April 28, 2008
In the course of less than one hour this morning, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., did more damage to Barack Obama than any ten of his lunatic “God Damn America” rants from the pulpit.
Even the Obamaniacs are upset — yes, even the ones who have been screaming “Wright is RIGHT!” and “Obama could NOT disown his pastor” and “This is just a tempest in a teapot, a manufactured controversy, a non-issue — Wright won’t have any effect on Obama’s candidacy,” and all the rest of the “Blah, blah, blah, Ginger, blah, blah, blah“ garbage that, these days, has about as much effect on those of us rooted in reality-based thinking as dragging one’s foot to stop a 747.
Well, guess what? The unending Wright story is not a tempest in a teapot — and now that virtually every MSM outlet in the country is leading with headlines suggesting big trouble for the Obama campaign, now the Obamaniacs are getting it. Now they’re screaming, “OMG, Obama’s got to DO something! Obama’s got to completely, totally disown Wright, right NOW!”
How the band has changed its tune.
(The only thing that hasn’t changed: When one Obamanut expresses even a single, rational, independent thought, the rest of the Obamanuts eat their former comrade alive. But that’s the usual reaction when the collective cognitive dissonance of a cult is threatened.)
But I’m getting ahead of myself, as usual. In short, Wright did the unthinkable: he opened his mouth again. And this time, he may have sunk Barack Obama for good.
Reflects WaPo’s Dana Milbank:
Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama’s presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama’s longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered — and added lighter fuel.
Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks (”God damn America”) and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.
In front of 30 television cameras, Wright’s audience cheered him on as the minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama’s vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head table, American Urban Radio’s April Ryan, confirmed that Wright’s security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.
Not that you haven’t heard Wright’s rantings about all these things (and worse, much worse) before, nor should it come as a surprise that he and Farrakhan are still the best-bestest of buddies. So what? So this: Just when you thought Wright couldn’t make things any worse for Obama, Wright dropped a bombshell, expressing what those of us not awash in Jesus Juice Obama-flavored Kool-Aid have been thinking, and saying, about Obama all along: Obama was forced to distance himself from Wright solely for the sake of politics, and if those Wright sermons hadn’t become public, Obama would still be calling Wright his “spiritual mentor”:
Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. “He didn’t distance himself,” Wright announced. “He had to distance himself, because he’s a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American.”
Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, “We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected.” The minister continued: “Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls.”
Joe Fitzgerald of The Boston Herald picked up on something similar Wright said to Bill Moyers: “He [Obama] says what he has to say as a politican. I don’t talk to him about politics.”
Fitzgerald’s reaction (more valid than ever in light of Obama’s characteristically pitiful attempt at damage control during a “hastily gathered” press conference this morning):
Please. When a man spends 20 years absorbing another man’s sermons, it’s reasonable to conclude his beliefs and values will be informed and shaped by what he hears; if not, the man doing the preaching must be woefully ineffective.
So take your pick: Either Obama is showing the electorate a face that’s insincere, or Wright showed the viewers a leader who’s inept.
Is Wright trying to sink Barry? “Maybe,” muses Amy Sullivan of Time, “Barack Obama skimped on his contribution when the offering plate came past at Trinity United Church of Christ. Or perhaps he nodded off during one of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. It’s hard to think of another reason why the Illinois Senator’s former pastor would put on the kind of performance this morning at the National Press Club that can only be described as a political disaster.”
Or maybe Wright’s ego is so swollen from the roaring cheers bouncing off the walls inside that echo chamber known as Trinity United Church of Christ, he thinks the outside world is no different from the insulated little cocoon he’s built around himself.
Sorry, Rev. Nobody who heard you this morning is shouting “Amen!” this time.
Per Jeff Greenfield of CBS:
If you had a chance to listen to Rev. Jeremiah Wright — at his NAACP appearance in Detroit, or in his talk at the National Press Club — you came away with two impressions: first, Rev. Wright is a learned, compelling, often hilarious speaker; second, he is a genuine threat to the presidential hopes of Barack Obama.
His NAACP speech was shaped around the theme that “different does not mean deficient.” He talked about how blacks and whites were “different” in everything from language to music to religious worship. He interposed his speech with snatches from speeches, songs — at one point, brilliantly imitating the sharply different styles of marching bands. Michigan State, he demonstrated, simply did not move on the field the way the Grambling Band did.
He also offered a highly inclusive vision of the change America needed — rejecting exclusionary thinking whether it was white vs. black, black vs. white, straight vs. gays, Christians vs. Jews. There was nothing in that part of the speech that was objectionable or offensive.
