You might be excused if you said placing Obama’s face on a $10 food stamp with a bucket of fried chicken, watermelon, ribs, and Kool-Aid was an isolated act.
When a major right-wing network calls Michelle Obama, “Obama’s Baby Mama,” you could dismiss it as as an overzealous producer who just thought it was funny and didn’t mean it to say that black women are just baby machines for black men. You could, I suppose.
You might even get a pass if you thought a Web site that depicted Obama and the word “Waterboard Him” was just created by an obscure group that didn’t represent all Republicans – although you would be wrong.
If a picture of Obama was Photoshopped to make him look a little bit like Osama Bin Laden, you could pass it off as the work of a few idiots on the right. It could be, right?
Supporters who carry racist Obama Monkey Dolls to your rallys are people who don’t represent your campaign. You could argue that.
Of course, this is just a moron on the fringe, right?
What about when a high-level Republican fundraiser sends out an email that includes a joke with the punchline, if an airplane carrying Obama and his wife were blown up “it certainly wouldn’t be a great loss, and it probably wouldn’t be an accident either.”? Sure, you could pass it off as the act of a random dumbass.
If, in response to your question, “Who is Barack Obama?” someone yelled “Terrorist!” you could say that was just one idiot in the crowd and was not indicative of the general sentiment. It’s plausible.
In fact, you could cite dozens of examples of these racist, divisive, dillusiuonal attacks on Barack Obama and conclude that they are just elements of the fringe and don’t represent mainstream Republicans.
Sooner or later though, you will have to acknowledge that this “fringe” is very widespread. You’ll have to come to grips, eventually, with the fact that this “fringe” has become the very definition of the your party.
SGEW
Oh man. Precisely. Exactly. Right on.
This is why all of the conservatives I had any modicum of respect for have abandoned the Republican party (or, at least, the McCain campaign). In all seriousness: can anyone name a single respectable conservative who still publicly supports John McCain? By "respectable," I mean: intelligent, erudite, reasonable, honest, and not screamingly racist. Anyone?
Also, I cannot recommend Ta-Nahesi’ take on the overt racism from the Republican party highly enough. His most recent:
The rest here.
eric U.
if you said the Republicans were a racist party, you’d be wrong. Wouldn’t you?
r€nato
yeah, sure, but someone wore a t-shirt at an Obama rally which McCain didn’t like.
So I guess both sides are equally bad. In fact it’s really Obama’s fault because he did not agree to do ten town halls with McCain.
r€nato
You just covered the tip of the GOP racist iceberg, Michael.
There’s George "macaca" Allen, who famously had a noose displayed in his offfice.
There’s the constant peddling of the obnoxious lie that the mortgage meltdown was caused by darkies taking out mortgages they couldn’t afford thanks to Democratic affirmative action.
Race-baiting has become such a common GOP tactic that we hardly notice the less-obnoxious instances of it. We take it for granted that every two years, they are going to send out mailers designed to blame minorities and immigrants for all our economic woes.
Thank goodness their reign is coming to an end. It is going to take a long time to cleanse that poison out of their party.
TheFountainHead
If only Wallace had held ten town hall meetings with MLK, we wouldn’t be having this problem today.
malraux
I must say that I’m somewhat concerned about election related violence. The stage is definitely being set for any Obama victory to be viewed as illegitimate by large segments of the Republicans. Combined with the worst charges being made, the fringe have been given a framework in which violent opposition is the patriotic act.
rachel
Well, that’s what happens when you drive the smart and the sane out of your party. Don’t forget, though, that the Dems also have many kooks and assholes in their party*. It’s just that we can’t see them now because they’re hidden by all those normal people.
*I’m willing to concede that Dem kookishess and assholery may be less toxic, but it’s still there.
fuddmain
McCain should get down on his knees and thank Allah every single day that Obama didn’t do 10 town halls with him.
He’d be even more toasted than he is now.
rachel
@fuddmain: Perhaps the 10 townhall proposal was McCain’s attempt to lower voter turnout by boring the pants off everybody. :)
D. Mason
Despite it being a frequently used racial slur, you can’t say much about this without coming off as a rank hypocrite. People have been calling Bush a chimp for years. Turnabout is fair play and Obama supporters may as well get used to it. Unless of course you want to enter frothing right-winger territory where you decry the same shit you’ve been doing just because it’s now being done to you.
r€nato
does anybody doubt what would have happened if the shoe had been on the GOP foot in 2000?
There would not have been a gracious concession from W once the Supreme Court had ruled in Gore’s favor.
There would not have been a grumbling acquiescence by W’s supporters. Hell these people never considered Clinton a legitimately-elected president, even though he won the office twice without a major assist from the Supremes.
The GOP has gone from the ‘big-tent’ party to the party of anyone who’s got a racist, hate-filled axe to grind. Whether it’s race, sexual preference or religion… if you hate someone who’s not white, Christian or straight, you’ve got a home in the GOP.
Brian J
If only Barack Obama had agreed to do those town hall forums. None of this would have happened.
r€nato
yes, that’s offensive because for years, it was a frequent racial slur to insinuate that white people were sub-human by comparing them to monkeys.
or, not.
smarter trolls please.
Nick
Southern Strategy, fruits of and reason for.
If it’s ‘Country First’, that implies that there is something special about Americans. That also requires defining ‘real’ Americans. (Is an immigrant somehow made special by virture of living here, or by becoming naturalized?).
The alternative is a cosmpolitan view of the world and the rights of man (are all men created equal, or only those within our borders?).
"No man is an island…."
Linda
Well, yes we do, all parties do to some extent, BUT at least currently, or leaders are not making excuses for the fringe. They do not ignore people who shout kill him at rallies or hint that their opponent is a traitor who has terrorist associates. In fact, both Obama and Biden keep emphasizing that McCain is a decent man who simply views the situation in ways that don’t work any more. While McCain and Palin keep pushing the Obama=terrorist meme.
magisterludi
A republican reader of Sullivan refers to the new GOP as Christian Fascist. I prefer American Taliban myself.
