March 30, 2010

Wow. Just, wow.

Steve Benen catches this gem from former Swiftboater Bud Day:
"You know, we just got through (electing) a politician who can run his mouth at Mach 1, a black one, and now we have a Hispanic who can run his mouth at Mach 1," Day said. "You look at their track records and they're both pretty gritty. Charlie has not got a gritty track record."

Day confirmed he was speaking of Obama and Rubio.

"You've got the black one with the reading thing. He can go as fast as the speed of light and has no idea what he's saying," Day said. "I put Rubio in that same category, except I don't know if he's using one of those readers."

"The black one." Wow.

Just after posting this, saw an excellent take from Adam Serwer on the teleprompter thing:
"The 'teleprompter' jibe has always fascinated me because it's such a clear response to the white anxiety that the president's obvious intelligence provokes in some conservatives. As Day inadvertently reveals above, the teleprompter is a kind of catchall symbol for all the easy breaks minorities get at the expense of whites, which is why it's a favorite trope of people like Rush Limbaugh who inexplicably blame 'affirmative action' for Obama being president. They're so used to exaggerating and mythologizing the effects of affirmative action that they actually believe anyone who isn't white who has achieved a position of prominence actually doesn't deserve to be there, which conversely reassures them that they are in fact superior. It's a bedtime story that rationalizes all nonwhite excellence as the product of easily removable external forces, and its very existence hints at the fragile ego of the person who tells it."

2 comments:

Noah said...

If I was going to write an ideal take-down of Benen's drivel it would be Adam Serwer's take-down. It slams him with a searing eloquence that I can only mimic poorly using a load of 4-letter expletives.

I won't sully your blog with my thoughts.

Streak said...

Just to clarify, Benen noted this drivel. He didn't write it. The driveler, as it were, was Bud Day, the former Swiftboater.