Now, wait a minute. Wright emphasizes how “different” blacks and whites are, then waxes poetic about “inclusion”? I thought the goal was to appreciate our differences, while focusing on how we’re really all the same under the skin — yet Wright, in his comparison of two marching bands, makes fun of the way white people can’t dance? Hm.
Or, as the hard-right National Review put it — which will give you a good idea of how well this Wright business is going over with the tighty-righties Obama thinks he’s going to win over — in a piece titled “Jeremiah Wright May Have Just Sunk Obama’s Campaign:
And since then, it’s gotten worse, even with a Bill Moyers interview that wasn’t softball so much as it was Nerf Tee-Ball. We’ve heard Wright compare the Roman Legions who punished Jesus to the U.S. Marines, we’ve heard him argue that the U.S. and al-Qaeda are doing the same acts under different flags, etc.
Now we hear Wright analyzing the differences between white and black brains (!)…
Back to Greenfield:
So what’s the problem for Senator Obama? In his National Pres Club speech, we saw another side of Rev. Wright — utterly unrepentant about any of the things he has said, and insistent that the wave of criticism aimed at him was really “an attack on the black church.”
That argument is familiar — even pervasive. When a visible member group that has suffered exclusion is challenged, that individual is frequently heard making that argument. Senator Huey Long argued that attacks on his honesty were really attacks on the poor for whom he spoke; Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton both argued that attempts to hold them accountable for misconduct were really attacks mounted by their political enemies.
No kidding. If I had a nickel for every time an Obamanut called me racist for criticizing what Obama says and does, or went into a mindless rage at Hillary Clinton for something Obama said or did (what, did she cast a spell over Barry to make stupid remarks fall out of his mouth?), I would have a lot of nickels.
In wrapping himself in such an argument, Rev. Wright never even seeks to confront the core of the criticism: What did you mean when you said what you said? Why tell your congregation that AIDS was a government conspiracy to commit genocide on African-Americans?
Jake Tapper of ABC caught that, too:
[Wright] didn’t distance himself from any of the sentiments underlying the clips shown on television. Indeed, the former pastor embraced the most controversial items he has said.
On his contention that the U.S. government had created AIDS as a method of committing genocide against African-Americans, Wright referred to a hotly-disputed 1996 book “Emerging Viruses: AIDS And Ebola : Nature, Accident or Intentional?” by Leonard G Horowitz, which contends that AIDS and the Ebola viruses evolved during cancer experiments on monkeys.
He also referenced “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present” by Harriet Washington, and said based on the Tuskegee experiment — in which the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a 40-year study on 400 poor black men in Alabama with syphilis whom they did not properly treat — “I believe our government is capable of anything.”
Greenfield again:
More broadly, Rev. Wright’s counterattack reframes the argument in starkly racial terms: “Attack me, attack the black church.” It is exactly the opposite what Senator Obama has been arguing throughout his campaign; that it is past time for the United States look beyond race. Indeed, Wright’s vision of this controversy strikes at the heart of Obama’s view.
Greenfield concludes — correctly — that Wright is stuck in a moribund mindset, seeming “not to believe that the United States has in any serious way come some considerable distance — and one of the surest signs of that is the plausible presidential candidacy that Wright’s comments have so seriously harmed.”
I’ve never dismissed the fact that racism still exists in this country — but Wright and his flock appear utterly unable — or unwilling — to process the fact that all whites are not stuck in the 19th-century.
Jeremiah Wright, however, is. He’s soaking in it. And for whatever unresolved personal issues he has with whites, his “ministry” appears to dedicated not to empowering disenfranchised African-Americans in any positive, progressive, forward-looking way, but to keeping the hate — and his own “us vs. them” mentality — alive.
Jeremiah Wright is not a stupid man, but one wonders if he suffers from some sort of incurable amnesia — and if he enjoys that amnesia, deliberately induced or not.
To wit (quoted from Tapper):
“Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy,” Wright said, since Farrakhan had not enslaved Africans and brought them in chains to the U.S.
Wright argued that his fiery nature was appropriate since the leaders of the U.S. have never apologized for slavery or racism.
Oh, really now? I know what President Bill Clinton said in 1998 — and it sure sounded like an apology to my ears:
“Surely every American knows that slavery was wrong, and we paid a terrible price for [it], and that we had to keep repairing that.
“And just to say that it’s wrong and that we are sorry about it is not a bad thing.
“That doesn’t weaken us.”
What does Wright want, for every U.S. president, past and present, to get down on his knees? (In Clinton’s case, yeah, probably.)
