Mike Huckabee — past and probably future GOP presidential contender, and of course host of a Fox News show — says gay rights is a “different set of rights” than civil rights, and notes that gays aren’t getting their “skulls cracked,” so nobody’s rights are being violated. Well, that’s not really true, as Think Progress notes, but, needless to say, physical violence shouldn’t be the bar for discrimination in this country.
Of course, there’s all this:
• In the course of his mocking diatribe, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld inserted an off-color, homophobic joke about Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): “Look, I don’t dispute that aliens exist, but there are more urgent threats than wrinkly creatures with a knack for anal probing. But enough about Barney Frank.”
• After Dennis Miller said that President-elect Barack Obama “ought to flatten these punks at AIG [American International Group],” Bill O’Reilly stated, “OK, and then arrest Barney Frank, correct?” Miller replied, “Barney might want to be arrested.” In response, O’Reilly said, “Oh, jeez. Ugh,” and shuddered. He continued, “OK, Dennis Miller, everybody. I told you to hide the kids.”
• On The O’Reilly Factor and in a FoxNews.com article, Bill Sammon suggested that Rep. Barney Frank allowed his relationship in the 1990s with Herb Moses, a Fannie Mae official at the time, to improperly influence his conduct as a member of the House Financial Services Committee.
• Radio host Lars Larson played a spoof “Barney Frank for President” advertisement, in which a person said: “Now remember, this Erection Day — Election Day, vote for Barney Frank for President. I’m Barney Fag — uh, Frank and I approve this massage — message.”
That’s how the Fox Network, which employs Huckabee and much of the right-wing media, treats one of America’s only openly gay politicians. But they don’t crack his head, so, who’s complaining, right?
And the hits just keep on coming.
Aside to Lars Larson: If you’re going to make a career out of being a despicable bigot, you should at least try to come up with original material — gay-hater Dick Armey took “credit” for the “Barney Fag” slur ages ago.
Normally, I breeze by the homophobic garbage on Democratic Underground, partly because I don’t haunt the halls of DU anymore (unless I’m tipped off to a particularly interesting meltdown going on in real-time), and mostly because I don’t see the point in torturing myself watching my people battle those hopelessly (and happily) entrenched in their own bigotry. I wasted six years battling the “Some of my best friends are gay, so I’m an expert on what’s homophobic and what’s not” brigades myself, and it was, indeed, a complete waste of time I could have spent doing something, anything, more productive… like trying to teach goldfish to drive.
Hearing there was something of a meltdown going on (again), I ran across a post by a gay DUer I’ve long liked and respected, who (for the umpteenth time for any LGBT DUer) pointed out the pervasive compulsion to label George W. Bush, or Karl Rove, or pretty much any right-winger as “gay.” This is different from outing a right-winger who really is gay (or at least a verifiable down-low type like Larry Craig); this is the Everyone We Hate is Gay syndrome, and it’s ugly, and extremely offensive to gay people.
After reading the usual “I don’t see any homophobia, so it doesn’t exist” replies from DUers who either have a serious memory disorder, or feign blindness to the neverending stream of homophobia right in front of their keyboards, I thought I’d ever-so-helpfully dredge up a few examples of what they’re “not seeing”… which, apparently, is too herculean a task for the Google-impaired.
Here are 1) the original post in question, and 2) two of the nastiest, most insensitive replies:
LeftCoast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-04-08 02:57 PM Original message
I’ve been around here for years and it just never stops. Virtually every foul Republican is referred to as “gay”. It happens over and over. It’s against the rules and the mods do try, but it never ends. Why?
They say that doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result is the definition of insanity so I don’t know why I keep expecting it to change.
I don’t know what to do, but I don’t like how DU makes me feel.
devilgrrl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-04-08 03:08 PM Response to Original message
15. Virtually every foul Republican is referred to as “gay” - By whom?
Quit painting everyone with one brush stroke please.
kestrel91316 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-04-08 03:21 PM Response to Original message
22. Do you always make shit like this up?
I have been here quite a while and can’t recall a single instance of a Republican being called gay for the hell of it. Now, if they are gay AND closeted AND a homophobe, I can see that.
