Axis Kast wrote: Because you say it doesn't? Sorry, but it very clearly does when GOP campaigns get away with bullshit like the Willie Horton scaremongering propaganda and the "McCain's illegitimate black baby" smearjob in addition to the often not-subtle attacks on affirmative action (e.g. the Helms/Gantt senate race of 1996).
You’ll need more than a snide, snickering insistence that every reference to a criminal that happens to be black is evident utilization of the race card.
I'm sorry if the real world doesn't suit you on this question. But then, we identified your problem with this sort of thing several years ago and it appears you have learned nothing in the intervening time.
The “revolving door” ad put forth by the Bush campaign to perpetuate the negative campaign begun with the Horton case featured a distinct minority of non-white actors playing felons supposedly released under the furlough program. The Dukakis campaign felt obliged to fire back with an ad that alleged hypocrisy, pointing out that Reagan was “guilty” of the same oversight – involving an individual named Angel Medrano.
Please. Only a moron fails to grasp that the entire tenor of that ad was to frighten whites into believing that President Dukakis would open the prison doors to let out the black hordes TO COME AND RAPE YOUR DAUGHTERS/WIVES/SWEETHEARTS.
As the
New York Times observed:
For the 1988 campaign to elect then-Vice President Bush, the indelible image that helped defeat Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts was a black man named Willie Horton. Willie Horton committed rape while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison under a program that was actually started by another governor, a Republican.
Despite his public denials that he had anything to do with an anti-Dukakis commercial featuring Mr. Horton, this film has Mr. Atwater encouraging an outside group to spread the word. The tactic worked. Mr. Atwater and friends managed to turn Willie Horton’s face into the only thing some voters could remember about the Democratic nominee.
Then we have
Sidney Blumenthal's word on the matter:
In the debate. Gore mentioned neither Willie Horton's name nor his race. He depicted Dukakis as weak, handing out "weekend passes for convicted criminals." Dukakis, responding indirectly, shot back that his "experience" as an executive was superior to Gore's. Gore shrank from his attack, never alluding to the issue again. But James Pinkerton the [Vice-President and
Republican presidential candidate, George] Bush campaign's director of opposition research, was monitoring the New York debate. It was the first time anyone in the Bush group had ever heard of Willie Horton. "The more people who know who Willie Horton is, the better off we'll be," he told [Bush's campaign manager] Lee Atwater. . . .
. . . the Bush campaign virtually nominated Willie Horton as Michael Dukakis's running mate. The furloughing of Horton by a prison board was turned from a weak spot in Dukakis's criminal justice record to weakness in dealing with black pressure, from incompetence as a manager to ideological extremism, from cerebral arrogance to lacking compassion for the victims of crime, and, finally, to lacking feeling per se. Dukakis, according to Bush, was a "know nothing, believe nothing, feel nothing" candidate, "the ice man."
"There is a story about a fellow named Willie Horton who, for all I know, may end up being Dukakis' running mate," Lee Atwater told a group of southern Republicans in Atlanta just prior to the Democratic convention there. "The guy [Dukakis] was on TV about a month ago, and he said, You’ll never see me standing in the driveway of my house talking to these [vice presidential] candidates.' And guess what? Monday, I saw in his driveway of his home Jesse Jackson. So anyway, maybe he [Dukakis] will put this Willie Horton on the ticket after all is said and done."
Atwater and other senior advisers later claimed that race had been extraneous to their decision to raise the Horton issue. But a member of the Bush campaign team who was helping to produce the negative spots said: "Willie Horton has star quality. Willie's going to be politically furloughed to terrorize again. It's a wonderful mix of liberalism and a big black rapist."
from: Willie Horton and the 1988 Presidential Campaign
From Sidney Blumenthal's Pledging Allegiance: The Last Campaign of the Cold War
(New York: Harper Collins, 1990) pp. 224, 264-65, 295-96. 307-08.
Whoa! Stop the tape! Stop the tape, stop the tape! Let's go back over that last paragraph:
Atwater and other senior advisers later claimed that race had been extraneous to their decision to raise the Horton issue. But a member of the Bush campaign team who was helping to produce the negative spots said: "Willie Horton has star quality. Willie's going to be politically furloughed to terrorize again. It's a wonderful mix of liberalism and a big black rapist."
Quote: "a wonderful mix of liberalism and
A BIG BLACK RAPIST." Yeah,
SUUUUUUURE the Willie Horton ad had nothing to do with the GOP playing the race card. Pull the other one.
The McCain push poll was carried out by unknown persons. It can certainly be ascribed to Republicans, but assigning institutional or general blame is absolutely impossible.
Axi, Axi, Axi... How eagerly you rush to your
destruction:
After Rove Denied Role In McCain Whisper Campaign, Reporters Concluded He Was Behind It.
A December 1999 Dallas Morning News linked Rove to a series of campaign dirty tricks, including his College Republican efforts, allegedly starting a whisper campaign about Ann Richard being too gay-friendly, spreading stories about Jim Hightower’s involvement in a kickback scheme and leaking the educational history of Lena Guerrero. The article also outlined current dirty tricks and whisper campaigns against McCain in South Carolina, including that “McCain may be unstable as a result of being tortured while a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.” (DMN, 12/2/99) After the article was published, Rove blasted Slater in the Manchester, NH airport, “nose to nose” according to one witness, with Rove claiming Slater had “harmed his reputation,” Slater later noted. But according to one witness, “What was interesting then is that everyone on the campaign charter concluded that Rove was responsible for rumors about McCain.”
And, as for Senator Helms’ campaign, it’s no secret that his ad was racist. No excuse.
Except to the GOP, who hired on one of Helms' campaign advisers to work for John McCain in 2008.
Please. Part of the GOP's appeal to southern voters has been predicated upon things like affirmative action being part of the "big government" problem. And despite what you continue to insist, States' Rights is still a codeword for "dem Feds have no business tellin us we need to give 'dem coons rights".
Prove it. Show me valid, convincing evidence that Southern whites vote Republican to perpetuate a mode of social control that is no longer in place.
Your constant trouble – and you did this with Turner as well – is that you make completely unsubstantiated claims about what people’s interests are and then expect everyone to give you a free pass. There’s no doubt that Helms appealed to racist opinion in his presentations against Affirmative Action. That does not make all opponents of Affirmative Action racists.
And your constant trouble is a continual denial of reality which is shoved right into your face because it gets in the way of your pursuit of shadows. Southern whites do indeed vote Republican for racial identity reasons. The party has definitely identified itself to Southern whites as the party of white interest. As the article
Breaking The White Nation points out:
Today we can locate the great base of support and political power for the religious right in the South, and thus the great base of support and political power for the opposition to women’s rights in the South.
The engagement, with Neo-Confederacy to various levels and by various means from involvement to expression of Neo-Confederate beliefs to working with Neo-Confederates, is extensive with reactionaries in American life. In an article on Confederate Christian nationalism, published in the Canadian Review of American Studies of the Univ. of Toronto Press, we showed how Christian Reconstructionism is Neo-Confederate in its beliefs and overlaps with much of the Neo-Confederate movement.
Both Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson interviewed with Southern Partisan, as did Dick Armey, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott, Phil Gramm, and numerous other Republicans.
The history department at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in 2002 had a trial of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee finding them not guilty and vindicating the Confederacy and this year put Abraham Lincoln on trial, finding him guilty. This is put forth as merely a historical exercise, but Jefferson Davis’ and Robert E. Lee’s trial at Liberty University was the cover article for the Southern Partisan. [34]
Pat Robertson’s Rutherford Institute defends Confederate flag cases. George W. Bush owes his victory in the South Carolina 2000 Presidential primary to the former associate editor of the Southern Partisan, Richard T. Hines, who ran a Pro-Confederate flag effort attacking John McCain as not supporting the Confederate flag. [35] An endless catalog can be listed of these things.
