last state to establish that holiday, missing that record by eight years.
And despite a generation of GOP gerrymandering, the last time I looked, 5 of 8 Arizona house seats were held by Democrats. The last two times we elected a governor, the winner was a (reportedly) gay Democrat, rather progressive, woman. The AZ Attorney General is a progressive Democrat.
Arizona just easily passed a referendum tax increase designed to shore up funding for schools, healthcare, and public safety, in the middle of the so-called “Tea Party” tax rebellion.
Ruckus
@sunsin:
I truly believe that you are right as far as you go. Not all of the racist crap is from old white assholes, some of them are their children. They may be a minority, crazy and stupid, but those traits are exactly the one’s necessary for violence. And they are being baited everyday. And almost no one is calling for restraint, thought and maturity. 27% may not be a large percentage but the other 73% are not all flaming liberals either. And I’ll bet that a large number of that 27% have guns and no real concept of restraint if pushed hard enough.
suzanne
God.
I live in the East Valley (metro Phoenix), and I can’t tell you HOW FUCKING ASHAMED this shit makes me feel. I’ll be volunteering for Mitchell, Goddard and Glassman in the coming weeks, methinks.
Because FUCK YOU, assholes. I love it here, and you can’t have it. I’m smarter than you, I vote more than you, and your racist shit is not fucking acceptable. GET THE FUCK OFF MY XERISCAPE.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Like they are on the blogs, for example.
bumper
@celticdragonchick: tried this earlier and it didn’t go thru…but just fyi, Ruger has a manufacturing plant in Prescott. Don’t know which models they make there though.
Ruckus
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Alright I deserved that.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Ruckus:
Hey, not blaming you. But nowadays, in an atmosphere of daily and weekly challenges to our patience, and our capacity to deal with crises and problems, things seem to have devolved into nothing but trolls for snark and gratuitous mob reactions to complex situations without easy solutions.
Shaking the pitchforks always makes people feel better, but it doesn’t accomplish much. I guess I am saying pretty much the same thing as @Joel:
And I also agree pretty much with @suzanne: I still think that short term, stupidity can prevail, but long term, democracy is going to work.
I’m going grassroots this election year, the the greatest extent that I can. I think the potential for grassroots in Arizona is huge if we can motivate voters. We still outnumber the morons!
cmorenc
@bobbo:
This is a nice, concrete illustration of the principle that: racism is determined by what you do, regardless of what you say the reason is for what you do.
suzanne
@LikeableInMyOwnWay: If you need help at all, you just let me know. My family and I love volunteering.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
We can now add AZ to the lists of states we’d gladly help secede.
gwangung
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Well, if you let them have the land around Nogales and just short of Tucson to the north. Heh.
Wile E. Quixote
@celticdragonchick:
You’ll love the P944. I had a Beretta .40 and I compared it to my P944 one day and then went and sold it because the P944 was a better gun, and much cheaper as well.
Ruckus
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
Once again we agree. But I’m one of those old white guys and I don’t feel I have the time, I’m pretty sure I don’t have the patience and my disgust meter is pegged. There were several posts about the flotilla attack and in one of them non violent protest was discussed. My viewpoint is that non violent protest is the only effective way long term to change minds but I don’t see the will, a leader, nor the time, even if the assholes are just the 27%.
I don’t know that anyone is actually asking but I am getting pretty tired of feeling like I need to be apologizing for being white.
tavella
It really is like those two states are in a competition for “Douchebag State of the Year.”
Rebecca
@burnspbesq:
Santa Cruz is okay. But that’s mostly because of the hippies.
Karen
I am really beginning to think that the goal of these dumbfucks in Arizona is to make it illegal to not be white.
I’m Jewish so I do not use this term loosely but I can easily see these attitude spreading to other states and a repeat of the Holocaust and the Japanese internment camps of the 30’s.
The only surprise was that it had taken this long.
