Don't you feel like the whole Rick Perry hunting lodge rock painting thing is close to the death rattle of the groundless charges of racism? I guess Rick Perry went to a hunting lodge where the n-word* was painted on a rock somewhere or some such. The WaPo dragged a word on a rock into a huge story, but were never able to find the actual, you know, like, rock. Whatever. It fit the narrative - conservatives are racists. It's always worked before.
Thanks heavens for the new media. The comments on the WaPo article on their website do a good job blasting this notion as have some bloggers and Democrat officials in Texas.
Meanwhile, Hollywood lefty Morgan Freeman, acting as if he's playing the role of a Japanese soldier who doesn't know the war has ended, is still fighting a racist enemy that doesn't exist. That's not going so well.
Finally, there is the long, rich, multimedia memory of the web. Obama spent 20 years sitting listening to this guy and now his spews of racial filth can be called up any time you like to deposit in web comment threads. The "racism!" narrative sure seems to be at an end to me.
* - I was going to spell it out, but who knows what kind of web search algorithms are running out there, looking for that word, waiting to alert hate-filled loonies to descend en masse onto a site and begin screaming. Been there, done that on this site and ended up having to take a post down because of the insanity.
Isn't it a shame that Herman Cain was so easily cowed by Rush Limbaugh. Cain's straight talk was a refreshing change to the majority of Republican Androids running for office.
ReplyDeleteAs for the subject of the post, don't fool yourself thinking that racism is no more. I can personally attest that its alive and thriving. Less so on the coasts then in the interior, but it rears its ugly head everywhere in this country. No the real question is did Cain over react to the story. And that really depends on what version of the story you believe. Perry claims that when his parents got control of the lodge they quickly whitewashed the sign, and when that proved inadequate, they later turned over the stone. Fair enough. But locals claim that the sign was up until fairly recently. In the mid to late 1960's Lady Bird Johnson started a campaign to rename the huge number of locations in the US that used the N-word in their name. Often they just replacing it with Negro, one of which is this, and other times renaming it completely. So if you kept the original offensive name, you did so deliberately and on purpose. While I'm willing to give Perry the benefit of the doubt, If that is the case, like it or not, Cain has a very valid point.
Yeah, Cain blew it.
ReplyDeleteAs for racism in this country, there's no doubt it's alive and well. Did you check out what happened at the Wisconsin State Fair this year?
what happened at the Wisconsin State Fair this year?
ReplyDeletePlease remind me? At my age I don't remember things so well ... ;)
Try this. It didn't get much play outside of Wisconsin. There are plenty of other examples out there as well.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the WaPo wants to know what was painted on a rock decades ago.
Stamping out racism will be about as successful as stamping out stupid. We will keep at it but there will always be idiots among us.
ReplyDeleteKT, thanks for sharing that video of Ali and Roger Simon. His graciousness and magnanimous was/is as instructive as it is impressive.
Yes, racism will always exist because it is an outgrowth of tribalism, which seems inherent in human nature. But it doesn't seem to be the biggest problem facing the African-American community. Further, there are other forms of prejudice that seem to have greater affect on actual attitudes, those about height for instance.
ReplyDeleteThe Wisconsin incident is truly sad. I vaguely remember hearing about it, but no details.
ReplyDeleteWe had something similar to this happening in downtown Denver late at night.
When I lived in Santa Fe, this commonly happened to whites walking around the State House late at night.
Its hard to know what, if anything, set this off in Wisconsin. Kids now are so easily "dishonored." I know in Santa Fe it was just teenage rage. Lashing out at someone you saw as the other, who was doing better than you. There were long time families were being displaced by in influx of Anglos.
Its the same teenage rage that turns children into suicide bombers.
Don't you think that this is, in part, a reaction to years in school being taught tons of stories of discrimination? My daughter's social studies textbooks were just a chain of stories of racial and sexual injustice linked by dates of battles and maps.
ReplyDelete