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Time to Boycott the Donuts

I was venting my spleen last night about Dunkin' Donuts idiotic decision to cave to Michelle Malkin and her band of crazies in the right wing blogosphere. And the inimitable skippy stopped by to give me an action alert.

As skippy points out, by playing Malkin's game, Dunkin' Donuts not only insults one-time bohemian college students, like myself, who wore the ultra-hip keffiyah, but THE ENTIRE ARAB WORLD.

From Epicurious:

Of course, Malkin glosses over the fact that the kaffiyeh is a staple of Arab wardrobes all over the Middle East (Jordanians prefer red-and-white ones, Kuwaitis all-white ones, etc.), not just among those using violent means to create a Palestinian state. Simply saying that anyone who wears a kaffiyeh is demonstrating solidarity with Islamic terrorists is like saying anyone who wears a beret believes in Cuban-style communism as espoused by Che Guevara. True, Arafat made it his trademark, but it's critical to remember that to a vast number of Arabs, the kaffiyeh's basically just another kind of hat, and that to equate kaffiyeh-wearers with terrorists sets a dangerous precedent in a country that should have learned by now the pitfalls of underestimating the complexities of Arab (and Muslim) cultures.

Unless Malkin actually is saying that all kaffiyeh-wearing Arabs are jihadists and terrorists, which is certainly something she'd conceivably say.

But let's face it. That's how Malkin and her ilk think, as they stoke racist hate against Muslims... and some Sikhs and others who have the misfortune of looking somewhat Arabic. And now Dunkin' Donuts corporation has joined the appallingly ignorant in legitimizing prejudice.

we say, what's good for the batshit insane is good for the logical.

here's dunkin' donuts contact form. why not email them and let them know that you will no longer be buying their donuts or coffee or any product because their actions, at worst, in effect condemn all who wear scarves, and at best, are just plain looney?

be nice...and point out what epicurious says...a kaffiyeh is merely a piece of wardrobe worn by most people in the arab world, and to ascribe a political philosophy to its usage is moronic.

and we don't need to buy from moronic corporations.

Jaon Walsh's Embarrassing Hillary Apologia

Salon's Joan Walsh is outraged that anyone would think there was anything untoward about Hillary's reference to RFK's assassination as justification for her staying in the presidential race.

The world is divided between people who consider Bill and Hillary Clinton monsters, and people who don't. It used to be that the monster faction was limited to Republicans and certain mainstream media fixtures like Maureen Dowd and much of the MSNBC lineup. Now, increasingly, it involves too many Obama-supporting Democrats -- and the Clinton-hate is in danger of damaging the Democratic Party.

. . .

Thanks to my long weekend, I could probably get away without addressing the controversy over Clinton's RFK remarks, which is finally dying down. But I think this is an important and disturbing issue for Democrats. Criticize Clinton's vote to authorize the Iraq war, her pandering on the gas tax holiday, her lame remarks about "hardworking Americans, white Americans," her response to Obama's "bitter" remarks, her lackluster campaign strategy coming into 2008. I've criticized all of that, and more. But to argue that she was suggesting she's staying in the race because Obama might be assassinated -- even after both Clinton, and the journalists who interviewed her, said her reference was to RFK's June campaign, not to his heartbreaking murder -- requires either a special kind of paranoia or venal political opportunism.

That she was referring to Bobby's campaign and not his murder is objectively false. In the three documented instances in which Hillary has raised this issue, two of them referenced his assassination, specifically.

Scrolling through the 700 odd comments -- largely critical of Walsh's assessment -- I noted bowseat93's recommendation of Stephen Ducat's blog on Huffington Post, as food for thought on Hillary's motivations. Ducat lays out a far more telling time-line than Hillary's irrelevant primaries through history version.

On March 2 an ABC/Washington Post poll showed that 59% of Americans were worried "that someone might attempt to physically harm Barack Obama if he's the Democratic nominee for president." By March 6 Hillary Clinton was reminding her interviewer, Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel, of "the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A." This was a response to a question about whether her decision to stay in a race she couldn't win would hurt her party. It only seemed like a thoughtless non sequitur.

As we have recently learned, two months later, on May 23, while discussing the same issue with the editorial board of the Argus Leader, she called upon her audience to "remember [that] Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California." When two utterances of the same "gaffe" are nearly identical, like Senator Clinton's oft-repeated Bosnian sniper "misstatements," such mistakes are likely to be motivated, either by a conscious strategy or an unconscious wish.