Does anyone else get as nervous as I do with all the "home schooling" going on in this cult? Even Kathleen Parker hinted at that with her "Christian Soldiers, indeed" comment.
SGEW
What are you, crazy? You just rebutted your own argument there, D.
To wit: the fact that it is a "frequently used racial slur" is exactly what we’re talking about. I suppose that if the Village Voice’s inauguration cover was "Hail to the Ofay-In-Chief" instead of "Hail to the Chimp," you might have a point. But, seeing as how the Voice did not do that, seeing as how there is a categorical difference between mocking someone with anthropomorphic animal comparisons and using a "frequently used racial slur," and seeing as how we are TALKING ABOUT RACISM, you do not. Sorry.
Xanthippas
Thanks for the list Michael. Despite the fact that some people (D. Mason for example) seem to think that all of this is the equivalent of calling Bush a chimp, you’ve hit the incipient racism of the right-wing right on the head. Sorry to you moderate Republicans out there who seem to think your party represents some perfect blend of Edmund Burke and Milton Friedman, but your party happens to be the only one that attracts the racists, bigots and homophobes of America. Why that is, is perhaps something you should consider asking yourself.
Brian
And then there was this, out of Washington State:
"Snohomish County Republicans on Tuesday stopped selling phony $3 bills at their Evergreen State Fair booth bearing a picture of Barack Obama wearing an Arab headdress.
In addition to the image of Sen. Obama, the likely Democratic nominee for president, the “Obamanation Note” design includes a silhouette figure of a camel, identifies Obama as “Da Man” and is signed by “Teddy Kennedy, Chief Socialism Advisor,” and “Al Sharpton, New Spiritual Advisor.” The serial number, “IBD14UOK” when read aloud, is fractured English: ‘I be de one for you, OK.’"
D. Mason
Yeah, yeah, I’m a troll, blah blah blah. I was being called a troll back then when I said calling Bush stupid names like that was counter-productive. The hypocrisy of foaming at the mouth over primate jabs at your candidate is completely transparent. It doesn’t really matter if it’s racist or not at this point. Calling Bush a chimp for years gave the would be racists a free pass on this shit whether you like it or not.
Comrade Stuck
@D. Mason:
Linking Malkin to support your argument will give you warts and make your dick fall off Mason. Renato is right. Better trolls please.
Bill in Chicago
My thoughts exactly! The real issue no one seems to want to discuss is this:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-04-01-obama-muslim_N.htm
So 10% of the general population believe in this Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim crap. By extrapolation, that is over 20% of McCain’s support! We are not talking about isolated nutjobs here, but something much more widespread and significant.
And of course, needless to say, the man who started it all has been officially diagnosed with psychiatric disorders (and denied admission to the Illinois state bar as a result):
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us/politics/13martin.html?bl&ex=1224129600&en=4b6a0b6f9f1b411c&ei=5087
So yes, here is the new standard bearer of the Republican Party:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOU9xZ4zcss&feature=related
D. Mason
My point was simply that mocking one person with anthropological animal comparisons kind of opens the door. Just because the Dems put up a black candidate this year doesn’t mean you get to now cry foul about the same shit thats been going on for years. Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think it will wash with most people.
Not all of this, just the monkey digs which is what I linked to.
ambboogie
FAIL.
Napoleon
I do. It is part of an attempt to totally seperate them and their movement from American society, including paying taxes to it at a level needed to keep government functioning properly.
Comrade Colonel Ivan Ivanovich Renko, Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (ret.)
I call bullshit, Mason.
The question is– would or did Bush and his minions regard it as a racist attack, or did they see it as just an attack?
I would wager you’re not black, or you’d at least be aware of the history of demeaning black people as "apes" or "monkeys."
How you can conflate that history with the Bush/Chimp cartoonery is beyond me.
ambboogie
Sooo.. you pick out just ONE example as being not racist.
I’d love to hear you explain all the other examples…. say… post a link where Bush was on the dollar bill with watermelon and fried chicken?
Go ahead, i’ll wait.
Tim
Overt racism has frankly become socially acceptable to the Republican party. Just look at Drudge Report right now and the picture he’s using above the link to "Colin Powell might endorse Obama…"
The Moar You Know
This isn’t a new development and I must confess to profess astonishment towards any who are surprised at the "new" racist direction of the GOP. Started with Nixon, of course, as so much of the toxic behavior of the modern GOP has, was sharpened to a keen edge by the master of dogwhistle politcs, Ronald Reagan (hey, anyone here old enough to remember "welfare queens driving Cadillacs"?). Didn’t skip a beat as we graduated to George HW Bush and his election-winning friend, Willie Horton (whose skin was helpfully darkened by photo staff at Time magazine, just as OJ’s would be seven years later). George Bush II, of course, used push-polling about McCain’s Bangledeshi adoptee daughter to knock him out of the running in South Carolina.
What did all these strategies have in common? They all worked.
Why?
Well, the "fringe" has never been fringe, racism has been one of the core beliefs of the Republican party since 1968. It’s only getting ugly this election cycle because the black guy is going to win it; before, no one would have gotten bent out of shape about a black guy running for president because it simply would have been accepted wisdom that he could not possibly have won.
Brachiator
@magisterludi:
I don’t get nervous at all. Many people choose home schooling because the other choices available to them are either poor schools or hideously expensive schools. And I feel sad for the parents who are deliberately choosing a narrow and inadequate education for their children, because these kids will have a harder time when they have to compete in the wider world with kids who have gotten stuff like real history and science.
But I also think that a successful Obama presidency would be much like a successful Clinton presidency. Wingnut true believers will bend over backwards to try to prove that the groundwork for success was laid by Republicans.
cyntax
@D. Mason:
And there we have it. The only people still left in the Republican Party couldn’t argue their way out of wet paper sack.
Just cause you say it doens’t make it so; can you in any way explain the logic behind your false equivalency? I mean by anything aside from the "I’m rubber–you’re glue" rule of playground rhetoric?
