And he’s not even running for president most likely:
I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, [is] very different than the average American.
[…..]…if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.
How long til this becomes accepted fact like the earth tones and Al Gore’s claim that he invented the internet?
Loneoak
Considering the highpoint of Obama’s autobiography is finally visiting Kenya for the first time as an adult, this is even dumber than it looks at first glance.
CoffeeTim
So, it’s a bad thing to have a President who might have a broader perspective than a conservative preacher from Arkansas?
Who knew?
christian mistermix
I really hope this is a question in the next presidential debate, because it would put Hucksterbee in a terrible spot answering that question, and give Obama a great opportunity to knock one out of the park.
stuckinred
The fucking idiots that believe it already do and nothing is going to change their little pea minds.
kay
Huckabee’s not this stupid.
It’s a deliberate and calculated lie.
I know he’s supposed to be the “likeable conservative” but he makes my skin crawl. I actually watched an entire episode of his show once, so I could see him talk.
BGinCHI
Huckabee’s strategy for becoming leader of the free world is to accuse its current leader of growing up in another country even though he knows this to be false.
A proud moment in American political leadership.
I’d say he’s got a rock solid 27% of the electorate sewed up.
JimF
Actually he made a good point about the birth certificate. If there had been anything the Clintons would have found it and used it against President Obama.
Stooleo
I think he is going to run, why else would he be still fellating the teatards.
BGinCHI
With all the gnashing of teeth over the economy and how bad things are, I just wanted to share with all of you my own good fortune:
This just came via email today and I can’t wait to see the money roll in. Who said there aren’t opportunities out there?
TooManyJens
Hey — what’s with that WaPo story actually pointing out that Huckabee had his facts wrong? Who let Emi Kolawole commit an act of journalism?
wvng
One more piece of evidence that the entire right wing freakshow is a performance art piece, probably funded by the NEA.
Davis X. Machina
Shit, I grew up hearing how the British were a bunch of imperialists from my grandfather.
He was from Co. Roscommon
GregB
What about Huckabee and Barbour who grew up in Klan central? I mean we need to know more about them.
Was Huckabee’s father a racist and does that color his beliefs?
Was Gingrich’s father a neo-confederate anti-American?
Questions that need answers.
kindness
BSG rules!!! The WaPo, in their (programmed) wisdom won’t let you post normal spelling for curses in the comments section but apparently the computer doesn’t know the BSG usage of the term ‘fracking’.
No doubt this short lived victory over moronism will be flagged and removed by some teabagger who will be shocked and throw a fit. Ahhh, what the hell.
Lev
I think one of the enduring questions of the past few years is what happened to Mike Huckabee? I mean, in 2008 the guy was routinely saying reasonable things IN A GOP PRIMARY, like that it was hypocritical for Republicans to ignore the multitude of adulterers and divorcees running for president. Okay, he shifted to the right with the rest of the Republican Party, but he’s a TV host now, he’s barely a politician. What gives?
If nothing else, he’s a reminder to be supremely cynical about all politicians. They project an image, but frankly it ain’t worth jack shit, we don’t know these people and admitting that is important. Huckabee, like McCain, only needed time to show the nastiness beneath the appealing surface. And, in both cases, it doesn’t really seem to have profited them.
tomvox1
Hey, Mike, you do know it was called the “British EMIPIRE, dontcha? Whatta dope…
kindness
OK, what’s with the Edit feature. I had !!! after BSG rules and they got wiped from the comment. I tried to edit it to put them back in and I get this black screen w/o the edit box.
kay
@Lev:
I feel as if the nastiness was apparent, in both men.
I honestly do not know why anyone thought John McCain was not nasty and mean-spirited, ever. I didn’t get it then, and I don’t get it now.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Doesn’t apply to Obama at all, but it definitely applies to Mike and his listeners.
kindness
I guess exclaimation points are not allowed.
geg6
@Davis X. Machina:
Hell, both my grandparents on my father’s side were born in London and they thought the Brits were imperialist scum.
Chuck Butcher
The Clinons?! WTF, how about the GWB DOJ/FBI/CIA/ETC? The GWB was on Obama’s side in the election? Fuck me running…
TooManyJens
@kindness: If they ban “fracking” you can always go with “frelling”, which I always liked better anyway.
Dusty
[blockquote]Actually he made a good point about the birth certificate. If there had been anything the Clintons would have found it and used it against President Obama. [/blockquote]
Isnât this actually a gratuitous swipe at the Clintons? What, the McCain campaign and/or Republican party and/or VRWC didnât bother to run any oppo research in 2008? Itâs just the ruthless, unscrupulous, power-hungry Clintons?
tomvox1
@TooManyJens:
Well, the mystery over Kolawole’s newly discovered journalistic chops is solved at the bottom of the piece:
gnomedad
He’s not a birther, he’s a grow-upper.
Lev
@kay: But McCain put his money where his mouth was. For a while, he voted in a more compassionate way than most Republicans. And Huckabee talked the same game, while actually running for the Republican nomination. Both eventually sold out in a very craven manner, but they actually took risks to do the right thing for a time. That counted to me, at least until it became obvious what was driving those dudes.
tomvox1
@kindness:
Yes, BJ’s Edit function appears to be down since at least this morning. Now I’ve gotta proofread, dammit…
biff diggerence
I’d like this slave state hick to provide the difference between the Mau Mau and 1770’s American Revolutionaries with respect to British imperialism?
Fucking Moron.