Ducat's time-line inspired to me to check on another. In the fallout since Hillary's appalling gaffe, it came to light that Obama has had increased security, possibly due to death threats. It occurred to me that this was probably something Hillary must have known. Likewise Mike Huckabee, whose "joke" in front of the NRA, did not receive the scrutiny it deserved. So I did a little googling and I find it hard to believe that both Hillary and Huckabee did not know that Obama was granted a Secret Service security detail, since it was reported in the beginning of May.

The Secret Service said Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama was being placed under their protection, the earliest ever for a presidential candidate.

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff authorized Obama’s protection after consultations with the congressional advisory committee.

. . .

Earlier reports said Obama had received a threat of some sort.

But a Homeland Security official said it was not in response to a specific threat.

Obama's campaign office deferred all questions to the Secret Service and Homeland Security.

So here are things Hillary obviously knew when she made her most recent, disastrous gaffe. That over half the country is concerned that Obama could be assassinated and that he has Secret Service protection earlier than any other presidential candidate -- and that there were non-denial denials about the issue of specific threats. Could she really be that careless and inconsiderate?

Here's the bottom line. Despite Walsh's protestations to the contrary on "Hardball" Hillary owes Obama a direct apology. And she owes an apology to the many Americans whose hearts went into their throats at hearing the word assassination in the context of her continuing to run against Obama. AND she needs to clearly and forcefully state that she has no desire to see the man assassinated? Why? Because she knows full well that she has a racist voter base, which she panders to on a regular basis. "Hard-working white people" indeed. You know. The people in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, who stated openly to pollsters that race was an issue when they cast their votes for Hillary. Unlike John Edwards, Hillary has made absolutely no attempt to disown the support of those racists. Any one of them could be hearing Hillary's assassination in June references as a dog-whistle and a prompt to make the nightmare of over have the population a reality. Unless and until Hillary learns to admit a single fucking error and do something proactive to stop the potentially life threatening damage of her idiocy, I must assume that her gaffe was not a gaffe at all.

Hahaha! Assassinations Are Funny!

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.




Can someone explain to me what the fuck Mike Huckabee thought he was doing here? This is a joke? Fantasizing about someone aiming a gun at possibly the first black president of the United States? And note that he's in Louisville, Kentucky; deep in the heart of Hillary's (ahem) "key demographic."

Hillary Clinton: Not Ready for Prime Time

Who's Tom Morrow?

A hat tip to Talking Points Memo on a couple of insightful perspectives on Hillary's hard-working white people gaffe. First from one of Bill Clinton's most ardent defenders and co-author of "The Hunting of the President," Joe Conason.

There is indeed a pattern emerging -- and it is a pattern that must dismay everyone who admires the Clintons and has defended them against the charge that they are exploiting racial divisions.

. . .

But this time she violated the rhetorical rules, no doubt by mistake. It was her offhand reference to "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans" that raises the specter of old Dixie demagogues like Wallace and Lester Maddox. Was she dog-whistling to the voters of Kentucky and West Virginia?

While I still cannot believe she actually intended any such nefarious meaning, she seemed to be equating "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans." Which is precisely what Wallace and his cohort used to do with their drawling refrain about welfare and affirmative action. This is the grating sound of Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, even though Tricky Dick would never quite stoop to saying such things in public.

As Conason goes on to point out, Bill Clinton has a proven track record on race issues in Arkansas. It's hard to imagine that the Clintons themselves are racist at all. The problem here, as per Conason, is one of being incautious with language, on issues where caution is paramount.

Not surprisingly, Peggy Noonan is less charitable in her assessment.

White Americans? Hard-working white Americans? "Even Richard Nixon didn't say white," an Obama supporter said, "even with the Southern strategy."

If John McCain said, "I got the white vote, baby!" his candidacy would be over. And rising in highest indignation against him would be the old Democratic Party.

To play the race card as Mrs. Clinton has, to highlight and encourage a sense that we are crudely divided as a nation, to make your argument a brute and cynical "the black guy can't win but the white girl can" is -- well, so vulgar, so cynical, so cold, that once again a Clinton is making us turn off the television in case the children walk by.

"She has unleashed the gates of hell," a longtime party leader told me. "She's saying, 'He's not one of us.'"

