I’m glad ABL posted that video today. I really don’t think many people appreciate how under assault the black community has felt since Obama was elected. A time of celebration, that of the first black President, through the sheer nastiness of a segment of our population and amplified by their accomplices in the media, has been turned into a several year period where day by day folks have felt personally attacked. That is what is so ugly about these racist attacks by Trump- they don’t hurt Obama in the least. They do, however, gut punch every black person in the country with the exception of Michael Steele, who is just too stupid to notice he is being denigrated. It’s sick, really.
This is, of course, nothing new. Ask yourself how gay people feel every single time Brian Fischer or one of those scumbags opens their mouths. Ask how the Latino community has felt during the last decade with the rise of the xenophobic right. If anything, the only thing that has changed is this time it seems much more open and overt. What people used to whisper quietly to like-minded folks they go on national tv and say, or email everyone their picture of Obama in tribal dress with a bone through his nose. Some shithead child of extreme wealth and privilege can go on tv and question whether Obama deserved to get into Harvard while men who love goats scream “affirmative action,” and when confronted, they act all huffy because someone pointed out their racism.
Crazy times. Not sure where I am going with this, just it is crazy times. Maybe by the time my generation is all 60-70 the Ferraros and Buchanans and Trumps will all be dead and this bullshit will be over with.
khead
Yeah. Sure. You should just retire now and start bitching like the rest of WV.
stuckinred
@khead: That’s what I said in 1970.
What’s the count on the Maggie fund if I may ask?
Lysana
I’m afraid your/our generation still has its bullshit racists and whatnot. Consider Sully. Not to mention the privileged white gays akin to him, such as Savage and Aravosis, who adore picking on everyone else and running behind the shield of “homophobia” when they’re called out.
Phil Perspective
@khead: Don’t forget to add Tweety to that list. While he’s been good on the Birther issue lately, during the primaries, he was god awful.
Comrade Mary
If you feel like experiencing a little more homicidal rage in your life, you can watch this interview with John King and that self serving smear of shit topped with a hairball.
Me, I need more placidity in my life. Let’s just say that Trump should be happy he’ll never be near me and a cold paper cup of Tim Horton’s tea.
BOSS BITCH
Groupon Dumps Trump
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/28/groupon-dumps-trump/
stuckinred
@Phil Perspective: And he sucked the swiftboaters like Olongapo City Boom Boom girl.
gex
I can sympathize entirely. Every election cycle brings this kind of hostility out towards gays. And election cycles don’t seem to end anymore.
And it is such a damn shame. Some of the anti-gay folks, for what it’s worth do actually think this is a morality thing. Misguided, and fucked up, but in some twisted way they are working towards good.
These racist mofos don’t even have that small saving grace.
Cat Lady
This racist fever will either kill us or make us stronger. The masks have slipped and even though it’s ugly to see, there’s no question any more what we’re dealing with, and that’s probably ultimately useful. No more dog whistles are needed – the dogs have all come running.
abo gato
That video made me cry when I saw it early this morning after Kane posted it. I am afraid we will never be rid of these crazy, hateful people. They seem incredibly able to keep the hate alive in their progeny.
eric
there are two strands of racism. One is the racism of the lower classes who look to the other as the cause of their economic suffering. So, this other sucks resources out of the system or they take away good jobs. The impetus for this racism is often class suffering. Then, there are the racists, or perhaps carnival barkers, that play to this racism. they have no reason to hate the other except it serves as a means to the end of more money or power. As with almost everything, my BJ comrades, it comes down to class stratification. We seem now to be in a time where the upper class has no shame in excerbating racial divides, just as they have no shame in ignoring regluations (see WV coal mines and even Japenese power plants).
Bob Loblaw
Not to mention the reality that this environment of hate makes it even more impossible to address the inequality and disparate economic outcomes that minority communities face.
The Obama administration is presiding over the brutal demolishing of the future of an entire generation of young African-Americans and Hispanics that they will never fully recover from due to the financial recession. And it isn’t even the administration’s fault.
It’s a lot to have to bear.
Comrade Mary
Huh. Chris Hayes sitting in for Laurence O’D with no explanation given. I guess one may not question or give orders to the executives, ever.
ed
Maybe. I’m guessing the late Lee Atwater would bet (a lot) against this bullshit being over by then. But one remains e’er hopeful.
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Mary: Well, if he’s been canned, he went out swinging.
eric
@Bob Loblaw: Bob….look at the future of young whites as well with the escalaitng cost of higher education and the absence of jobs and the dismantling of the safety net….they are playing the disaffected whites against their black comrades so that the white youth blame the dark other for their own lost generation. It is a racial cynicism on a national scale.
ed
I wonder if Groupon’s jumping off Celebrity Apprentice has anything to do with it.
Mako
uhg. You need an editor.
Ask yourself why you are being led to the little issues. Are you a tool?
hilts
John,
Don’t expend all your energy on Andrew Sullivan. Save some righteous indignation for Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik. Zurawik sees Sullivan’s critique and raises him:
Citizen_X
@BOSS BITCH: Awesome. It happened to Glenn Beck, now maybe it’ll happen to that racist thug Trump.