You probably wanna run back to FR if you wanna concoct fables out of whole cloth.
For these “I can’t recall” folks (who can never again claim that DUers just don’t do this sort of thing), here’s a memory-refresher (and this, my friends, only scratches the surface):
And the winner of the Most Offensive Asshat on DU in 2008 (So Far) Award goes to “kurtboss,” who — to the credit of the DU admins — has since been banned:
kurtboss (361 posts) Mon Aug-04-08 09:05 PM Original message
Okay, let’s just make clear that there is nothing wrong with being Gay, however employing this strategy does make use of the negative cultural stereotypes about homosexuality. It’s exploiting it…but, to a good end.
So, here’s the deal. I want opinions. I don’t know if he’s really gay, but it doesn’t matter. This is hardball politics. A war, healthcare, the economy, etc all ride on this election…so it’s probably worth getting dirty for a couple months. I believe this can destroy his chances for victory by putting this seed of doubt in the minds of bigots.
1. The GOP Evangelicals HATE gays
2. Obviously easy to exploit McCain’s obsession with Obama–it’s practically pathetic at this point and noted everywhere in the media
3. He’s in the Navy. Village People anyone? It gets awfully lonely on ships.
4. To tie this up for you…McCain is already questioned by the Evangelicals and absolutely requires they turn out for him in droves. It’s his weakness.
How to attack it? Viral email. Youtube some effete moments put together…perhaps the infamous hug?? McCain is pretty pro-gay as GOP guys on policy isn’t he??? Check out the four photos below in what my FIRST and only google image search turned of of McCain hug
As for transphobia (or: Everyone We Hate is Transgender), there are far too many references to “Mann Coulter” to waste my time listing them all; see for yourself.
Don’t even get me started on the “prison rape is funny” posts — or the “Gays will lose us the next election! / Gays lost us the election!” scapegoating that happens every two years, like clockwork.
* While Hillary Clinton is not a right-winger, she is loathed as much as Bush, Rove, and all the rest by a substantial portion of DU. Remember, the ploy is called Everyone We Hate is Gay.
In explaining its reasons (experience, we agree, is a major one) for endorsing Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, GayWired Media takes a fresh approach:
As LGBT people fighting for the right to marry—the right to a legal recognition of partnership—no one knows better what Hillary Clinton has faced in her fight to be treated as her husband’s equal. With the exception of Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady’s position was always that of loyal “spouse” whose job it was to smile, nod and support her husband. Hillary Clinton was the first woman to step into the role of first lady ready to fight in a public forum… for better or worse, and as anyone who read headlines during her eight years in the White House knows, the press and the right-wing made her fight tooth and nail for the respect she earned.
Well done. And equally well done is this succinct summary of Barack Obama’s liabilities in the area of equality:
But whereas Clinton’s support of LGBT issues is consistent — in her autobiography Living History, she calls “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” a terrible “compromise” of her husband’s presidency — we get the sense much of Obama’s support is merely PR. The omission of the word gay from his South Carolina victory speech and refusal to remove openly homophobic gospel singer Donnie McClurkin from a performing engagement on his campaign trail further support those fears.
At first glance, none of the candidates for president on the Republican side express anything resembling a strong commitment to LGBT rights. In fact, many express the opposite. But one holds a strong commitment to state’s rights—a commitment that, thus far, has protected LGBT rights at the federal level while discouraging any amendment to the constitution that would prohibit same sex marriage. Coupled with his commitment to ending the war in Iraq and putting an immediate end to this costly and misleading charade, Ron Paul may look like the dark horse to lead America beginning in January, 2009, but he’s far better suited for the role than many of his fellow party members would have you believe.
And certain Southerners still scream, “States’ rights!” while defending slavery.
We will give GayWired credit for proving that gay folks are not just single-issue voters, as it takes Paul’s stance on the Iraq war into account:
Ron Paul is that rare politician who has gone out on a limb—the only Republican nominee to have voted against the Iraq War Resolution, he says the war in Iraq was sold to Americans with false information and if elected president, he would begin yanking troops out of the Middle East immediately—no disrespect to the issue of gay marriage, but as far as we’re concerned, ending the war is the most important issue at stake this election.