D. Mason
I don’t need to pick out any other examples because I don’t disagree with the other examples. My point was about the monkey jabs and only the monkey jabs. I’ve tried to make that clear but I guess some people choose not to get it.
My point was simple but maybe I need to use even more simple language: Using a guy holding a curious george doll to support arguments of racism against Obama is pretty futile in my eyes after years of using curious george dolls to attack Bush. It’s tit for tat and it might not be "fair" in light of Obamas skin color but that’s fucking life.
Charity
You know, I could have almost let the "baby mama" thing slip. I still think it could have been an older clueless white guy/lady who was thinking of the Tina Fey movie and thought it was funny that Obama and mama rhymed.
But I’m sorry: everyone knows the implications of fried chicken & watermelon. They aren’t "just foods" when applied to an African-American candidate.
Howard Cosell
There is an issue with saying something like that?
Cassidy
You do make a valid point, but the overt racism of these "fringe" people really does go beyond the Bush=chimp caricature, which was based on his facial expressions and not his color.
And Mason is right, to a certain degree. In the warped minds of these people, the attacks are equivalent. I don’t think he’s saying they are the same, but that they see them as the same. Slight but important difference. And while I don’t believe they see the attacks as equivalent, I think they would use it as a plausible excuse because they are empty, mouth breathing, oxygen stealing shits who need to be culled from the planet.
fliegr
Why is there any surprise about this? When you specifically enact the strategy of pandering to the most credulous, undereducated segments of the population to make up for the fact that there aren’t enough multimillionaires who need their taxes cut to get you sufficient votes for political power, it should be patently obvious that demographic unbalance will eventually sink the ship. We’re just seeing the lunatics take over the asylum, that’s all. Maybe they’ll break away and form their own political party and give us all something to point and laugh at for a few years, once we’re done cleaning up the horrendous mess they’ve left.
SGEW
Self-defining fail. You suck.
D. Mason
I absolutely agree. Dems just need to choose other examples and let the monkey jokes go because flogging them looks hypocritical.
Punchy
So now you’re pretending there’s no diff between calling a white and black wo/man a monkey?
Why don’t you test this? Go up to 1 white and 1 black coworker and call each one a monkey to their face. Report the results.
Until then, STFU.
r€nato
OK D. Mason I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe you are not a troll.
Perhaps you are just not very intelligent.
Brian J
Or to get people to vote for him by screaming an electoral form of mercy after listening to over 10,000 repetitions of "my friends."
r€nato
for that matter, I would welcome D. Mason calling a white man ‘boy’ and a black man ‘boy’ and then reporting the results… after the doctor extracts his teeth from his stomach.
SGEW
Or something. I’m not gonna say it.
Wait . . . now I’m concerned. Consternation!
cyntax
LOL
Being the walking (posting) embodiment of a tautology is fun!
D. Mason
I’m not pretending shit. I know exactly what the racist implication are. My point was very fucking simple and there is no need to twist what I said. I already acknowledged the racist context. Calling Bush a chimp for years gave cover to people who will now call Obama a chimp/monkey/ape. Now they’re using that cover. That was my very simple point and if you choose not to get it that’s your problem.
lutton
>>a picture of Obama was Photoshopped to make him look a little bit like Osama
FYI: I think it was a photo of Osama p-shopped in a way that resembles Obama…
Dork
You’re very, very wrong. But your concern is noted.
r€nato
C’mon D. Stop making excuses for racists. Do you really think that any of these people cited (or needed as an excuse) comparing Bush to a chimp, as license to compare Obama to a monkey?
Are you truly that unaware of the racial context of decades, even centuries of comparing black folks to primates in order to suggest they are less than human?
chopper
no, it doesn’t. one is clearly a racist comparison, always has been. the other is not.
demimondian
I’m not willing to make that concession. Trust me, in our own corners, we have people every bit as toxic. The big difference hasn’t been our kooks — at least, not in my lifetime — but the fact that they weren’t state sponsored -terrori- err, I mean, kooks.
SGEW
Okay. I get it. I concede that it is unfortunate that the Chimp/Curious George comparisons came so easily (so easily!) back in 2000, since we now have a black candidate. However, no one could have predicted (love that phrase – especially when it’s accurate) that Barack Hussein Obama would be the Dem’s nominee in 2008. Oh well.
But now, people are using that as "cover"? So what? They’re cowardly, lying, racist sons of bitches, and no amount of "cover" will be able to hide that . . . especially when this "cover" amounts to very, very little.
Punchy
Also D. Mason’s cover: the fact that Ice Cube calls his black friends "n#ggers", allows D. Mason to call his black friends the same. Same word, right? What’s the diff?
r€nato
See, this is what annoys me about today’s right.
You can’t have an intelligent debate with hardly any of them. It’s all false equivalency and ad hominem attacks and blaming Clinton/Carter and endless debunking of Faux Noise/Limbaugh/Hannity disinformation and projection. When you spend so much time dealing with all of that, it becomes pretty difficult to have a productive conversation/debate with someone across the aisle.
I am so thankful that Cole pointed us towards Daniel Larison. He’s evidence there are still a few remaining folks on the right who did not check their brains at the door when they got handed their GOP membership card.
The Moar You Know
You should have phrased it like this from the get-go. You are, of course, absolutely right.
Michael Demmons
I don’t think D. Mason is making excuses for racists. All he is saying is that racists will use the excuse “You did the same to Bush” to provide cover for the racist activities they know they are participating in.
I don’t agree, however, that we should drop it. But D. does have a point, and I don’t think calling him stupid makes your argument against him better.
D. Mason
You’re reading shit in my posts that isn’t there. I’m not making any excuses, I acknowledged it is racist, having called Bush a chimp doesn’t change this but it DOES change how it will be viewed. I don’t know how many more different ways I can say this.
tavella
Notice how no one cared that the watermelon-and-fried chicken bill had Obama as a donkey? That’s because it’s an ‘anthropological animal comparison’ that _doesn’t have a vicious racist history_.
