September 14, 2009
Dowd says that Joe Wilson is coming from a place of racism
In her most recent column. I am not a huge Maureen Dowd fan, but this column strikes a chord with me. When a Southern senator tells Obama that he should show some humility when he spoke on healthcare, and then this other southern rep with his own iffy track record on race relations calls the President a liar on the house floor--I have to say I wonder.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
South Carolina has a long list of dignitaries that includes Lauren Caitlin Upton (Miss Teen USA 2007 pageant contestant), Board of Education Chair, Kristin Maguire, Governor (and avid Appalachian hiker), Mark Sanford and now Joe “the hater not a debater” Wilson or the “screamer not the dreamer” as others have dubbed him. I did enjoy him cut and running through his apology, which only goes to show that he stands for nothing. He is just another good old boy where in the morning these married men preach to you that there should be prayer in our schools and in the evening they are on their cell phones setting up a date with their other women on the side, hypocrisy has been bred in. I am not surprised that he felt compel to yell like he was at some Friday night game. So long Joey, you too will be seeing the unemployment lines.
I don't know whether Joe Wilson is a racist. He might be, he might not.
I will say this presidency is less than a year old and I'm already tired of the race card being played--by both sides.
Conservatives have undeniably made some racist slanders toward Obama. The left though has taken advantage of Obama being black and has turned it into an excuse for everything that doesn't go perfectly according to plan.
Conservative governors don't want to accept stimulus money? They must be racists.
People don't support a bailout of company X? They must be racists.
People don't like the proposed health care reforms? They must be racists.
Some people in this country don't like Obama because he is black. That's undeniable. But that has become the left's excuse for why people are rejecting a President whose declaration of a new era of open government isn't quite up to snuff. It's become the left's excuse why people are rejecting the trillions of dollars of new spending with no plan for how to pay for it. It's become the left's excuse for people rejecting health care proposals that have significant flaws.
What Joe Wilson did was wrong. Maybe he did what he did because he's a racist. But the left needs to stop looking for the racist skeletons in everyone's closest and come to terms with the fact that Americans may simply not like Obama's policies.
LB, I see your point, but am not sure you are characterizing the debate in a fair manner. I can't speak for all liberals, mind you, but I have not assumed that all opposition to Obama came out of racism. The opposition to the stimulus or even bailing out companies, never struck me as racist. And I am fully aware that a lot of people have legitimate concerns about healthcare that have nothing to do with race.
But you are being a bit flip here about the issue of race and racial hatred. If what Wilson did was motivated by race, on its own, it is less than a jackass thing to do. But if he represents a current of racial hatred, then we have something else going on. The Southern Poverty Law center has noticed huge increases in activity and membership in white supremacy movements. Add to that the increased threats on Obama's life going back to last fall, and this is not some semantic issue.
Here is the problem, to put it bluntly. Democrats have their racists too, but we have not incorporated them into our base and coddled them. The right has done exactly that, from John Ashcroft cozying up to White Supremacists and a whole host of other conservative Republicans spending time among Conservative Citizens Councils and such. Look at the signs from the Tea Partiers, and check out how many have a racial tinge to them?
Absolutely, people can oppose this President and not be racist. And absolutely, I agree that some people are too quick to play the race card. But there is something bad going on, and Republicans have their hand right in the middle of it.
Some call Joe Wilson a great statesman, and are even proud of his “Shout Out”, so lets see, he says, he was told by the Republican leadership to apologize (he did not realize the magnitude of his mistake), he then gives his weak “not for reals” apology, but then goes on to those “Commentator Talk Shows” and basically says he real was not wrong and plays the victim card and calls for people to send in for money to support him for re-election. Had he kept quiet after his apology, that might have been the end of it but now that people know he lied about the apology the story will continue, until he is out of a job and the funny thing is, he does not see it coming. This summer has been rough for his beleaguered political party. At least he did not end up on the “Republican 2009 Summer of Love” list: Assemblyman, Michael D. Duvall (CA), Senator John Ensign (NV), Senator Paul Stanley (TN), Governor Mark Stanford (SC), Board of Ed Chair, and Kristin Maguire AKA Bridget Keeney (SC). In my opinion the Republican Party has been taken over the most extreme religious right (people who love to push their beliefs on others while trying to take away the rights of those they just hate) and that’s who they need to extract from their party if they real want to win. Good Luck, because as they said in WACO, “We Ain’t Coming Out”. The birthers, the tea baggers, the screamers, and the deathers continued extreme minority presence will become tiresome to mainstream America, if it has not already done so.
Post a Comment