@Comrade Mary:
I once ordered a dish at a Chinese restaurant called “ants climbing tree.” It was, as a friend called it, “action food:” a nest of vermicelli that, when the hot sauce was added, collapsed noisily and spectacularly. “Wow,” my friends said, “more like ‘ants devouring forest.'”
Anyway, that’s what I imagine would be the result of your tea on Trump’s hair.
joeyess
Trump should be the poster boy for why we need a confiscatory estate tax.
That is all.
gex
@ed: Huh. You’d think that the Don would be the one who should take the blame for losing Groupon. That’s not how our authoritarian/aristocracy rolls.
Loneoak
@eric:
Amen. Sometimes it seems like the only young people who will survive are the children of investment bankers.
Marc McKenzie
@Bob Loblaw:
As crazy as this will seem…I agree with you, Bob.
But then again (in regards to the intro paragraph), John was pointing this out for some time now. Many in black community are sick and tired of the attacks that Obama is getting from all sides. The blatantly racist attacks from the Birthers and Trump should not be tolerated, but the MSM does not seem to give two s&@#s at all.
BGinCHI
Can everyone do me a favor?
From now on, can we please call out every racist action as racist/racism and leave the “I don’t know if he/she is really a racist, but what they said is racist” bullshit?
It’s not that I don’t think these mouth-breathing assholes think racist thoughts in their heads and have meanness in their hearts, but it’s just not worthwhile to get into a “is so-and-so really a racist just because they emailed racist photos or called someone a darkie”?
The answer is that it’s racist. Period. Let’s leave the fucking psychologizing out of it because it lets them off the hook.
I know it’s a subtle difference but in this country right now the discourse is polluted with it.
General Stuck
Think about it. Obama comes into office with an economy teetering on the brink of depressive collapse. He is hammered from the right wing for any thing they can thing of. He is also hammered from the left to make some very large ideological changes in our economic life. Changes that mostly are good ones, but also would likely have made the instability even more dire.
He chooses a moderate and sane approach, of just saving the patient (economy) with a laser focus, doing stuff that pisses me and many other liberal supporters off. So here we sit, still bouncing along, the economy ain’t dead and is getting around with a walker.
And since it is impossible to prove a negative, or what would have happened if he’d done it any other way, he won’t really get much credit for making some crucial and possibly existential decisions that pissed nearly everyone off.
And doing it with crazy assholes right wingers pulling out their racist jeans and doing what they could to destroy his presidency, and some on his own side pissing and moaning at every instance that didn’t quite suit them. The dude has focus, more than he gets any credit for. Think Jackie Robinson times 10 to the nth power. And keeping his cool all the way.
This campaign ad was paid for by me, and my small army of loyal Unicorns.
Tom Hilton
Even Steele notices: remember when he acknowledged the GOP’s 40-year Southern Strategy? (I think that bit of honesty is what doomed him as RNC chair.) And he was calling out the Birthers pretty early, IIRC.
transmaniacon
Jeff Rense or Alex Jones?
gex
@Tom Hilton: Steele mentioned it. As did Melman before him. And of course Atwater. It sickens me that Republican operatives can say that Republicans campaigns are racist, but the media and Republicans still act as though that is all in the minds of oversensitive minorities.
Pig ignorant is really tough to cure. (My apologies to pigs)
4tehlulz
Shorter David Zurawik: Thin-skinned negro is thin skiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiined.
harlana
@abo gato: I really thought we were rid of most of them. I really did. I assumed all that was left was a smattering of some 80+ year old white folks, raised during the Jim Crow era, here and there. That’s how clueless I was. And then the Obama campaign began and I witnessed one shocking incident of blatant, ugly racist behavior after another. It hasn’t let up and will continue on throughout his presidency.
Yes, as a white southern woman, I really was just that shamefully naive. (And, no, I really do not live in cave)
Comrade Mary
That image is pure win, John. Where’s it from?
EDIT: Oh, and Chris Hayes is covering real news, not birtherism, even though the other prime time shows were hammering the final nails into Trump. Which would normally make me feel good, but I think at least one day of media mea culpas would be in order, but it looks as if NBC is having a hissy fit instead.
Suffern ACE
@hilts:
Skipped the rest.
Mnemosyne
@hilts:
Shorter David Zurawik: “YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!!”
khead
@General Stuck:
Obama gets a lot more credit from me for the “economy ain’t dead” part than the “keeping his cool” part.
I don’t give much of a shit about keeping his cool. Of course, I’m a raging (former) redneck and not an angry black man so I get the benefit of the doubt most of the time.
Richard Bottoms
This motherfucker is in for a world of hurt. Donald Trump chose to insult black people in general and president Barrack Obama in particular, and now his ass is going down.
AxelFoley
Well, they’re already a third of the way there.
What, too soon?
Suffern ACE
And others are TV critics and pundits who do no such thing.
Mnemosyne
@4tehlulz:
You have to admit, Zurawik sure seems like someone who knows all about being thin-skinned.
Tom Hilton
@4tehlulz: I think Zurawik is wondering why the Negroes can’t be as sanguine about racism as he is.