And we must admit GayWired’s reasoning also takes a fresh (well, novel) approach:
Though Paul isn’t known to be an avid supporter of gay rights, he opposes all federal efforts to redefine marriage, has said “don’t ask, don’t tell” fails because it doesn’t take into account heterosexual behavior that is disruptive to service and has said he has no interest in interfering with two individuals in a social, sexual or religious sense. That said, he was an outspoken critic of the Supreme Court’s decision on Lawrence v. Texas which deemed sodomy laws unconstitutional under the fourteenth amendment. Though he called the law ridiculous, his support of states rights, he argued, gives the State of Texas the right to regulate sex using local standards.
A consistency that, while bizarre, is almost refreshing. His view on the rights of the individual and of the state have defined his entire career. Better the devil you know or the devil who shape shifts depending on how he’s doing in the polls?
We still think GayWired is off the hook endorsing Paul — or any Republican; where is it written that a news outlet must endorse a candidate from each party? Well, maybe it is a requirement with for-profit companies — but still: If we were forced to endorse one of the remaining Republican candidates (that is, remaining as of GayWired’s press deadline), we would have picked Rudy Giuliani.
Make no mistake: We can’t stand Giuliani — but when the other choices are McCain, Huckabee, Romney, and Paul, choosing Giuliani is like choosing to have one eye gouged out, as opposed to having all four limbs amputated.
A few (quite a few) dumb-butts keep insisting that nobody other than “a few fringe gay activists” know, much less give a hoot, about Barack Obama’s continuing association with the anti-gay religionist brigades.
Well, listen up, dumb-butts: If you thought Obama’s hypocritical, two-faced, double-dealing, under-the-table, behind-the-scenes, low-down, dirty crap-o-rama was flying under the “mainstream” radar (how’s that for the most mixed metaphor in history?), here’s some news for you: You’re wrong. Again. And so’s your Saint Barry.
From CBS News, which found Carrie Budoff Brown’s piece from The Politico “valid” enough to pick up this morning:
Gay Community Still Wary Of Obama
. . .
“If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community,” Obama told 2,000 worshippers Sunday at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King once preached. “We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.”
. . .
Yet … At the same time as Obama’s Sunday speech, gay bloggers were digging into the background of the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, a spiritual adviser to President Bush who endorsed Obama a day earlier.
. . .
The twin developments appeared to encapsulate the tension inherent in Obama’s embrace of what he calls a new style of politics, his belief in forging alliances even with those who hold fundamentally different views.
In this case, he has spoken out against homophobia in front of black audiences while embracing some black religious leaders who are resistant to gay rights.
“People are confused,” said Wayne Besen, a gay activist and founder of Truth Wins Out, a New York organization aimed at countering the “ex-gay” movement. “We see one report of him saying powerful words. Then he is hanging out with some shady characters. People don’t know what to make of that.”
Wayne, darlin’, we love ya, we really do, but what “people” are you talking about when you say, “People are confused”? Obama cultists, perhaps, are confused, as they should be — but not one clear head that’s been following this stroke-Peter-while-screwing-Paul game Obama’s been playing has ever been “confused” in the least.
I’ve known “what to make” of Obama since the day he told us gay folks to STFU — no matter how long and loud and hard we protested, that self-loathing faux-”ex-gay” Donnie “Gays Are Trying to Kill Our Children” McClurkin was going onstage to woo the homophobes, no matter what (and woo he did).
By Monday, Caldwell’s church, Windsor Village United Methodist in Houston, scrubbed its Web site of any reference to the gay conversion program, Metanoia Ministry.
. . .
“I got to tell you, this is going to sound real stupid, but I didn’t know it was on our website,” Caldwell said. “I was surprised and embarrassed by it. I’m embarrassed from the standpoint that I should have known. We have 120 ministries at the church. You can’t be on top of everything.”
