Well obviously not... But it seems to me like there could be a silver lining in the dark cloud that is McCain's campaign tactics of racist innuendo -- if Obama wins (as I am expecting and hoping he will), it will be a pretty significant bit of evidence that racist attacks have lost their appeal with the American electorate -- or that the portion of the electorate they appeal to has shrunk into insignificance.
posted morning of Sunday, October 19th, 2008
➳ More posts about Politics
If you are getting all your political information from Talking Points Memo, you will hardly get an impartial viewpoint. Try balancing it with something not written by a highly paid consultant, like this:
http://blog.pumapac.org/2008/09/22/lets-talk-about-race/
or something like this:
http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/how-dare-you-question-dear-leader/
And if you're going to talk about racism I think you also have to talk about the really crude and inexcusable violent sexual attacks on Palin.
posted evening of October 21st, 2008 by Nijma
Ah, but the difference is, "crude and inexcusable violent sexual attacks" (such as they may be -- I've seen a couple of rude blog comments or posts but nothing with any focus or frequency to speak of) are not being perpetrated by the Obama campaign -- whereas the racist attacks against Obama are part of the explicit strategy of McCain's campaign. They are paid for out of campaign funds and designed by campaign staff.
I'm really not interested in balancing well-written political analysis of Josh Marshall and his staff with incoherent rants from dittoheads, thanks.
posted morning of October 22nd, 2008 by Jeremy
How is questioning someone about socialism "r@cist"? Socialism is an economic theory. Ayers is white and so was the Weather Underground.
But considering Obama's statements about redistribution of wealth and especially the older video of him talking about using the executive branch instead of the Supreme Court to achieve
"social justice", I would like some more explanation.
That socialism question seemed a little strange to me, but why not just answer the question instead of saying "it's r@cist"? And Biden is white so he couldn't use the r@cism thing; he just said the reporters who asked the question wouldn't get any more interviews.
Why NOT answer the socialism question?...now it's the avoidance of the question that's starting to look odd.
If you are really interested in how the Obama campaign uses sexism, you could start with Hillbuzz then start following their links--they now have a tab just for documenting the daily official and surrogate sexist attacks against Palin. There's plenty of stuff out there about what the Obama campaign did to Hillary too--you can even see the videos of Obama flipping Hillary off while the crowd roars. And the t-shirts....The latest ones say "Palin is a c***"--google the pictures--but "Bros before Hos" was hugely popular before that.
In the last debate Obama was asked a direct question about the crude and offensive t-shirts being worn by his supporters. At that point he had a perfect opportunity to reject the tactics of his supporters. I was disappointed but not surprised that he did not.
posted evening of November first, 2008 by Nijma
Look, calling Obama a socialist is not racist, just stupid. What I was referring to as "racist innuendo" is the McCain campaign's claim, at the link, that Obama is going to turn the IRS into "a giant welfare agency" -- this serves to associates Obama with "welfare", which is a code word for "the black underclass", which has a racist effect. There are plenty of other thinly coded racist appeals from the McCain campaign out there.
posted morning of November second, 2008 by Jeremy
Yeah I thought it was stupid too, but who knows. But how is the IRS linked to a "black underclass"? Taxes are based on income, not race. Economics again. That would be the "economic justice" that so many equate with socialism or Marxism and creeps into Obama's remarks when he's unscripted or that some are reading into the tax calculator on his website.
If you want to talk race, then you're talking about reparations for slavery, which the Republican governor of Florida has said he would consider. But that's "racial", not "racist".
I don't believe there is any "racist dogwhistle code", thinly veiled or otherwise. It's just an excuse to avoid answering awkward questions and get pity by calling people racist who are not racist.
posted evening of November second, 2008 by Nijma
how is the IRS linked to a "black underclass"?
They're not! But "welfare" is. McCain says, "Obama is going to turn the IRS into a welfare agency" -- "IRS" might as well not be in the sentence at all, the components that are doing all the work are "Obama" and "welfare".
posted morning of November third, 2008 by Jeremy
"Welfare" is a racist dogwhistle code? I will be dipped in s#1t! All those years I was a caseworker and followed the policy manual for income requirements instead of going by race. How was I to know? Gosh, and I even got food stamps a couple of times; I didn't know that was supposed to be a racial thing then either. Why, I must be a secret r@cist!
Of course the TANF, food stamp, and KidCare is now combined with medicare, SSA, and SSI in a "one stop shopping" deal, so I guess all those disabled and under 19 and over 65 types are racist too. And they have translators for Spanish, Arabic, and Polish, so gosh, there's so many racist welfare people in the world that don't even speak English, whodathunk.
Of course linking welfare directly with the IRS would put all those caseworkers and translators out of work, but hey, income redistribution might turn out to be a beautiful thing for them too--if they're the right color... oh, wait, the IRS isn't linked to race after all.
Well, it's been nice chatting, but maybe I'll scamper back to my own blog now. I'm from Illinois--wonder if I should even bother to vote tomorrow.
posted evening of November third, 2008 by Nijma
See ya.
posted morning of November 4th, 2008 by Jeremy
