Sunday, September 20, 2009
White Out...
"He is interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and personal character..."
That quote above happens to have come from the movie the American President and one of the best speeches I've seen in a movie (Michael Douglas tends to get a few of these)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWRVbWMvi7c
But the other reason why this speech and sentiment came to mind was because of something else. If you missed it earlier this week Jimmy Carter stepped up with a very powerful accusation. You can see a clip of his interview with NBC news here...
Now many people were quick and decisive in smacking down President Carter and saying that the protests against President Obama did not have a racial element to them. The White House itself was very quick to get in front of this with Robert Gibbs on video showing his displeasure with this here...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/13/gibbs-obama-protesters-no_n_284893.html?page=6
But President Carter often has a habit of saying things that are often controversial but sometimes have a ring of truth to them. This was a guy who lived and grew up in the South who else would know better through his own experiences?
I mean this jackass from South Carolina who was heckling the President during a joint session to Congress Joe Wilson...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Wilson_%28U.S._politician%29
A member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans...
http://www.scv.org/
Who railed against Strom Thurmond's Black daughter because it would 'stain Strom's reputation. So I suppose Strom Thurmond's illegitimate daughter should apologize for being born even though the good old Senator was such a hypocrite that he was a former Klan member who was sleeping with an African American woman.
And that's not about race? You can't seriously want me to believe that race played absolutely no factor in how Joe Wilson acts.
But the reason why Carter's statement to me is so compelling is because in the modern media age we do have some resources on hand. Now I went just for kicks and took a look at Flickr. And in particular if you take a look at what I did which was a group of pool photos from the recent Tea Party protests...
http://www.flickr.com/groups/teaparties/
Take a look at the pictures. I looked through 15 pages of them. What didn't I see? I only saw White people. The city with the highest population of African Americans in the nation and where were they in these protests? No where. Now 60,000 people (I think that was the ABC estimate) marched on Washington. Hardly any color except White. Are you telling me I'm not supposed to see a pattern in that? Where's the Latinos filled with rage over spending? Where are the people of other races?
Now of course these were the same people who when Congress while President Bush was in office didn't even blink when Congress voted to add $40 trillion dollars worth of unfunded liabilities to the national debt through the Medicare Drug bill. Where were all those spendthrift protesters then? Why didn't they march on Washington then to scowl at President Bush for his fiscal insanity?
Now go back to the quote that I started this post with. And if you see the pictures of these protesters you can see the pattern. The same pattern and group of people. All of them who either lived and grew up in the 1950's or 1960's. Middle aged, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time. And they fear that their lives are slipping away. But now in the White House is someone who doesn't look like he grew up in the same neighborhood they knew when they were kids in suburbia. The person in the White House looks like 'the other'. So it's easier to blame it all on him.
I was talking with a friend who happens to be African American because in Pennsylvania before the election we had remembered when we read a blurb about a pollster's encounter with a family when he knocked on their door in Western Pennsylvania. The pollster had knocked on the door and asked this family if they could tell him who they were voting for. The wife who had answered the door smiled and called back to her husband who was sitting in his easy chair. He called out from his chair, "We're voting for the nigger." The wife smiled happily and told the pollster, "We're voting for the nigger.".
On CNN the organizer for these Tea parties flipped out on the air and began spouting nonsense I've never heard before about any figure in politics. After all, when was the last time you heard your President called an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief...
I am sure that man who organized the tea parties never had President Obama's race or the color of his skin even remotely enter his thought process. God Bless that poor man. His heart must be as pure as snow.
Now look at that anger from those tea parties and that rage. We ran budget deficits during the tenure of both George Bushes and Ronald Reagan. And yet people are now marching on the streets enraged about deficits now? What had them frightened enough to get their fat asses off the sofa? What's changed? Are you truly naive enough to believe race plays no factor in all this rage? If I replaced the word 'spending' with 'Black'...would we have a more accurate sentiment of what this fear is all about?