Whether it is incautiousness or a cold political calculus and deliberate race-baiting, Noonan is right in her assessment of how Hil's comments read. The point is essentially moot. Language matters in politics. And while all politicians find themselves in bad moments and make stupid gaffes -- like Obama on "bitter" voters -- the stakes on the issues where Hillary has been grossly impolitic are so sensitive as to require the greatest of care. How is it that with her many years of "experience," Hillary is so completely unready for prime time?

Scarier still, because of the direct impact on matters of national security, was Hillary's ghoulish commentary on Iran. Or as Joe Conason put it:

In this protracted and often dispiriting prelude to the general election, few remarks have been as poorly chosen as Senator Hillary Clinton’s threat to “totally obliterate” Iran. What she obliterated with just those two words were her own boasts of superior diplomatic experience—and she managed at the same time to tar America’s international image with all the subtlety of the man she hopes to replace.

Context cannot excuse her, even though she uttered that gaffe in response to an intentionally provocative question: What would she do, as president, if the Iranian regime ever strikes Israel with nuclear weapons? First she could have noted that the question’s premise is wrong, at least according to the most recent National Intelligence Estimate, which found that Iran neither possesses nuclear arms nor is likely to acquire them anytime soon. Then she might have answered as all presidents (or aspiring presidents) should when asked about such hypothetical military scenarios: “Our adversaries know very well that we have the power and the resolve to respond if one of our closest allies is attacked.”

Alluding to the potential use of justified force is far smarter than blustering about an act of genocidal brutality. So why wasn’t that distinction obvious to Mrs. Clinton?

Hillary has become completely embarrassing. From her surreal "victory" speech, as her Indiana win was dwindling almost to the point of slipping away, to the mounting number of dangerously sloppy attempts at talking points. Won't someone please take the mic away from this woman before she does serious damage to something more important than her own reputation?

Now, Has She Gone Too Far?

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.



I think Ann Coulter goes too far every time she opens her mouth. I thought she went too far when she said, of Muslims, that, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." I thought she went too far when she said that you can't be anorexic if you have a boyfriend. I thought she went too far when she advocated revoking women's suffrage. I thought she went too far when... This is tedious. I'll be here all day. Here's a pretty good list.

That Ann Coulter continues to have a career as a political pundit stands as a daily reminder of how much trouble we are in as a country. But this time she may really and truly have gone too far. Not because she advocated turning this country into a theocracy, which alarmingly few people seem concerned about. But, because now she's given the lie to they myth that the Christian right isn't, at heart, anti-Semitic. Sure the ex-girlfriend of Bob Guccioni, Jr., who once said that because she was unmarried there was nothing immoral about sleeping with a different man every night, is an unlikely spokesperson for the family values set, but she has set herself up as one repeatedly. Her horrific performance on CNBC's "The Big Idea," was such an instance, as she regaled her Jewish host, Donny Deutsch, with stories about the wholesomeness of all the "megachurches," where she frequently lectures.

Her aggressive proselytizing of poor Deutsch, and admonition that Jews must be "perfected" by accepting Christ, has touched off a firestorm that may put even Coulter's natural allies on alert. Insulting Jews does nothing to advance a rightwing agenda. Consider the number of Jewish neoconsertives, or what a force AIPAC is to reckon with, for both parties. Let alone Republicans who want to bomb Iran... or, as they put it, "transform the Middle East." (Although, so far, David Horowitz is gaffing off any concern about her remarks.)

Coulter's latest verbal tick underscores one of the dirty little secrets of the Christian Zionist movement; that they are using Jews to bring about the rapture, after which they fully expect them to go to hell.



The issue is spelled out in segment three (above) of recent edition of "Bill Moyer's Journal," when Rabbi Lerner and evangelical Christian Dr. Timothy Weber address the concept of dispensationalism and how disadvantageous it is to Jews who wish to remain Jews, rather than converting to Christianity.

BILL MOYERS: Before we go any further, give me a shorthand definition of dispensationalism.

DR. TIMOTHY WEBER: Dispensationalism is a particular way of reading Bible prophecy which divides the Bible into two stories. There's a story about God's earthly people, Israel. And then a story about God's heavenly people, the Church. And the basic premise of dispensationalism is that all Bible prophecies concerning earthly events applies to the Jews. And all of those events will be fulfilled literally in the End Times. So, Israel must be returned to the land. They must stay in the land. Without Israel in the land, there can be none of the other events prophesied in the Bible. There can be no rise of Anti-Christ. There can be no rebuilding of the Temple. There can be no Battle of Armageddon. And there can be no second coming of Jesus Christ. So everything is riding on the Jews, getting them there and keeping them there in the Holy Land.

