...Bill Clinton, who had the same cool temper and intellect, the same preference for cooperation
Same as whom, I wonder. The apparent counterpoint is Obama, but the attributes do not describe him at all it seems to me. Nor, quite, Clinton himself, though he certainly was very smart (and a very smart political operator). Clinton's ability to take credit for initiatives he fiercely fought served him in great stead on many occasions. But that fierce fighting did not evince a "preference for cooperation."
Of course, if we re-imagine that phrase to mean "I'd rather my opponents just agreed with me" then it would fairly apply to, well, anyone. But President Obama is famously thin-skinned and temperamental, confrontational in attacking what he calls his "enemies," and whose intellect such as it is becomes evident when he is off-script. He's not stupid, I think, he's just not particularly bright, smooth, nor a good speaker.
I have mixed feelings about this. I would prefer that the representative of the United States be bright, articulate and good at extemporaneous speaking. But were Obama possessed of these attributes, he'd have been able to get away with much more of his agenda.
Nevertheless, the overall point of the piece is a fair one. Opposition to Obama's policies is based on the policies, not the man's racial ancestry. He is arguably far more fixated on race; it is not a feature evident in his political opponents. The Democrat Party has used the platform during my lifetime (and, I suspect, yours) "this is the white man's country." But we have left those days behind.
Same as the article attributed to non-Borderers. I agree with you that Obama's personality doesn't live up to that profile, though it's an image that his PR people cultivated for the policy level.
LJ screens some comments automatically for dirty words, which your first version of this had. Apparently when one version has been screened, it screens the next version also. On your other post, LJ didn't screen for 'baloney', but I did.
As to the content of your link, I may read it later if I have time. Mostly I read things that are likely to have unusual ideas or a fresh approach; the idea of racism vs Obama is pretty trite by now.
It is interesting. A few of these are "legitimate," sort of, and thus very unfortunate. They are supported by any group at all. For example: When a Republican woman in a local club forwarded a race-related image, she resigned over the uproar. No one supported her. And the origin of the image was interesting: "The Riverside Press-Enterprise said the cartoon was created by Tim Kastelein, a 31-year-old Minnesota Democrat who said he made it in a satirical attempt to make fun of right-wing pundits afraid of a Democratic presidential candidate."
Several are not racist, they are merely anti-Obama, if crude. The site your commenter linked to makes the point that attacks on Obama are racist even if the exact same attacks on Bush were not. I can see this, to an extent, but he is also clearly extending his sensitivity far enough to be looking for hidden code words and "dog whistles."
Some of the "perpetrators" are nameless. Some are from people who seem to have had no Internet existence before or after their appearance with a particular display, despite having unusual names and what should have been decades of prior life. Odd, but still possible.
One New Yorker took an strange approach: She bought a T-shirt proclaiming "Obama is my slave" - was attacked by a group of blacks, and went back and sued the person who sold her the shirt. The woman had a name suggesting Middle East extraction, but I cannot guess as to her appearance.
The most famous one: the much-flogged "Romney supporter" with the very likely staged "Put the White Back in the White House" shirt - with the Romney sticker on the back, and evidently wearing a coat to get in but exposing the shirt's back for a camera. It was a professionally printed shirt that is not available in any store... all rather like Democrat-announced plans to sabotage the Tea Party.
I've been tracking websites of these attacking groups for years, folks like "Crash the Tea Party" and so on, and they are quite blatant about their plans. This sort of thing fits their pattern: Sneak in with a sign, shirt, sticker or something that makes the Tea Party look bad, expose it, get an accomplice to take a picture before the conservatives object and ask you to leave.
Various other "racial epithet" attacks, campaign headquarter attacks and so on turned out to be Democrats attacking themselves and blaming it on Republicans.
Others don't seem to fit that mold. The most blatant of these is by a very strange NAACP member whose advertising shtick for his bar is to run the pretense that it is an "official Klan bar" despite the fact that many of his friends and customers are black. He's been doing this sort of outrageous, reprehensible signage for years, and long before Obama showed up. Ugly, but not exactly a Tea Party standard. It is not at all clear that he even believes any of it; it's marketing.