When asked if he opposed such programs, Caldwell said: “It’s not a ministry of the church. It is not supported financially by the church. It is not located at the church. That is pretty much where I am with it.”
. . .
But blogosphere skepticism has persisted, in part because of this connection: Barbara Hicks, a church staff member and treasurer of the church’s Prayer Institute, is listed as the contact for Metanoia Ministry. She uses a church phone number and email address.
“That is my ministry,” Hicks said Tuesday when reached at her church office.
She directed further questions to Caldwell, who said Hicks “does it on her own.”
How stupid do these people think we are? Caldwell and Hicks are playing the “Go ask your mother / Go ask your father” game. And it stinks — to high heaven. If either of them were so secure in the rightness of their “ministry,” neither would try passing the blame off on the other.
And neither would disgust me half so much if they would accept responsibility for their hateful, anti-gay brainwashing “ministry.” I’ve got more respect for Fred Phelps — at least that crazy old bastard stands by every vile word he’s ever spat out of his brittle old chapped lips, and doesn’t blame his sickening actions on anyone else.
I’ve said the same about Huckabee and Romney and all the rest of the screw-the-gays Republican candidates: At least they make no bones about where they stand — and about what they’d like to do to me.
Or, to quote Duane Wells yet again: “I never thought I’d say this, but Mr. Obama’s duplicitous stance on gay and lesbian rights circa the Donnie McClurkin controversy has given me something of an appreciation for George W. Bush’s no-nonsense approach to politics. I may not agree with a thing that comes out of curious George’s mouth, but at least he doesn’t piss in my cornflakes and tell me that he filled the bowl with whole milk. No sir. If there is a good thing to be said about President Bush it’s that he will tell you he’s going to piss in your cornflakes, then he will actually piss in your cornflakes and then he will hold a press conference defending his right to piss in your cornflakes. There’s no deception. It’s honest and clear… whether you like it or not. With Obama that is unfortunately not the case.”
“It matters who you are endorsed by because these are the people who are going to be calling in favors,” Besen said. “The gay and lesbian community has the right to be disturbed when such individuals are standing up beside Obama.”
Read those words again: “It matters who you are endorsed by because these are the people who are going to be calling in favors.”
Damn right.
You hear that, all you Obamaites who keep whining like a bunch of little girls: “Obama’s not responsible for the views of everyone who endorses him!” Take off your blinders: If you believe that a candidate’s backers don’t expect — or get — anything in return for corraling votes and money for that candidate, then you don’t know the first thing about politics. That’s the way it works: You wash my back, I’ll wash yours. Why the hell do you think the Bushites have been courting the Radical Religious Right all these years?*
If you don’t understand that, then you’re too naive — or just too stupid — to vote this time around. Learn something about the world, and maybe by 2012 you’ll be ready to come join the grown-ups back in Realityville.
* And why do you think the RRR came thisclose to abandoning the GOP altogether? Because the GOP didn’t deliver, that’s why.
Now, don’t you Obamaites use that as an excuse to sing that old song that goes: “Obama’s just courting conservative Democrats. When he gets in office, he’ll lead the fight for gay equality!” That’s a pile of crap, and you know it; it’s the same damned song we hear every election cycle. And consider this: If Obama is making promises — to any group, including the Radical Right — that he has no intention of keeping, what does that say about his honesty?
There’s little I can say that hasn’t already been said in the wake of Barack’s love-fest with Ronald Reagan, in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal (given in order to gain the paper’s endorsement) — except: If you don’t understand the outrage, you’re either too young to remember, or appreciate, the enormity of the damage Reagan and his nest of freedom-hating vipers inflicted on America — and don’t give a damn about learning your nation’s history — or you were a Reagan voter who’s still in denial.
For the rest of us still trying to heal from the Reagan Era, this is what the fuss is all about — or, more accurately, this is what Obama is all about:
Ronald Reagan More Effective Than Bill Clinton:
“I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
Obama did not specify what he believes those “excesses” were. But Reagan is widely credited with leading a rightwing backlash against the gains of the civil rights and feminist movements that preceded his 1980 election.