You fail.
Cris v.3.1
I couldn’t figure out how that could possibly be a "punchline." So I found a copy of the original joke. It may be a punchline, but it sure fails at the funny.
cyntax
So your argument is–in effect–that rascists have reasons for believing that what they do is justified. Really, ya think? But when we question those motivations, you tell us we’re whining and it makes us look bad (to who exactly is unclear). That makes perfect sense.
Dennis - SGMM
Seems to me that there’s a hell of a difference between some people on some blogs referring to Bush as a chimp and the institutionalized crap coming out of the GOP. there’s such a thing as an inappropriate response. If you have to make excuses for your response then it was likely inappropriate.
chopper
right on.
bvac
Sure, you could say all that, but it happens on both sides of the aisle!
Atanarjuat
The only thing that’s fringe is the delusional myth that Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin won’t be decimating Nobama and Lyin’ Biden on November 4th.
Yeah, keep it up, lefties. All these absurd attempts to smear the entire Republican Party with the acts of a few overzealous individuals are only increasing the massive backfire Nobama will suffer.
But look at the bright side: after your treasonous, terror-appeasing candidate has been crushed by the McCain/Palin electoral landslide, Nobama will have plenty of time to catch up with his bosom buddies Ayers, Rezko, Wright, and Raines. They can all commiserate with each other on just how close they came to scamming the American people, but, alas, once again foiled by those oh-so-mean Republican bullies.
Country First.
D. Mason
From what i saw, the person comparing Obama to a monkey was some guy at a rally holding a curious george doll with an Obama bumper sticker. His meaning was clear but that example doesn’t seem any more institutionalized than a bunch of bloggers calling Bush a chimp.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
Not nervous. But it’s not surprising. Obama has caused the hardcore 29% deadenders to go full tribal. When you’re a tribe, then your tribe is right and the other tribe must be ignored or destroyed. Someone nailed it up above: this is no "fringe". Fringe would indicate what, maybe 5%-10%? This is who they are, and Obama’s candidacy has removed the shroud. How many times have we heard "I just can’t bring myself to vote for Obama"? Hell, my sister-in-law, a Dem voter for years, said it to me just yesterday. I was floored, because the translation is, sadly, "I can’t vote for no ni**er".
Mmmm Pie (Filter)
@D. Mason:
Umm…can I say that Cleek’s Pie Filter rules? While I love a good argument even more than your average person, and truly appreciate the superb troll-baiting/bashing that occurs here, most of the time it’s just easier to chuckle at how much HTE TROLLZ LUVS HTE PIEZ.
Carry on.
binzinerator
Hell yes! It’s the damn straight truth.
Which reminds me of something you said in a previous thread that bothers me regarding racists’ votes:
If one takes what you said in your previous thread to its logical conclusion, you will eventually end up where the GOP is now — with the racists defining the party.
The GOP made accommodating the fringe an electoral strategy. Once inoculated in the welcoming body politic of the GOP, the fringe freaks eventually transformed their host like some zombie virus.
If the Dem party stays healthy, after the economy improves the racist fringe will seek some other, more accommodating host to infect (back to the GOP, or if the GOP is undergoing fringe nut detox, possibly to one of the Christian Identity movements). But there’s a risk, just as there’s a risk if you stick your hand in a festering bio-waste bag.
The key to staying free from zombie infection is to not accommodate these people. But there will be pressures and temptation to do so; just look at the GOP before it was transmogrified into a stinking undead corpse. And although I think the pressures and temptation will be much less for the Dem party, if a few percent is all it takes between win and loss, there will be temptation. Look at what Hillary did with her: "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans" line.
So I do care whose votes the Dems get. And under what conditions. The fringe can go shit their pants in their economic freakout someplace else for all I care.
Matthew B.
Yeah, I had to Google it myself too. There’s a British variation here.
kay
I got a vile robocall so I called the number at the end and got the RNC in DC.
I spoke with an exhausted and clearly disgusted young man who told me he’s getting "hundreds" of complaint calls.
That’s a good strategy.
Cassidy
@cyntax: and Punchy, renato, etc.
You’re missing the point completely. You don’t have to believe something to justify it. Do you think any of these racist assholes really believes that calling Bush a chimp was a racist caricature? Of course not. But unfortunately, that’s all the leeway these shitheads need to justify their own shitheaded behavior. And considering how weak our media is, that’s all they need to get a free pass from the talking heads on our tv. Combine that with the Obama campaign ignoring them, it unfortunately creates an environment of equivalency, because it’s easier to not call the loud mouth at the PTA meeting a racist c*nt.
malraux
But racists will always make something up to give themselves "cover". If it weren’t the curious george thing, it would be the rumors of Bush’s drug use justify equating Obama to gangsters. Or the fact that they once met this DFH who claimed that Bush was really a member of the Illuminati to make the claim that Obama will establish an African Nation inside America.
The right fringe is obsessed with their own victimization. They will always have something to justify their actions.
Sherrell
I knew this was coming. I doubt any African American has ever broken a barrier without facing this, but this is 2008 and its amazing that the same old racist tactics are still there…watermelons, chicken, monkeys.
But now I ask a serious question, I’m African American and I realize that according to everyone on TV I’m going to vote for Obama because he’s black but what am I supposed to think about self described republicans when I see there party behave this way. I realize their not campaigning for my vote…but there not even campaigning to one day be my leader.
I’m on 25has politics always been about demonizing the other side cause if so I can see why people don’t want to get involved. It’s amazing in the year of "hope" I’ve managed to develop a more negative view of our nation.
burnspbesq
@Xanthippas:
Serious disciples of Edmund Burke have pretty much all left the Republican party. There is no conservative party in American politics at this time. The Democratic party can’t figure out whether it is center-right or center-left, and the Republican party is the statist theocratic party.