Citizen_X
@hilts:
Hey, come on, people: Zurawik gave Obama a whole half a month!
Omnes Omnibus
@Mako:
You certainly seem to be one.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
I never thought I would write this, but the news is actually making me glad that I have ten fuckloads of papers to grade and that I’m giving finals for the next week, because I don’t have time to really get involved and angry about this Trump and the rest of these motherfuckers.
Mrs. Peel
@Lysana:
who adore picking on everyone else and running behind the shield of “homophobia” when they’re called out.
Except that “homophobia” is obviously true in your case, my dear, since your list consists entirely of gay men.
me
@Comrade Mary: According to twitter, he’s at a Unicef dinner. Shouldn’t be hard to confirm or deny.
Silver
Here’s the funny thing: I’m in Orange County, and I’m a foreigner.
However, since I’m white and from Canada, about half of the white people I meet locally just assume I’m a racist shithead and in on their joke. I cannot believe the casual racism that passes for acceptable around here.
And yes, it’s gotten worse since Obama’s been elected. I don’t quite know how it happened, but somehow in this country we’ve let the racists decide what racism is.
Mako
@Omnes Omnibus:
hmm thought you where a poster worth reading.
WereBear
@hilts: One thing these pundits do not lack is nerve.
To raise the shield of a dead comrade while running away; boy, that takes an ocean of gall and a tiny tiny raft of self-awareness.
The good news is; someone’s fee fees were hurt. So one dart hit its mark, anyway.
In the meantime, I will be watching selections from our DVD collection and editing our new video to avoid the wall to wall Royal Wedding coverage; but if President Obama was talking national security; it wouldn’t be covered.
gex
@Mrs. Peel: Well, first off, you know the gays are all alike, so if these guys are racist, all gays are racist. Second, you don’t understand the demographic implications of gay white men voting as a bloc. Shit’s gonna happen! /snark
freelancer (itouch)
Anybody else find it odd that Lawrence O’Donnell isn’t on tonight?
gex
@Silver: And they’ve decided calling them out for racism is the true racism as you would expect them to.
scav
Poor sweet little Zurawiky dear clearly has no memory of any of the year naughts. Did he get his bright ‘n’ shiny media integrity badge out of his cornflakes?
Meredith
Hey, that’s what I said in 1964. I was sure, because I knew this country was so great, so rich, so smart, that we would be way beyond this by now. My heart aches. It was such a wonderful dream.
me
Heh, Rob Zerban is a friend of mine. He looks very nervous.
Just Some Fuckhead
@freelancer (itouch):
Prolly interviewing with KO.
Joshua Norton
So now that Barry has done the deed, I make a motion to officially refer to Trump et al. as “After-Birthers” from now on.
Hedges Ahead
Not to worry, Chris Hayes says Lawrence had the night of tonight as a planned night off.
Comrade Mary
Heh. Chris Hayes is now talking about birthers’ and AGW-deniers being unable to face the truth, and he also jumped in to clarify that O’D is off tonight for scheduled reasons. So maybe he is at the UNICEF dinner — or maybe the invitation’s kerning was off. Has anyone takne a look?
Bob
” …or email everyone their picture of Obama in tribal dress with a bone through his nose.”
Those pictures were bad enough but for shear vileness nothing compares to this –
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/77878,people,news,outrage-at-republicans-barack-obama-chimpanzee-pic
Just Some Fuckhead
@Joshua Norton:
Yer a day late on that. Carry yer fickle ass back to Wonkette.
khead
Atlanta trades up for Julio Jones?
WTF?
Wait…wrong subject….
MGB
I follow Chris Hayes on Twitter. Since last night, he’s been saying that LOD had a planned day off. Some kind of award dinner, or something like that (I’m too lazy to look up my twitter feed at the moment @chrislhayes if you want to look). LOD will be back tomorrow.
Hart Williams
You know, one way of reading this is that we “respected” the feelings of the defeated South after the Civil War and a hundred years later, they were still the same thuggish, racist pricks they’d been before the war.
Then, we passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, and waited another fifty years. And the only thing that’s changed is that they don’t use the “N” word in print.
Civility to the uncivil hasn’t worked.
Maybe now it’s time to see if a tire iron wouldn’t accomplish as much with less wasted effort. If civility, if civilization, if democracy doesn’t work on the barbarians, you gotta pick a language they DO understand.
WarMunchkin
I sense a Moore award.
Southern Beale
Imagine how the Muslim community feels.
Jeebus. I’m so disappointed in this country. I had really hoped we were better than this. What a tragedy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mako: Do you really think that you toss a slow hanging curveball like that and not have someone take a swing at it? Lighten up.
RandyH
Lawrence O’Donnell is off tonight because of a Unicef dinner he is attending. I think it has to do with that “Kids In Need of Desks” project he raised so much money for.
hilts
@4tehlulz:
@Suffern ACE:
@WereBear:
@Citizen_X:
@Mnemosyne:
Zurawik is a pal of Howie Kurtz, so I bet he’ll be on Reliable Sources this Sunday trashing Obama. Zurawik is the same guy who once compared Olbermann and Maddow to Nazi propagandists.