James E Powell
Absolutely yes! Better to have a Real American from the Heartland than some graduate of some fancy school full of a bunch of fancy, foreign ideas. Like soshulism!
Violet
@kindness: @tomvox1:
To edit, right click to open it new tab or new window. Editing has been working that way.
Edit: Just tried it and yes, it’s still working.
Violet
OT – Just saw over at GOS that some of the WI state senators are thinking of returning to the state. That would not be good. Anyone know anything more?
Sentient Puddle
@kay:
If this is the case, then I don’t think he’s running for president. This is the kind of shit you indulge in if your audience is confined to the right-wing base, not if you’re going after the whole electorate.
kdaug
You know back when Mike Huckabee’s kid beat that dog to death? I heard Mike cooked it up in a popcorn maker.
stuckinred
@biff diggerence: Have him listen to
Mau Mau Amerikon
General Stuck
We are just going to have to tend to our side of the planet and let the wingnuts tend theirs. Too bad the earth isn’t flat, so we could be on top, and they would just fall off into space.
PS – this is how you start to talk after subjecting the psyche too long of reading this loopety loop stuff..
Warren Terra
As others have been indicating, this actually works quite well if adjusted for Haley Barbour:
ETA: Also as others haven noted, is Huckabee saying that the people using repression to preserve the British Empire weren’t a bunch of imperialists? I mean, you can debate the merits of imperialism, if you really must, but isn’t that the definition of imperialism?
fraught
Death always comes in threes. Same with career-death. Charlie Sheen, John Galliano and now this guy. Mau Maus? Haven’t heard those referenced since the 50’s and it was a racist hot button then.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@BGinCHI: worth the read:
http://kasperhauser.com/scammer-letters
kay
@Lev:
I see that as sort of opposite. McCain voted the way he did for exactly as long as it was politically feasible for him to do so. I don’t see that he took any risk.
In my view, the time for him to show his mavericky bravery was when his entire Party was attacking Hispanics, who put him in office. He just didn’t show up for that. He won’t get another chance. He’s an old man.
kdaug
You know back when Mike Huckabee’s kid beat that dog to death? I heard Mike cooked it up in a popcorn maker.
ETA: FYWP.
geg6
@biff diggerence:
Well, let’s see…oh!
Those Mau Mau? They were blackety, blackety, black, black, black. Just like Nobama!
Guess they never heard the rumors about Alexander Hamilton.
Bubblegum Tate
Which wingnut fuckface was the one who made that stupid argument that Obama’s molded by “Kenyan anti-colonialism” or whatever? D’Souza, right? Anyway, Huckabee’s stupidity here is just a natural extension of that.
The Pale Scot
maybe someone could point out to this prod that there’s 60 million Irish-Americans with a similar opinion
Omnes Omnibus
@biff diggerence: I can think of one difference. Jomo Kenyatta just doesn’t sound American, if you know what I mean. Ditto for Kikuyu vs. Pennsylvanian.
kdaug
@kindness:
Actually, the correct BSG spelling is ‘fraking’.
I know. I have the t-shirt.
Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)
@kay: I agree kay. They are both obviously such bitter, nasty people. It’s especially always been obvious with McCain, and it’s getting franker with Huckabee, as well.
catclub
@tomvox1: Right clicking and editing in another tab worked for me this morning.
Lev
@kay: Fair enough. I stopped being a McCain believer earlier than most. Really, his turning down John Kerry’s VP offer in 2004 should have been a clear sign at the time that he was what he was. I mean, a guy who truly believed that the Bush Administration was a threat with respect to climate change, with respect to prosecuting the war, with respect to regressive taxation and torture and all the rest he said–a person like that would have jumped at the opportunity to sacrifice his own presidential ambitions and suffer exile from his party to bring Bush down. The only reason not to was the chance of being president. And we know what he chose.
trollhattan
@GregB:
Fxd Excellent use of the word “color” btw.
Redshift
@biff diggerence: Yeah, my favorite comment on this noted the resistance to cognitive dissonance inherent in a movement that could simultaneously name itself after the Boston Tea Party and complain about calling the British imperialists.
The new Know-Nothings indeed…
CarolDuhart
@Chuck Butcher: Good point. Obama was a Senator, a Senator who worked with Lugar on decommissioning old nukes and preventing their proliferation. Needless to say, that meant a deep Security check on him to get the needed security clearance. These folks would have had, by necessity, almost unlimited budget for investigation. If the investigation turned up anything that was really disqualifying, it would have definitely surfaced by now. The Senate would have quietly informed both Obama and Lugar, and Obama would have just as quietly decided not to run and stay in the Senate.
Obama never went to Kenya before he was an adult. Listening to the audio version of “Dreams of My Father”, Obama Sr. left Kenya an already married man, and did not ask for assistance, assistance that would have readily been available to him for his young wife and child when he went to Harvard. So why would he have brought his newlywed wife from America to Kenya, knowing that he already had a wife there, and she being pregnant?
