Truthers, birthers and now, racers

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This is getting beyond tiresome. Another idiot, Bob Herbert at the New York Times, is unleashing a vitriolic attack on white people for their intimate, racist thoughts that clog their pale
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Jimmy Carter: Racer

noggins. It wasn't enough that Maureen Dowd ascribed Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst during President Obama's health care speech as raw racism, without a shred of evidence. Or that former president Jimmy Carter, whose mind apparently has gone to seed, declared that "an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man." [Emphasis added.] This, even though Obama himself has said the opposition to his health care reforms is not race-based.

New York Times columnist Herbert probably felt left out at picking this scab, so he belatedly chimed in on Friday with this sort of crap:

I have no patience with those who want to pretend that racism is not an out-and-out big deal in the United States, as it always has been. We may have made progress, and we may have a black president, but the scourge is still with us. And if you needed Jimmy Carter to remind you of that, then you've been wandering around with your eyes closed.

And this:
For many white Americans, Barack Obama is nothing more than that black guy in the White House, and they want him out of there.

Or this:

But the fact that a black man is now in the White House has so unsettled much of white America that the lid is coming off the racism that had been simmering at dangerously high temperatures all along.

This, too:

Republicans have been openly feeding off of race hatred since the days of Dick Nixon. Today's conservative activists are carrying that banner proudly.

Finally, this lunacy:

Think about the Oklahoma City bombing, and the assassinations of King and the Kennedys. On Nov. 22, 1963, as they were preparing to fly to Dallas, a hotbed of political insanity, President Kennedy said to Mrs. Kennedy: "We're heading into nut country today."

The Oklahoma City bombing racially motivated? The assassination of John Kennedy had nothing to do with race, nor was the shooter a conservative. Robert Kennedy's assassination had nothing to do with the racism that Herbert is talking about--the kind of racism that led to King's murder. Yet, Herbert lumps all of this together into one crazy, screwed-up thought.

The media have come up with names that suit fringe elements like Herbert: Truthers describe the nuts who think that George W. Bush had something to do with the 9-11 terror attacks. Birthers describe those who believe that Obama's mother and other co-conspirators pulled a fast one by getting a foreigner elected president. Let's call the Herberts of the world racers--they want to be the first to find a racist hiding behind every issue, debate and tree. Racer, it is.

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2 Comments

Joe the Cop said:

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Uh, the Oklahoma City bombing was at least partly racially motivated. Timothy McVeigh was a big fan of the white supremacist novel "The Turner Diaries", and his racism and anti-government ideology were closely intertwined.

Dennis Byrne said:

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"Closely intertwined" overstates the relationship. Yes, he read the Turner Diaries, but there is little or no evidence More to the point, the bombing itself can hardly be put into the same "racist" classification as the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King. If it were truly racially motivated, I suspect he would have picked another target other than an office building that reflected the American demographic.

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