I also see that Mexican Americans whose families legally immigrated to the US decades ago yet are forced to carry their papers like criminals will be pulled over, show these papers then tossed in jail for having fraudulent papers and detained indefinitely or at held with high enough bail that they cannot afford it.
This is where wealthy people of Mexican descent could raise money for the poor that will be imprisoned. And eventually when other non-white people are tossed in jail for trumped up reasons.
Unfortunately, the wealthier people tend to be in the GOP which makes the profiling palatable by saying it’s just to stop illegal aliens. But what do you do when just having brown skin makes you illegal.
Tell me I’m overreacting or reading this wrong. Please. As Rachel Maddow says, “Talk me down.” But we’re living in a country that believes you’re guilty until proven innocent and sometimes that’s not even enough.
Canada is sounding better and better every day.
asiangrrlMN
Believe me, I am not shocked at the racism–I know it exists. I am just disgusted by how free the ‘baggers and their ilk feel to flaunt this shit right now. It’s a sign, I know, that their way of thinking is dying out (not fast enough). My issue is that they are not gonna go quietly into the night. They are gonna make this cultural war big, and ugly, and just brutal. Since I have never felt a part of this country, ironically, until Obama was elected, I am not so certain I want to fight for it from the ‘baggers and the media and the power structures that be. And, for me, this shit on top of the papers, please law passed and all the rabble-rousing for building the damned fence is just too fucking much from the racist assholes who are less and less able to control their racist impulses. And, in states like AZ, the racist assholes are in power, in part because of the apathy/fear of many of the voters.
Mister Papercut
@El Cid:
This about sums it up.
Redshirt
Progressive Americans! Don’t consider leaving because of this crap. Things are, in fact, getting better and better every generation. This is the final battle, really, with an old, white, order. Demographics, politics, media, everything’s changing, and that change riles some people up. We have to resist and withstand their attacks and come through stronger for it. No need to flee, no need to fight, really, other than standing fast and holding true to one’s convictions. Which should be our goal anyways, everyday.
maus
@asiangrrlMN:
And there’s no way to close the floodgates with a fully complicit “the truth lies between both positions” media.
Elie
I think its part of the process of de-toxification…the poisons have to be brought into the mainstream to be cleansed.
This happens in the human body after severe illness and shock…the peripheral circulation stores the poisons because the system has been unable to mobilize them. To get the patient (our country), well, that peripheral circulation has to be restored to all our organs and limbs. That necessarily mobilizes the poisons into the main circulation.
But that is where they need to be. That is where they are filtered out, de-toxified and finally pissed, exhaled and shit out (depending on where they are in the system)
Its hard to see this, yes. Its hard to see a patient looking like they are getting worse before they get better. We have to support our national “self”, as we would a cherished patient, recovering from a long long illness with a body that is filled with poison… We CAN do this, we can…
phoebes-in-santa fe
@Karen: Karen, I’m Jewish, too, and have given the subject a lot of thought.
Did you see my posting at #146? If not, please read it. I think we’re a whole lot different than 1920’s and 30’s Germany.
poicephalus
FOAD
+ YRDD2ME
Hob
@Jay in Oregon: No doubt. And another mark of a nervous dishonest man is that nothing he said makes any sense even if it were true. I mean at first it seems like he’s saying it’s inappropriate for a black kid to feature prominently in a mural there, because they hardly have any black people there. But since that’s really obviously not true, he detours the sentence so now it’s about how things used to be, back in the day, when things were normal– there were just those four, and they kept out of sight!– even though that has nothing to do with anything, except as a general shout-out to old white people. And then he realizes that might’ve sounded a little unenlightened, so he throws in the “but I liked them” bit.
kay
@Redshirt:
I hate to be a “voting nag”, but if current registered Hispanic voters in Arizona turned out at even 50%, and voted against any candidate who is relying on this shit to win an election they could be 20% of the vote, rather than 12%.
Nearly double. 20% is a lot of clout.
