Statements of undisputed facts about President Barack Obama's actions can generate declarations on progressive websites that one has "gone too far" or said something that "should not be said." Honesty has been replaced by loyalty.
The most common place to find accurate statements on presidential abuses of power is buried in a sea of lunacy on rightwing websites that conclude their analyses with encouragement of violence, gun purchasing, and assassination.
Denunciations of rightwing incitement of violence and hatred come most often from groups and individuals eager to change the topic from the abysmal failures of Democrats who have been given large majorities in the House and Senate, plus the White House, and chosen to do nothing.
Tough talk about the failures of Democrats is most often heard from racist, xenophobic believers in fantastical fairy tales with very little connection to reality.
I've spent the better part of the afternoon flipping the television channels to hear more report about this 88 year old monster who killed a guard in his attempt to kill even more people at the Holocaust Museum in D.C.
This was a guy that the authorities KNEW ABOUT. He ran a web site which attacked Jews, Blacks and Catholics. He self-published a book that he gave the first six chapters of away for free on line (then advertising the last six chapters for money).
NOTE: I should be fundraising here, folks. I wanted to give you good reasons to support the site before rattling the old tin cup. But as often happens, instead of polishing something off I got carried away in a whole new direction, and so I've got the post below. But please consider as you read it if there is anywhere else on the net where you're likely to read this particular take. I'm sure there are some. But there are few, if any, that are situated the way that Open Left is. Please consider what that means, and act accordingly
As I noted in an earlier diary, Newt Gingrich has gone all-in with a nutjob email attack on Sotomayor. In this diary, I want to deconstruct Gingrich's attack, explicating both the lies and the racism involved. The racism is most accurately understood in terms of preserving white racial power, along the lines indicated by social dominance theory, which is a theory of group dominance. As a consequence, and a result of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, the old power relations are largely maintained in the deceptive guise of a new dispensation. Three inter-related patterns are particularly salient for the analysis in this diary: (1) A new pseudo-egalitarian narrative, involving language such as "equal opportunity, not equal outcomes" is used to ensure against equal outcomes, while distracting attention from the fact that opportunities remain vastly unequal. (2) The realities of historical and material context are suppressed, so that a realistic critical analysis of existing conditions is rendered impossible. (3) All attention is focused on (or deflected away from) individual actors, about whom narratives can readily be shape-shifted on the spot.
Before turning to examine Gingrich's email directly, I want to turn to an illuminating NY Times op-ed, "Rogues, Robes and Racists" by Charles M. Blow, which begins thus:
Someone pinch me. I must be dreaming. Some of the same Republicans who have wielded the hot blade of racial divisiveness for years, are now calling Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee, a racist. Oh, the hypocrisy!
The same Newt Gingrich who once said that bilingual education was like teaching "the language of living in a ghetto" tweeted that Sotomayor is a "Latina woman racist." The same Rush Limbaugh who once told a black caller to "take that bone out of your nose and call me back" called Sotomayor a "reverse racist." The same Tom Tancredo, a former congressman, who once called Miami, which has a mostly Hispanic population, "a third world country" said that Sotomayor "appears to be a racist."
This is rich.
Even Michael Steele, the bungling chairman of The Willie Horton Party knows that the Republicans have no standing on this issue. In an interview published in GQ magazine in March, he was asked: "Why do you think so few nonwhite Americans support the Republican Party right now?" His response: "Cause we have offered them nothing! And the impression we've created is that we don't give a damn about them or we just outright don't like them." Ding, ding, ding, ding.
As Blow's first few paragraphs make plain, there is little doubt that those leading the attacks on Sotomayor are themselves infected with the very same racism they claim to see in her. And he proceeds to demonstrate the vacuity of their attacks in greater detail. Yet, even his explication suffers from an over-concentration on the individual actors within the field of sustained white privilege, as opposed to a focus on the field itself. Blow is working primarily within the constraints of this new dispensation, and so the most he can possibly achieve is to reveal contradictions within it. He does this quite brilliantly, but such a strategy is necessarily limited in how far it can go.
TurnBackHate.com invites you to sign our petition protesting President-elect Barack Obama's decision to invite Pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church to deliver the invocation at the Inaugural ceremony on January 20th, 2009. There can be no doubt about it: Pastor Warren is a minister of hate who has repeatedly and unapologetically used rhetoric that is offensive, insulting, hurtful, and spiteful towards ordinary Americans of all walks of life. Whether you're watching the Inauguration on TV or online, listening on the radio, or attending the ceremony on the Mall in Washington, we hope you'll join us in silently and non-disruptively turning your back on Pastor Warren when he delivers the invocation.
Maybe the Senate and House should vote to censure Ann Coulter for this lovely comment:
If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.
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