Jon H
Everybody needs to go to Urban Dictionary and upvote the following definition for “trumpkin”:
“gettin a blowjob from DONALD TRUMP while takin a shit. Once u ejaculate in his mouth, or even worse, pull an angry dragon, that pud says “ya fired”.”
Or else come up with a better one.
(A “blumpkin” is getting a blowjob while you’re poopin’. Therefore a trumpkin…)
grandpajohn
@Hart Williams: Hmm, So all
These people currently acting racist and the people in Orange county and others are Southerners? Racism is only found in the South?
thinking like this is one of the reasons there is still so much blatent racism still found NATIONWIDE.
freelancer (itouch)
Nevermind, Hayes said his absence had been planned.
Hart Williams
@grandpajohn:
Haw haw haw. It were a metaphor, and a joke, you see. We of the left and the civil persuasion are entirely too nice and dumb to bash the KKKonservatives’ brains out even if we caught them raping our children.
Which is, essentially, what they’ve done.
Jon H
Zurawik is just sore because, as a TV critic, he is about as far from serious reporting as he could be without being the cartoonist of “Love Is…”.
He probably had grander ambitions, and is bitter about how his career turned out.
Donut
@Richard Bottoms:
Yup, and Mr. Trump is already trying to walk some of this shit back vis a vis the President’s academic records. He’s juuuuuust bright enough to realize he overplayed his hand, and badly. Not bright enough to understand why and how this is going to fuck him, but whatever. He’s obviously a miserable, worthless fuck of a human being to begin with, but Baratunde Thurston was spot on about karma being a motherfucking bitch. Trump will get his, in due time, and here’s hoping it’s in this world, and soon – where we can get our schadenfreude on, big time. I’m normally not one to take much actual pleasure in enjoying other people’s hardships, but I would relish watching Trump get fucked up (not literally/physically, you know what I’m saying) by his bad karma.
greennotGreen
I blame Trump 10% and the media 90%. They knew he was a scorpion when they decided to carry him across the river, but they were apparently too damn stupid to realize that he was stinging them again and again and again. And they dealt with it by spreading the poison far and wide. I had a great aunt who was either a racist asshole or a loony-tune, depending on your point of view, but nobody interviewed her and promulgated her bile. The only difference between her and Donald Trump is that the Donald has a powerful accomplice: the American corporate media.
jeff
I’m gay. Things have gotten better for us more quickly than for blacks. But racism has, overall, damping the data for aberrations, declined. As has gay-hate. That doesn’t help much when you’ve been kicked in the face by the most privileged and least talented white man on the planet, but I’m trying to be a little positive. Part of white America will never give black people credit for their achievements, but that is less so than even a decade ago. Similarly, my siblings and father will never give me credit for being a human being, but many others have. I wish, actually, that I had been able to deal with discrimination a lot better, but I beat myself up right along with the society that condemned me. This is a shitty point, but we’ve had good one’s, too, and I think they’ll be more frequent, though history is long, and our lives very very short.
greennotGreen
BTW, I’m seeing a “Single and Over 40?” ad at the bottom of my screen. Are other people who don’t fit that description also seeing it? Because if it’s just my cohort, it’s really creepy.
Just Some Fuckhead
@greennotGreen:
I’m seeing “real black bbw dating“.
Comrade Mary
I see nothing. I’m going to die alone. #cries#
jeff
I’m seeing “Say NO to Obama” and get free shipping, fwiw
eemom
@General Stuck:
splendiforous summation, mon General.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
So the Blatimore Sun’s fucking TV critic thinks he’s in the same business as journalists who risk their lives reporting from war zones? For serious?
Guess what, Binky, the people in the media who’ve made Trump’s campaign of racial hatred against the President the top story for a fucking week aren’t fit to drink the piss of those real journalists you use as a shield against criticism.
The nerve of this fucktard to call Obama thin-skinned. Yeah, Obama is only catching massive amounts of shit for being the wrong shade of pink, but that’s nothing compared to the pain felt by the media when the same President points out what’s happening.
Fuck this country. We deserve what we get.
gnomedad
@Joshua Norton:
Funny you should mention that:
Afterbirthers Demand To See Obama’s Placenta
Sly
Not all of them will be dead, but a lot. And not enough new racists will have been raised to take all of their places. Sure, there will be new ones. But not enough, and thats what makes all the difference. Gradually, being a racist douchebag is being selected out of the American population as a trait that makes the carrier unsuitable for social advancement.
