It's not about race

It's about ... about... oh, never mind.

Poll: GOP Voters In Deep South Think Obama Is Muslim, Unsure On Interracial Marriage

Tolle, lege.

But .... but ... it's not about race!!

At least, so they keep saying.

And in the real world a Tea Party web site has this:

Patriot Freedom Alliance, a tea party group in Hutchinson, Kansas, made a statement on its website recently, depicting Obama as a skunk. “It is half black, half white, and almost everything it does, stinks,” the site reads, according to a screen grab posted by The Hutchinson News.

To the Patriot Freedom Alliance, this is simply political satire and no worse than what Palin was subjected to.

well, then that certainly makes it ok.

NASCAR and Southern Hospitality

Now that Michelle Obama has been booed during an event honoring our troops some folks are wondering whatever happened to southern hospitality.

Any 62 year old southern white who is honest knows the answer.

It was for whites only.

And even then, only for a certain class.

And, I have to point out, it was at Homestead-Miami in that unnamed state to our south. Making the homefolks proud.

maybe I could move back to Minnesota.

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Bonkers over (White) America

I think that Pat Buchanan is working to become a caricature of himself. And after his Hitler-friendly last book had taken it about as far as it would go. I admit it. I was wrong.

Read a few snippets from his latest volume in which, among other thing, he laments the fall from power of the great white race which in his mind is synonymous with 'Americans."

For those few of you in our family, he is lamenting the appearance of, among others, our beloved sister-in-law, our niece and nephew, my little friend Miggs, our cousin in Colorado's family and ... well, just keep filling in the blanks.

Remember the good old days when this paleo-clown was considered too extreme and distasteful for the Republican party? Oh c'mon. It was not that long ago.

although I admit, I've often thought certain family characteristics spelled the doom of Western Civilization as we have known it.

It's not about race

Tim Coburn, Repub Senator from OK, on President Obama (Tulsa World via TPM):

Responding to a man in Langley who asked if Obama "wants to destroy America," Coburn said the president is "very bright" and loves his country but has a political philosophy that is "goofy and wrong."

Obama's "intent is not to destroy, his intent is to create dependency because it worked so well for him," he said.

"As an African-American male," Coburn said, Obama received "tremendous advantage from a lot of these programs."

Yes, I was just telling a friend of mine the other day how lucky he was to be black.

I didn't really understand his response.

It's not about race

From an Oklahoma state rep (R):

Kern voted for the amendment, arguing that minorities earn less because they don't work as hard.

"We have a high percentage of blacks in prison, and that's tragic," Kern said, "but are they in prison just because they are black or because they don't want to study as hard in school?

"I've taught school," she added, "and I saw a lot of people of color who didn't study hard because they said the government would take care of them."

I've taught school and I saw a lot of people who didn't study because ... well, they just didn't study.

apparently you have that luxury when you are white.

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But it's not about race

After that bracing little refresher course on post-racial politics from South Carolina we can turn to the great state of Arizona, where events have unjustly earned the state a reputation as being filled with anti-Mexican racists.

Hard to see why anyone would think that, but there is this from a town in Arizona called Prescott where the local elementary school decided to have a mural painted. Some of the children in the mural are based on actual students at the school. Here's a sample of some reactions, a told by the artist in charge of the project to the Prescott Daily Courier:

As the Miller Valley mural took shape, Wall said, he and the other artists working at the site heard regular racial slurs from the passengers of cars driving by.

Wall reports hearing comments such as "You're desecrating our school," "Get the ni----- off the wall," and "Get the sp-- off the wall."

"The pressure stayed up consistently," Wall said. "We had two months of cars shouting at us."

The hostility seems to have been sparked at least in part by local city councilman Steve Blair, but since he tells us " 'I'm not a racist by any stretch of the imagination, but whenever people start talking about diversity, it's a word I can't stand.' " ... and " 'The focus doesn't need to be on what's different; the focus doesn't need to be on the minority all the time' " it could not be about race.

My imagination may be more flexible than Councilman Blair assumes.

the kid in question btw is an Hispanic (legal) but don't worry - the school told the artists to lighten his face.

"Toto, we're not in Europe anymore"

Or something like that. The Clemens household is all abuzz with plans for Halloween, mostly revolving around a 'Wizard of Oz' theme. Since I couldn't find a Winkie costume I am thinking of going to the annual History Dept. Gala Halloween Extravaganza and Costume Ball as ... Clemens.

To change the topic back to what the post is really about (what... where are my spectacles .... zzz ... oh!)

AMERICA!

It is not Europe. Andrew Sullivan, a non-American American wanna-be has a riposte to Pat Buchanan's latest declaration of the Unbearable Whiteness of Being America, has this to say (along with several other things worth reading):

The English, lulled by their marination in American pop culture from infancy, and beguiled by the same language, can live out their days in this country never actually noting that it is an alien land - stranger than you might have ever imagined, crueler than you realized, but somehow also more inspiring than you ever thought possible. This is the America I am trying to make my home, after 25 years. It is not the America of Pat Buchanan's or John Derbyshire's fantasies.

Derbyshire's latest controversy is due to his claiming giving women the right to vote was a 'bad thing.'

Obama and the Conservatives II

Noonan is not the only conservative who can see the value of what Obama did the other day. Check this one out.

Obama and the Conservatives

Apparently a lot of people were impressed with Obama's speech on race this week. Oh, not those such as the folks at National Review Online who were on the whole snarly and disgruntled about the whole thing, but certainly more thoughtful conservatives like, of all people, Peggy Noonan*. While she is not in general in favor of Obama, she realizes that he actually gave a speech that expected people to think on their own. Here's a taste of her reaction:

The primary rhetorical virtue of the speech can be found in two words, endemic and Faulkner. Endemic is the kind of word political consultants don't let politicians use because 72% of Americans don't understand it. This lowest-common-denominator thinking, based on dizzy polling, has long degraded American discourse. When Obama said Mr. Wright wrongly encouraged "a view that sees white racism as endemic," everyone understood. Because they're not, actually, stupid. As for Faulkner -- well, this was an American politician quoting William Faulkner: "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." This is a thought, an interesting one, which means most current politicians would never share it.

The speech assumed the audience was intelligent. This was a compliment, and I suspect was received as a gift.

It was also refreshing in its rarity. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, let's all hope this becomes a trend.



*yes, I know. I can't believe I wrote this either, but she is beginning to grow on my.


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