Ever wonder what legal Hispanic immigrants to the United States think about illegal immigration? Fox News asked a few:
racism
Tell a Lie Loud Enough and Often Enough….
The New York Times has a celebrated history of shame, up to and including disclosing government secrets, and their latest editorial is another disgusting affront to journalism:
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We know that operatives in modern-day presidential campaigns are supposed to say things that everyone knows are ridiculous — and to do it with a straight face.
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Still, there was something surreal, and offensive, about today’s soundbite from the campaign of Senator John McCain.
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The presumptive Republican nominee has embarked on a bare-knuckled barrage of negative advertising aimed at belittling Mr. Obama. The most recent ad compares the presumptive Democratic nominee for president to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton — suggesting to voters that he’s nothing more than a bubble-headed, publicity-seeking celebrity.
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The ad gave us an uneasy feeling that the McCain campaign was starting up the same sort of racially tinged attack on Mr. Obama that Republican operatives ran against Harold Ford, a black candidate for Senate in Tennessee in 2006. That assault, too, began with videos juxtaposing Mr. Ford with young, white women.
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Mr. Obama called Mr. McCain on the ploy, saying, quite rightly, that the Republicans are trying to scare voters by pointing out that he “doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills.’’
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But Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, had a snappy answer. “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” he said. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.’’
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The retort was, we must say, not only contemptible, but shrewd. It puts the sin for the racial attack not on those who made it, but on the victim of the attack.
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It also — and we wish this were coincidence, but we doubt it — conjurs [sic] up another loaded racial image.
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The phrase dealing the race card “from the bottom of the deck” entered the national lexicon during the O.J. Simpson saga. Robert Shapiro, one of Mr. Simpson’s lawyers, famously declared of himself, Johnny Cochran and the rest of the Simpson defense team, “Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck.”
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It’s ugly stuff. How about we leave Britney, Paris, and O.J. out of this — and have a presidential campaign?
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There’s no secret racist message in McCain’s ad, implicit or otherwise. The intent was to call Obama vapid and his hype overblown, nothing more. If you’re looking for vapid, overrated celebrities, you’d be hard-pressed to find more worthy examples of any skin color. Is there really any doubt that if the campaign had used images of, say, Halle Berry instead, that would have been called a clue to the Right’s deep-seated yearning for segregation?
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And the supposed OJ allusion? To say it was deliberate is wishful speculation at best, and “dealing the race card from the bottom of the deck” seems to accurately describe both situations: a minority figure invoking race victimhood to divert attention from the real issue.
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The Times has no evidence for their thesis other than that Barack said so (speaking of which, if that was Obama “call[ing] Mr. McCain on the ploy,” why did he initially try to deny it? And if his comments were in response to McCain, why did he say them back in June, too?). There’s no lie the Left, and their propagandists in the media and blogosphere, won’t tell or spread in the pursuit of power.
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We know that operatives in modern-day presidential campaigns are supposed to say things that everyone knows are ridiculous — and to do it with a straight face.
–
Still, there was something surreal, and offensive, about today’s soundbite from the campaign of Senator John McCain.
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The presumptive Republican nominee has embarked on a bare-knuckled barrage of negative advertising aimed at belittling Mr. Obama. The most recent ad compares the presumptive Democratic nominee for president to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton — suggesting to voters that he’s nothing more than a bubble-headed, publicity-seeking celebrity.
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The ad gave us an uneasy feeling that the McCain campaign was starting up the same sort of racially tinged attack on Mr. Obama that Republican operatives ran against Harold Ford, a black candidate for Senate in Tennessee in 2006. That assault, too, began with videos juxtaposing Mr. Ford with young, white women.
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Mr. Obama called Mr. McCain on the ploy, saying, quite rightly, that the Republicans are trying to scare voters by pointing out that he “doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills.’’
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But Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, had a snappy answer. “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” he said. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.’’
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The retort was, we must say, not only contemptible, but shrewd. It puts the sin for the racial attack not on those who made it, but on the victim of the attack.
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It also — and we wish this were coincidence, but we doubt it — conjurs [sic] up another loaded racial image.
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The phrase dealing the race card “from the bottom of the deck” entered the national lexicon during the O.J. Simpson saga. Robert Shapiro, one of Mr. Simpson’s lawyers, famously declared of himself, Johnny Cochran and the rest of the Simpson defense team, “Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck.”
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It’s ugly stuff. How about we leave Britney, Paris, and O.J. out of this — and have a presidential campaign?