Obama Sr. was a scholarship student, a student that did not have his own money to attend. Leaving America before graduation would have meant permanently not finishing his education and coming home in disgrace, and perhaps never having enough money to support either family.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@General Stuck:
Couldn’t they just keep climbing down the turtles?
geg6
@kay:
I agree. McCain only was “mavericky” because it got him face time on the Sunday shows and the enduring adulation of the Village and their media stars, who stayed bought with BBQs and donuts. McCain-Feingold was all about getting away from the Keating scandal; you’ll never hear the words “campaign finance” from his thin, lying lips ever again. Immigration reform was only good when he was burnishing his maverick badge. He was serious about exactly nothing and only championed anything if he though it would make the Villagers swoon. When his shtick got old due to the stupidity of choosing the Wasilla Disaster as his wingwoman, he became what he always was. A spoiled, nasty, mean, stupid shell of a human being. I never fell for his bullshit and I can’t believe anyone ever did.
batgirl
@kay: I disagree. He is that stupid. Because while this plays well with the base in a primary he completely loses the “likeable conservative” mantle with the independent voters he would need to win the general.
Just Some Fuckhead
What a dumbass since Obama grew up in Hawaii. Of course, I cannot relate to a President that grew up wearing a grass skirt and a coconut bra.
Mark S.
Is this the new GOP line?
As long as we repeat over and over SS is going bust, no one will be too sad when we get rid of it. So let’s get rid of it!
Svensker
Mau Mau? WTF?
The mendacity, sir. The mendacity.
Jay
I remember when Huckabee was alone among conservatives in his reasonable take on the Wright controversy: that the man had faced some tough racism so we ough to try to understand his anger. Clearly, Huck/Hack/Hick is trying to balance that with this latest bullshirt appeal to the racist base, which means he is running for President.
Mnemosyne
@Bubblegum Tate:
Right. I have to admit, there is some sick comedy on hand when you have someone whose family came here from India defending imperialism and the British Empire.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
@Dusty: Isnât this actually a gratuitous swipe at the Clintons
Pretty much. But not unexpected, given that Huckabee will always be in the Big Dog’s shadow. He has a vested interest in keeping the Clintons as sinister as he can, because he thinks (erroneously) that it makes him look more honest by comparison.
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead:
What do you have against William Howard Taft?
sacman701
Even the birthers don’t claim that Obama grew up in Kenya, so here Huckabee just looks like an idiot. To me this is more evidence that he isn’t running, because if he were seriously considering a run he would at least be paying enough attention to avoid such basic mistakes.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Jay:
Because Wright said nothing more inflammatory than Huckabee did when he was a Baptist preacher for 12 years. And Huck refused to release transcripts of his sermons, FWIW.
BGinCHI
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): Dude, so funny.
Love their Sky Maul book too.
kay
@Lev:
I actually understand why he’s bitter now. His entire career record was destroyed, not by liberals, but by conservatives. His influence may have been over-stated by media anyway. I watched an HBO documentary on the Bush-era effort to reform immigration (that was back when McCain was for immigration reform). He just wasn’t in the mix, even then. He’s notable only by his absence, and the camera followed them around for months. Teddy Kennedy just dominates, and it’s a conservative-leaning initiative. He’s everywhere, all the time.
Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: You are a cold, cold individual. I needed that image like a hobo needs typhoid.
Carol
Huckabee is trying to walk a fine line trying to satisfy a base that by now is all Alex Jones/birther/teabag and at the same time try to stay viable for a General Election as well.
He will fail, because the teabags (probably rightly) believe that they will be summarily ditched as soon as he gets the nomination, for the same reason some liberal party purists distrust Obama: he wants to win instead of going down with the ship fighting a pure fight.
Pardoning a guy on the basis of a preacher’s recommendation who then later kills 4 cops, is just cherry on the Sundae.
4tehlulz
0/10 for using expired dogwhistle.
Jesus, even half the fucking birthers wouldn’t get the reference.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: The Government department at my undergrad had a British obsessed Indian professor, a Japanese obsessed Korean professor, and Soviet obsessed Czech professor. The Czech was my adviser; oh, yes, I learned my Hans Morgenthau, oh yes, I did.
Hob
What does Huckabee think “our” view of the Kenyan revolution is supposed to be? That it was a bad thing?
It was a popular uprising against a foreign occupier, during which atrocities were committed by both sides along very familiar lines: the rebels attacked civilians for suspected disloyalty, the occupiers resorted to repression and torture on a horrifying scale. Eventually the country won self-government and some of the rebels became active in the new government; there was and is still controversy about specific events and people in the rebellion, but not about the outcome or the overall rightness of the cause. That’s what I learned in school in the US and I believe it’s not particularly different from what Kenyans would say. Who knows what the fuck Huckabee learned in school though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q): You are welcome.
Warren Terra
@Omnes Omnibus:
That is a seriously disturbing mental image.
LGRooney
@fraught:
LGRooney
And, FYI, that’s Warren Zevon
Tom Levenson
@Davis X. Machina: Sh*t, my grandfather was a British imperialist. (Col., RHA. Brave as hell, by all reports (died before I was born)) Served in both WWs, but also in lots of bits of empire.
And empires, you know, ruled other people, who often didn’t like it, and were chastised for such opinions — which was not always unintelligible to those doing the chastising.
Ah well. We’re a city on a hill, and the English are there with us, once we got over that 1776 stuff, so shut up, that’s why.
Carol
What I find fascinating is that all of the dog whistles are only meaningful if you’re over 55. They are acting as if the only people who are going to be voting next year actually remember the dog whistles. Way to go trying to reach the majority of Americans who were born after the Berlin Wall or whose memories of Reagan are grade-school ones. I’m 54, and even those dog whistles are tired by my standards.
Obama by five.
Lev
@kay: Did they have audio of him blowing up at John Cornyn, after swooping in and hijacking negotiations on immigration reform, his immortal line of, “Fuck you, I know more about this than anyone in the room!” For a Senator to yell like that outside of a Michael Bay movie is just surreal.