Disciples of Milton Friedman are all in hiding. We are all Keynesians now, at least temporarily. One can only hope that the Blue Dog Democrats get the memo.
Comrade Incertus
More clown shoes here. Bobby calls it a case of "being too dumb to play dead in a cowboy movie."
Cassidy
@Sherrell:
It’s hard to come up with new material when you’re not very smart to begin with.
Notorious P.A.T.
It’s not like there is a history of creating and exploiting racial polarization in the Republican party.
Incertus
@Michael Demmons:
That’s true, insofar as the racists are concerned, but it comes off as justification of their actions, even if that’s not the intent.
burnspbesq
@Atanarjuat:
My friend, you really need to resume taking your meds.
Notorious P.A.T.
Was that ever the BASIS of a Democratic campaign? "Vote for me because Bush is like a chimp"?
cyntax
@Cassidy:
I disagree. There are actually two parts to what Mason said (his argument if you will). The first is as you say the description of how the rascists in the GOP will justify their rascism. If Mason had simply been pointing that out, we wouldn’t have gotten all this back and forth. But it’s the second part of what Mason said that’s truly contentious:
And that’s where the false equivalence really comes in because Mason seems to be using it to say we can’t call rascist actions for what they are now. And looking at eveyone’s posts, that’s the part that really pissed people off, since it’s a tacit argument for that rascism.
That One - Cain
I think this is a false equivalence. You’re saying that calling someone a chimp gives cover for the other side to make equivalent remarks. Yes, this is true being politics and all. But if I call Bush a chimp, I offend his supporters as I of course am trying to do. When I call Obama a chimp or dress a monkey to look like Obama I’m not just offending Obama’s supporters. I’m offending an entire class of people who has a whole have been subjected to this kind of sophomoric comparisons.
That is where the false equivalence lies. Our protestations might seem like politics and it well might be. Because no non-white really understands that kind of discrimination or it’s emotional impact. I certainly don’t. But you can’t argue that if a black guy (or gal) says they are offended. You can’t use that the tit-for-tat argument for those class of people. Can you? The fact they did for that class of people can rightfully be justified for our outrage. If you want to mock Obama’s big ears, that’s fair game or some tic in his personality whatever. But using run of the mill visuals from the racial south. Not so much.
cain
demimondian
No. They will have a rationalization — not a cover. It’s a false equivalence to claim they’re the same thing, and the fact that conc3rn tr0ll is VERY concerned doesn’t change that.
mattH
Had you not said "Turnabout is fair play and Obama supporters may as well get used to it" in your original post, I don’t think you’d have to defend yourself, simply because that is making an excuse for what they are doing and how it’s been done. I don’t know that you’re a concern troll, but that ‘s only because you seem like a regular troll.
demimondian
@burnspbesq: Hmm. I don’t know if you know it or not, but "Atanarjuat" is one of our tame fakes, someone who poses as a right wing troll. You can tell them by virtue of the fact that they have enough decency to not post that kind of screed in an inappropriate thread…like, say, a thread about a brain-injured soldier.
On the other hand…Atanarjuat? Yeah, listen. I think it’s not funny right now. Those jokes are fine until the real death threats actually show up, and we’ve started seeing those. I wonder if you ought to back it down for a little bit?
That One - Cain
Demi said it better than me in shorter words. :)
cain
Shaggy
Hey Kay –
Can you describe the call to us?
Lesley
But but…McCain and Palin encourage this and permit it to fester.
jake 4 that 1
No one could have possibly foreseen that running on the Us v. Them ticket for decades would result in the Us crowd devolving into ephithet-spewing barbarians when confronted with the stark possibility one of Them would wind up in charge.
There is nothing the fReichtards have done or will do this election that could really surprise me.
ambboogie
Soooo…
basically you’re saying that yeah the GOP is racist about those OTHER things, but the MONKEY! THE MONKEY ya’ll used the MONKEY about BUSH, SEE! SEE!…
bwahahaha okay jackass.
Laura W
Shedding a small ray of light: I try to donate a little to the campaign when they do the matching program. I love getting emails from the new donor I’ve matched. 3 out of the 4 have written me, and all four have been women. I doubt they deliberately do same-gender matching, so this is interesting in and of itself. Joe Biden sent me a lovely email yesterday asking for $$ so they could match 100,000 new donors by midnight today.
So a couple hours later (usually it’s immediate) I got an email from my match:
Congratulations! Your pledge inspired Peggy L. in Phoenix, AZ to make a donation to the campaign.
Here’s what Peggy L. in Phoenix, AZ had to say:
Laura
God bless you. I am a registered Republican and I see Barack as the last great hope for what is left of our nation.
I got hurt at work as a flight attendant,almost killed on an airplane actually, lost my job, have no health insurance. Yes CHANGE IS GOOD
Joshua
Oh. My. God. I saw this on Media Matters.
Remember when we all laughed at that Clownhall poster that claimed Obama created an Obama flag?
Yea, well, now wingnut radio is saying it.
How long before we get a chain email about the Obama flag?
Bob
I think he is trying to make the point that it IS racist, but lets not give the racists an opportunity to squirm their way out of doing the right thing. Some may disagree with him, but I think he is making a reasonable point.
Brachiator
@D. Mason:
It’s not that you didn’t make your point clear. It’s that you are just plain wrong, because you want to pretend that neither intent nor context is important. But a blogger noted in a similar context that Bush is not the first president to be maligned with a monkey jab:
But Lincoln was also depicted as a monkey in a favorable context by editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast:
Now, you might even say that the ridicule heaped on Obama is part of a long American political tradition, but to deny that it is also racist is pointless.
D. Mason
No, you’re twisting my words once again. What I am saying, what i have said numerous times in a very clear way is that because chimp jokes have been a staple of the left for years when referring to Bush, it looks rather hypocritical to take umbrage to the very same attacks directed at your candidate. I argued against calling Bush a chimp when I first noticed it because I knew it was a very charged insult(and was called a troll for that). I had no idea the dem candidate would be black of course but as soon as Obama won the nom I saw this shit coming. It’s the world we live in.
mattH
Yea, well, now wingnut radio is saying it.
