Political Outliers
by digby
Matt Stoller nicely deconstructs this Red State post about the King funeral that is perfectly illustrative of right wing comportment vapors and thinly veiled racism. Here's just one little bit to give you the flavor:
I also think I have a clearer understanding of why the culture of so many black Americans in this country is below what it should be and is capable of being.
One expects this kind of thing over in Freeperland. They pride themsleves on being crude and thuggish, after all. Via pandagon, here's a sampling of their cute caption contest:
“I would like another roll with dinner please.”
“Two classy people sitting behind a pile of trash.”
Lowery: And yesim, we’s be black and we’s be proud. We’s for the gubmit but not Bush’s gubmit. Bush’s gubmit is against us black peoples…
W: “What’s that old saying, ‘Better to be thought a complete race baiting moron than open your mouth and remove all doubt.’”
“Psst…Laura, you sure that ain’t Looter Guy?”
47 posted on 02/07/2006 2:56:13 PM PST by Horatio Gates (Go Seah….uh…Mariners! Congrats to the Steelers. Well done.)
Ok. It's Freeperland. But here we have Red State, commonly thought of as the "thoughtful" right wing community. They aren't quite as crude, to be sure. But they share many of the same impulses:
You evidently did live during the civil right era. There was nothing peaceful about it.
If the truth be told, it was an extortion scam to enrich themselves. Mrs. King carried on this tradition. Anytime you wanted to use anything that was MLK, Jr. you had to pay Mrs. King.
Don't forget who the pupils were of this scam; Jesse Jackson, Joesph Lowery, and Hosea Williams. They practiced this extortion of Corporations all of their lives and some are still doing it.
So lets be honest, praise Mrs. King for the loss of a husband and who had to raise her children by herself, but don't latch on to a myth and try to make it true.
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Bush should take back New Orleans money and force these aholes to come begging for it.
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I don't know the makeup of the King funeral attendees but you can bet a large portion were high profile Dems with an even higher concentration of race hustling poverty pimps. It was their show and if they want to defile the King legacy with no-class antics, why shouldn't it be on TV?
Whether anyone in the audience walked out in protest or not, Bush #41 and #43 were class acts and that won't be lost on reasonable viewers -- including many black families watching at home.
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Anyone who didn't find that, or the Wellstone funeral, offensive, lacks a sense of decorum. If the Afro-American community applauds this funeral, they will make a statement about no one but themselves. And that is just what that group did at the funeral.
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Back during the Bush/NAACP speech flap, I thought Bush should have sent in a third-tier official to give a speech explaigning that Bush wasn't going to cater specifically to them since he could win elections without their vote, and catering to them wouldn't change their vote anyway.
Simple fact it, Dems must have the black vote to win, and even with it they loose more often than not. Yet the Dems are quite capable of taking the black vote for granted.
What is worse political messages at a funeral about a great civil rights leader or people trying to turn those messages as something that the late "Queen" would find offensive.
Not simply political messages but cheap shots. Perhaps she would have been fine with such cheap shots. But the proper way to pay respect in such a situation is to not take such cheap shots, and act with dignity--irrespective if the deceased would have demanded such dignity or not.
Frankly, it ain't about her or blacks in general.
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He was Joseph Lowery, former head of the SCLC. One of the biggest extortinist organization in the country. They used the same tactics that Jesse Jackson uses to extrort money from Corporations. You pay or we picket.
Myth buster, these were pupils of MLK, Jr.
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This is Al Sharpton to Howard Dean in 2004:
"Do you have a senior member of your cabinet that was black or brown?"
Dean did not, but apparently, we can take Sharpton's cue and refer to all non-African dark-skinned people as "brown"...unless he meant Latinos only, in which case we must deploy "sienna" and "umber" in our earth-tone rainbow coalition.
It really is funny to watch you "progressives" jump all over itrytobenice for picking up the wrong crayon. Why don't you throw in a lecture on the difference between "colored people" and "people of color"?
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Those who follow leaders like Dr, Lowry deserve to be marginalized.
Funny, but I recall that African-Americans are losing political clout in America, as the Hispanic population increases in size.
So, explain to me again why the NAACP and other "mainstream" African-American organizations should be accorded respect, if they refuse to be respectful-- or even polite themselves?
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That crowd looked to be heavily Afro-American, and with their response and their applause, they showed themselves to be the same--no class! Just like the Paul Wellstone funeral--the memories of many are going to be long.
Insulting the sitting President of the US, when he has the respect to come to a funeral to honor the deceased and the causes they/she fought for--this is going to stick with me, a long, long time.
This is a crowd that as Karl Rove said, is pre--9/11. Protect the country, forget it. Every chance they get they'll just want their political ox gored, and their handouts increased.
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blah ... blah .. blah blah
It's doubtful that either Coretta or MLK will be standing up for any reason ... not anymore.
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And The Winner Of the Most Idiotic Moonbat Meme of the Year, for the FIFTH year running is. . .?
"You can't tell us how to mourn!"
Gee, if those Muslims burning down embassies claimed to be mourning someone (Mohammed, presumably, since Cindy Sheehan demonstrates that there's no time limit on this principle, either), I guess they'd have an airtight justification among our friends on the left.
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Actually, I can't wait for the unsealing of the secret FBI King files in 2027 to reveal the truth about MLK and his less than honorable life and legacy (thanks to a liberal judge and the King family they have bought time preventing their release under FOIA... hmm, you think they have something to hide?). In the mean time, the country remains held hostage to the unbalanced and intellectually dishonest legacy of this man and his family. Pardon me if I choose not to worship at their phony altar.
Also, I can see clearly why blacks just love the Democratic party for all its done for them in perpetuating their continued pride in their own sense of victimhood. Bravo!
Got racial hostility much?
I have written a lot about race on this blog over the last three years. It's a topic that I feel strongly about and work hard to understand. Everytime I write about it, I'm told by more than a few people that racism isn't really a problem anymore, it's a class issue.
With the amount of energy expended in that Red State thread deriding blacks for having "no class" perhaps in one respect that is true. But in the sociological sense, it is not. Class is an issue in this country, to be sure. But it is not the same as or the cause of racism. Racism lurks just beneath the surface of our culture. Lurking beneath the surface is an improvement over the blatant violence and legal segregation of the Jim Crow era of 40 years ago, but racism has not disappeared.
The comments and the disgusting picture above are indicative of the racist strain that has been a presence in both political parties but which settled on the Republican side after the civil rights movement. Over the last quarter century this impulse was regulated with coded race speech and marginalization of the worst purveyors of racist sentiment to the fringes of political life. But something seems to be changing. I'm seeing this more often all of a sudden and not just in wingnut sinkholes like Free Republic, but in mainstream blogs like Red State, the constantly recurring discussion of "The Bell Curve" and the pages of the Wall Street Journal where James Taranto writes things like this:
The truth about race that Katrina illuminates, then, is that, at least when it comes to matters involving race, black Americans are extreme political outliers. This is why attempts to play the race card are politically futile: They have to appeal not just to blacks, but to a substantial minority of whites. The Gallup poll results makes clear that the current racial appeals are not resonating with whites.
Fuck the blacks. They don't vote for us anyway.
But then, there's always some good reason to fuck the blacks isn't there? I wrote a comment about the continuing problem with hiring patterns some years back on Kevin Drum's old blog:
Hiring minorities is a problem because:
1955 - They are an inferior race
1965 - They aren't good workers
1975 - They make old white customers uncomfortable
1985 - Affirmative action means their diplomas are bogus
1995 - They are a litigation risk for discrimination
When it comes to equal rights it's always something, isn't it?
2006: They don't know how to behave in public.
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