Those excesses, of course, were feminism, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the antiwar movement. The libertarian anti-government ideology of an unaccountable large liberal government was designed by ideological conservatives to take advantage of the backlash against these ‘excesses’.
What about the civil rights movement, which had a huge effect on the ’60s. Was that an excess? Were people who protested the Vietnam War, because they felt it was fundamentally wrong, much the same as many of us feel concerning Iraq, an excess? What about the strong feminism movement? Was that an excess? Or how about the new found concern of the environment? Was that an excess too?
His narrative completely excludes stagflation, high gas prices, and the hostage crisis in Iran. Think they might have been factors in the 1980 election?
He also fails to reconcile the fact that Reagan won just 50.7% of the vote in 1980 (his landslide was in 1984) with his theory that there was a unified national mood.
He also fails to explain why, if the nation was so unified, 1980 saw one of the strongest third-party campaigns in 20th century American history.
Moreover, Obama ignores the racism that was fundamental to Ronald Reagan’s campaign. Recall that Reagan began his campaign with a call for state’s rights in Philadelphia, MS.
He [Reagan] was openly — openly — intolerant of unions and the right to organize. He openly fought against the union and the organized labor movement in this country. He openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day. The destruction of the environment, you know, eliminating regulation of companies that were polluting and doing extraordinary damage to the environment.
I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change.
Sen. John Edwards January 17, 2008
[Reagan] never did make a similar peace with the “welfare queens” he fabricated out of whole cloth to push his anti-compassionate conservatism. Nor with the African Americans he insulted by launching his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were slaughtered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964. Nor with the Berkeley students demonstrating in a closed-off plaza whom he ordered tear-gassed by helicopter in 1969.
Nor, last but not least, with the tens of thousands of AIDS corpses whose disease he did not even deign to publicly acknowledge until 1987.
When I think about the 60s and the 70s, I think about Medicaid, Medicare, the Environmental Protection Agency, Community Development Block Grants… It’s astounding to me to have this blanket endorsement of a right wing attack.
When he says government in effect grew too much in the 60s and 70s… Reagan agreed with that. This is not simply a tribute to Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric but an endorsement of some of the substance.
Barney Frank (D-Mass.) Conference call January 18, 2008
Republicans: The Party of Ideas
“I think it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there… over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.”
So I suppose that means George Bush (past 7 years), had some good ideas? I suppose he thinks Bob Dole’s ideas were better than Clinton’s in ‘96? Does he think Gingrich had the right ideas in the ’90s?
The Republicans were the party of ideas for the last 10 to 15 years, because they were challenging conventional wisdom? OK, now I’m completely boggled. Is Obama talking about the same GOP I know — the Republican party of Tom DeLay and George Bush? The party in which candidates compete to see who can do the best Reagan impersonation? This is the party that’s challenging conventional wisdom? What’s going on here?
Paul Krugman Reagan and Obama The Conscience of a Liberal January 17, 2008
That’s not the way I remember the last 10 to 15 years.
I don’t think it’s a better idea to privatize Social Security. I don’t think it’s a better idea to try to eliminate the minimum wage. I don’t think it’s a better idea to undercut health benefits and to give drug companies the right to make billions of dollars by providing prescription drugs to medicare recipients. I don’t think it’s a better idea to shut down the government, to drive us into debt.
Sen. Hillary Clinton Conference call January 18, 2008
The Republicans have been the party of ideas for the past ten to fifteen years? Including the last seven years of Bill Clinton’s administration? Really, Mr. Obama?
So just what did William Jefferson Clinton do for blacks and Latinos?
Since the economy is the hot topic these days, let’s just look at what President Clinton did for minorities in terms of economic gains. …
Unemployment Rate for African Americans and Hispanics Remains Historically Low. Under President Clinton and Vice President Gore, the Hispanic unemployment rate has dropped from 11.3 percent in January 1993 to a record low of 5.8 percent in March 1999. The unemployment rate for African Americans has fallen from 14.1 percent in January 1993 to 8.1 percent in March 1999 — one of the lowest levels on record for African Americans.