Though I do have to give McCain credit: that is literally the only time I’ve ever found Cornyn sympathetic or likable. Quite an achievement.
Omnes Omnibus
@fraught: I did a paper on the Mau-Mau and social mobilization back in the 80s.
geg6
@Hob:
Well, considering when and where he grew up, I’m pretty sure he learned “Those Mau Mau were sockalists and murderers who want nothing more than to rape white wimmen. Just like those darkies trying to sit at Woolworth’s and do some ciphering at UMiss.”
Or something quite like it anyway.
catclub
@4tehlulz:
That’s Chairman Mau Mau, to you, running dog capitalist lackey! I fart in your general direction.
Stooleo
@kay:
Seems to me that McCain’s political career since 2000 has been totally motivated by grudges and spite. When GWB beat him he became a mavericky moderate conservative, just so he could stick the shiv in. Now, having been beaten by Obama, he’s morphed into a mavericky ultra conservative, cause you know, that shiv aint’t going stick itself.
Just Some Fuckhead
@catclub:
That reminds me of my oom Poppa Mau Mau.
kgus
I would love to see the Huckster asked his opinion of Abraham Lincoln. I would love every Republican hopeful asked the same question.
John PM
@Hob: #79
It was a popular uprising against a foreign occupier, during which atrocities were committed by both sides along very familiar lines: the rebels attacked civilians for suspected disloyalty, the occupiers resorted to repression and torture on a horrifying scale. Eventually the country won self-government and some of the rebels became active in the new government; there was and is still controversy about specific events and people in the rebellion, but not about the outcome or the overall rightness of the cause.
SpotWeld
In the next couple of months we’re going to get a bunch of media types lining up to start some “Obama’s first term in review” articles, all as lead up to stories on “Obama vs. GOP Candaite 1, 2, & 3: Compare and Contrast”.
In essense, the right is facing the rather problematic situation of a lot of people actually talking about the President in a factual and reflective manner.
What Huckabee is doing is laying out a reason not to vote for Obama in 2012 without actually talking about anything relevant to reality. And the dicussion is spent on point out how is wrong, instead of educating anyone about anything that has anything to do with voting in 2012.
Dammit… if this really is how 2012 political reporting is going to go I am going to subscribe to WoW and just disappear for a year or so.
techno
But you know, the Huck has a point. Obama’s views of the Brits are not exactly those of the folks who intend to buy a 3D TV in time for the royal wedding. Hey, his distaste for the Brits is one of the few things I still like about him.
But someone should point out to that hick preacher that this country was founded by folks who were so annoyed by British colonialism they thought the appropriate response was to hunt down the representatives of His Majesty and kill them. I’ll bet the Revolutionary War is even in the history books in Arkansas.
In most of the world, British Imperialism is considered the greatest evil ever invented by humans. By ignoring this fact, our foreign policy lurches from disaster to failure.
trollhattan
@geg6:
By awesome coincidence that was the same day he learned the earth is six-thousand years old and man ain’t no danged monkey.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@kgus: A better question for Haley Barbour.
“Tell us what makes you proudest about being in the party of Lincoln?”
freelancer
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Ken-yan Bird! ba-ba-ba OOOO Mau Mau ba ba ooo mau, mau mau…
BGinCHI
Walker giving his budget address shortly.
Can’t wait to see the fallout from the “Are there no workhouses? Yes, in WI.” power grab.
Lev
@kgus: That’s a nice thought, but you seem to forget how they’ve twisted history to such an extent that they still claim to be the Party of Lincoln, and have retconned modern Democrats into the political heirs of Jefferson Davis.
@Stooleo: Agreed. All politicians have an inflated self image. In reality, there’s nobody who isn’t expendable, but politicians have to believe that about themselves in order to be successful. But McCain takes it so much fucking further than anyone else. You don’t hear about people like Mike Dukakis and Bob Dole dedicating their entire career to ruining those of the people who beat them.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
“a person like that would have jumped at the opportunity to sacrifice his own presidential ambitions and suffer exile from his party to bring Bush down. The only reason not to was the chance of being president. And we know what he chose.”
I’d have thought McCain could have ran in 2008 (if he did a Blair/Brown deal with Kerry to step down after four years) or 2012 for president with super-duper bipartisan appeal. Villagers would have swooned.
Hob
@John PM: Yeah, that’s what I meant by “very familiar lines.”
The British made much of how incredibly exotic, unsporting, and bloodthirsty the Mau Mau were supposed to be, because (a) they had secret initiation ceremonies, and (b) if you weren’t a member, they might show up in the middle of the night demanding that you join them and prove you weren’t a collaborator or they’d kill you. Which is pretty much the same as every fucking partisan guerrilla army ever.
And the tactics the British used to try to get the population under control were pretty much what occupiers have always done, with the brutality turned up a few notches (but only a few) compared to British efforts outside of Africa.
BGinCHI
On Walker’s WI budget and who/how it cuts:
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_5abf01a0-444b-11e0-9c33-001cc4c03286.html
Opening para:
El Cid
(1) The first group which would have considered the British government to have been imperialist with regard to the Kenya Colony would have been the British government.
The name for Kenya before independence was the Kenya Colony and Protectorate.
(2) Another famed anti-imperialist would have been Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who presented along with Winston Churchill the Atlantic Charter in WWII.