That’s just another example of Wright’s deliberate blindness and stubborn insistence to remain entrenched in a view of a United States that has long since progressed beyond Wright and his antiquated — and divisive, damaging, dangerous — ideas.
One last thing: In demanding an apology for slavery, Wright said: “Britain has apologized to Africans. But this country’s leaders have refused to apologize. So until that apology comes, I’m not going to keep stepping on your foot and asking you, does this hurt, do you forgive me for stepping on your foot, if I’m still stepping on your foot. Understand that? Capisce?”
Yeah, capisco, loud and clear. What’s funny is that Wright would stoop to using the language of us “garlic noses” to make his point.
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Barack Obama,
Election 2008,
Hate Speech,
Jeremiah Wright,
Race/Ethnic Issues
April 23, 2008
I take it back: Randi Rhodes is not merely a foul-mouthed misogynist — she’s a nasty, stupid pig. No, wait, I take that back, too, as it is an insult to pigs everywhere.
(So sue me, Randi; if you can call Hillary a “f—king whore” and compare Geraldine Ferraro to David Duke, I can call you a stupid pig. Or worse.)
From ryeland at MyDD:
Randi Rhodes calls Hillary voters “white trash”
I hope Nova M Radio is happy with their new talk show host, the Left’s own Rush Limbaugh. Randi Rhodes is a disgrace and an embarrassment to Democrats, and I can’t imagine why any organization (political campaign or business) would want to be associated with her hate-filled rhetoric.
In the first five minutes of her show today, Randi let this one go:
“The Clinton campaign describes Hillary’s voters as older, white, and undereducated. Or as we called them in my neighborhood: white trash.”
Randi followed this, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, with a screed about how Hillary is an elitist (in part, because she loaned her campaign $5 million). Tell us more about elitism, Randi. How do “white trash” fit into your analysis?
I don’t know if Randi Rhodes is helping or hurting Barack Obama, but I do know that she’s hurting the Democratic Party with this kind of divisive, classist language. White trash? That’s how she chooses to describe the majority of Democrats who voted in this year’s primaries? I wouldn’t be surprised if Randi finds herself back on the unemployment line soon.
Randi Rhodes, you embarass me as a woman, and as a human being — both species to which, at this point, I sincerely doubt you belong.
Oh, and Randi? You may not be any whiter than I am, but you’re sure as hell older older than I am, and as far as education goes, I’ll go up against you on “Jeopardy!” any day of the week. All that Kool-Aid you’ve drunk has obviously shrunken your brain to the size of a peanut.
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Hate Speech,
Hillary Clinton,
Randi Rhodes
April 17, 2008
Last October, I mentioned that The Bahamas was (were?) finally started to wake up to the reality that if you treat homos like garbage, homos won’t spend their vacation dollars in your island/country/town.
It ain’t rocket science.
Of course, not too many homo-haters in this country, the Grand Ol’ U.S. of A., are even close to rocket scientists. Sally Kern — about whom Buffy has written extensively on The Gaytheist Agenda — would be lucky to pass a course in the Science of Tying One’s Shoes.
Luckily, Oklahoma is not filled with Sally Kerns (although we do question the very humanity of the dipsticks stupid — or just hateful — enough to vote for her), and is beginning to understand that homophobic hatred could cost the Sooner State some serious money.
Not that we Sneaky Homosexual Agendaists were planning to descend en masse and rename the place Oklahomo; no, it’s this, via The Journal-Record:
OKC Chamber: Kern spooks big biz relocation consultant
OKLAHOMA CITY — A San Francisco Bay-area financial services company has not yet ruled out Oklahoma City for a major office relocation, a vice president of a real estate search firm confirmed. A decision is expected in three to four weeks.
But Tom Maloney, vice president of California-based Staubach Co., would neither confirm nor deny that the 1,000-employee, AAA-rated client company’s top executive is a lesbian who expressed concern over Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern’s recent anti-homosexual statements, as has been the topic circulating among local business leaders.
Roy Williams, president of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, said the issue is a major concern the chamber is trying to address. He confirmed a Staubach consultant was troubled by Kern’s comments during a recent visit to the city.
“He told us straight up … ‘I cannot recommend to any of my clients that they should consider Oklahoma City because of that,’” Williams said. “When you have one of the nation’s premier relocation experts making those statements, you should pay attention to that and not dismiss it.