Here are additional economic accomplishments of the Clinton/Gore administration — as of 1999 (during the administration’s second term) — that also had a direct positive effect for minorities…
. . .
Listen, Mr. Obama. If you think that President Clinton and Vice President Gore accomplished those amazing turnarounds for the economy and for minorities by singing “Kumbayah” with Republicans, you’ve just shown how naive you are.
And you’ve exposed how uninformed you are about the brutal history of U.S. politics where every progressive step is spattered with the blood, sweat and tears of all who fought so hard for those gains.
How we yearn for those 1990s that you dismiss, Mr. Obama.
[The interview] also re-aroused my suspicions that Obama is not a real Democrat, given as he is to touting GOP talking points on Social Security and presenting far weaker economic stimulus and health care plans than his rivals. Are his real political views more like Reagan’s than the Democraty party’s? It’s quite possible.
Worst of all, it reminded me of Obama’s dreamy attitude about the presidency. He thinks he can just be the “vision” guy and get “smarter people” around himself, and that the governing will take care of itself.
Never mind that George W. Bush — taking off where Ronald Reagan began — has decimated all key federal agencies of their most experienced staffers and devastated the agencies’ budgets, so much so that some will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.
JedReport was unable to reach Newt Gingrich, the chief intellectual of the Republican Party for comment. JedReport was able to confirm that Albert Gore, has had an idea or two over the last fifteen years, however.
Not “Invested” in the 1960s, Yet Can Read Baby Boomers’ Minds (Oh, and By the Way, the Boomers Can Go to Hell)
“I didn’t I didn’t come of age in the battles of the 60s, so I’m not as invested in them. So I think I talk differently about issues and I think I talk differently about values, and that’s why… um, I-I think we’ve been resonating with the American people.
“I think… And, by the way, when I say this sometimes, it’s-it’s interpreted as ‘I don’t think anybody who’s a Baby Boomer should be president’ — that’s not what I’m saying, but what i’m saying is… I think the average Baby Boomer has moved beyond a lot of the arguments of the 60s but our politicans haven’t. We’re still having the same arguments, you know, it’s all around cultural wars and it’s all, you know, even when you discuss war, you know, the frame of reference is all Vietnam — well, that’s not my frame of reference, you know, my frame of reference is what works. And my— even when I first opposed the war in Iraq, my first line was: ‘I don’t oppose all wars.’ You know… it… it… specifically to make clear this is not just a… anti-military, you know, 70s love-in kind of approach.”
In one fell swoop, Obama disparages the success-filled, non-stop efforts of millions of people during the 1960s and 1970s…
News flash: Barack Obama isn’t invested in the 1960s. No kidding. He’s not invested in reality either.
. . .
The 1970s peace movement helped stop the Vietnam war. It’s what drew John Kerry to the Senate to give one of the most electrifying speeches from a military veteran in U.S. history.
. . .
The cult of personality of Reagan, now Obama, has another thing in common. The arrogance to seduce the masses into believing something that isn’t so. Obama is convinced that Reagan was transformational, but misses on what grounds that transformation occurred.
That Obama made his case by attacking the “anti-military” Democratic rabble who Reagan also blamed for bringing this country to its knees in the 70s, because of the peaceniks’ love-in kind of approach, which was the in thing after the carnage of the Vietnam war, without realizing what he’s doing proves Mr. Obama’s cluelessness.
Reagan was the antithesis of “an anti-military, you know, 70s love-in kind of approach.” Now we find out that Obama is too. Who’s going to tell John Kerry?
Good Grief! That’s Me on the Left January 18, 2008
Astounding isn’t it? Yep, let’s put the guy who brought us “Iran-Contra, “Star Wars,” and “the largest deficits then ever known” up on a pedastal and claim he transformed this nation with “clarity” and “optimism.”
“One of the things I’m very proud of about this campaign is that I think we’ve already changed the political dialogue. When you think about it, you know, when Mitt Romney starts talking like me — which wasn’t the case… You have somebody like Huckabee who is doing very well basically taking a similar tone… I think we are shifting the political paradigm here.”