The first part of the Charter reads as such:
Now, Churchill never actually signed it, and of course, both Churchill and the US opposed the independence movements of most colonies.
Stupid ass redneck fucktard.
It’s funny how there would have been fewer anti-imperialist guerrilla wars if there had been fewer territories controlled, oppressed, enslaved, and robbed by imperialists.
It’s even funnier how the people most motivated to express their horror at the evils of the Mau Mau don’t give the slightest shit about the far more deadly repression under British colonialism. Killing a few dozen white settlers (like the Brits gave a shit about the Africans killed except for inconvenience) merited heavy bombing in the forests and shoving tens of thousands into murderous concentration camps.
Kikuyu-based anti-imperialist and anti-‘loyalist’ actions would really not have been necessary had Britain not stolen all their productive lands in the highlands for white British settlers.
But, you know, Roosevelt was a fucking communist, and Africans should have just waited politely for the British to plunder as much as they wanted and keep promising them that independence and self rule would come when the Brits thought they were ready for it.
The guerrila war against them, however, did get the British to leave Kenya far earlier than they wanted.
Carol
@Carol: Not to mention that a lot of younger American’s parents come from parents who have little reason to think fondly of colonialism or it’s cousin, racism.
JPL
I guess Huckabee is running for President and gathering all his little racist followers behind him. How will Sarah top this?
burnspbesq
OT, but this will likely make some of you quite happy.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/41853809
Before you break out the special-occasion booze, recall that the only two people to go to trial so far on criminal charges stemming from the financial crisis were acquitted. That said, I can’t wait to hear the explanation for why a Goldman director was calling a hedge-fund manager immediately after Goldman board meetings.
El Cid
Since I apparently can’t edit comments:
[The US backed formal independence, as it did in Latin America. Like Latin America, though, the US wouldn’t allow them to, you know, really make their own decisions. All kinds of US-backed and controlled tyrannies were formally independent. Our boy Mobutu kept “Zaire” completely independent, too. So did Suharto in Indonesia.]
tomvox1
@Violet: @catclub:
Why thank you! But while not as bad as proofreading it still feels like an un·nec·es·sar·y step.* Oh, well. Que sera…
*See, I looked up “unnecessary” and pasted it in rather than utilize some dang right click-double window thingy ex post facto. Extra effort sucks–hello, Glenn Beckian typos, y’all!
Stefan
their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours
Wait, what’s our view? That the British were right to put down the revolt against imperial rule and perpetuate their armed occupation of Kenya? Even though the British weren’t imperialists?
because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.
Um, weren’t the British a bunch of imperialists? That’s why they had, you know, a British Empire. And that’s why we rebelled against them….
These people, I give up. The elaborate fantasy world they create for themselves…
Amir_Khalid
@tomvox1:
When I was a working journalist, we always proofread before hitting submit. Because we’d catch hell if we made any silly typos.
Sheesh. You young people nowadays … ;)
Loneoak
@Mnemosyne:
My understanding is that D’Souza is from a very wealthy Christian family that undoubtedly benefited mightily from the Empire. Of course he thinks the son of an African goat farmer is unfit to hold high office because he might think poorly of brutal imperialism.
David Brooks (not that one)
@geg6:
Ditto my grandparents, and they thought that was a good thing.
ppcli
“he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.”
I think that Huckabee’s point is this: because Obama was told this over and over, he probably came to believe it. That means there is at least one belief in his world-view that is actually *true*. Even worse, this makes it likely that he may believe other true things too. Which makes him as foreign to Huckabee and the rest of the 27% ers as he would be if he was raised on the surface of the sun.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir_Khalid: I bet you were paid to do it too.
Triassic Sands
I’m going to join others and go out on a limb and guess the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted lots of native Kenyans…so why would it be a surprise if a black living in Kenya grew up hearing that. On the other hand, if he’d been in the continental US his entire childhood, there’s at least an even chance that he would have never heard of Kenya, and all he’d know about the British is something about a Tea Party. But he’d probably still think they were imperialists. They were, you know, imperialists.
Why aren’t people embarrassed for saying stupid stuff like this out loud?
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
The thing that gives me a smidgen of hope is that the charge is insider trading, which, unlike the rest of their shenanigans, the banksters were never quite able to convince Congress to legalize.
ETA: And an ignorance excuse sure as hell won’t work — I have to take a training every two years that explains what insider trading is and why it’s illegal for me to do it, and I’m a frickin’ secretary with a film degree, not someone in the financial industry.
ppcli
@Loneoak: Yeah, D’Souza even wrote an essay about that – the thrust of it was that when he spoke to his grandfather, his grandfather always hated the British and hated imperialism. While he, on the other hand, loved the British and imperialism – thanks to it, he got a good English language education, went to Dartmouth, he got a comfortable wingnut welfare sinecure, etc etc. And then he said (if I remember right, this is a more or less a direct quote from the article): “Then it hit me: the reason that he and I disagreed was that imperialism had been very bad for him. But it was very good for me!”)
The rest of the article is riffing on a familiar theme – if it weren’t for the white Sahibs the indigenous Indians would still be living in jungle huts, he would have been living like Mowgli and so instead of going to the Ivy league he would have been back in the subcontinent learning to sing from Baloo and Bageerah.
freelancer
@Triassic Sands:
‘Cause Huckabee saw Zulu once, so the African history of British Colonialism is something he’s an expert on, like second nature to him.
gene108
I think what got Huckabee screwed up is when he ran for President in 2008, he couldn’t run on his record as governor.