Call it Social Darwinism that actually works.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Mary:
You can have my new “84% of illegal immigrants caught in 2010 were NEVER prosecuted” ad. I’m going to bed now that Stuck and eemom are slow dancing.
jeff
@grandpajohn:
As a Southerner, I thank you for pointing out what should be obvious: the Tea Party (and obviously Trump) among other prominent racists in recent years have not primarily been from the South. No kudos to the South, but blaming them for the sins of people in the OC and Schenecdaty (sp?) is unfair.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Where the fuck did he get loyal unicorns? Mine are a bunch of randy sluts who will have it off with anyone who has the meat and two veg.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
we’ll just haunt your nightmares, fuckie. Sleep tight. : )
Silver
@jeff:
Think of the US like a person with explosive diarrhea. Sure, they might have shit on their knees and wrists, but the source is still the Sou…asshole.
cat48
Looks like the Press has found the scandal of the president’s father dating white women at Harvard by obtaining his Immigration Papers. Ben Smith at Politico has something on it & other sources at google news. Just sad.
kdaug
@Cat Lady:
The dog days are over.
hilts
@greennotGreen:
Did you catch Ed Henry at the WH briefing the day before Obama released the long form birth certificate? His own fucking network CNN had just thoroughly debunked the birther nonsense and this asshole is asking Jay Carney — Donald Trump says this, Donald Trump says that, what’s your response to his charges?
And this morning that worthless asshole Mika Brezinski took exception to Bob Woodward suggesting that the press went overboard and gave Trump a free ride.
Rhoda
Honestly, the Rev. Wright thing hit me harder than this birther thing or the release of the long form birth certificate. I think it’s because for the last three years I’ve just watched the shit that’s been going down and the pain of it’s been scabbed over. I really hurt more for Thurston’s video and his reaction and those of the people in my life than I did for the President; I’m just angry now. And it’s this deep, simmering thing that I don’t even acknowledge because I don’t see how exposing it to the light of day will do anything but cause more blowback or refocus the discussion in a way that would hurt what I want to see happen.
My father said the night that Obama got elected, shit was about to get real and the people we saw at the rallies would seem sane once it was all said and done. And my mother and my aunts and my uncles just nodded and my brothers and sisters and cousins and I just celebrated sort of brushing past it.
But it really did start immediately. This is what happens to the first anything; Sonia Sotomayor went through it during her confirmation. Elena Kagan STILL is going through it; through her confirmation wasn’t as hard. Every time another person crosses the Rubicon they make the path clearer for those to follow.
Hopefully, the first woman, the first Jew, the first gay will find a path to walk in Obama’s footsteps(God knows the shit they’ll have flung at them). And the second African American President will actually, amazingly, be considered a god damn American.
dww44
@jeff: Thanks for the mostly positive historical overview. My brother-in-law is gay and probably has beaten up on himself far more than any in his family. He had to up stakes and depart the South to emigrate to the Northwest to get himself to a place of personal acceptance. Bright guy though.
Sasha
I’ve said for some time that Obama’s election would drive a certain segment of the American populace absolutely bugfuck, and this was a good thing because finally the boil would be lanced.
I had no idea, however, that it would take so long for the pus to drain.
hilts
A blast from Donald Trump’s past:
In 1989, Trump paid $85,000 for full-page ads in four NY city newspapers calling for the death penalty for Raymond Santana and four other teens arrested for allegedly raping a Central Park jogger
In the ads, which have the banner headline “Bring Back the Death Penalty,” Trump wrote, “They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”
The convictions of Santana and the four others were vacated in 2002. Trump has never apologized for his ads.
h/t http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beats/politics/138192/-i-ny1-exclusive—i–man-cleared-in-central-park-jogging-case-demands-apology-from-trump
gex
@dww44: That’s the thing about the anti-gay stuff. The abuse from outside is only a small part of the abuse you suffer.
Arundel
Maybe by the time my generation is all 60-70 the Ferraros and Buchanans and Trumps will all be dead and this bullshit will be over with.
Who? Geraldine Ferraro? The one who just died of blood cancer? I cannot stand ABL’s overbearing, poorly written grievances, so I skip her posts, so I’m not clear whom you’re talking about. Forgive me. Geraldine was and is the only political Ferraro I can think of, and she just died recently. I’m aware she said some racially insensitive things, but it’s weird to read that she’s one of history’s greatest monsters that you look forward to their death, when she died a month ago. WTF?
And honestly, forgive me if I’m a fool and you’re talking about some other Ferraro, that I’ve never heard of.
gnomedad
Just remembered a line from a Saturday Night Live skit: “NBC – Smart as a Peacock!”
agrippa
@Sasha:
sasha, those attitues take a long time to become extinct, as they have deep roots.
But, I think that there is a little bit less of it than 30/40 years ago.
Obama’s election did cause that segment to pitch a conniption fit.
Lysana
@Mrs. Peel:
And it’s obviously true you can’t read, since I was rather clear I was listing gay men. And since those men in particular are rabidly devoted to hating my kind since I’m bisexual and female, I really don’t give a shit if I look homophobic when I call them out for their hatred. They have the privilege in this situation; I don’t.
iriedc
I’ve said to my husband over and over again over the last year that I’ve felt Cokie Roberts’ enabled birthers’ slither into the mainstream by implying that Hawaii was not an American enough place for a US Presidential candidate to take a family vacation. I still have a WTF reaction when I think about that.
I knew I couldn’t lead my kids to believe that we were living an a truly post-racial America. But I didn’t think I’d have to take so much time thinking about how to explain the hatred their President is experiencing just because his skin is the same color as theirs.
