Thursday, September 27, 2012
Barack Obama isn't a "Real" President: Newt Gingrich Channels Birth of a Nation (Again)
Sometimes they make it all too easy. I called out this predictable strategy months ago on The Ed Schultz Radio Show. My gifts of prognostication are not that great; it is simply that the Republican Party is desperate, uncreative, and bereft of new ideas. The Southern Strategy is simply a bad rerun that the Right has given up trying to update or repackage.
Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party GOP are so very 19th century in their fears of "Black Reconstruction," "Negro Rule," and President Obama. Prominent conservatives have developed a set of talking points which suggest that the country's first black president--and by extension African-Americans as a community--is lazy, irresponsible, shiftless, incompetent, uppity, arrogant, a thief, not a citizen or "real" American, wants to steal money from hard working white people in order to give it lazy negroes, and oppresses the good white people of America.
At this point, it is abundantly clear that Gingrich, Romney, and the assorted "polite racists" in the country's de facto White Party must either carry around copies of Thomas Dixon's The Clansmen in their pockets (right next to their laminated copies of the Constitution), or host weekly viewings of D.W Griffith's movie The Birth of a Nation at their homes or offices.
During Reconstruction, African-American legislators were described by the white southern democrat press in terms not too unlike those used by Gingrich and the Right-wing media when they talk about Barack Obama today. Given that the Dixiecrats are now Republicans, and the Tea Party GOP has absorbed the former Confederacy, conservatives should simply go back to the future and publicly state that Barack Obama is a "monkey," or alternatively describe the White House, the First Family, and black elected officials as a "menagerie."
It would be much more efficient than the charade of racial dog whistles and air raid sirens that the Right and its noise machine have deployed to date. Honesty can be refreshing, even when it has the stench of white racism and white racial resentment, that in combination, form the go to game plan for the Republican Party in the Age of Obama.
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16 comments:
It's hardly a mistake that not a month goes by without news of some local yokel GOP operative sending out vile, racist images of the president akin to those in Birth of a Nation. With Romney losing, I guess we can expect the desperate appeals to bigotry intensify.
@WHB. Desperate times call for desperate actions. Where will they go? Who knows?
Who you trying to convince brah man? Obama's base already believes that Romney sucks.
http://t.co/uXAxc7Cc
For those not already on board this ringing endorsement from Madonna should do the trick:
“Y’all better vote for f–king Obama, OK? For better or for worse, all right? We have a black Muslim in the White House. Now that’s some amazing s–t. It means there is hope in this country. And Obama is fighting for gay rights, so support the man, goddamnit."
And, hey, here's a powerful endorsement by Samuel L. Jackson, mother fuckers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK7QfCEEiBs&feature=player_embedded
Now really. If a black man suddenly appeared in white folks homes in the middle of the night talking about “wake the fuck up”, I think their reactions would be a lot stronger. They’d be hysterically reaching for revolvers or dialing 911.
By the way, anybody see Jackson’s “Meeting Evil”? Check out what this black dude did in a white suburb.
"Wake the fuck up? Sure anything you say Mr. Jackson. Vote for Obama? You bet, sir. Donate? Yes indeed! I'll be having a bake sale tomorrow.....Please don't hurt me."
Well Newt is right on one point. I suspect Obama is contemptuous of Newt.
Newt is right, Obama isn't a real President, he's a tool of the one percent. I just wish liberals were the ones saying it instead of some southern salamander
@MB. Who has the Lady Gaga vote?
@Nomad. Don't be hating on Mace Windu. Sam is post-black very black in a comic way. Quite a performance. no?
@O. Newt hasn't done a productive thing in 15 years and lives off of the gov't tit and rich people's money. Unmitigated nerve. Plus, given how he was censured and dirty as hell he has no business talking about anyone.
@IM. So kind and naive. All presidents are tools of the 1 percent by definition.
Why do they insist on putting Newt on tv? Every one that was alive in the 90s hates him. He called Mitt the most solid republican since Eisenhower(wtf???). Larry Flint put him on front street while he was after Clinton. He gets booked after he says the most inflammatory things and is never called on it(Sharpton doesn't count).
I'm pretty burned out with these charlatans. The best we can do is keep them out of public office. Newt has done enough harm already.
Vic78
"Sam is post-black very black in a comic way. Quite a performance. no?"
He's the best. Check out "Meeting Evil". Critics didnt seem to like it but its vintage Jackson. I thought it was pretty good.
The "good white people of America" aren't a very impressive bunch these days. Perhaps they should be worried at the prospect of being challenged.
A fellow ex-pat friend of mine recently got back from a trip to Illinois, his first trip to the states in five years. He was horrified at two things: how fat everybody was ("they ride around Walmart in motorized shopping carts!"); and the number of "hillbilly" reality shows on TV.
I take no pleasure in this degeneration, and if any other ethnic groups want to step in and help out, I think it's just fine. CNu wants to study him up some high-tech? Great, thank you, somebody's got to do it. Being president is the hardest job in America. If there's a Black American who wants the job, God bless him, we can use the help.
And what's up with this "Witch Doctor in Chief and his Wookie wife" bullshit? I read those comments too, up on the Breitbart, or Weasel Zippers.
President Obama may not be perfect, I'm no Neo-Liberal apologist, but he's okay, all things considered, and his wife seems like a wonderful woman offering zero grounds on which to condemn her.
The bad-mouthing: very few heartfelt, advised opinions; tons of parroted talking points; mostly ruthless electioneering. Nothing forgivable about any of it. Shame, shame, shame.
"President Obama may not be perfect, I'm no Neo-Liberal apologist, but he's okay, all things considered,"
Please. Support him, vote for him, contribute to the campaign, but don't fool yourself. Obama is the worst president since the spectacularly awful Dubya. In the end, he might actually surpass him in shocking awfulness. You're not voting to retain a good president. You're voting to stave off one that is, ostensibly worse. The lesser of two awfuls.
@ Nomad
Admit it, President Obama could be worse. Now, now, go ahead, swallow that bile and admit it: President Obama could be worse.
I don't know about you, but I couldn't say that about W. He was a perfect storm of awful. President Honey Boo Boo.
Maybe W was more of an embarrassment to me because I'm White, and President Obama to you because, you know . . . maybe. These things happen.
And who says I'm voting? I'd be an absentee ballot in California, and if Obama needs those to win California, he's lost the whole thing already. Saves me from having to compromise anything.
There's one thing that I don't fool myself about. I never pretend to understand what's going on in our new, permanent, unelected Executive Branch. After seventy-one years of emergency rule, with the budget they've got, and with their giant to-do list, and bases all over the world, and answering to just about nobody these days, who knows what goes on in there? Obama could be a hero for all we know.
"President Obama could be worse."
How? More drone strikes? Even crappier corporate healthcare bill? A couple more wars maybe? Another bail out for the banks perhaps? Even more neglect of mainstreet foreclosed homes and whathaveyou? Slash the social safety net? Acquire even more police state powers?
Well, now that you mention it, I guess he could be worse. And the way things are going, he will be. Mark my words. What a sad state of affairs when the best we can say about the merits of the sitting president is that he could be worse. On that fact we are both in agreement. I object to the blithe assertion, the myth that non-neoliberals perpetuate, that Obama is okay. He is far from okay. As I say support him you like, but don't offer up that myth as justification. He's not good. He's awful. It's just that he's the lesser of two awfuls.
I did see "Meeting Evil". I wasn't as impressed.
I do think that although Obama is marginally better than Romney would be there are quite valid and honorable reasons to vote for other candidates.
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