–
There’s no secret racist message in McCain’s ad, implicit or otherwise. The intent was to call Obama vapid and his hype overblown, nothing more. If you’re looking for vapid, overrated celebrities, you’d be hard-pressed to find more worthy examples of any skin color. Is there really any doubt that if the campaign had used images of, say, Halle Berry instead, that would have been called a clue to the Right’s deep-seated yearning for segregation?
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And the supposed OJ allusion? To say it was deliberate is wishful speculation at best, and “dealing the race card from the bottom of the deck” seems to accurately describe both situations: a minority figure invoking race victimhood to divert attention from the real issue.
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The Times has no evidence for their thesis other than that Barack said so (speaking of which, if that was Obama “call[ing] Mr. McCain on the ploy,” why did he initially try to deny it? And if his comments were in response to McCain, why did he say them back in June, too?). There’s no lie the Left, and their propagandists in the media and blogosphere, won’t tell or spread in the pursuit of power.
Around the Web
It seems the federal Women, Infants, and Children program, ostensibly a low-income healthcare aid, is referring people to Planned Parenthood. Nice, eh?
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“He doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency.” That’s the latest phony smear Obama claims the GOP is leveling against him. This race-baiting filth should be a cakewalk for any Republican candidate worth his salt. Unfortunately, we got Johnny the Wonder Dolt…who claims to be an “unabashed conservative.” Yeah, right.
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This week, Ann Coulter’s column takes on the Edwards-love child story. Lord knows if anybody’s sleazy enough to do something like this it’s John Edwards, and his reaction to the charges haven’t exactly been the conduct of an honest man with nothing to hide. Still, I’d be wary of anything from the pages of the National Enquirer.
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Religion of Peace update: evidently the Dutch no longer value freedom of speech.
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Required reading: Walter Williams on “A Country at Mercy of Environmentalists” and Rick Moran on “House Issues Apology for Slavery, Jim Crow.”
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“He doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency.” That’s the latest phony smear Obama claims the GOP is leveling against him. This race-baiting filth should be a cakewalk for any Republican candidate worth his salt. Unfortunately, we got Johnny the Wonder Dolt…who claims to be an “unabashed conservative.” Yeah, right.
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This week, Ann Coulter’s column takes on the Edwards-love child story. Lord knows if anybody’s sleazy enough to do something like this it’s John Edwards, and his reaction to the charges haven’t exactly been the conduct of an honest man with nothing to hide. Still, I’d be wary of anything from the pages of the National Enquirer.
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Religion of Peace update: evidently the Dutch no longer value freedom of speech.
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Required reading: Walter Williams on “A Country at Mercy of Environmentalists” and Rick Moran on “House Issues Apology for Slavery, Jim Crow.”
Around the Web
“The Barack Obama I knew,” according to, er, a Palestinian anti-Zionist activist. Wonderful company this guy keeps….
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Political personalities, coming to a Nintendo Wii near you.
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Nobody should take pleasure in Ted Kennedy’s recent medical woes, and most conservatives have offered him and his family their condolences and prayers, as well they should. But for John McCain to go so far beyond that as to say it’s “a great privilege to call” this guilty-of-manslaughter demagogue “my friend” is pathetic.
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In the wake of California’s latest same-sex marriage decision, Dennis Prager has some must-listen segments on the matter.
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Pot, meet kettle.
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Political personalities, coming to a Nintendo Wii near you.
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Nobody should take pleasure in Ted Kennedy’s recent medical woes, and most conservatives have offered him and his family their condolences and prayers, as well they should. But for John McCain to go so far beyond that as to say it’s “a great privilege to call” this guilty-of-manslaughter demagogue “my friend” is pathetic.
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In the wake of California’s latest same-sex marriage decision, Dennis Prager has some must-listen segments on the matter.
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Pot, meet kettle.
Around the Web
The Left’s devotion to mature, principled, open debate is on display yet again.
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Barack Obama’s been caught dead-to-rights in yet another lie. Clumsy, dishonest…this guy’s simply not ready for primetime. Of course, the Bush White House had to chicken out as soon as Barack started his hissy fit—way to display leadership, Dubya!
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Are you ready for plant rights?
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The latest food for thought from Thomas Sowell.