The Republican Party needed an issue to keep the tea baggers all fired up once health care passed. They settled on this divisive nasty strategy. If Hispanic voters in Arizona object to being used like that, all they have to do is turn out.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@suzanne:
Assuming that I make it to Drinking Liberally next week (Thursday) I hope to hook up with my Hispanic contact and do some plotting. (Didn’t go last time, was not feeling well. But I did make it to the Protest SB1070 rally on Saturday).
I’m a pasty white gringo with shaky Spanish vocabulary, but I am ready to go door to door or hang in Hispanic areas and register voters or do whatever to get voters out in November. I am renting a passenger van on Election Day to help get voters to the polls.
In Arizona, Dems are ready to fight back. This November, the seats are going to go to the folks who get voters to the polls.
Ruckus
@kay:
I believe it was on West Wing that someone once said why don’t all the gun control people join the NRA. There are something like 1 million members now, if 2 million gun control people joined they could vote to change the NRA position and the major opposition to gun control goes away.
Voting.
Now in AZ all we have to do is convince them it’s safe to go to the polls. Or maybe actually make it safe to go.
Lupin
American expat here (dual citizenship). Moved out with the Missus after the 04 elections. This reminds me why.
There’s plenty of racists here in Europe, but (a) the sheer craziness factor seems to be missing; and (b) organized society as a whole stomps on them like bugs.
I return to the fact that the % of lunatics in the States with influence is uncomfortably large — 25%? 30%
I think it’s an End-of-Empire thing, a sure sign of some tectonic transformation in the US of A, like WWI in Europe or the Civil War or the collapse of Communism.
I don’t think things are going to be pretty for a while.
kay
@Ruckus:
Thus is a personal opinion, but it’s based on a couple of years of doing voter protection. The best way to make it safe is to inform people of their rights re: voting. Specifically. All people. Election law is state law, and each state has different rules.
Too many are accepting a provisional ballot or being backed down by pollworkers who are bullies or uninformed. Arizona has one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country, and they were early on that bandwagon.
The problem is usually a current address. An address “mismatch”. People who move a lot don’t change their address on their ID, and people who live with a group of other people don’t have a utility bill with their name on it.
If the voter moves a lot (and poor people do) or isn’t the named individual on documents (and poor people aren’t) they need to keep updating registration and ID, and find their precinct.
I’d just start with the premise they’re going to make voting as difficult as possible, and prepare for that, and arm each voter with information. They have to make some noise if they’re sent away or given a provisional. They’re worried about holding up the line or being humiliated when singled out. I think we have to take a new attitude. The presumption should be that if you’re registered, you vote. Make the election officials prove you can’t, and then you can essentially “appeal” that decision immediately at your county board of elections. Go there personally, that day. There’s process available on election day. The only way to overcome this is to know the rules, and use them, and just start with the assumption that “they don’t want me to vote”, as individuals. One at a time.
The whole FOX news junta on “voter fraud” is about intimidation. They want us to buy the idea that voters are engaging in fraud unless proven innocent. That’s backward, but media have parroted it mindlessly for so long, and are so clueless about voting process, that it’s become the attitude of voters.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@kay:
Good post.
Ruckus
@kay:
Very nice comment.
Of course I was talking about the new AZ ID law which in some places will
probablyundoubtedly be used to intimidate people of color.My living situation is unusual as I don’t have a listed residential address. So I have a permanent vote by mail ballot for every election as allowed by the state I live in. It was hell getting this, took 2 election cycles, much pushing of the registrar. They kept saying no until I got them to read me the law and showed them how I qualified. It never would have worked except I refused to take no for an answer. Not loud and obnoxious just forceful and right. I can imagine that someone without the concept of not only being entitled to vote(as all citizens are), but as someone who feels that I’ve earned it as well(military service) might not be forceful enough to make this work.
BTW, even without an address I could still vote, I would just have to pick up my ballot at the registrar’s office. So in this state living under a bridge doesn’t keep you from voting, you just have to want to.