He raised taxes while governor, to better fund education in Arkansas. Since he raised taxes, he had to run like hell away from what he did as governor.
I’m not sure what he had to fall back on, other than trying to appeal to the religious folks in his base and I guess things just went down hill from there.
Pretty sad.
Huckabee was the only Republican candidate in 2008, who spoke about addressing middle class concerns. For 2012, look for people who try to jockey to give out the biggest tax cuts and cut the most benefits for everyone else.
burnspbesq
@Triassic Sands:
“Why arenât people embarrassed for saying stupid stuff like this out loud?”
A number of potential answers come to mind, but I think I’ll go with ”
pathological liarsRepublicans are never embarrassed when caught in a lie. That’s what it means to be apathological liarRepublican.”Mnemosyne
I have to admit, the fact that Huckabee apparently doesn’t know that the British had an empire — thus automatically making them imperialists since the only requirement to be an imperialist is … to have your own empire — is funnier and funnier to me. And yet sadder, too.
So much for the school system in Arkansas. WTF are they teaching them down there anyway?
chopper
@Dusty:
not that clinton ran a great campaign, but mccain couldn’t have found his own ass with two hands, a map and a homosexual dwarf.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
Plus the guy ran McKinsey for almost ten years, and you would think that if there was one firm in the world that would have “don’t screw with client proprietary information” deeply embedded in its institutional DNA, it would be McKinsey.
gene108
@ppcli: I really want to punch D’Souza in the face for saying that. My grandfather said nice things about British rule in India, because the trains always ran on time (if you know what I mean), but was proud as hell about independence. I don’t know how much hatred you can have about your people, if you think British colonialism was good for India.
MikeJ
@chopper: Not if the dwarf had any taste or pride.
SiubhanDuinne
@techno:
You’re mighty durned sure of yourself, aren’t you?
Amir_Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus: Not paid that much …
Mike Huckabee’s comments might have made some kind of sense if he had been talking about Barack Obama Sr. But even so, Barack Sr would have been plenty justified in feeling that way about British imperialism. Every sane Kenyan felt that way.
Imperialism is far from being a nonprofit enterprise. Even in a country like mine — Malaysia — where their rule was not quite so bloody, there was a lot of resentment over how the British interfered with our culture, religion, and politics; how they exploited our resources and our labor as a source of their wealth; and how they made us a captive market for their exports.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: They are on the shelf behind the librarian’s desk along with “Catcher in the Rye” and “Are You there, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” and other such filth.
Loneoak
@gene108:
What’s also odd is that he came to the realization that even if the Empire was good for him, it was terrible for his Grandfather, and yet he unambiguously supports Empire. In other words, he couldn’t care less about his own Grandfather.
trollhattan
@gene108:
And since he did the giganto weightloss thing he’s clearly in the clutches of FLOTUS and her broccoli conspiracy.
Also, too, I refudiate Stalin for Tuesday.
Mike in NC
We’ll probably never know, but of course the Newtster himself is 100% died-in-the-wool neo-Confederate. I read the other day that he’s definitely going to run for the GOP nomination, and will probably make the announcement standing in front of the “heroes” on Stone Mountain.
Odds are that Barbour, Romney, Pawlenty, and Daniels will run, too. They’ll all throw their tinfoil hats into the proverbial ring within a few days after Gingrich promises to save the country. Follow the money.
Redshift
You know, it’s hard following a movement that considers the Founding Fathers who rebelled against the British Empire to be demigods who could do no wrong, and that still firmly believes in White Man’s Burden and that empires run by the right people are entirely positive for the wogs.
I guess since our revolutionaries were white and English-speaking, that makes it completely different.
Redshift
@Mike in NC: Newt was from PA and was an Army brat who ended up in Georgia. (Apparently his Civil War ancestors fought for the North.)
techno
@SiubhanDuinne:
Well, now that you mention it, maybe not!
TruthOrScare
It’s a deliberate lie. Birtherism never caught on widely so it’ll be flogging a dead horse to make that a mainstay of the 2012 chain email campaigns. Since none of the morans can be bothered to learn anything other than what the wurlitzer teaches them, how would they know it’s a lie? This is just opening another front in the ongoing “not one of us” attacks. Huck is a Fox employee and if he’s not running, he’ll be used like any other Fox mouthpiece to maintain the “people are saying” cloud. That nice little old lady who may not be a full blown wingnut but hears that nice preacher say this on the radio, starts to wonder. Works out to his benefit too — a few days coverage of this can’t hurt book sales. Rupert will be sure there’s a little extra in his paycheck for taking one for the team. I think this is a sure sign that he’s not running, especially since he went to the trouble of saying it twice.
Linda Featheringill
To Everybody:
Really interesting post and thread. You never know what you’ll start when you say something on BJ.
You guys are smart. Does that make you elite?
:-)
lou
@techno:
I’d edit, except I don’t know how to do strikethoughs, to say Western Imperialism. Witness Congo and Belgium, Haiti and France, Italy and Ethiopia. In fact, all the current ills of the Middle East and Africa date back to Western interference. Ditto us more recently in South and Central America.
chopper
@MikeJ:
well that’s the basic assumption. i’m sure any map with any self respect would have self-immolated if it discovered it was anywhere near mccain’s ass.
Mac G
So this isnt true? I am confused.
Ija
@Mnemosyne:
I think he wrote something at some point about how British imperialism was actually good for India. Civilizing the ignorant natives and all that, you know.
