Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day. To celebrate, actions and protests were planned all over the country. Hell, MTV even broadcast in black and white in an attempt to start a dialogue on race. Not to be forgotten, the GOP sent out this delightful photo of Reince Priebus, chairman of the GOP, standing in front of the King memorial.
Because, you know, when we think of the practices of the GOP, we think of the teachings of MLK.
Team Blackness also discussed the problematic thinking of NBC creating a new section just for black people, SNL’s gentrification sketch, and how to sue a tights company over your lack of orgasms.
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RaflW
It is not lost on me that the GOP picked a gray, rainy day for this photo op.
Or that Reincypoo is all casual with his hands in his pocket, bored face, like he’s waiting for his limo to get him outta there.
Or that he’s alone, as in, no one else from the GOP could be bothered to show up.
Or that the quote could easily be read by fellow wingers as “The time is always right to do right” … so why don’t those lazy *&^# do right?
What a multi-layered, frosted shit-cake.
Waldo
He said “right” twice. See, King was a righty.
Well played, Reince.
Shakezula
Based on the weather in that picture, he posed for it on Sunday, sent it out on Monday. Because nothing says I care like rushing out to take a picture at a person’s national monument a few hours before the holiday honoring that person.
rikyrah
this is who they are, Elon.
elmo
Oh, for the Photoshop skillz of my stepdaughter! The only way that picture is existentially accurate is if you envision Rancid PiePus pissing all over the MLK statue…
Villago Delenda Est
Rinse Prebus is another cancerous mole on the ass of humanity.
KG
@Villago Delenda Est: why are you being so mean to cancerous moles on asses?
Violet
He’s an awful person. Makes my skin crawl. He looks like he’s hiding all sorts of horrible secrets.
Belafon
I went to the Lincoln Memorial once. Think of how important that makes me.
Cacti
The worst thing about MLK Day is that it’s used by people who hated or would have hated him to make him some cuddly Santa Claus of Civil Rights figure…
Rather than an activist who preached social justice, and said lots of uncomfortable things about our national fondness for violence, and the smug public attitudes toward poverty.
Waynski
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Orwell
Most people who read 1984 saw a dystopian vision of the future. The GOP saw a communications strategy.
another Holocene human
@Violet: He knows the John Does.
Belafon
@Cacti: Kill a man, then co-opt his message. Not the first time.
Sly
I submitted this over at LGM when the topic of the Right’s perennial effort to co-opt King as a conservative hero was brought up. It’s from Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community?. Part retrospective on the movement and meditation on how it might play out, it was the last book written by King before his death.
I’ve long believed that what was so remarkable about the movement’s leadership, and their greatest asset, was not in their organizational skill or their courage or their ability to present racism in morally unambiguous terms, but that they knew white people better than white people knew themselves.
Turd Burglar
He looks like he’s standing at a urinal. No respect, no pride, just a privileged white guy looking arrogant.
PhoenixRising
@Sly: Yep. The best part of ‘Selma’ was MLK explaining to the SNCC kids that he respected their work raising black consciousness, and they ought to respect the fact that his work focused on raising white consciousness.
Violet
@another Holocene human: He knows more than that. Creepy.
PhoenixRising
Isn’t it correctly rendered ‘The time is always ripe to do right’? Or have I been mistaken about that quote for 35 years?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Cacti:
I think one of the reasons people are reacting so strongly against “Selma” is that it shows the ugly, dirty horror of what actually happened on that bridge, not the nice, sanitized version all us post-Civil Rights kids got taught in school. They were fucking beating people with baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire. That happened. In the United States of America, well within our parents’ memories.
jl
@Turd Burglar: I think Priebus looks like a privileged white guy looking like a privileged white guy who doesn’t know how to look or what to think. Had to do some GOP outreach, whatever… stand there looking ? and wait for somebody to snap the pic. Then get back to work.
Had they thought of the implicitly partisan ideological pun yet? It probably won’t be lost on the African-American community, or any other significant minority community of whatever description you like.
‘The time is always right to do right’, aka, we co-opt anything and anybody, because we are Right wing operatives, not a real poliitcal party anymore.
Another entry in the annals of GOP outreach. Probably a minor one that will be forgotten in a day or two, to the conscious mind. But another brick in the wall that will drive away African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, Sikhs…. etc. etc.
Good job, GOP. Keep it up. Probability that I will live to dance on your political grave ticked up just a little bit higher.
But, it was transparent BS on MKL day, which I do admit is sad and regrettable.
Violet
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Agreed.
TR
@PhoenixRising:
Yes, it is. Attention Balloon Juicers: The GOP fucked up the quote.
It’s from King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
Maybe it’s pedantic to point out how they screwed it up, but … no.
Also, keep in mind that quote comes from King’s demand that the federal government take action in the South to secure the safety of African Americans who are being abused by local law enforcement. If Preibus wants to use that quote, fine, then he needs to follow the rest of the letter as well.
jl
@TR: Thanks. Gotta get ‘right'(wing) in there as often as possible. That is the cynical view, that they purposely got it wrong. But who knows, their mishmash of incompetence, confusion and bad faith is very deep, and it is hard to fathom which is the driving force behind what they do in a particular instance.
But, you know, this is GOP outreach, so you know they aren’t going to put much effort into doing quality work.
Edit: And the GOP cannot follow the letter or the spirit of the whole of anything King said or wrote, since his advocacy for social justice for all the people of whatever description will come out as clearly as his message on racial civil rights. Can’t have that, it will wreck the co-opting effort.
jl
Some evidence to support my hypothesis that incompetence, inattention and complete cluelessness is as reasonable explanation for what the GOP churns out as malice or Machiavellian coup-plotting or dog-whistling:
Bobby Jindal Blasts Muslim ‘No-Go Zones’ After Fox News Retraction
from TPM blog
‘ Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) on Monday sharply criticized so-called Muslim “no-go zones,” just two days after Fox News apologized for discussing them without any evidence to prove they exist.