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Michelle Obama railing against “whitey?” On video?! Should be an interesting campaign…(hat tip: IMAO)
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Barack Obama’s been caught dead-to-rights in yet another lie. Clumsy, dishonest…this guy’s simply not ready for primetime. Of course, the Bush White House had to chicken out as soon as Barack started his hissy fit—way to display leadership, Dubya!
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Are you ready for plant rights?
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The latest food for thought from Thomas Sowell.
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Michelle Obama railing against “whitey?” On video?! Should be an interesting campaign…(hat tip: IMAO)
"You know we just think, the less black kids out there, the better." "Understandable."
It seems Planned Parenthood isn’t above flirting with racism. Here’s the latest on their most recent PR fiasco.
The Obama Future: Haven’t We Been Here Before?
No matter how you try to parse it, there’s no way to make Barack Obama’s history with Reverend Jeremiah Wright look good. On March 14, Obama told Fox News’ Major Garrett, “none of these statements were ones that I had heard myself personally in the pews” (which becomes “I knew about one or two statements” later in the interview). To buy Wright Spin 1.0, you’d have to believe that the sound bites we’ve heard were all isolated incidents outside of which Wright’s message was totally different, and that Obama never caught wind of any of it, either in person or from fellow congregants, even though this was the kind of thing the church made available on video, and his wife sure as heck was paying attention. So the best case scenario is that Obama is Jacques Clouseau. Now there’s presidential material!
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As unflattering as “inattentive buffoon” is, Obama could have settled for it. But no, in his “A More Perfect Union” speech, he said “Did I ever know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.” Make no mistake: this is an admission that Barack Obama, the new-style politician of hope who is going to restore our ability to believe in the process, lied to the American people just days earlier.
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But that’s not all Messiah has to offer. He continues to maintain that, deep down, Reverend Jeremiah—who’s like an uncle to him—isn’t so terrible: even though he made “mistakes” (you mean the CIA didn’t invent AIDS? Whoops, my bad), there was enough talk of love and Christ and helping the poor amongst the lies, demagoguery and insanity to justify regularly exposing his kids to this man and his message. I don’t buy it—especially not after Wright’s flattering appearance on Hannity & Colmes last year. (By the way, this would happen to be the same Barack Obama who called for Don Imus to be fired and for Trent Lott to resign, each for considerably less. What a fraud.)
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Then there are the cheap shots towards Geraldine Ferraro, who “some have dismissed…as harboring some deep-seated racial bias” (not Barack, of course; he just, y’know, thought you might be curious about what people are saying), “politicians [who] routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends,” and “talk show hosts and conservative commentators [who] built entire careers unmasking bogus cases of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality.” Nice. And let’s not forget Obama’s charming reminiscence about Grandma. As Ann Coulter writes this week:
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Discrimination has become so openly accepted that—in a speech meant to tamp down his association with a black racist—Obama felt perfectly comfortable throwing his white grandmother under the bus. He used her as the white racist counterpart to his black racist “old uncle,” Rev. Wright.
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First of all, Wright is not Obama’s uncle. The only reason we indulge crazy uncles is that everyone understands that people don’t choose their relatives the way they choose, for example, their pastors and mentors. No one quarrels with the idea that you can’t be expected to publicly denounce your blood relatives. But Wright is not a relative of Obama’s at all. Yet Obama cravenly compared Wright’s racist invective to his actual grandmother, who “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
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Rev. Wright accuses white people of inventing AIDS to kill black men, but Obama’s grandmother—who raised him, cooked his food, tucked him in at night, and paid for his clothes and books and private school—has expressed the same feelings about passing black men on the street that Jesse Jackson has. Unlike his “old uncle”—who is not his uncle—Obama had no excuses for his grandmother. Obama’s grandmother never felt the lash of discrimination! Crazy grandma doesn’t get the same pass as the crazy uncle; she’s white. Denounce the racist!
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And finally, the heart of his message is fundamentally contradictory. Sure, he throws in the obligatory scolding of Wright’s “profoundly distorted view of this country,” and admits that “all too often [anger] distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change.” But in the same breath, Obama perpetuates the distraction by saying he could no more sever ties with Wright than with the black community, thereby identifying the two as one and the same. Give to bigotry no sanction…unless the bigot in question talks about nice stuff, too. I don’t think so, Barack.
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As unflattering as “inattentive buffoon” is, Obama could have settled for it. But no, in his “A More Perfect Union” speech, he said “Did I ever know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.” Make no mistake: this is an admission that Barack Obama, the new-style politician of hope who is going to restore our ability to believe in the process, lied to the American people just days earlier.