Ija
@Mnemosyne:
Yup, found it, it’s this article. Money quote:
India is lucky the Dinesh D’Souza decided to hightail it to America. Otherwise he might be over there right now writing articles about how India might be better off if it is under British rule once again.
The article is titled Two Cheers for Colonialism, BTW. Which I guess explains everything you need to know about D’Souza. Well, at least he’s sincere in his belief. He really does think anti-colonialism is a bad thing. Mike Huckabee is just being an opportunist.
Bubblegum Tate
@TruthOrScare:
Well, it caught on pretty well with the types of people who will vote in the GOP primaries. I think some recent poll pegged birtherism among Republicans at more than 40 percent. So if that’s your audience, you’re receptive to what Huck’s saying. Beyond that, you’ll repeat what Huck’s saying.
Rick
Has Ben Smith explained yet why this was certainly an innocent and honest mistake on Huck’s part?
Nerull
Wait. Obama can’t be trusted because he’s from a country where the locals had a revolution and threw out the British Empire? Hrmm…
eemom
Huckabee is a smarter, friendlier, better mannered and therefore much more dangerous Sarah Palin. With a dick (presumably).
PanAmerican
He’s going nowhere if he runs. The money end of the party never liked him or his voters anyway, and they will use this, the squirrel consumption, etc. to beat him into the turf.
Like a bunch of asshole frat boys clowning a rube pledge.
aimai
@Hob:
Well, I think its obvious that the Kenyans are, in fact, the Indians and the British were the Cowboys–the white man’s burden is riding the range. So, naturally, Huck sides with the cowboys.
aimai
Kirbster
@The Pale Scot: And isn’t Obama Irish on his mother’s side?
AnotherBruce
Because he has not denied it, there is no way of knowing whether or not Huckabee spent a significant part of the 80s decade in Central America running a prison rape camp for activist nuns.
Nick
@CoffeeTim:
Oh, you must’ve grown up in Vermont or one of the major cities.
Chuck Butcher
The Confederate Party of Republicanism.
Ija
@Nerull:
Obama canât be trusted because heâs from a country where the COLORED locals had a revolution and threw out the British Empire?
Fixed it for you. Anti-colonialism is only bad when it is done by non-white people.
kdaug
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: Nope. It’s turtles all the way down.
soylenth
He clearly thinks he has the privilege of questioning the origins of minorities, while at least unconsciously knowing that he’ll never have the same done to him. Why would he? he’s obviously white, christian and born in America! Dark people could have come from anywhere!
I feel like the obvious response is micro-analyze everything he’s ever said about his childhood (doesn’t he have some animal cruelty issues?), as publicly as possible for as long as possible. Eventually, if it were done often and publicly enough he might get upset to the point where he might wonder where people get off questioning his childhood and how it might have affected him. And how foolish it is to try and read his mind as a child and then make further assumptions about what such guess might mean for his political ambitions. It is only at this point that he could possibly understand what an absolute condescending piece of shit he’s being to the sitting president of the united states.
Hob
Btw, the Wapo article has an update: Huckabee’s spokesman said he misspoke, and he meant to say Obama grew up in Indonesia.
Makes perfect sense, if “grew up” means “lived for four years”. Well, except for the part about how he “grew up” hearing bad things about the British from a Kenyan point of view from his father and grandfather – i.e. the entire point of Huckabee’s bullshit – which makes no sense at all if you’re talking about the years he lived with his stepfather in Indonesia, after his father had abandoned him. Yeah, I’m sure the Kenyan revolution was regular dinner-table conversation in the Soetoro/Dunham house…
Huckabee has no shame.
Josie
Now in the update, his spokesman says he just misspoke and confused Kenya with Indonesia, but he still would like to know where his liberal ideas come from. So liberal ideas can only come from outside the country? I wonder how he would react if he knew I was raised in Texas of all places and am more liberal by far than Obama. Horrors!
Hob
Yeah, how is Huckabee supposed to know all this mysterious information?! It’s not as if Obama wrote a bestselling autobiography that was specifically about how he grew up not knowing his father and where his liberal ideas came from!
What a goddamn fucking lying sleaze. Sorry, I’m just sort of catching up on hating Huckabee… for some reason he never really bothered me that much till now.
Lysana
@Kirbster:
Indeed. No one’s as Irish as Barack Obama.
Bex
@trollhattan: He did the giganto weight loss thing, but he’s gained most of it back. Maybe more. He’s so not running.
MikeJ
@Lysana: Less than a month to the annual wingnut freakout over food colouring in the white house fountains for Paddy’s day.
uptown
Oddly enough, I grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted the colonials. Of course I went to a public school in the USA, don’t know where Huckabee went.
Viva BrisVegas
@techno:
In most of the world British Imperialism is long gone and forgotten, leaving behind a set of generally well functioning democracies. In the British Commonwealth, whose very existence should tell you something, when the Empire is recalled it is with a somewhat censorious nostalgia.
On the other hand, the American Imperium is a very current topic of conversation. Mainly because of that trail of tears that leads through Vietnam on to Central America through South America and into Afghanistan and Iraq. One that would make Genghis Khan blush with its waste and profligacy of death.
When the US can start pull out of its occupied territories and leave behind functioning democracies, then we can start talking about the greatest evil.
Wile E. Quixote
@Warren Terra:
Say what you like about the tenets of British Imperialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.