How long before we get a chain email about the Obama flag?
Be sure to send it to everyone in Ohio, with a picture.
ambboogie
D. Mason… but this post was about the MULTIPLE (not just one) MULTIPLE examples of the lunatic right fringe and their racist assertions.
YOU chose ONE example to try to rebuke the call for racism.
I’m not calling you a troll, but your argument his highly flawed and could be EASILY seen as an excuse for racists.
Cris v.3.1
@Matthew B.:
That’s interesting (the Gordon Brown variant). It is instructive to try to frame the same "joke" with the target being somebody you genuinely don’t care for. I guess I can imagine snickering if the joke was about Kissinger. But it’s still mean-spirited and really not funny.
cyntax
@D. Mason:
But we’re not twisting your words, because as you wrote them, you’re not just explaining their logic but you also appear to be making a tacit endorsement of it:
Now if what you meant to say was something like "In their minds, turnabout is fair play…" that would have been different and clearer. But as you wrote it, it read as an endorsement of and expansion upon that logic that you were attempting to describe.
Michael Demmons
@binzinerator:
Touché. You are exactly right. And I should have thought that through before I said it.
iluvsummr
From my perspective, the amazing thing is that Obama is ahead in spite of all the GOPer’s antics. There are enough intelligent, rational people out there (more than the racist dead-enders). That’s progress I can believe in (though I know some of the GOPers will come totally unhinged if he wins). And I’m sure Obama’s also aware of that.
Zifnab
People who make death threats deserve to be mocked, then ignored. These guys aren’t shouting "Bomb Obama" out of anything more than their desperate need for personal attention and bitterness over how their worldview is dissolving. Fuck’m.
Mock the hell out of the wacko assholes. It’s exactly what they deserve. People who get treated with "respect" because they say something as stupid or offensive as issuing death threats shouldn’t get any sort of positive reinforcement.
t jasper parnell
Off topic, but totally Heh, indeedy .
D. Mason
No, I didn’t. I chose ONE example and then rebuked the use of that specific example as supporting evidence in the case for racism. That, after my numerous posts attempting to clarify this, anyone can claim I was saying something else shows me a level of dishonesty or willful ignorance that is very reminiscent of shit I see on right wing blogs. Since I am an Obama supporter I don’t feel shy about calling out people who are ostensibly on my side when I see them as going too far. Please point to any statement I made that claimed the right were not being racist.
Josh Huaco
@Joshua:
I’m not sure, but I think Hannity got his start guest-hosting for Bob Grant back in the late 80s/early 90s.
/too lazy to Wiki
jake 4 that 1
@Joshua: That is all kinds of awesome also my friend.
Let’s hope this spreads until we see the headline "Conservatives alarmed by Ohio’s flag."
Zifnab
Chimp jokes get made about candidates all the time. I remember Baker and Hamilton getting mocked up as "Surrender Monkeys" by the NYPost. And Ross Perot garnered a few monkey jokes. That, alone, doesn’t make the comments racist. But couple them with all the comments about Obama painting the White House black and the guilt-by-funny-middle-name with his "links" to terrorists and the Michelle Obama "whitey" tape that just screams race-baiting… As a body of work, the GOP campaign against Barack Obama has been two steps shy of burning crosses and screaming the N-word.
When the monkey comments do come, surrounded by rhetoric that accuses Obama of trying to set up an African Nation or revive the Black Panthers or steal all the white women and give every drug dealer a Cadillac – yeah, it sounds kinda racist.
D. Mason
It’s not just in their minds. In most peoples minds if you do something and then said thing is done to you, it’s fair play. Now of course this is extrapolated out from the candidate to the supporters since no Dem politician ever called Bush a chimp and no Rep politician has called Obama any primate either. I’ll put it like this, if i went around calling black people crackers for whatever reason, I would have a pretty hard time claiming racism if a black person called me a cracker. It’s just common sense. In the same way that Malkin can’t get all stupid about people examining Joe the Plumbers counter tops without looking like a frothing Maniac. The right would be a lot better off if people on their side would stand up to that kind of shit but they don’t because they will get shouted down… Imagine that.
Crust
New? Where have you been the last 20 odd years?
Have people forgotten the lunatic, but widespread claims (including in the Wall Street Journal and on cable) that the Clintons were murderers and so on?
I mean of course Clinton and Gore (and Dukakis and Kerry) aren’t African American so the angles are different but the mainstreaming of "fringe" in the Republican party — Atwater’s legacy — has been around with us for a long time.
ksmiami
D. Mason – let me be as clear with you as possible. As someone who abandoned the Republicans in 1992 for figuring out that they cared about nothing but power, perpetuating hatred and money (not to mention that they could not govern well), these so called isolated incidents really are the exposed face of the Republican party since the time of Nixon’s Southern Strategy. The only difference that while previous campaigns did a lot of the sleaze on the downlow, der party now no longer even pretends to countenance any form of political correctness, or compassionate conservativism, but simply gives a voice for the so called victims of liberal elitists and minorities and atheists. In a wierd way though I am glad they are exposing themselves for what they truly represent cause I believe that they will scare enough moderates away for us to win. It kind of reminds me of the civil rights struggle in that once MLK and the other leaders figured out how to expose the racists for their violent tactics by bringing them out in full view of the reporters, America did make the right decisions.
So by all means, I hope your leaders go on offending every brown person, every Jewish person, every Asian, every gay, every atheist, every thinking woman, every educated person and so on and so on until all you have left in the party faithful are some pasty fat assholes who owe back taxes eating cheetos and screaming epithets like "Terrorist, Taxes, Mooslim". Then see if you can run the country with a group of dysfunctionals like that.
