Boy, Oh, Boy - Maureen Dowd's take on Joe Klein's sad outburst and the GOP

Boy, Oh, Boy
by Maureen Dowd, Op-Ed Columnist
New York Times
Published: September 12, 2009

this is from a couple of weeks ago, but it's a good take; meant to post it then; ah well. - sj

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.

The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.

But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

read the rest here

Obama's official birth certificate

Here it is you fucking birth survivors (clik official birth certificate for bigger view). Oh, and by the way, the other presidential candidate, John McShame, was born in Panama. Is Panama in America? - sj

Miss USA and the "B" Word

by Emma Ruby-Sachs - Huffington Post

In the Miss USA contest, Perez Hilton, celebrity blogger extraordinaire, asked Miss California what she thought about gay marriage. Her answer, supporting "opposite marriage," earned her both cheers and boos from the crowd and likely cost her the Miss USA crown.

It also spurred a video response from Hilton calling Miss California a dumb b****.

Hilton apologized for using the b-word, then retracted his apology and now even the BBC is covering the newest tensions surrounding gay marriage in America.

But no one is talking about the b-word that should be used to describe Miss California: bigot.

A bigot is one who is (according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary) "obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices ; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance."

To take a state institution like marriage and quarantine it from same-sex couples despite the complete lack of evidence that such a restriction is rational or in the best interests of the citizens of the state is intolerance.

The basis for the marriage restriction that many put forward (although Miss America didn't even have the wherewithal to go this far) is that gay marriage constitutes a threat to religious freedom. However, no equal rights initiative has contemplated ordering religious institutions to recognize same-sex couples.

Unfortunately, Miss America is not the only bigot in America's public life.

We could list a large number of Republicans, Rudy Giuliani for one, and a number of Democrats.

Even President Obama holds the intolerant and bigoted view that marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman. Sure, he couches it with talk of equal rights under the law, but has, so far stood behind civil unions as an alternative to marriage - a plan that would create the same kind of separate but equal legal scheme rejected by Brown v. Board of Education.

Miss California, like many who share her take on the marriage issue, was careful to talk about her "opinion" and "beliefs" and the way she was raised as if this excused her intolerance. Barack Obama talks about tradition and belief as well in defense of his own position.

But the fight for equality is not just an exercise in name-calling. And it is not a polite exchange between friends about what to eat for dinner. There is no room for preference or belief when it comes to legally enforceable discrimination that is imposed on the entire population

The unequal treatment of LGBT Americans creates real casualties and ongoing disastrous effects for many citizens. We don't want to re-insert Perez Hilton's chosen b-word back into accepted public discourse, but we must begin to call the opposition to equality what it is: bigotry.

Seriously?

The New York Post's editors clearly weren't thinking, which appears to be par for their course:

"But it has been taken as something else -- as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism," reads the statement. "This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize....However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past -- and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback," the statement says. "To them, no apology is due. Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon -- even as the opportunists seek to make it something else."

Come, now, you can't really believe that is a legitimate apology. Any reasonably sentient person with even a shred of historical perspective would easily make the association of the chimp to the first African-American President of the US. Given the legacy of racist depictions of African-Americans, over centuries, as monkeys or apes, any aforementioned reasonable person should draw the conclusion that a cartoon such as this would be perceived as at best insensitive, at worst blatantly racist.

As for the defenders of the artist and tabloid who point out that GW Bush was often portrayed as a chimp, the intent of the cartoon is beside the point. There is a line beyond which is no man's land when it comes to racial sensitivity, and there's just too much historical baggage for this to be taken in another context.

See just how our republican leaders keep select Americans from voting

If this doesn't make you sick, you are unamerican. Period. Watch this and learn something you probably didn't know.