That quote above happens to have come from the movie the American President and one of the best speeches I've seen in a movie (Michael Douglas tends to get a few of these)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWRVbWMvi7c
But the other reason why this speech and sentiment came to mind was because of something else. If you missed it earlier this week Jimmy Carter stepped up with a very powerful accusation. You can see a clip of his interview with NBC news here...
Now many people were quick and decisive in smacking down President Carter and saying that the protests against President Obama did not have a racial element to them. The White House itself was very quick to get in front of this with Robert Gibbs on video showing his displeasure with this here...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/13/gibbs-obama-protesters-no_n_284893.html?page=6
But President Carter often has a habit of saying things that are often controversial but sometimes have a ring of truth to them. This was a guy who lived and grew up in the South who else would know better through his own experiences?
I mean this jackass from South Carolina who was heckling the President during a joint session to Congress Joe Wilson...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Wilson_%28U.S._politician%29
A member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans...
http://www.scv.org/
Who railed against Strom Thurmond's Black daughter because it would 'stain Strom's reputation. So I suppose Strom Thurmond's illegitimate daughter should apologize for being born even though the good old Senator was such a hypocrite that he was a former Klan member who was sleeping with an African American woman.
And that's not about race? You can't seriously want me to believe that race played absolutely no factor in how Joe Wilson acts.
But the reason why Carter's statement to me is so compelling is because in the modern media age we do have some resources on hand. Now I went just for kicks and took a look at Flickr. And in particular if you take a look at what I did which was a group of pool photos from the recent Tea Party protests...
http://www.flickr.com/groups/teaparties/
Take a look at the pictures. I looked through 15 pages of them. What didn't I see? I only saw White people. The city with the highest population of African Americans in the nation and where were they in these protests? No where. Now 60,000 people (I think that was the ABC estimate) marched on Washington. Hardly any color except White. Are you telling me I'm not supposed to see a pattern in that? Where's the Latinos filled with rage over spending? Where are the people of other races?
Now of course these were the same people who when Congress while President Bush was in office didn't even blink when Congress voted to add $40 trillion dollars worth of unfunded liabilities to the national debt through the Medicare Drug bill. Where were all those spendthrift protesters then? Why didn't they march on Washington then to scowl at President Bush for his fiscal insanity?
Now go back to the quote that I started this post with. And if you see the pictures of these protesters you can see the pattern. The same pattern and group of people. All of them who either lived and grew up in the 1950's or 1960's. Middle aged, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time. And they fear that their lives are slipping away. But now in the White House is someone who doesn't look like he grew up in the same neighborhood they knew when they were kids in suburbia. The person in the White House looks like 'the other'. So it's easier to blame it all on him.
I was talking with a friend who happens to be African American because in Pennsylvania before the election we had remembered when we read a blurb about a pollster's encounter with a family when he knocked on their door in Western Pennsylvania. The pollster had knocked on the door and asked this family if they could tell him who they were voting for. The wife who had answered the door smiled and called back to her husband who was sitting in his easy chair. He called out from his chair, "We're voting for the nigger." The wife smiled happily and told the pollster, "We're voting for the nigger.".
On CNN the organizer for these Tea parties flipped out on the air and began spouting nonsense I've never heard before about any figure in politics. After all, when was the last time you heard your President called an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief...
I am sure that man who organized the tea parties never had President Obama's race or the color of his skin even remotely enter his thought process. God Bless that poor man. His heart must be as pure as snow.
Now look at that anger from those tea parties and that rage. We ran budget deficits during the tenure of both George Bushes and Ronald Reagan. And yet people are now marching on the streets enraged about deficits now? What had them frightened enough to get their fat asses off the sofa? What's changed? Are you truly naive enough to believe race plays no factor in all this rage? If I replaced the word 'spending' with 'Black'...would we have a more accurate sentiment of what this fear is all about?