“In the West, non-assimilationist Muslims establish enclaves and carry out as much of Sharia law as they can without regard for the laws of the democratic countries which provided them a new home,” Jindal said in a speech to London’s Henry Jackson Society, as quoted by CNN. “It is startling to think that any country would allow, even unofficially, for a so called ‘no go zone.’” ‘
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bobby-jindal-no-go-zones
I hope Ernst does as well as Jindal and Priegus tonight. It’s like a limbo dance where low bars can be the most difficult to beat. But, hey, I am rooting for Ernst tonight! She can do it! She has the chops!
Caprice
http://boingboing.net/2015/01/20/we-have-exactly-one-thing-to-s.html
“We have exactly one thing to say about Paris suing Fox News” from Xeni Jardin
WereBear
@TR: Wow. That’s just jaw-droppingly arrogant and stupid. Nothing new, I know…
But this, and Zandar’s wonderful article, just points up how the GOP are constantly dragging the country down to their level. And we just can’t manage that for much longer.
SatanicPanic
@Turd Burglar: Like a teenager whose parents dragged him to a museum he didn’t want to go to. He’s got his hands in his pockets for crying out loud.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Caprice:
Whoever wrote that needs to add a disclaimer: “The writer of this piece does not understand how libel law works.” Seriously, now suing someone for libel is suppression of free speech? WTF?
Shakezula
Who’s up for reading the full message and watching the video that goes with it? https://www.gop.com/rnc-statement-on-mlk-day/
Not me!
Hal
Rinse Pubics is a vile human being. There is something so insufferably fake about him. He’s a robot programmed to dispense nothing but GOP talking points given out with a smile usually used by men who drive around neighborhoods trying to lure kids with the promise of free candy.
Caprice
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I agree. I was disappointed when I read her post. I don’t think Xeni was thinking clearly on this one. I wanted to share the link; some of the reader comments are excellent.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Caprice:
I pretty much agree with the commenters because “fight speech with more speech” isn’t supposed to apply to actual libel and slander. The famous Falwell case was a protected parody — if they’d tried to publish an “investigative” article seriously making the same claims, Falwell would have won.
I did appreciate the classic GIF, though. One of my favorites.
Villago Delenda Est
@TR:
But…but…
The “quicksand of racial injustice” is the basis of the contemporary GOP…the Party of Jefferson Davis, the party that is convinced the wrong side won the Civil War. You know…the side that opposed Abraham Lincoln.
boatboy_srq
@TR: That just screams deliberate alteration. One wonders whether, by changing the one word, the GOTea thinks they can avoid any complaint that they stole his exact words. Plus, with the Teahad’s fixation on “left/right”, it makes sense to reiterate one of their pet terms. As for the photo, RNC PR BS seems to be following the GOTea pattern of revering some historical figure renowned for upending the societal norms of the day only once s/he’s dead and memorialized in granite (just like Saint Ronnie, Lincoln, Jefferson, etc etc). Either all of that, or being typical Teahadists the effed up in the details again – but my votes on malicious intent with this one.
boatboy_srq
@Villago Delenda Est: I GET IT! The photo is RNC PR BS posing alongside the Solid Rock of Human Dignity. How could I have missed it?
kuvasz
Way to go Reince, there is nothing better for you than to look small standing next to a great man.
boatboy_srq
@TR:
Takes some ‘nads to quote from THAT document after Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Louis Ross, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Well within my memory. And I could name a few other Juicers who would own to the memory as well.
PhoenixRising
@SiubhanDuinne: I took my kid last night, and here’s what was interesting about the audience (putting on my Lily Tomlin hat for a moment): I was the only white person not old enough to remember the news footage the first time.
That means something, and I have no idea what.
Mike in NC
Priebus looks at statue and wonders, “Who’s that guy?”
Another Holocene Human
@Sly:
Balanced? This is far too kind. They outnumber us. Now, morally, they may collectively be featherweights, but numerically … see election, presidential, 2012.
Another Holocene Human
@Violet: Scotty-boy is such a simpleton, to be the Koch’s creature. If he somehow does become president they will still own him, but if he goes down (in scandal, perhaps prosecution), he’ll go down alone.
jl
@Another Holocene Human:
I think the unregenerate segregationist whites are a small minority. The scared ignorant and bigoted whites who are willing to go along with unregenerate segregationist whites, and repeatedly get conned by politicians pandering to unregenerate segregationist whites, is sadly large. Maybe a majority of whites, still. They are not racists as long as people who do not look like them stay in their designated roles, whatever the bigoted white comfort zone happens to be these days. There have to SOME boundaries. A minority in a position of leadership is outside that comfort zone unless he or she consciously is in the service of white power structure, and any minority in leadership that shows any autonomy skeers them into hatred and even more bigotry. Sad commentary on some of my people.
karen marie
The anagram looks like they dumped him out of a car and pulled the bag off his head.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So is MLK a Hard Right Conservative or a Commie this week in Wingnut land?
TG Chicago
Y’all have mentioned a number of things odd about the symbolism of the photo. I’d add that the obvious image would be someone looking up at the statue thoughtfully. That’s a pretty obvious way to go. Instead Priebus seems to be turning his back on MLK — and rather dismissively at that.
I don’t see how they thought sending out this image was a better idea than sending out nothing at all.