“And that’s immediately what happened: People said, ‘Well, then tell them not to come here.’ …”
At the Commerce Department, Business Services Deputy Director Sandy Pratt said … Kern’s comments have not been raised as a concern: “It did not come up in any of the governor’s economic development team meetings with consultants or discussions we’ve had with consultants,” Pratt said. …
As for Kern’s comments, “They no doubt send a message out there that no city wants to send, and that is one of divisiveness instead of unitedness,” [Williams] said. For the last five years, the chamber has made a greater effort “to embrace differences and embrace diversity, to build a community that is open and welcoming to anyone.”
Well, that’s a very nice sentiment, Mr. Williams, but while Oklahoma City may be “open and welcoming to anyone,” the state of Oklahoma is very much stuck in the Dark Ages, thanks to your constitutional ban on marriage equality.
Sally Kern aside — and seriously, who is Sally Kern but just another dunderheaded bigot who’s done us the favor of showing the public just how mean and stupid homophobes can be? Sally Kern is a flyspeck in the cosmos. It’s the people of Oklahoma — the ones who decided to legislate their own gay and lesbian neighbors into permanent second-class citizenship — who are the problem. It’s nearly impossible to comprehend that the marriage ban isn’t Staubach’s biggest concern: Staubach’s LGBT employees will have no rights in Oklahoma.
Interestingly, Indianapolis is also on Staubach’s list of potential new homes. Wake up, Staubach — Indiana is hardly better than Oklahoma; aside from the fact that Indiana refuses to recognize any same-sex marriage, civil union, or domestic partnership established in another state, and aside from the fact that a state constitutional ban on marriage equality failed in February, the issue is far from dead: Both houses of the state legislature favor a ban, and there’s an ongoing push to put the issue to the voters. And (especially when you consider that over the past seven years, only one state, Arizona, was able to beat back a marriage amendment) you know what that means; to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin (and mix in a little Ayn Rand), when you allow the majority to vote on the rights of a minority, you’ve got two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Staubach, you need to reconsider this move. I’m assuming you want to leave California because it would be cheaper to do business somewhere else.
But you’ve got to ask yourselves which is more important: money, or doing the right thing.
Meh, I know: It’s business. And money always trumps the right thing.
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Caribbean,
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Hate Speech,
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United States
Dear YouTube:
You know me. I have my own channel on YouTube. I recommend YouTube to everyone I know. I wouldn’t if I didn’t love YouTube, which I do. YouTube is the greatest thing since Al Gore invented the Internet.
But you guys are strictly out to lunch on one thing: You make it absolutely impossible to report abuse.
Oh, I know: If I see an inappropriate video, I can flag it. No problem there.
The problem is that you provide no way, anywhere on the YouTube site, to report cretins like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/hangthefaggot
I found this hateful little lowlife spewing his homophobic filth all over the comments section of a video honoring victims of anti-gay hate crimes.
Here are some examples:
hangthefaggot (15 hours ago)
I remember some dumb liberal fag saying straight marriage is evil and that only fags could be allowed it because they can’t violate marriage. What the hell?!? Fags cheat on their butt buddies all the time and if it wasn’t for straight people, you fags would not have even been born.
hangthefaggot (15 hours ago)
Some fags do rape women and little girls. This is because they want to get back at straight people.
hangthefaggot (15 hours ago)
You don’t think fags can be promiscuous? Of course they can! They are rarely any fags who have a single butt buddy. They just jump in bed with one fag, get tired of him, and shout “NEXT!”.
There are other equally disgusting remarks, from other equally disgusting imbeciles (e.g.: “lprevatt”: “u r absolutely right, the transexuals or shemales, whatever this things r called, in my opinion they are just weird creatures and they should die . GOD PLEASE, KILL ALL THEM! They spread diseases, they have promiscuos’behaviour. KILL THEM with another disease please!”), but my concern is with this “hangthefaggot” creature.
It’s the username, you see.
Do you approve of this username, “hangthefaggot”? Are there not even the most rudimentary filters in place to prevent such a username from being created in the first place? Could someone conceivably create the username “hangthen****r”? Would it be allowed to stand for at least ten days (the time since “hangthefaggot” first joined YouTube)?
YouTube, I would have been more than willing to keep this issue between you and me, but, as I said, you make it impossible to simply contact you to say, “Houston, we have a problem.”
The only way I can get in touch with you is through an open letter.
So, I ask: Are you going to do anything about this monster that calls itself “hangthefaggot”?
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Hate Speech
I don’t care that he’s a Democrat, and I don’t care whether he said it during an endorsement, or was caught unawares in private. “Pansy” is, was, and always will be code for “faggot” — effeminate, weak, limp-wristed, worthy-of-disdain “faggot”. It’s a nasty slur, and if Easley doesn’t realize why it’s so offensive, he needs to enroll in Homophobia 101, pronto:
