Perhaps I haven't made my disgust with the racist commentary on the right side of the political fence clear enough. But really, people: knock it off. I don't want to get snarky emails about the "First Bro" or Photoshopped pictures of watermelons growing on the White House lawn. You are doing NO ONE a service by spreading this crap. I will start emailing you one at a time if you keep sending me anything relating to Obama's race and might get snippy and self-righteous with you. That sort of thing IS racist, and it isn't funny or productive. ENOUGH already. We're supposed to be better than this, yes?!??
That said, the image above has several glaring things wrong with it. Let's start with the various political parties at large at the end of the Civil War. Jefferson Davis: Democrat. Abraham Lincoln: Republican. The Republican Party, in fact, was formed in reaction against slavery, and African Americans became a reliably Republican voting bloc (those who weren't prevented from voting in the south by their mostly Democrat white neighbors) until the 1930s. History matters, and some of us conservatives still read it.
And having vented about that, I'm not finished. I have been very careful NOT to mention the President's race in this blog, partly because it's irrelevant to me, and partly because even mentioning it in passing gives some critics the assumed right to disregard my opinion because I am obviously a racist. The President's policy decisions are bad enough without any vitriol and nastiness. If racist commentary is the best the right has to offer, they deserve to lose in 2010. Populism has a price, and one of them is a tendency to appeal to the lowest common denominators, including racial hatreds. So, again: knock it off.
But to those of you who think the image above is terribly clever, I would ask you to put away your broad brush and listen more thoughtfully to those of us who do NOT discuss the President's race and STILL oppose his policies. Disagreeing with the President is not racist.
End of rant.
1 comment:
Bart - thank you for this.
Happily, this liberal's inbox isn't being inundated by the images and written slurs that yours apparently is. But I applaud you for drawing the line, and for following through on the individual basis, if you need to.
Furthermore, you are right - the more that this crap seeps out of the mouths and pens of (let's hope) a few hateful people, performing the latest appalling thing to be the shiny object that media focuses on, the less likely it is that the center and the left will take the right seriously. It becomes so easy to dismiss another point of view, because you can't hear it or see it for all the awful vitriol gushing out the sewer pipes of the media outlets.
You and I are about as opposite as can be when it comes to politics, yet we share a common respect for all people and allow that to guide our discussions. I appreciate that you don't see the President's race, or my gender, when you consider what we are saying and doing.
Thanks,
D2
Laughing --the captcha "word" is "stribut." When did I get possessed by Cartman?
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