El Cid
@Ija: India had had thousands of years of major civilizations, nation-states whose achievments in science and mathematics and literature and even industrial production were significant on a world-scale.
Fuck, the Indian cotton & fabric industry was so good, efficient, and competitive that Britain banned the import of Indian textiles such as Calico in order to subsidize and favor their own less developed textile industry.
But, you know, the experience of wealthy educated Catholics from Portuguese Goa is that Britain gave India everything, seeing as how it was all just an undifferentiated mass of bodies thriving in the Ganges.
El Cid
@Viva BrisVegas: In most of the world for an extraordinarily long time, the existent tyranny was the greatest malevolent force acting upon them in the whole world.
And for other areas, the French. A few areas, the Dutch. For a couple of areas, and for a much shorter time, Italy and Germany.
I’m pretty sure that if ‘the Sun never set on the Mexican Empire’ had been the case, millions of people in 3 or 4 other continents would feel that Mexico was the most punishing imperial force around.
techno
@Viva BrisVegas:
Love that Brit propaganda. The new “colonialism wasn’t SO bad” attitude that circulates these days is really quite revolting (oh that’s right, revolts kept happening to those ‘wonderful’ Brits.)
You think the Brits are recalled fondly in, say, Iran? Do you really think the Brits are recalled fondly in Bengal where MILLIONS died of starvation while the Brits stole their food during WWII?
Need we go on?
Chris Grrrâą
@Warren Terra: Verily, it would be liberally unpatriotic and irresponsible not to speculate about the influence of Barbour’s and Huckabee’s possibly-persecuted grandfathers.
@soylenth: So very well said. Thanks.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Just Some Fuckhead:
What I want to know is how many times Obama got lei’d and how old he was when it first happened. Same with who first lei’d him.
This is important information!
El Cid
@techno: It’s also difficult to aim for anything difficult and new such as independence from a colonial oppressor when the measurement of success you’re supposed to face in, say, 1957, is how things will be in 2007.
For that matter, fuck, no peasant African farmers should ever scrimp and save and break their backs each day to pay for their kids to be educated, because you don’t really know how it might end up.
Those Egyptians should cut all this ‘freedom’ shit out, because 50 years from now things might be worse than they were under Mubarak.
Or some snotty elitists for whom things worked out better might say so.
El Cid
@Viva BrisVegas: What are you talking about? Who in the world doesn’t aspire to have a democratic, successful nation such as Iraq is now?
Wile E. Quixote
@Jay:
Huck’s reasonable take on any racial matters went out the window on the morning of the 29th of November, 2009. That’s when Maurice Clemmons, who the Huckster had granted clemency to 10 years earlier, went on a killing spree and gunned down four police officers in Lakewood, Washington.. Maurice Clemmons makes Willie Horton look like a boy scout and if the Huckster runs his opponents are going to jam this down his throat. There’s also the matter of the Huckster’s pardon of Wayne Dumond but that won’t outrage the teabaggers as much because Dumond was white and his victims were white as well. The Huckster is desperately trying to tack as far right as he can because of Clemmons, which only goes to show what a piece of shit he is.
I want to see the Huckster run in 2012 just to see him have to answer for th Clemmons and Dumond pardons. It should be fun up here in Washington because the Huckster did pretty well with the wingnuts here in 2008. I don’t see that happening in 2012 though.
Stefan
As several other people have already said, a lot of Irish still harbor a lot more anger against the imperialist British than the Kenyans do.
The Kenyans only had them for about 70 years. We had them for a thousand.
mai naem
What a dick wad. The correction is just f-ing amazing. Uhm, Indonesia was a Dutch colony, not a Brit colony so why would the Huckster talk about British imperialism? Also too, I heard the Huckster grew up Mormon in Provo, Utah in a Big Lurrv kind of family with his daddy and several mommies and 34 brothers and sisters.
KSinMA
And don’t you think “Huckabee” sounds like an Anglicized version of a Mooslim name?
Origuy
@El Cid:
Don’t forget the Russians, Pretty much everything west of the Urals or south of the Don, plus a bunch to the west, was occupied territory from the time of Peter the Great onward. Some of it still is, viz Chechnya.
valdemar
As a Brit, Mau Mau and so on barely registers on the historical radar compared to, say, India or the Opium Wars with China. When you have a world empire you basically give every part of the world its own little set of grievances against you. While the general populace may be almost unaware of what’s going on ‘over there’, the people over there don’t forget.
Obama, however, has never expressed anything resembling anti-British sentiment, despite attempts by the Murdoch press and others to stir up some bullshit over a bust of Churchill. He’s obviously a reasonable man and the only thing that stops a lot of people from seeing him as a moderate conservative is his melanin quotient.
Viva BrisVegas
@techno:
No even close. My propaganda comes from one of those bits on which the sun never set. In fact it set just a few minutes ago.
I was just so impressed that some arsehole from Bumfuck, Alabama knows exactly what the world thinks and its that “British Imperialism is considered the greatest evil ever invented by humans”.
There’s plenty of evil to go around, just lift up your nose and take a sniff.
bob h
Huckabee is stoking resentment and anger about Obama among people who may be mentally unhinged, and may push one of them over the line into an attack on Obama. He is playing with fire.
chukmaty
Huckabee has long been pretty adamant that he believes Obama is a citizen and born in the US, he was likely referring to his childhood growing up in Indonesia. It was a slip up like Obama’s “57 states.” Get over it, Huck ain’t a birther and he has regularly argued against birthers.
The End