–
But that’s not all Messiah has to offer. He continues to maintain that, deep down, Reverend Jeremiah—who’s like an uncle to him—isn’t so terrible: even though he made “mistakes” (you mean the CIA didn’t invent AIDS? Whoops, my bad), there was enough talk of love and Christ and helping the poor amongst the lies, demagoguery and insanity to justify regularly exposing his kids to this man and his message. I don’t buy it—especially not after Wright’s flattering appearance on Hannity & Colmes last year. (By the way, this would happen to be the same Barack Obama who called for Don Imus to be fired and for Trent Lott to resign, each for considerably less. What a fraud.)
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Then there are the cheap shots towards Geraldine Ferraro, who “some have dismissed…as harboring some deep-seated racial bias” (not Barack, of course; he just, y’know, thought you might be curious about what people are saying), “politicians [who] routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends,” and “talk show hosts and conservative commentators [who] built entire careers unmasking bogus cases of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality.” Nice. And let’s not forget Obama’s charming reminiscence about Grandma. As Ann Coulter writes this week:
–
Discrimination has become so openly accepted that—in a speech meant to tamp down his association with a black racist—Obama felt perfectly comfortable throwing his white grandmother under the bus. He used her as the white racist counterpart to his black racist “old uncle,” Rev. Wright.
–
First of all, Wright is not Obama’s uncle. The only reason we indulge crazy uncles is that everyone understands that people don’t choose their relatives the way they choose, for example, their pastors and mentors. No one quarrels with the idea that you can’t be expected to publicly denounce your blood relatives. But Wright is not a relative of Obama’s at all. Yet Obama cravenly compared Wright’s racist invective to his actual grandmother, who “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
–
Rev. Wright accuses white people of inventing AIDS to kill black men, but Obama’s grandmother—who raised him, cooked his food, tucked him in at night, and paid for his clothes and books and private school—has expressed the same feelings about passing black men on the street that Jesse Jackson has. Unlike his “old uncle”—who is not his uncle—Obama had no excuses for his grandmother. Obama’s grandmother never felt the lash of discrimination! Crazy grandma doesn’t get the same pass as the crazy uncle; she’s white. Denounce the racist!
–
And finally, the heart of his message is fundamentally contradictory. Sure, he throws in the obligatory scolding of Wright’s “profoundly distorted view of this country,” and admits that “all too often [anger] distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change.” But in the same breath, Obama perpetuates the distraction by saying he could no more sever ties with Wright than with the black community, thereby identifying the two as one and the same. Give to bigotry no sanction…unless the bigot in question talks about nice stuff, too. I don’t think so, Barack.
Give Me a Break!
Currently watching Hannity’s America. “Civil rights activist” Ron Daniels just said Louis Farrakhan isn’t an anti-Semite, because saying “Judaism is a gutter religion” doesn’t really mean he hates Judaism and its practitioners; instead, it’s just a critique that Jews don’t always practice what they preach.
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These apologists are a dime-a-dozen, but it is noteworthy that Sean Hannity treats this fraud with kid gloves. Indeed, is there any heinous left-winger he won’t deem a “good friend?”
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[Flashback: Hannity’s Hypocrisy vs. Sharpton]
ONE Rotten Recruiter
Upon seeing the resume of Corey Andrew on CareerBuilder.com, an Army recruiter named Marcia Ramode chose to pick a fight with him via email in which she made pathetic racial & homophobic slurs against him.
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There’s no question that Ramode needs to be fired. But can we please forego the liberal opportunism that followed it, like Andrew Sullivan’s comment that “It seems as if some in the military have taken Peter Pace’s recent remarks on homosexuality and run with them”? This was one nut, and if she got the homophobia from General Pace, where’d the racism come from?
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But remember: there’s NO LINK WHATSOEVER between the Democrat Party and liberal punks who slash the tires of Republican vans. Bad apples only reflect poorly upon the whole on the Right.
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There’s no question that Ramode needs to be fired. But can we please forego the liberal opportunism that followed it, like Andrew Sullivan’s comment that “It seems as if some in the military have taken Peter Pace’s recent remarks on homosexuality and run with them”? This was one nut, and if she got the homophobia from General Pace, where’d the racism come from?
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But remember: there’s NO LINK WHATSOEVER between the Democrat Party and liberal punks who slash the tires of Republican vans. Bad apples only reflect poorly upon the whole on the Right.
Conservative Standards 