Given all that has transpired this week where good white conservatives painted me with faux outrage as a "racist" for using a metaphor in my description of how black conservatives buck dance and perform for the Right-wing racial imagination, we have this overlooked story on the Fox News website.
Where was the condemnation? Where was the outrage? Funny, I thought the beating heart and soul of contemporary popular tea party conservatism was "colorblind?" That it took great offense to such hateful and vicious speech?
Alas, the Right-wing Vox Populi show their true colors. It is the greatest offense since the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby for a black person to make an allusion that links Herman Cain "to the monkey in the window," but it is alright for white folks to call Barack Obama a gorilla.
Amazing.
Courtesy of the Daily Kos:
Today on the Fox Nation web site, they posted a story on the popularity of some new videos of a gorilla walking upright like a man. That seems like it should be an innocuous little animal tale with a precocious jungle creature imitating human behavior. But this is Fox Nation we're talking about.
This is the sort of item that Fox Nation posts fully aware of the dog-whistle effect it will have on its readers: a community of dimwits that is simply incapable of masking the open hostility and racism that is at the core of their putrid souls. Here is a sampling of the comments to be found attached to the article:
1preacher: Yea, I could see where this Gorilla evolved from obama's family.
amveteran: This is a true knuckle dragger. Reminds me of Al Sharpton.
winterhawk: Just as I thought, that's buckwheat's daddy.
flyinjohn23: Not only that....He got himself one of those Hiawian Birth Certificates over the internet all on his own too.
1preacher: Because I said that this was obama's mother, that is racist? Not following that one.
hawk1052: Shelia Jackson Lee, comes to mind.
armed: is the one in the background carrying a teleprompter and throwing tater tots at the other one.
And if that isn't bad enough, there were at least 13 comments that the Fox Nationalists "flagged for review." If the examples above made it past their decency filter, we can only imagine how disgusting were the comments that were removed were. And in addition to the overt racism, there was also an abundance of derogatory and idiotic remarks regarding evolution and the intelligence of liberals.
These people are sick and beyond pathetic. And Fox News knows exactly what they are doing by throwing this chum in the tank. This isn't the first time that Fox Nation's readers behaved so atrociously. Last year they posted feverishly about how they wished the President were dead.
The bigots at Fox are surely comfortable with this sort of hatred. We learned last summer that only 1.38% of Fox's audience is African American (compared to about 20% each for CNN and MSNBC). So they probably don't think they have much to lose by being racist jerkwads. Just their humanity, and they don't have much of that to begin with.
12 comments:
Would that I had something meaningful to say, but maybe I should just offer a sincere apology. Really, I feel like one of those computers on Star Trek, the ones that end the episode sparking and smoking, saying, "does not compute!"
Calm down brother. We need you intact for the good fight!
Can you imagine how this stuff makes me feel? To a certain extent, I am forced to own it, my face is a smoking gun. It's bloody embarrassing. Probably you can understand. That shoe pinches on either foot.
Just for chuckles I tend to read a fair number of the comments on foxnews.com, and jab the crazy ones once in a while.
Overt racism is rampant on that site. Plus, it's simply amazing how the Fox "narrative of the week" becomes ingrained in the commenter's opinions. Take any demonstrably untrue thing that spent a couple days on Fox News, and it will be irrefutable fact to these people.
Fred C,
Any time I visit a blog talking about race issues, there's always one sadsack white guy making apologies for white people. Sorry, but this isn't about you - this isn't about me. We are bystanders, nothing more. We can neither fully understand the black experience nor can we can understand how the racists feel.
For you and me? Self-aware white people? Our job is to understand and bridge as many gaps as we can.
Don't apologize for other people's shit, though. It's meaningless. That's them, that's their problem. You're you. Our job, as self-aware white people, isn't to apologize for other white people's shit - it is 1) to know our own prejudice and fight it within our own hearts and 2) to talk to white people and tell them, "Hey, that's not ok."
The thing is - if you're out there every day working to change things, you have nothing to apologize for. And if you're not out there working to change things? Then apologizing ain't getting shit done.
Good luck. You're going to need it.
These people are sick and beyond pathetic.
Exactly. And they are revealing themselves for what they are, yet again.
@Battochio. Isn't that funny how their habit is never punished, nor are there ever any consequences. I received some "interesting" emails offline calling out some version of Conservative victimology because I called attention to their nonsense.
If a left/progressive/or other dissenting voice--as we learned last week--ever criticizes their sacred cows it is the end of the world and the "it was posted in the comments section so it doesn't count rule" would not apply.
These folks have drunk so much of the Right-wing echo chamber sanctimonious Kool-aid they have lost the capacity for moral, intellectual, and ethical consistency.
@Anon--I have to second your suggestion to Fred C. We can only do the just thing and try to live ethical and good lives however we define that. Fred is not culpable for white folks' nonsense to the degree that he confronts it and speaks to truth to power.
I extend this to people of color, class, sexuality, and gender as well. If you let the b.s. pass and don't stand up for what is right you are complicit. But, you can't live a life burdened by guilt if you are trying to do the "right" thing.
What do the teabag ninnies and the gasbags on fox noise and AM talk radio have in comon?
They're hardcore rascists
They're know-nothings
They're homicidal morons.
Television is a solitary activity masquerading as a social one. The internet is a social activity masquerading as a solitary one. This conservative has never warmed up to Fox Nation because of exactly this kind of sewage. I won't apologize for other people's misdeeds, but I'm sorry you folks have to see that stuff.
Fred,
You are a good man anonymous makes sense..BTW I am never going to accept the insanity of ignorant black folks nor feel pity or guilt for them..
Thanks for the kind words, Anon included. But guilt and apologies are the very stuff of my universe, and sometimes I might get carried away.
I agree, of course, that walking-the-walk is the important thing, and that we all must start with ourselves.
It's like I sometimes explained to my law clients: I do wish that I had a magic wand, and could make it all go away, but we need to stick to our options here.
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