Lysana
@gex:
And you need to wake the fuck up yourself. None of those guys are our friends, and they’re the visible edge of the privilege problem. Our generation is still poisoned, still fucked, and this derailing shit isn’t gonna help.
karen marie
@ed: You all are giving Groupon way too much credit for “doing the right thing” here.
They were probably thrilled to be able to pull their ads from a failing show. They are getting way more publicity for free than they probably ever got running ads on Trump’s “reality” show.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen marie: What then is the exact amount of credit that they should receive?
MaryQ
I was thinking this though just today, in fact. I was thinking how sad it is that we have this President, who won a decisive victory, who connected so well with people, who has accomplished so much, who is ready, willing and able to do the hard work of governing, AND who is African American (sort of), and the First Lady is a beautiful African American women, and they are the mother of two lovely African American girls, and we should be celebrating that now, here, we live in a great country, where this can happen. And now it’s all “birth certificate blackity black soshulism black black death panels blackity tax and spend white poeples money black black deficit welfare blackity blackity black”.
And the 25% of the population that thinks as says this gets a friggin megaphone that allows them into my living room every. single. day.
I wondered how this was impacting African Americans. Now I know. Thanks for sharing this. I’m sorry.
Warren Terra
@Richard Bottoms:
Given how thoroughly Groupon alienated everyone who’s not an asshole with their massively misguided “Tibet is being wiped out – but we can get you great discounts on Tibetan food in a Chicago restaurant” Superbowl ad, I’m surprised they feel the need to run away from advertising on Trump’s show. I’d have expected them to double down on cornering the asshole market.
Omnes Omnibus
@Warren Terra: Clearly they felt they needed to go the other way.
khead
@Hart Williams:
Well, I suffer from the delightful delusion that if the North had discovered nuclear weapons in 1863 then maybe Sherman would’ve made sure Atlanta to Savannah glowed for the next 100 years.
I’m sure it’s just wishful thinking on my part though.
Warren Terra
@Arundel:
The concept of “maybe in a couple decades all the bigoted assholes from the previous generation who so dominate the national conversation will all be dead” is not in conflict with the fact that the bigoted assholes from the previous generation have already started dying. Quite the reverse, in fact.
And make no mistake: Ferraro may not have been “one of history’s greatest monsters”, but she was a monster. She was, consistently, a bigot. She wasn’t the most impressive woman Democrat in 1984; indeed, she wasn’t close to being the most impressive woman Democrat in Congress in 1984. Her husband was a crook, her son was a crook, and it’s hard to believe she wasn’t herself a crook. Given by circumstance a platform of historical importance, she spent the next twenty-five years doing nothing of significance, serving occasionally as a Fox News Democrat, before re-emerging in her final years to vomit her racism upon the national conversation – racism that apparently had a great deal of precedent in her previous record. She is exactly the sort of person our society needs to ignore or, failing that, to outlive. I hope that she made some positive difference in the lives of her friends and her family, and I’m sorry for their loss. Sadly, despite the tremendous opportunities she was given, her death is not America‘s loss in the slightest.
Cain
@dww44:
Married to your… brother?
map106
And with any luck, when you’re 60-70, the current progressives and liberals, who will be just slightly to the left of Hitler, will be wishing that you would get off their lawn and die, just like you and your cohort repeatedly wish upon those of us currently above 55.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Cain: Don’t know where you come from, Skippy, but around here my brothers- and sisters-in-law are my wife’s brothers and sisters, as well as my siblings husbands and wives.
Omnes Omnibus
@map106: Congratulations on missing the point of the post and for lumping a generation together in exactly the way you assumed Cole did. Well played.
billy rae valentine
today there’s this nice lady’s take on how it’s not that they’re racist, it’s that Obama hasn’t respected the majority-conservative perspective that is America: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/truth-be-told/2011/apr/28/american-people-fury-over-birth-certificate/
General Stuck
@kdaug:
Isn’t that a cool song. Another different kind of sound was a video ABL posted on her blog with an all girl chorus doing a cover for the Nirvana tune Smells Like Teen Spirit
No one of Importance
@Arundel:
Because ABL is the only person in the entire universe and on this blog who pointed out when Ferraro died what a nasty fucking racist she was.
Hmmm. There’s a constant theme running through the whines of ABL’s critics – she’s illiterate, stupid, oversensitive etc.
Is it the fact she’s angry, female or ‘near’ that makes you take her obvious strengths and claim them to be her weaknesses?
I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark here and guess it’s ABL’s beautiful dark skin that has you and the other morons so obsessed with pointing out her alleged intellectual inferiority. Call me crazy but it’s just too much like Trump calling Obama a ‘bad student’ for me not to connect the dots.
gwangung
Sorry to hear that. I think you can learn a lot from her posts (writing being not the least).
brendancalling
I would like to see Donald Trump kidnapped and dumped in a North Philly slum, wearing his white hood. he’s such a fuck.
My dad grew up in one of the houses his dad sold. Nice house, solid. Trump’s a piece of shit asshole, he brings shame to white people everywhere, and frankly to humanity as a whole.
brendancalling
@No one of Importance:
ding ding ding! BULLSEYE!
