The worst thing about the election of Barack Obama – worse than his radical past, worse than his belief more government is the solution to every challenge, worse than the media tongue baths – is knowing how rapidly opposition to any of the President’s policy prescriptions would attributed to racism by his cheerleaders in the media and on the left. Barry himself hasn’t dusted off that old chestnut yet, perhaps he’s savvy enough to realize doing so would lose the political center forever, instead creating opposition strawmen who mindlessly defend the status quo.
Among Barack’s unofficial communications directors in the media, however, there is no compunction over playing the left’s all purpose Get Out of Factually Inconvenient Arguments Free Card. Viewed from an ivory tower, hundreds of thousands of Sheriff Bufford T. Justices marched on Washington yesterday…
Buford T. Justice: Hey boy, where is Sheriff Branford at?
Sheriff Branford: I AM Sheriff Branford.
Buford T. Justice: Oh, pardon me. For some reason you sounded a little taller on radio. (turns away and addresses his stupid inbred son) What the hell is the world comin’ to?
I caught the link at RCP – Obama Opponents Can’t Accept a Black President – Maureen Dowd, NYT – Dowd’s title is an even more classic “Boy, Oh, Boy”.
Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.
But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!
Only the finely tuned ear of a liberal uber-literati can discern the subtle racism inherit in a here-to-fore unknown conservative’s inconveniently factual admonition that Obama was indeed misrepresenting the language contained in every single Democrat-designed health care bill currently languishing in Congress. Call him gauche, call him racist, just don’t call Joe Wilson ineffective – on Friday the Senate Finance Committee wrote language to restrict federal health dollars to illegal immigrants. Call it the soft bigotry of factual representations.
Buford T. Justice: This is Sheriff Buford T. Justice. I’m in pursuit of a black TransAm. He’s all mine, so stay outta the way.
Sheriff Branford: This is Sheriff George Branford of Deeson County, Arkansas. We are apprised of the situation and are taking appropriate measures. Did you say you are a sheriff?
Buford T. Justice: That’s a big 10-4! This is Sheriff Buford T. Justice of Texas.
Sheriff Branford: Texas? You know, of course, that you’re out of your jurisdiction. I suggest that you let my department handle the situation.
Buford T. Justice: That’s very comfortin’, but I’m in a high-speed pursuit. Don’t you hear good?
Sheriff Branford: I hear perfectly. The fact that you are a sheriff is not germane to the situation.
Buford T. Justice: The god damn Germans got nothin’ to do with it.
Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.
…
It may be President Obama’s very air of elegance and erudition that raises hackles in some. “My father used to say to me, ‘Boy, don’t get above your raising,’ ” Fowler said. “Some people are prejudiced anyway, and then they look at his education and mannerisms and get more angry at him.”
Most people don’t like a condescending, partisan hack browbeating them with falsehoods and thinly veiled personal attacks regardless of the lecturer’s race. Besides, there’s nothing worse than a not-so-brainy egghead who thinks he actually is an intellectual heavy. Obama has trained himself to read a teleprompter pretty effectively, but nothing I’ve seen from the guy leads me to believe he’s some sort of quasar in the intellectual universe. Obama’s really bit of a dullard so far as I can tell.
But when inconvenient facts intrude it’s time to insulate yourself in a cocoon of liberal conventional wisdom. Better drop the “U” word. Limited government types just think Obama is uppity. What with his fancy book learning coupled with being clean and articulate and all.
Taggart: Now what the hell do you think you’re doing with that tin star, boy?
Bart: Watch that “boy” shit, redneck! You’re talking to the sheriff of Rock Ridge.
Taggart: Now if that don’t beat all. Here we take the good time and trouble to slaughter every last Indian in the West, and for what? So we can appoint a sheriff that’s blacker than any Indian. I am depressed.
The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president.
…
For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.
The state that fired the first shot of the Civil War has now given us this: Senator Jim DeMint exhorted conservatives to “break” the president by upending his health care plan. Rusty DePass, a G.O.P. activist, said that a gorilla that escaped from a zoo was “just one of Michelle’s ancestors.” Lovelorn Mark Sanford tried to refuse the president’s stimulus money. And now Joe Wilson.
“A good many people in South Carolina really reject the notion that we’re part of the union,” said Don Fowler, the former Democratic Party chief who teaches politics at the University of South Carolina. He observed that when slavery was destroyed by outside forces and segregation was undone by civil rights leaders and Congress, it bred xenophobia.
“We have a lot of people who really think that the world’s against us,” Fowler said, “so when things don’t happen the way we like them to, we blame outsiders.” He said a state legislator not long ago tried to pass a bill to nullify any federal legislation with which South Carolinians didn’t agree. Shades of John C. Calhoun!
There you have it. Joe Wilson is from South Carolina. South Carolina! Just look at all the nutty characters to whom he can be linked! South Carolina, for God’s sake! Why he might as well have fired a cannon shot from the wall of Fort Sumter than question our black president’s veracity!
I hear at Christmas time they open presents next to the burning cross all of them use instead of an eco-friendly artificial tree.
Then again, I’m one of those people who believe the 10th Amendment is just as important as the 1st too. Maybe the reason conservatives defend states’ rights is the intrinsic nature of our federal government to grow and wield more power over increasingly minute aspects of our lives. Countless thousands marched in Washington yesterday because Barack Obama is a) President, b) as such the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, and c) the Democratic majority in Washington is attempting to rush through the most radical transformation of the US economy ever contemplated.
I figure Dowd probably thought conservatives were racist when they stood up against Hillary Care and the BTU tax in the ’90’s, too. I imagine she sees racism just about everywhere to the right of Olympia Snowe.
Undercover Brother: You know what they say, behind every great black man…
Conspiracy Brother: is the police.
Undercover Brother: No.
Smart Brother: A bunch of slow white athletes?
Undercover Brother: No!
White She-Devil: A cute butt.
Undercover Brother: NO!
Lance: Probable cause…
I’ll choose to ignore Obama’s ethnicity and continue to oppose him where I disagree with him. I figure I owe him that much and it’s what Dr. King would want. The whole content of his character thing. Obamaphiles like Dowd and their boy-who-cried-wolf routine is already trite, and by 2010 it may prove to be a real burr under independents’ saddles. They may have assumed post-racial meant something other than post hoc accusations of racism.
Desperation is a stinky cologne.