He was talking about the very same Mitt Romney who has spent more money on attack ads than all the other presidential candidates combined. Just over two weeks ago, CNN reported:
Two negative ads recently launched by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who has spent more on advertising than any other candidate, either misrepresent his rival’s records or include distortions, according to a CNN analysis of the commercials. (emphasis added)
This is the man who Barack Obama proudly cites as evidence he has brought about a shift in political paradigms?
. . .
Confused? So am I. I honestly have no idea what in the hell Obama is talking about.
It’s either another one of Obama’s completely meaningless bloviations or a political analysis conducted on a geometric plane I’ve never heard of before (perhaps for those times when triangulation just won’t do).
Mind you, I’m not saying that Obama didn’t put on a fine display of triangulation in the video. …
After Obama’s Reagan love-in, a quote I posted January 16 from Ed Pilkington is, if not prescient, far more pertinent than ever:
“Look further back still and the pattern is repeated. In 1990, while a second-year student at Harvard, [Obama] had the audacity to stand for election to head the Harvard Law Review, one of the country’s most prestigious legal publications. He beat off 18 other candidates to become its president (savor the moment: He was elected president Obama).
“David Goldberg, a civil rights lawyer who was a runner-up in that poll, recalls that Obama won by reaching out to right-wing law students, several of whom went on to become key legal advisers in the Bush administration: ‘We were a really polarized group of students, and he managed to span us all.’”
Notice a pattern yet?
Reagan — the Hollywood red-baiter who rose from president of the Screen Actors Guild to president of the United States even though he was already senile. Reagan who gave us tax cuts and “trickle down” economics that didn’t work — except for the rich and richer and richest. Reagan who let “mommy” (Nancy) run the white house with the aid of her astrologer. Reagan whose horse was smarter than he was.
Give me a break. One of the most disgusting sights in recent years was the genuflecting before this total fraud that went on at his funeral. And the hypocritical bullshit being trumpeted by the networks! Where were all the actors and writers and directors whose lives he ruined? I guess they were dead. But — what, me worry? — in America nobody knows one crumb of history, so Ronald Reagan’s vicious red baiting, how he rose to prominence by smearing other actors and writers and directors, was totally forgotten.
I suppose Mr. Obama has forgotten too — scholar of history that he is. Perhaps he was not alive in the 50s so he knows nothing about it — the Army-McCarthy hearings, the smearing of creative artists who donated to Spanish Civil War Relief even though they were not “card-carrying” communists. They happened, like my parents, and their friends, to have given money to help little Spanish children, orphaned by the Spanish Civil War — and ever after they trembled lest Ronnie Reagan and his ilk witch-hunt them.
Nowadays, as we grapple with the malevolence of President Bush, it’s Reagan we remember as the sensible one. At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, let memory at least acknowledge that there was much about Reagan that was not so sensible.
It’s not just more evidence that Obama was willing to say whatever it took to get the conservative editorial board to endorse him. It’s worse. It’s much worse.
It is further evidence that not only does Obama have no sense of the history of the last half of the 20th century — wait until you see the video below the fold — but also that he really is as conservative as his weak health care plan and far weaker economic stimulus plan have hinted. (Then there’s his use of GOP scare-tactic talking points on Social Security, and how he has been embraced by the right — including George Will who last year compared Obama to Ronald Reagan…
On the issue of Obama’s lack of “investment” in the struggles of the 1960s and 70s, and his obvious lack of personal experience of recent American history, here’s another quote from my post of January 16:
“Despite his skin color versus mine, I am not at all convinced that Barack Obama’s ties to the Civil Rights era equate with mine; when my snow-white third-grade class was being introduced to our first black classmate, Obama was living in Indonesia. We both attended Catholic school — but somehow, I cannot imagine that young Barack was inundated by the issue of American race relations (on the news, in the movies, on the cover of newsweeklies, and in lengthy class discussions — yes, even before my age reached double digits) as I was.
. . .
“I wasn’t quite four when the Watts riots exploded — and exploded with such repercussion that I remember them as well as I remember the endless news footage of the Vietnam War, and the nightly body count out of Southeast Asia.