The Southern Partisan certainly conceptualizes much of the modern conservative movement as being Neo-Confederate or in alignment with its values. A recent issue had as its cover a photo of the head of Ronald Reagan saluting, with the cover title, “The Legacy of Ronald Reagan.” The article’s introduction explains, “If Bill Clinton was the first black president, as some have argued, then Ronald Reagan was the first Southern President of the 20th century.” Dismissing Woodrow Wilson as not being truly southern, the article’s introduction concludes, “That’s why we were especially moved when we learned of his death. We felt as if a direct descendant of Jefferson Davis had died. Hence the following.” [36]
Trent Lott also sees the Republican party the party of Jefferson Davis. The following exchange was in his Southern Partisan interview by the same Richard T. Hines:
PARTISAN: At the convention of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Biloxi, Mississippi you made the statement that the “spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican party platform.” What did you mean by that?
LOTT: I think that a lot of the fundamental principles that Jefferson Davis believed in are very important today to people all across the country, and they apply to the Republican Party. …
… But we have seen the Republican Party become more oriented toward the traditional family values, the religious values that we hold dear in the South. And the Democratic party has been going in the other direction. As a result of that, more and more of The South’s sons, Jefferson Davis’ descendents, direct or indirect, are becoming involved with the Republican Party. The platform we had in Dallas, the 1984 Republican platform, all the ideas we supported there – from tax policy, to foreign policy; from individual rights, to neighborhood security – are things Jefferson Davis and his people believed in. [37]
After the massive defeats of the Democratic Party in 1994, in an interview in Civil War News, the Commander-in-Chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) discussed the victory of the Republican Party:
According to Dasinger, the mood of the nation seems to have changed in recent years, as evident by the results from the national elections last November. Dasinger says that while people appear to strive for “political correctness” on the outside, they quietly vote their conscience on the inside once they step into the voting booths and are alone.
“If our politicians can’t read the results of the November elections, then there’s something wrong with them,” Dasinger says. “And if they thought last November 8th was something, I think they are in for a real shock the next time around.”
Dasinger says this new national mood has helped to contribute to the popularity of groups like the SCV, which appeals to those who are trying to stay focused on their heritage. In fact, Dasinger predicts that the present trend may only be the tip of the iceberg. [38]
Not surprisingly the Southern Partisan sold a T-shirt with the Republican Party logo on the front with a Confederate battle flag pattern with the words, “Lincoln’s Worst Nightmare,” and on the back the statement, “A States’ Rights Party from Dixie” with the “x” in Dixie a Confederate Battle flag, and the text surrounded by the flags of the states of the former Confederacy.
The modern reactionary movement is interpenetrated by the Neo-Confederate movement and derives many of its ideas from Neo-Confederacy. The current triumph of the Republican Party is a triumph of the Neo-Confederate historical narrative and the nationalism which it constructs.
FAILED OPPOSITION
Despite the enormous influence of a Neo-Confederate region on America’s history and politics, progressive, egalitarian and liberal forces seem blind to Neo-Confederacy and the geography of our politics.
Neo-Confederacy came very close to defeating the 19th amendment, and it did defeat the ERA. The states with the Confederate flags and monuments are the base of opposition to women’s rights, yet Neo-Confederacy is unknown to women’s studies and feminism. This is not unique to feminism. Any number of other progressive movements are similarly blind.
The general idea seems to be that some progressive agenda can be effected in the south, sidestepping and not confronting Neo-Confederacy. This is despite the historical record of biracial coalitions in the 1890s and the Virginia Readjusters in the 1870s being defeated by Neo-Confederacy.
Part of this is because some white progressives in the south may think they are the most advanced thing, but they never have left the plantation. The abandonment of Green Party congressional candidate, Vanderbilt University mathematics professor and African American Jonathan Farley to the Neo-Confederate wolves in Nashville, Tennessee after Farley criticized the Confederate tradition, reveals the Green Party to be the white party after all. This is not a unique event with some progressive elements in the south who time and time reveal themselves to be good sons and daughters of the Confederacy. Being prisoners of a Confederate identity, they can not effectively advance a progressive politics. Banal white nationalism short circuits progressive politics all too often.
Outside the South this reactionary complex, the Confederate-identified South, is not comprehended as what it is. There might be some comments about conservatives in the south, but the Confederate nationalist South as the origin of these reactionary politics is not comprehended. When the Confederacy is brought up, it is seen as an obstacle to prying few a few loose Southern electoral votes and congressional seats from the Republican party.
Given the economic status of the south and the average income, it should be the bastion of the Democratic Party, in fact the left wing of the Democratic Party, instead of the Right wing of the Republican Party. This was perceived by Howard Dean, former 2004 Democratic presidential candidate in his statement about having economic issues as the politics to get the votes of the guys with the Confederate flags. This statement both shows what Dean understands and what he doesn’t understand at all. It is the very Confederate flag which represents a view that the holder’s interests are ultimately their white skin and a privileged position in society as a white man versus gays, minorities, feminists, immigrants, and others. The Confederate tradition is the anti-democratic tradition and short circuits the politics of class.
There will not be a sustained progressive politics in the South or in the nation as a whole as long as there is a Confederate nation within the American nation. If there is to be a secure basis of democratic politics in America this must be understood.
Only the blind fail to see that the Nixonian Southern Strategy's clear appeal to white interest remains the basis for continuing GOP political control of the Old Confederacy. You try desperately to make it an issue of "Christian values", but those values are inseperable from those of Neo-Confederate ideology. And in the end, as always, the only interests that are secured by this politics of division are those of rich old white men.
The game is really given away when you've got national GOP leaders (Trent Lott, John Ashcroft) writing for Southern nationalist rags like Southern Partisan and supporting one state's insistence on its right to fly the Confederate flag over the state capitol building.
The “Glorious Cause” is a staple of American history curriculums in the American South. Students are routinely taught that Confederate soldiers marched to war in the interest of defending their homes and property from an invader who looked liable to (and very often did) despoil it. Rogue 9 makes a very strong case that the acts of secession were in the serve of slave-owning elites, but a much less convincing argument that we can isolate the infrequent references to “damn abolitionists” in lengthy speeches as compelling and exclusive evidence that slave economics rather than community solidarity compelled young men to fight. It’s no wonder that the Confederate flag is often embraced as a symbol of devotion to duty rather than accepted as a reminder of horrific injustice. Racism need have nothing to do with it, although it is obviously racially insensitive.
Rogue-9's case is ironclad. The beliefs of individual grunts on the front lines, or even of a few of the officer corps, is immaterial next to the fact that the Southern leadership knew full well what the war was about and what they were seeking to defend, as the various ordinances of secession spell out in black-and-white. Millions of southern children have been fed Lost Cause propaganda for more than a century so they don't ever see that secession was always about white power and the right to keep slaves.
If you say so, Gracie. The particular cartoon's rather opaque "joke" turned upon knowledge of a little-known incident outside of New York appearing in a Murdoch-owned newspaper which "just happened" to link a stereotypical image for black people with the very bill being pushed by the current president, a black man. None of this has anything to do with the Calvin Turner issue, which still cannot be defined as racist as you attempted to do in complete ignorance of who you were speaking of. That you continue to go to these lengths to try to defend your blunder on this point is, sad to say, typical of you. But by all means, just continue to make a fool of yourself on this instead of letting it drop. It's most entertaining.
The facts speak for themselves. The incident, which occurred in Connecticut, led on the front page of the
Post the day before the cartoon appeared, providing context. The mauling had been reported the day before as far afield as the U.K., and also ran on CNN and other major media outlets. The stimulus bill can be linked to Obama only in his institutional role as president. Before the incident, it was actually more closely linked to Pelosi. Obama’s stake is that he supported it. Popular opinion among conservatives, however, was that the bill was simply a big concession to a range of special interests that were only tenuously related to economic resuscitation. A hodgepodge of illogically-grouped hand-outs.
The facts do indeed speak for themselves, despite your attempts at obsfucation. Showing an image of a dead monkey and linking it to the stimulus bill which is the hallmark of President Obama's programme as part of a very opaque joke does not erase the implied racist connotations of the piece no matter how much you like to pretend it does. As this
editorial piece which was quoted in the thread on this site about the cartoon in question outlines it:
To the editors who approved the cartoon, as well as the cartoonist, the piece was clearly all fun and laughs. But anyone with half a brain, especially someone knowing the history of African-Americans being called monkeys and gorillas, would have said, "We need to rethink this."
