September 18, 2009
Jimmy Carter, True Son of the South, Hits Nail on Head
Kai Wright in The Root:
It’s self-evident that a movement that calls the president a lying, socialist, Nazi eugenicist with a fake birth certificate is about something more than deficit spending. People don’t brandish automatic weapons and pray for the president’s death because they want to keep their employer-sponsored health plans. But to name the stalking beast is more than we can bear.
Not, thankfully, for Carter. He knows the tea-baggers aren’t new, that their fear of “big government” is but the latest version of states’ rights, which was itself a pseudonym for white supremacy. And he wants us to recall this history: In the months following the 1954 Brown ruling, a Mississippi college football star and plantation manager named Robert Patterson launched a crusade to protect school children from “being taught the Communist theme of all races and mongrelization.” Patterson was angry, and proud of it. “You say this is not the time for hotheads and flag-waving,” he wrote in a public letter quoted in Gene Roberts’ and Hank Klibanoff’s must-read history of civil rights journalism. “We need those hotheads, just as we always have when our liberty has been threatened.”
More here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 05:58 AM | Permalink
Comments
Do you think it is very helpful -- in an elevating the tone of the discourse kind of way -- for someone to write " a movement that calls the president a lying, socialist, Nazi eugenicist with a fake birth certificate" and "brandish automatic weapons and pray for the president’s death"?
When a writer grafts the views of an extreme minority onto those of the large, sane middle as a way of characterizing the opposition, an unbelievable caricature is created.
And then we have to distrust the writer's every word, even the word "the".
No one is well served by this cartoonery, not even the writer's allies. And civil discourse is dishonored.
Posted by: Mel | Sep 18, 2009 10:23:43 AM
Mel, can you direct me in that piece to the "grafting" that bothers you so??
And also, can you explain: after people have said that Obama is a lying Nazi eugenicist, how is it cartoonery to point out they've said that Obama is a lying Nazi eugenicist?
If you meant to say that the teabaggers are guilty of cartoonery, then I'm with you.
Posted by: giotto | Sep 18, 2009 10:59:51 AM
I suspect you already know this, but not all opposition to Obama policies comes from extremists.
The writer characterizes the opposition "movement" as all extremists. Not accurate, not helpful, and not persuasive.
Posted by: Mel | Sep 18, 2009 11:38:00 AM
Mel, how large can the "large, sane, middle" be we when 29% of Republicans in New Jersey think Obama is, or might be, the Antichrist? When near majorities of Republicans in some states think he was born in Kenya and is not a legitimate president? Unfortunately, the Republican Party's mental health problem is becoming a national crisis.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 18, 2009 1:59:05 PM
Poll numbers above come from here:
http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2009/09/extremism-in-new-jersey.html
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 18, 2009 2:00:10 PM
I guess I could point you to a recent poll that stated that a large percentage of Democrats believe that Bush & Co. knew about the 9-11 attacks ahead of time. Dispiriting, to be sure!
But any approach to our situation that claims all virtue on one side and all evil (or insanity) on the other is pretty limited, I think, and only perpetuates a pretty low level of political interactions.
Posted by: Mel | Sep 18, 2009 2:43:53 PM
Mel, the polls I've seen on the 9/11 issue don't really distinguish between the hardcore "9/11 was an inside job" folks and those who think that Bush &co. could have taken the "bin Laden determined to strike US" memo a little more seriously.
I agree that a dispiriting number of 9/11 truthers, but they are not being given air time on major news networks. We have never seen a commentator with Lou Dobbs-level Nielsen ratings wonder out loud why Bush has not produced definitive proof that he did not order the Twin Towers to be wired with explosives. As for claiming that "all virtue is on one side," what virtue do you claim for people who think that Obama is, or could be the Antichrist, and who are ready to believe any crap about him that they get in a forwarded email? The truth is not somewhere in between "Obama is a lying, socialist, Nazi eugenicist with a fake birth certificate" and "Obama is the legitimately elected President of the United States acting within his constitutional authority." Sometimes the truth really is all on one side of the issue.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 18, 2009 3:20:28 PM
"I agree that a dispiriting number of 9/11 truthers, but they are not being given air time on major news networks. We have never seen a commentator with Lou Dobbs-level Nielsen ratings wonder out loud why Bush has not produced definitive proof that he did not order the Twin Towers to be wired with explosives."
This. I AM sympathetic to Mel's overall point (it's not fair to pretend any and all opposition must be motivated by hatred for black people), but it doesn't seem like the levels of nuttery are equal on both sides either. Of course, it'd be nice to have non-partisan watchdog type assessments of such purely intuitive statements; otherwise I doubt I'd think the democrats were more crazy unless the evidence just smacked me in the face...
Posted by: D | Sep 18, 2009 3:37:08 PM
Face it all:
Obama is a farce and an idiot who exploited all of us, good hearted Americans, for his own gain. Until now this "black" american idiot is pursuing the very same political and economic POLICIES that the WAR CRIMINAL GEORGE BUSH pursued. Can you tell me what's the actual difference between the two either in Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine or Wall street? None, none, none
Shame on Obama the liar, shame on his cowardice, shame on his endless campaign lies. Obama seems to deserve the republican neo-nazi mob that confront it because he continues to choose to appease them rather than destroy them and their sponsors.
Obama reveals itself to become e majestic nothingness - a standard and boring uncle tom, an authentic (white) house nigger.
Who will dare to run against under the banner the REAL Obama against the pale fake that presently rules us.
Posted by: Maceo | Sep 18, 2009 4:36:33 PM
"I AM sympathetic to Mel's overall point (it's not fair to pretend any and all opposition must be motivated by hatred for black people"
D., I don't think anyone has tried to make the case that "any and all opposition must be motivated by hatred for black people."
Carter's point was that "an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward Obama is based on race. Not any and all opposition, but "intensely demonstrated animosity" of which we've all seen plenty of examples. Actually, I think it's impossible to distinguish between racism and xenophobia in this case - I can imagine that almost the same level of hysteria could have been whipped up if Obama had been fathered by a white Frenchman and had attended a Swedish elementary school.
As for the posted article, he's talking about the teabag movement, not all conservative opposition, and tracing a line between the Citizen's Councils of the '50's and today's teabaggers. I thought it was an interesting historical insight.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 18, 2009 5:54:35 PM
'Carter's point was that "an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward Obama is based on race.'
Thanks for clarifying all the levels of equivocation, but I still don't buy it. I think most conservatives honestly hate his trillion here trillion there debt policies, and frankly that scares the beJesus out of me too.
I'm so tired of the race card. So very very tired.
And I'm tired of "Jimmy" too. Nobody remembers but me, but way back when he was either running for or already president, he was quoted in a major publication as accusing someone of trying to "jew him down" on the price of some peanut oriented thing or other. Once a Son of the Old South, always a Son of the Old South in my book. The way I see it, there is no way "Jimmy" can call anyone else a racist without incurring an additional millennia in purgatory (oh it's real my friends), and that's a best case scenario.
Posted by: Carlos | Sep 18, 2009 6:36:01 PM
"I'm so tired of the race card. So very very tired."
How very tiresome for you then, to share a party with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Sep 18, 2009 8:34:52 PM
not my people. not even close
Posted by: Carlos | Sep 18, 2009 9:54:40 PM
...i invite you to join globalove think tank.
...ps...stop making sense.
Posted by: Oberon | Oct 2, 2009 9:05:45 PM
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