RABBI MICHAEL LERNER: But I think-- but what you have to add in there is that when this is a step in the process that they see towards the end of end times in which the Jews will be cast down into eternal damnation and to the fires of hell. And only those Jews who convert to Christianity will be okay. And everyone -- all the rest of us so they're welcoming us now -- with open arms and saying, "Oh, we love the Jewish people" But they love the Jewish people literally to death because they they want see those of us who stay Jews burn in hell but not-- not right away. They don't imagine it will happen right away. So there's a staged process. And this is the first stage in the process that will eventually lead either to us converting totally to Christianity or burning in hell. So it's not a really great future for the Jews that those theological people have in mind.

Southern Trees Bear a Strange Fruit

And so do the halls of Columbia University, apparently. Well, fortunately no bodies; just threats. What year is it? I keep loosing track because we seem to be going back in time.

Students and faculty at Columbia University expressed outrage over the discovery of a hangman's noose dangling from the door of a black female professor at its Teachers College, prompting the school to call a town hall meeting to discuss the matter.

"This is an assault on African Americans and therefore it is an assault on every one of us," President Bollinger said in a statement. "I know I speak on behalf of every member of our communities in condemning this horrible action."

Madonna Constantine, a professor of psychology and education, was the target of the alleged hate crime. On Wednesday, she addressed reporters, saying, "Hanging a noose on my door reeks of cowardice on so many levels. I want the perpetrator to know I will not be silenced."

As the recent occurrences in Jena indicate, there are still people in this country who don't like the idea of black folks getting too uppity. And to drive the point home, these atavistic morons are brandishing grizzly reminders of what just what can happen when they do. Nooses seem to be coming back into vogue, even in the New York area.

Nooses _ reviled as symbols of lynchings in the Old South _ have been showing up in other incidents around the country lately. Last year in Jena, La., three white students hung nooses from a big oak tree outside the high school, inflaming racial tensions. Other nooses have cropped up at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and the Hempstead Police Department locker room.

The U.S. Justice Department and Nassau County district attorney created a joint task force to investigate the noose found in Hempstead two weeks ago. No arrests have been made.

The Columbia investigation also follows the arrest Sunday of a white woman on hate crime charges alleging she hung a noose over a tree limb and threatened a black family living next door in Queens. The two incidents were "the first noose cases in recent memory" in the city, Osgood said.

"I hope it's not a growing thing," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "I think the noose thing is despicable and disgraceful. I don't know whether it was a hate crime or a very sick joke, but we take every one of these very seriously, and our hate crimes unit is investigating."

Anyone who thinks threatening a black person with a noose is a "joke" needs a history lesson. It is not a symbol that can be taken lightly. Whether it's kids who think they're being funny or Senator "Macaca" Allen decorating his ficus tree, this shit has to stop.

Neo-Nazis Target Jena 6

The American National Socialist Workers Party has reportedly targeted the Jena 6 and called for some vigilante justice.

The FBI is reviewing a white supremacist Web site that purports to list the addresses of five of the six black teenagers accused of beating a white student in Jena and "essentially called for their lynching," an agency spokeswoman said Saturday.

Sheila Thorne, an agent in the FBI's New Orleans office, said authorities were reviewing whether the site breaks any federal laws. She said the FBI had "gathered intelligence on the matter," but declined to further explain how the agency got involved.

CNN first reported Friday about the Web site, which features a swastika, frequent use of racial slurs, a mailing address in Roanoke, Va., and phone numbers purportedly for some of the teens' families "in case anyone wants to deliver justice." That page is dated Thursday.

I have been unable to find a functioning site associated with the national organization. I did, however, locate the blog of "the party's" putative leader, Bill White. Apparently they're IP jumping, because of being shut down. The blog also currently lists the address info, but I will not reprint that here.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Back On-Line

Comrades:

We are back up on an IP address:

http://208.74.xx.x

and will move to this address:

http://67.159.xx.xx

shortly.

Bill White, Commander
American National Socialist Workers Party

There are a few technical issues involved in moving this, but be patient -- things will be worked out today. Right now, we are waiting for the Overthrow.com DNS changes to resolve and setting up ASP on Hal's Linux box.