Does Obama remember any of this? Did he even hear about it before he returned to the U.S. at the age of ten — when even the Summer of Love was a quickly-fading memory?”
Liberals always talk as if only the conservatives of our own generation were scary, and the conservatives of a previous generation kind of cuddly. Not helpful. Reagan really did almost blow the world up.
Look, I know this is weedy stuff and probably doesn’t matter to the average voter under the age of 45. But to long time liberals who lived through this period as an adult, it’s like waving a red flag in our faces. Reagan ran explicitly against the left (and in the process normalized the kind of indecent talk that made Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter millionaires.) Because he won big in 1984, leaders in both parties accepted this omnipotent Reagan myth and have run against liberalism ever since — and have ended up, through both commission and omission, advancing the destructive conservative policies that brought us to a place where we are debating things like torture. It would be helpful if ending the era of Democrats running against the liberal base could be part of this new progressive “trajectory.”
Some of us also remember the early devastating AIDS epidemic sweeping through the gay community without a word of support, comfort, or recognition from Ronald Reagan.
Some of us remember the lies about “Welfare Queens” he used to justify horrible callous, usually racist rhetoric about vulnerable fellow citizens.
Some of us remember illegal drugs sold on the streets of our cities to pay for illegal arms to the Contras and torturers and death-squads, while Nancy piously suggested we “Just Say No” as the racist War on Drugs ramped up here.
Some of us remember that an extreme minority of anti-democratic fundamentalist zealots started calling themselves “The Moral Majority” in the Reagan years.
Some of us remember Reagan telling us “government is the problem” and then seeing to it that whenever Republicans are in charge they would damn well prove it.
Some of us remember how Reagan sold the lie that giving to the rich and taking from the poor would create prosperity that would “trickle down” to the poor anyway.
Some of us remember Reagan tearing down Carter’s solar panels from the White House and his choice of James Watt as environment secretary.
Some of us remember “Ronbo” belligerently making war noises, throwing his weight around, and joking about nuclear strikes.
Some of us remember PATCO, and Reagan’s war on the unions that created a democratizing middle class (even if it never managed to extend to people of color as it so urgently needed to do).
Ronald Reagan was an evil bastard and he set the stage for the even worse Killer Clowns of the present Administration.
Feel good bullshit about the affable Gipper is dishonest and dangerous and damaging and we will not stand for it.
No, Ronald Reagan didn’t appeal to people’s optimism, he appealed to their petty, small minded bigotry and selfishness. Jimmy Carter told people to tighten their energy belts and act for the good of the country; Ronald Reagan told them they could guzzle gas with impunity and do whatever the hell they wanted. He kicked off his 1980 campaign talking about “state’s rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi — the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964’s Freedom Summer. He thus put up a welcome sign for “Reagan Democrats,” peeling off white voters who were unhappy with the multi-ethnic coalition within the Democratic Party.
One of his first acts was to fire 11,000 air traffic controllers in 1981 — one of the most devastating union busting moves of the past century. And his vision of deregulation didn’t free the country up for entrepreneurship, it opened it up for the wholesale thievery of the savings & loan crisis. He popularized the notion that all government is bad government and in eight short years put in place the architecture for decades of GOP graft and corruption.
There’s enough hagiography of Reagan on the right, I don’t think Democrats really need to go there.
…if you think, as Obama does, that Reagan’s rise to power was premised on a sunny optimism in contrast to an out of control government and a society rife with liberal excess, then you don’t understand the conservative movement. Reagan tapped into greed and fear and tribalism, and those are powerful forces. Ignoring that isn’t going to make them go away.
It’s not as if nobody saw this coming — the warnings were there, over and over and over again. Did anyone think the Donnie McClurkin flap was an isolated incident? The easy dismissal of the Baby Boomers? The attack on church-state separatists?
(What “attack on church-state separatists,” you ask? Better you should ask, “Which attack on church-state separatists?” But here’s just one example, from his keynote address at the Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America conference: “At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word ‘Christian’ describes one’s political opponents, not people of faith.” Nice job broadbrushing those of us wh