Krista
Laura,
Thanks for sharing that with us. (Especially considering the state from which the lovely Peggy hails.) I am hoping that more and more people are starting to realize that it is shameful for people to go bankrupt due to medical bills in what is supposed to be the greatest country in the world. And maybe they’re starting to realize that the FYIGM attitude that permeates the right doesn’t benefit the country as a whole.
In other words, they’re seeing right through the jackals who are clinging tightly to their own millions and yelling "country first!" while a veteran sleeps under a bridge and a family sells their home in order to pay for little Susie’s chemotherapy.
cyntax
Well, again, I see a difference there. In Malkin’s case it is a case of hypocrisy but the equivalence you’re drawing between Malkin’s situation and the Dems who called GWB a chimp is predicated on ignoring the rascist context of calling a black person a monkey. So you’re also having to argue that "most people" will make the same false equivalence, ignoring the racial context. I’m not at all sure the average person will do that but maybe that’s the point we’ll agree to disagree on then.
ilsita
D. Mason’s monkey point is so straightforward. It looks like the people who landed on him so hard at first have to now continue to pretend not to get it or pretend that he has some subtext that must be teased out. This reminds me of the Lipstick on a Pig episode. Mason chooses his words very carefully.
Yes, when people bring monkeys to an Obama rally, it is foul behavior, utterly racist. And if we bring it up, they say, "Whaa? You called Bush a chimp for 8 years!" And then we stand there trying to explain the subtle, hair-splitting (to them!) difference while they grin and roll their eyes and call us hypocrites. They’re incorrect, and it sucks — but that’s how that conversation is going to go. But, the monkeys are just one expression of their racism. There’s a lot to choose from.
D. Mason’s not agreeing with it; he’s just explaining it. So it seems to me, anyway.
Anyway, Thank you for putting this blog post together. The racist sewage should be cataloged. It really frightens me. I showed it to my ditto-head mom this morning, and she said, "Well, Kennedy was killed by a communist, you know."
gex
@Michael Demmons:
I do want to argue that it is different accepting their votes versus catering the platform and the party to deliberately using and encouraging the hate as an electoral strategy. In Michael’s example, the frothing were coming over because of economic policy, not snarling culture wars. If we can get their votes this way, it is not really dishonorable.
However, there’s a real danger to getting addicted to those votes. I think that many moderate Republicans or conservatives can provide some insight to how that can turn out.
Gay Veteran
D. Mason: "…it looks rather hypocritical to take umbrage to the very SAME attacks directed at your candidate…."
it is the "same" attack only in that both involve a monkey, but in Bush’s case it is an attack on his intelligence and in Obama’s case it is an attack on his race
better trolls please
demimondian
It is not, in the end, different. Where do you think that Goldwater started out? I realize that you acknowledge this in your second paragraph, but you need to realize that the freak show’s votes are a "camel’s nose" — if you let the freak show’s votes into your big tent, then you’re soon going to have the whole freak show.
gbear
OT but INCREDIBLY good news!!
The supreme court throws out the Ohio GOP’s voter restrictions.
Suck on that, wingnuts.
JL
I have never called Bush a chimp. I frequently call him a fu*king a** but never a chimp.
Rick
And speaking of somewhat-less-than-subtle racism:
http://obamawaffles.typepad.com/obama_daily_waffles/
jake 4 that 1
@Crust: During Bush I’s bid for the WH (I’m pretty sure) there was a lot of talk about "Taking back our cities from the criminals." This of course meant slapping the nasty brown folks into line via the WAD and draconian sentencing guidelines. The only difference between now and then is you don’t have to be sitting in front of the TV the minute some neo-con starts yakking about leeches on society and it’s a lot harder for them to hide their real shit.
Fake food stamps showing a black guy surrounded by fried chicken and watermelons isn’t anything new for those jackasses, they just haven’t figured out that when a cretin in Cali. sends out a racist mailer at lunch time, it will be all over the country by dinner.
Comrade The Moar You Know
Their belated apology for Florida, 2000.
Calouste
@Matthew B.:
I’m pretty sure, as with almost all good British political jokes, the original version was by Churchill.
Tlazolteotl
There is this one as well:
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/27575299.html
where the GOP booth at a local fair in Washington State was selling fake $3 bills with a picture of Obama in Gulf-style headwear and a camel appearing in the bills’ seal, and reading "The Concerned States of America." Real subtle.
TheWesson
@D. Mason
There’s no reason to be concerned about what the GOP may or may not be able to reply with. If no one ever called Bush "Chimpy" they’d dredge up something else, or just make some crap up. If Democrats were always perfectly polite and well-behaved, then they’d be called "passive" or "elitist".
It’s a real big mistake trying to please the bullies. It won’t make them act any better, and it won’t help you (us) any.
If you’re dealing with propaganda, then the best thing to do is to basically ignore it while setting up your own counter-narrative. This is basically what Barack is doing every time he shows up for a debate on TV acting not like a wild-eyed terrorist but a clean-cut, sincere, concerned, slightly professorial guy.
Now I agree the word "Chimpy" is not particularly useful, except for venting … because it doesn’t build a story around Bush. A better story about Bush would be simply that he is underqualified – because, in fact, he is just competent enough to run say a hardware store pretty well.
The ‘competence’ narrative is a useful counterbalance to the ‘elitist’ narrative the R’s are always pushing. Anyhow, you get the idea. It’s about the story. A large mass of underinformed voters will be voting impressionistically.
Soylent Green
I think that’s a stretch. Running a successful business takes a lot of know-how. I’d say Bush is just competent enough to work in a hardware store. He could probably handle running the key-making machine.
Delia
Well, I’m pretty bored with the general direction of this thread — arguing with trolls gets repetitive.
In other news, Kathleen Parker continues to swing her hammer, this time defending fellow heretic Christopher Buckley. Not everyone over there is willing to be a mindless authoritarian clone, it turns out, and now that they’ve started to break out the damage is impressive.
lethargytartare
@D. Mason:
I had a diatribe planned, but I’ll just note that even the perp in question didn’t think it was fair play – when he realized he was on camera, he took the sticker off the doll and tried to pass the doll off to a kid a couple seats away.
