Here's Pam Geller, the doyen of the anti-Park 51 crowd, in a video from a few years ago reacting to Coulter using the word "faggot" in a speech. Geller tells the right to be bold. Be sure to make it to the end (if you can) where she scurrilously suggests Barney Frank runs a gay prostitution ring out of his apartment.
Not too long ago renowned scholar and respected intellect, Dr. Laura, said the word "ni...[a very bad word for black people]" a whole bunch of times on her show, revealing that she's as sensitive to tone as a kazoo. It's actually not the use of the word, in my view, that's the issue on this show, it's her cartoonish views on race.
Big surprise, our great mama bear and Russian ambassador, Sarah Palin, jumped to her defense with an inscrutable tweet. Man, is she fond of the gun metaphors which I think are excellent for political debates.
It all kind of puts the lie to the notion of respect being trotted out for the "ground zero mosque" debate. The right likes to pull out the "respect" card whenever it suits them; don't build a mosque by the WTC site, don't criticize the president during war, and on and on ad nauseum, but they jettison that standard when it doesn't suit them, like when their grotesque views on race are challenged. Listen to Dr. Laura's caller again. She just wanted some perspective on the frequency with which she hears racially insensitive conversations, but she's told to expect this when she marries outside of her race. That remark might have been the most amazing one from Dr. Laura who seemed to be channeling 1952.
So what's going on with the right on these matters? Well, first, it seems to me that they have a decent-sized portion of their base composed of bigots and racists. Certainly not all of them, but enough that this sort of talk, and defense of it, bubbles up from the slime regularly. These are not isolated incidents--these bubbles fill the ballast tanks that keep Rush and his pals afloat.
I think there is more as well. The PC movement of the 80s, well-intentioned as it was, went too far, what with the various speech codes and the forced resignation of David Howard by the completely illiterate for his use of the word "niggardly". The right has taken these PC excesses and decided to throw a decades-long temper tantrum. They use the specter of PC correction as an excuse to let loose the darkest dogs of their diseased world view. They use any criticism, especially on race, to display their fundamental misunderstanding of the first amendment, and to basically stamp their feet and to throw things around. Their best line is to tell the offended to "get a sense of humor" so they can shift responsibility from themselves.
Theirs is a putridly sick and infantile world view, where blacks are mainly criminals (or if the president, a tribal witch doctor) and Muslims are all terrorists. Throw in the worship of guns along with this unbridled id, and the subtext isn't hard to tease out. We have a bunch of fearful and insecure children who think that, as patriots and property owners, they are going to fend off the government and the ni...[very bad word for black people] who want to take their stuff.
I am so happy that the ugly (inside and out) crazy old gym teacher reaped what she had sowed. She could have gotten her argument across by saying “N word” and not using the word and by not saying "don't NAACP me" but like Michael Richards AKA “Cosmo Kramer”,she ends up the the trash heap of history, a history of her own making. I am so happy that the free market AKA sponsors started to pull their ads (I guess they were exercising their free speach) and she finally realized that she was just another “run of the mill gabby” and her days were numbered. She realized that she was not as smart as she thought she was, finally!
The problem with Palin is the same when she mistakenly referred to Ronald Reagan Eureka College, being in California and we all know its in Illinois, same thing, she does not fact check anything she is going to say. She is soooo Palin!
Posted by: Montana | August 23, 2010 at 03:23 PM