I love ABL, even when I disagree with her. Stupid, illiterate? PUH-LEEZE.
jeff
@Cain:
Do you not know what a “brother-in-law” is?
karen marie
@freelancer (itouch): I’m failing to understand why LO has his panties in such a twist. Given what he says about NBC having announced new seasons of current shows but not announcing a new season of Trump, and given Trump’s hilariously absurd hyping of his show at the presser in NY, my assumption is that the decision to drop his show has already been made. He’s been fired. Trump isn’t going to run for president, he’s just expanding his business opportunities. Garner enough attention and your endorsement is worth something.
Or at least Trump probably thinks his will be. I’m going to stock up on extra popcorn to watch him try to be a circus master of the crazy party.
But LO is no KO. His rant seemed strained. His message would have been, IMO, more powerful without the complicated “everything NBC execs know and when they knew it.” It’s pretty simple: was his show not picked up, are they canceling it or do they intend to pretend everything is fine?
Also, too, I’m surprised. What, did LO just suddenly noticed that NBC has no problem giving racists and hatemongers air time?
He’s apparently never seen Meet The Press where the Confederate Party has 10 minutes of face time for every one minute for a non-member and bigots are provided a national platform.
Comrade Mary
@General Stuck: I caught their cover of Creep on Conan a week or so ago. Almost perfectly glorious, and just a little precious at the end.
Tim, Interrupted
OK, I’m gay and who the hell is Brian Fischer and why the hell should I give a bloody shit what he says about anything?
Likewise, fuck Trump and the birthers. You all are giving these freaks way too much power over how you feel and the actions you take.
This emo/hurt feelings bullshit should be replaced by anger and organized retaliation; boycotts for instance.
Also, too, furthermore and additionally: Obama and his presidency of broken promises is by far the BIGGEST slap in the face to AA’s since the inauguration. He’s pretty much given the big fuck you to his base, Blacks included, which is what matters. Trump and the birthers are a side show.
Which, come to think of it, means that by feeding their birther bullshit, Obama gets to distract you from all the ways he has fucked you over. Oh. NOW I get it…
Tim, Interrupted
@Mako:
EXACTLY.
gocart mozatrt
Trump is certainly running for President. He had respect from many independents and moderates. He would not intentionally destroy his reputation with them unless he thought he could receive something in return like the Republican nomination. He may well get it. Sure he is a clown but how does that make him any less serious than all the others?
Caz
Do you have any examples of the “open and overt” racism that is so prevalent today among conservatives? Racism will exist forever, in every society, to some degree, and it grips every segment of society, from whites, blacks, asians, native Americans, latinos, etc.
However, racism continues to wane as each decade goes by. Surely, there is less racism today than there was in 1965, and there was less in 1965 than in 1865. Would you really have us believe that racism is as widespread now as it’s ever been? Maybe it is, but I have yet to see any proof of that position.
And you’ve gotten so up in arms about it that you are unwittingly engaging in it yourself, basically asserting that Michael Steele is too dumb to know that he’s being attacked. Just as it is racist to question Obama’s intelligence (he wasn’t smart enough to get into Harvard, blah blah blah), it’s racist to assert that Michael Steele is too dumb to figure out that he’s on the wrong side.
Personally, I agree with you to some extent that there is racism throughout our society, but I don’t think it is as pervasive as you do. But it is pretty apparent that the race card is being thrown around recklessly by progressives as a boilerplate response to any criticism of Obama. I guess it relieves progressives of any effort in addressing the merits of an argument, it’s an easy way out, and of course it can never actually be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that you’re wrong. It can’t really be proven that you’re right either, but it makes for a powerful, politically correct insult when a progressive doesn’t like a conservative’s point of view on an Obama issue.
It takes much more courage to give the benefit of the doubt that racism is not the reason behind the criticisms, and engage in a debate on the merits, than to slap the race card down at the very outset of every debate.
That’s just my two cents, as neither a republican, democrat, nor racist. Obama is very intelligent, and you’re doing a disservice to him by jumping in to protect him from rampant racism – as if neither he nor you are able to debate the substantive aspects of the arguments. Destroying someone’s argument on the merits is far more powerful than preventing any debate at all by crying “racist!”
Unfortunately, I suspect that all the responses to this post are going to be insults and allegations that I’m a racist, which doesn’t further the conversation at all. Perhaps at least one of you will have the decency to engage this conversation with some facts. Maybe I’m wrong, but you’ll have to present a respectable fact-based point of view in place of insults and the race card if my view is to be revised.
I guess we’ll see what happens…
TooManyJens
Reply to Caz deleted because seriously, why fucking bother?
Omnes Omnibus
@TooManyJens: I don’t know. Let’s say you were a cutter and you didn’t have a knife or razor blade handy….
pluege
Maybe by the time my generation is all 60-70 the Ferraros and Buchanans and Trumps will all be dead and this bullshit will be over with.
uhhh??? Expecting the flotsam of human nature, the worst of what humanity has to offer, the scum of the Earth causing their chaos and destruction since the dawn on humanity to correct itself and somehow be gone in a few decades. I don’t think so!