.
This guy wasn’t carrying a Curious George doll with an Obama sticker because he thought he could use Dems calling Bush a chimp as cover, he put an Obama sticker on that doll because he was in a place where he expected that to be acceptable.
.
which, I think, was Michael’s point.
dbrown
Using chimp for a murdering asshole like bush was simply a play on the level of intelligence that the bloody cock-sucker has exhibited and is not racist in any real manner for a white simply because such a remark carries no baggage. Using it for an African American is racist in the extreme since blacks were taken from Africa and brutalized, and enslaved. Also, for hundreds of years whites justified this because Africans were considered inferior and sub-human – little better than chimps. Africans were raped and murdered freely since slaves had no rights just like animals. To compare the use of a racist slur that carries so much hatred towards blacks and apply it to a white is extremely minor and only carries the stigma of low intelligence where as using it against a black is to bring up hundreds of years of white hate, murder and rape. Justifying the use by racist because non-racist used it for that lowlife scum bushwhack is stupid – there is no similarity in use or meaning and only real racist would use it against a black man.
...now I try to be amused
In a way, the Southern Strategy made Obama’s candidacy possible. It concentrated the racists into one shrinking party like a lab centrifuge concentrates stuff in the bottom of a test tube. When the set of people who will never vote for an African American is a subset of the people who will never vote for a Democrat, then a black Democrat will do no worse than a white Democrat just because he’s black. By turning to the GOP en masse, the racists themselves took race out of that equation.
I wonder if any of them realize this.
Incertus
The ones I know think God put dinosaur bones in the ground to test their faith. I wouldn’t count on it.
Bondo
This joke has been around for ages in various formats. I heard it told at a Democratic Meet-up regarding Bush in 2004. It is actually kind of funny in the structure of comparing the different words, but of course the assassination punchline makes it harder to swallow.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Sadly those on this so-called fringe seem to think they alone hold eminent domain over the country and anyone who disagrees with them doesn’t belong here.
What a mess they’ve made of things.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
What an astute observation. They screwed themselves, I like it.
jake 4 that 1
@Incertus: The ones who do realize it either got out, can’t believe that it won’t work, are too busy hooting and hollering to care, or are getting rich by offering advice to people like McPOW.
Laura W
Word, Delia.
But with the neat new blue font indicating who the responder is responding to, you can scroll through so much faster. YAWN.
Katrina van de H. is on FIRE with Tweety.
RS
I can’t remember a time when Republican campaigns weren’t about hate and fear, starting with Nixon in ’68. None of this is surprising in the least.
I have several more or less sane Republican friends who remain loyal to the party primarily due to the fact they’re high earners who feel that their taxes are too high ( I guess you could say they share the more traditional GOP value of greed). I will forward this post to them- hopefully it’s enough to knock some sense into their heads.
Notorious P.A.T.
ACORN offices vandalized; ACORN employee threatened with death
Keep sowing hatred and fear, Republicans.
Garrigus Carraig
Does "new" mean something different in Canada than it does here?
Garrigus Carraig
@Joshua: The nice thing about the ‘O’ flag flap is that it highlights the Ohio state flag, which, as state flags go, is kinda awesome.
TenguPhule
Shorter D Mason: I can’t tell the difference between a reference on intelligence compared to an obvious racial slur aimed at looks, character and humanity.
TenguPhule
Wrong Attitude.
Its "You put one of ours in the hospital, we put one of yours in the morgue."
Leslie Poston
Must Tweet this out….
jcricket
Uh, does McCarthy ring a bell? Ford, Limbaugh and their anti-semitic rants? Father Coughlin?
I admit, that until the mid 60s (and actually the 80s) the Democrats had their share of racists and commie-haters.
Now the worst of the Dems are the occasionally corrupt (Mahoney, Jefferson), nutty (McKinney) or overly proud of their lone-claim-to-fame (Blue Dogs).
Republicans, on the other hand, have full on embraced all the worst elements of society – because it’s the only way they can win.
Dan
You realize, of course, that Michelle herself called Obama her baby daddy.
Was that raaaaacist?
HRA
I have been part of an email group for years. We are a mixture of liberal, moderates and conservatives. Until this election began, there were posts about Bush and his family that were so highly incendiary that I even hesitate to repeat them here. The chimp reference was a mild one.
Even before Obama won the primary, the conservative part of the group began sending posts we have all seen now and yes, they are horrific. Naturally, the Bush haters responded and the Obama haters wrote "you did it to Bush". That, I believe, is exactly what D. Mason is referring to.
Now it has somewhat settled down and/or left the group. The reason I believe it has done so is everyone is scared by the violent turn the RNC and the McCain campaign have adopted recently. There is no defense for incitement. There is the choice of showing our displeasure by voting against it.
RememberNovember
People are missing the point- Comparing Bush to a chimp wasn’t a racist tack- it was because he had expressions that were chimp-like.
I think the chimp was smarter, btw.
Personal Designation
I don’t like any artificial political party for the record. Individual Personal Sovereignty is what I am more aligned with. I get the idea from reading here that fringe is shagging the daylights out of some people here, oh well, hunker down and Know Thyself. Read the 13th and 14th Constitutional amendments.
The first "modern day" racists I ever heard are well, mebbe I should call them entrepreneurs. They were Africans selling Africans into slavery. If that isn’t a new political party, then I don’t know what is. Slavery and bondage are still African realities. Hundreds of thousands of Africans still suffer in silence in slave-like situations of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation from which they cannot free themselves. Modern-day enslavers also exploit lack of political will at the highest levels of some African governments to effectively tackle trafficking and its root causes. Weak interagency co-ordination and low funding levels for ministries tasked with prosecuting traffickers, preventing trafficking and protecting victims also enable traffickers to continue their operations. The transnational criminal nature of trafficking also overwhelms many countries’ law enforcement agencies, which are not equipped to fight organized criminal gangs that operate across national boundaries with impunity.