First, mixing the two stories is ridiculous. Yes, the chimpanzee incident and the passage of the stimulus bill have a lot of folks talking, but to put them in the same element just doesn't make sense.
Second, the cartoonist didn't hang a sign around the neck of the chimp, so he left it up to the reader to determine exactly who the cops were referring to.
We all know that the stimulus bill was the first priority of the new president, so when reading the caption, it was easy to infer that the cartoonist was implying the president of the United States.
You know, the black guy.
And that's where the problem comes in.
What could be seen as silly humor if President George W. Bush were in the White House has to be seen through the lens of America's racist past, as noted by the leaders of the New York Association of Black Journalists, who also are demanding an apology from the Post. iReport.com: iReporter very offended by cartoon
"How do you think the Jewish community would feel about the use of rats in any depiction of them? How do you think the Italian community would feel about being generalized with mobsters?" the organization said in a statement.
"Monkey slurs against Africans and African-Americans go back to the days of early colonialism, when Anglo Saxon, Spanish and Portuguese conquerors used these types of drawings and descriptions to dehumanize black people so that their mistreatment and enslavement would not be viewed as wrong or sinful. The practice also took on more sinister roles later in history including during the slave trade here in the U.S. and in Hitler's Nazi Germany."
Ignorant leaders of the New York Post and others may think everything is fair game, and certainly criticizing the president of the United States is just fine. Yet while everyone seems to be caught up in the delusion of a post-racial America, we cannot forget the reality of the racial America, where African-Americans were treated and portrayed as inferior and less than others.
And Calvin Turner did make a racist comment. He did not say, “Secretary Rice is voting against her own interests,” he said that she was an Uncle Tom figure.
Uncle Tom is not a racist slur, no matter how much you wish to believe it is. Racism applies only to members of another race or ethnic group. "Uncle Tom" is used as an insult and a caricature between blacks, but the term itself does not connote an ethnic-based definition of superiority/inferiority, which is what racism is.
The assertion that blacks who identify with the Republican Party are voting against “their own interests” presumes automatically that such blacks cannot know their own interests, but must rely on the expert analysis of Mr. Deegan, who is much more able to speak to their requirements as political creatures.
Man of straw. Typical.
When that hispanic's economic interests are clearly being undermined by the party he's voting for, I can say it and so can anybody else who can view the issue objectively. I know full well he only cares that "dem Queers can't get married" far more so than anything else that really matters in his life or to his family, such as his own economic security and life in a well-functioning society. And once more, this is all part of serving the interests the GOP is out to protect —those of rich old white men.
How patronizing. It is particularly interesting to me that you admit that a minority can vote according to a particular interest, but insist that so long as this is not “economic” in the sense that you have defined it, he is not really voting “properly,” “effectively,” or according to his “interests” at all!
I'm sorry if reality doesn't suit you. But then, we've know you've had this problem for years. Somebody who is casting aside what his objectively observable best interests are in favour of wedge-issues being pushed by the people who want to see to it their own power is preserved at all costs IS voting against his own interests, moron.
Rahm Emanuel claims that the Republican Party supports Limbaugh, and individuals like Michael Steele fight shy of him because he can do them damage. Emanuel’s approach is very clever, but it does not necessarily speak to a reality.
Has it never occurred to you that Republicans might not feel compelled to “speak up” about Limbaugh because, even when he doesn’t represent them, they simply don’t get worked up about it? I see injustice all the time. I can shout ‘till I’m blue in the face. I save my energy for what I feel matters. Assuring you that Rush Limbaugh doesn’t represent my views isn’t one of those activities.
What sort of horseshit non-answer is
that supposed to be?! Republican lawmakers are on record as stating that Rush represents "the true spirit of the Republican Party". That means they give tacit approval and support to his vile ideology. Either you are a complete imbecile for trying to spew that with a straight face or you are simply an outright apologist.