Triassic Sands
The logic of this escapes me. Obama is a black person. If these racist attacks “gut punch every black person in the country,” then they gut punch Obama. They may not hurt him politically, but if these attacks really hurt every black person (who is not a Republican lunatic — and surely, you have to be doubly insane to be a black Republican, which raises the question of the mental state of gay, black Republicans — ooh, my head hurts), then they hurt Obama, too.
billy rae valentine
@Caz: i just got home from hollywood. i was partying a little bit. went to this placed called Lubitsch on santa monica boulevard. dj lady sha, this Iranian DJ, was spinning in one room. the other room was like a russian-drink type bar. idk all types of vodka. some shet like that. mostly beautiful white people. young. wow. i saw some pretty girls in that first place, right off the bat. then that other room was cool, too. the dj spun some hip-hop that i LOVED. i sat down at a table my myself and watched the dance floor. people were not inhibited at all. dorky dance moves were ok. i seen a guy just dancing by himself like he thought he was Maxwell hahha. and i’m like, “why am i scared to dance how EYE dance? haha this guy is doing some he just made up.”
white people i love how they dance. i’m not trying to launch into making fun of it, either. i MEAN IT. i mean i see some of them LOSING THEMSEVLES IN DANCE and i love it. or some skinny jewish kid dancing like those old Charlie Brown specials. like at the christmas party. and i’m like “that guy has more courage to dance than i do for sure! i am actually scared to dance. at this point i have to get drunk to dance in public.”
there were some girls dancing that i appreciated. i was like i appreciate you! inside my head. inside my head i was like that. i didn’t say anything i just observed. i chilled there in my blazer and skinny tie. i loved the music dj lady sha played. i don’t know which girl i saw was her. but i have suspects. they were all pretty, too.
i left there not too long after i got there. i don’t know, maybe a half-hour later. i left and went to hollywood blvd. went to Playhouse. idk. i think it was almost 1. i got right in. i think one of the brothers at the door thought he recognized me. he said something like that, but i was like idk this guy. but i am often in hollywood drunk. he was black. i was black. did he think i was a Somebody? i don’t care i go in dammit. omg. ALL KINDA BAD B1TCHEZ, NEGGGAAAAAAA.
ALL TYPES NEGGGAAAAAA. I’M GIGGLING MOTHERFUCKER. HAHAHA WHERE U LIVE AT OLD SALTY ASS NEGGA OLD TOURIST ASSS NEGGA I WANNA GO TO SOME WEBSITE I NEVER BEEN AT BEFORE AND ASK THESE NEGGAS WHAT THE FUCK THEY SO PISSED ABT ASS NEGGGA!! FUHKK U BIJ I NEVER SEEN U BEFORE. WE DON’T BELIVE YOU YOU NEED MORE PEOPLE ASS HEAD NEGGGA SHUT THE F___ UP TALKING
ABOUT WHAT THE FUDK U WANGT MOTHERFUHKKAA TO EXPLAIN TO YOU.
HAZHAA AADMIT IT Y’ALL FEELING THIS SHET. SOME OF YALL. SOME OF YALL DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK JUST ERUPTED IN THIS BIJ. YOU ARE LIKE HE CAN’T SPELL I TOLD YOU THESE NIGRAS ARE IGNORANT. $2.5 TRILLION DOWN THE DRAIN. BIJ I SPELL HOW I WANT TO SPELL. I AM INVENTING MY LANGUAGE AS I DO IT. THIS HOW I TYPE MY LANGUAGE. DEAL WITH THAT SHIT YOU UPPITY MOTHERFOKKER I HAVE HAD TO LEARN A LITTLE SPANISH. I WANT TO LEARN MORE. BECAUSE I LIKE THE PEOPLE WHO SPEAK IT I WANT TO BE CLOSER TO THEM.
how about you? come on, you might one day be like, “hmm let me try to get the hang of it. i got a set of rules i be building as i do shit like type on a message board to talk to people. and i hear this voice in my head and i’m just taking dictation of what he be saying.
i saw this guy’s post and i was like it sound familiar. like a white guy who wanted to understand. some parts of what he says sound skeptical of something he thinks a lot of us be saying and he’s just being honest about where he feels some people are percieving something some kinda way. he’s like “i don’t think it’s that. explain to me how it’s that. (that being racism.
i don’t care right now about presenting my case. i was gonna type out some response but fuhkk that. i came home, got high and wrote about how i just took a big-ass bite out of life in hollywood, bij.
karen marie
@Omnes Omnibus: Do you really think that if the show’s ratings weren’t dropping like a stone that Groupon would have pulled their advertising? I don’t.
negative 1
@Warren Terra: I’m glad someone else feels that way. That she gets lauded for her courage as being the first woman on a presidential ticket is a cruel joke. I am reminded of when Jesse Helms died – most obituaries couldn’t really find a nice thing to say. Why try? If you live your life as horrific cancer on the body politic then you should be remembered as such. Like anyone would be fooled by a warm obit for Lee Atwater? These people don’t get less detestable when they die. Just less harmful.
WaterGirl
@gnomedad: I can’t recall where I read it yesterday, but someone said that now that the long form has been released, some of these idiots will probably ask to see the first diaper.