What is notable about this collection, building up for six years, is how sparse it is. And how much they've had to lump together and call racist to try to pump the count up, including known hoaxes.
In my tracking these down, I discovered that some are from a joke site frequented (as nearly as I can tell) by mostly those on the left, who get this sort of thing out of their system as humor. The site is called "Daily Racist Dog" and appears to be a meme-generator used by those who oppose conservatives to express what they imagine conservatives say. It doesn't seem an accurate way to characterize the group, I think.
Out of tens of millions of Tea Party supporters, and any number of individuals (some of whom are vehement opponents of the Tea Party) who can express their opinions or their staged attacks even if ugly, this is not too terrible a haul. In a sense, it's about one "occupy" gathering's worth. This doesn't excuse the ones that are real, and "real bad" - but it does provide a bit of scale.
Sadly, one of the "real" ones - the president of a local Republican women's club forwarding an "ObamaBucks" cartoon made by a Democrat, had a follow up. The woman apologized and resigned, but that wasn't enough. So opponents wrote this about her:In this weeks meeting of the Chaffey Community Republican Women's group, an apologetic Diane Fedele reiterated her sincere regret of the use of the racially-insensitive "Obama Bucks" image in the group's publication.
In the club meeting on Tuesday, attended by both club members and the media, Ms. Fedele defended her apologies as sincere and honest.
"Believe me when I say I am very sorry about this whole misunderstanding. I am sorry if I offended any of those coloreds. I am sure all of these Bootlips will understand that it was a clear misunderstanding of my unfamiliarity of the burr-headed, Double A culture. When it comes right down to it, I can not think of anyone less racist than myself. I am friends with plenty of those Geechee Mandinkas. I promise this will not happen again."
When pressed further about her apparent total lack of understanding of the situation she has found herself in, a flustered Fedele continued, "Listen, I told all of the Shadow-Smurf mud ducks I was sorry! I don't know how else to convince you all I am not racist!"
At press time the California Republican Committee had not responded to our repeated calls for clarification. Intended to be funny, of course. Satire. But it piled on so many racially charged epithets that it astounds me that they could have considered this a good idea.
Remember that the original forwarding of the email was intended to pass on humor about Obama and the likelihood of his creating a welfare culture. It certainly included a racial angle (food item images stereotypically associated with blacks) that made it racially problematic, and a Very Bad Idea. (It also pictured Obama as a donkey.) But how can this next bit of humor be anything but worse?
Especially knowing full well they they were striving to be as offensive as possible. Imagining, of course, that this is the way Republicans think - except that I don't think they really believe that.
Same as whom, I wonder. The apparent counterpoint is Obama, but the attributes do not describe him at all it seems to me. Nor, quite, Clinton himself, though he certainly was very smart (and a very smart political operator). Clinton's ability to take credit for initiatives he fiercely fought served him in great stead on many occasions. But that fierce fighting did not evince a "preference for cooperation."
Of course, if we re-imagine that phrase to mean "I'd rather my opponents just agreed with me" then it would fairly apply to, well, anyone. But President Obama is famously thin-skinned and temperamental, confrontational in attacking what he calls his "enemies," and whose intellect such as it is becomes evident when he is off-script. He's not stupid, I think, he's just not particularly bright, smooth, nor a good speaker.
I have mixed feelings about this. I would prefer that the representative of the United States be bright, articulate and good at extemporaneous speaking. But were Obama possessed of these attributes, he'd have been able to get away with much more of his agenda.
Nevertheless, the overall point of the piece is a fair one. Opposition to Obama's policies is based on the policies, not the man's racial ancestry. He is arguably far more fixated on race; it is not a feature evident in his political opponents. The Democrat Party has used the platform during my lifetime (and, I suspect, yours) "this is the white man's country." But we have left those days behind.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Reply
"Same as whom, I wonder."
Same as the article attributed to non-Borderers. I agree with you that Obama's personality doesn't live up to that profile, though it's an image that his PR people cultivated for the policy level.
Reply
yeah, right: http://www.defshepherd.com/2012/10/racism-is-alive-and-well-35-incredibly.html
Reply
As to the content of your link, I may read it later if I have time. Mostly I read things that are likely to have unusual ideas or a fresh approach; the idea of racism vs Obama is pretty trite by now.
Reply
Several are not racist, they are merely anti-Obama, if crude. The site your commenter linked to makes the point that attacks on Obama are racist even if the exact same attacks on Bush were not. I can see this, to an extent, but he is also clearly extending his sensitivity far enough to be looking for hidden code words and "dog whistles."
Some of the "perpetrators" are nameless. Some are from people who seem to have had no Internet existence before or after their appearance with a particular display, despite having unusual names and what should have been decades of prior life. Odd, but still possible.
One New Yorker took an strange approach: She bought a T-shirt proclaiming "Obama is my slave" - was attacked by a group of blacks, and went back and sued the person who sold her the shirt. The woman had a name suggesting Middle East extraction, but I cannot guess as to her appearance.
The most famous one: the much-flogged "Romney supporter" with the very likely staged "Put the White Back in the White House" shirt - with the Romney sticker on the back, and evidently wearing a coat to get in but exposing the shirt's back for a camera. It was a professionally printed shirt that is not available in any store... all rather like Democrat-announced plans to sabotage the Tea Party.
I've been tracking websites of these attacking groups for years, folks like "Crash the Tea Party" and so on, and they are quite blatant about their plans. This sort of thing fits their pattern: Sneak in with a sign, shirt, sticker or something that makes the Tea Party look bad, expose it, get an accomplice to take a picture before the conservatives object and ask you to leave.
Various other "racial epithet" attacks, campaign headquarter attacks and so on turned out to be Democrats attacking themselves and blaming it on Republicans.
Others don't seem to fit that mold. The most blatant of these is by a very strange NAACP member whose advertising shtick for his bar is to run the pretense that it is an "official Klan bar" despite the fact that many of his friends and customers are black. He's been doing this sort of outrageous, reprehensible signage for years, and long before Obama showed up. Ugly, but not exactly a Tea Party standard. It is not at all clear that he even believes any of it; it's marketing.
What is notable about this collection, building up for six years, is how sparse it is. And how much they've had to lump together and call racist to try to pump the count up, including known hoaxes.
In my tracking these down, I discovered that some are from a joke site frequented (as nearly as I can tell) by mostly those on the left, who get this sort of thing out of their system as humor. The site is called "Daily Racist Dog" and appears to be a meme-generator used by those who oppose conservatives to express what they imagine conservatives say. It doesn't seem an accurate way to characterize the group, I think.
Out of tens of millions of Tea Party supporters, and any number of individuals (some of whom are vehement opponents of the Tea Party) who can express their opinions or their staged attacks even if ugly, this is not too terrible a haul. In a sense, it's about one "occupy" gathering's worth. This doesn't excuse the ones that are real, and "real bad" - but it does provide a bit of scale.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Reply
In the club meeting on Tuesday, attended by both club members and the media, Ms. Fedele defended her apologies as sincere and honest.
"Believe me when I say I am very sorry about this whole misunderstanding. I am sorry if I offended any of those coloreds. I am sure all of these Bootlips will understand that it was a clear misunderstanding of my unfamiliarity of the burr-headed, Double A culture. When it comes right down to it, I can not think of anyone less racist than myself. I am friends with plenty of those Geechee Mandinkas. I promise this will not happen again."
When pressed further about her apparent total lack of understanding of the situation she has found herself in, a flustered Fedele continued, "Listen, I told all of the Shadow-Smurf mud ducks I was sorry! I don't know how else to convince you all I am not racist!"
At press time the California Republican Committee had not responded to our repeated calls for clarification.
Intended to be funny, of course. Satire. But it piled on so many racially charged epithets that it astounds me that they could have considered this a good idea.
Remember that the original forwarding of the email was intended to pass on humor about Obama and the likelihood of his creating a welfare culture. It certainly included a racial angle (food item images stereotypically associated with blacks) that made it racially problematic, and a Very Bad Idea. (It also pictured Obama as a donkey.) But how can this next bit of humor be anything but worse?
Especially knowing full well they they were striving to be as offensive as possible. Imagining, of course, that this is the way Republicans think - except that I don't think they really believe that.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
Reply
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