-----

This information is still available all over the web and other ANSWP websites, but if anyone is missing it:

Looks like they're pretty determined to get these guys killed.

Editor's Note: I'm not going to post links or updated IP info because I will not assist them in evil. You'll just have to take my word for it.

From the Irony Files

I have been unable to muster much interest in the battle between Bill O'Reilly and the Daily Kos. O'Reilly's penchant for distortion and slander has become so old hat, that most of the time I can muster neither outrage nor the belly laugh most of it deserves. This, however, is a riot. One of my dear friends from My Left Wing, dhonig, is the latest to be defamed by Bill-O and the underlying premise turns reality squarely on its head. The falafel lover (and, yes, that's a double-entendre) has accused dhonig of, hold on to your hat, anti-Semitism.

Let me back up and explain why that is hilarious, aside from the fact that dhonig is Jewish. I don't think I've ever encountered anyone more sensitive to the subteties of anti-Semitism than dhonig. I personally have accused him of seeing it where it just does not exist. In fact, I've told him that he begins to sound like this to me:



I can't think of a worse kossack to quote in trying to prove your case, as O'Reilly is, that anti-Semitism is rampant on Daily Kos. Here is dhonig explaining how Bill-O took a segment out of his diary and twisted it completely out of context:

Ever since the 2006 Lebanon war, anti-Semitism became a significant topic, particularly in the I/P debates. People on one side of the debate cried "anti-Semitism," and people on the other side (in my personal opinion far more) inserted prophylactic demands "don't call me an anti-Semite but ...." It got so heated that I decided to write a diary, ultimately several of them, to distinguish between criticism of Israel, even criticism with which I vehemently disagreed, and actual anti-Semitism. This particular diary was a response to claims that people were too quick to make the anti-Semitism accusation, and that there really wasn't any on Daily Kos. Rather, the theory went, there was just legitimate criticism of Israel, and Israel's supporters were trying to shut it down with false accusations.
Okay, let's go straight to the money quote, shall we?

If Jews love the US so much- how come their #'s in the US military are dismal? Instead of selling ones soul to be diamond brokers, investment bankers

Did I write that? Nope. Actually, that was one of the hateful quotes I was criticizing. It is, of course, also worth noting that it was troll-rating into oblivion, 0 to 15.

The punchline is that dhonig is an attorney and seriously considering a law suit. I think he should sue. As noted by dhoning here, you can make your own opinion on that known here.

Not surprisingly Keith Olbermann has picked up on the controversy. Enjoy:

Boatload of Bigots

Hat-tip to Booman for this frightening look into the soul of American conservatism. Journalist Johann Hari joined readers of The National Review for an ocean cruise and provides a fly-on-the-wall view of arch-conservatives in their natural habitat; an insular lily-white world of affluent comfort. There, he was treated to unvarnished views about how Muslims are taking over Europe and how white people need to stop navel-gazing and breed more:

A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. "Is he your only child?" I ask. "Yes," she says. "Do you have a child back in England?" she asks. No, I say. Her face darkens. "You'd better start," she says. "The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they'll have the whole of Europe."

That liberals should be executed for treason:

" Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change."

That the UN should be blown up:

To my right are two elderly New Yorkers who look and sound like late-era Dorothy Parkers, minus the alcohol poisoning. They live on Park Avenue, they explain in precise Northern tones. "You must live near the UN building," the Floridian says to one of the New York ladies after the entree is served. Yes, she responds, shaking her head wearily. "They should suicide-bomb that place," he says. They all chuckle gently. How did that happen? How do you go from sweet to suicide-bomb in six seconds?

And that the magazine's founder, William F. Buckley is a senile, old man:

"Aren't you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?" Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. "No," Podhoretz replies. "As I say, they were shipped to Syria. During Gulf War I, the entire Iraqi air force was hidden in the deserts in Iran." He says he is "heartbroken" by this " rise of defeatism on the right." He adds, apropos of nothing, "There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we're winning." The audience cheers Podhoretz. The nuanced doubts of Bill Buckley leave them confused. Doesn't he sound like the liberal media? Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley "a coward". His wife nods and says, " Buckley's an old man," tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.

It's like he's wandered into the land of neo-conservative Sidthe; a separate reality of alternate timelines, and histories, where Iraq is a success, and the KKK are equal rights advocates. That last bizarre distortion has the benefit of being espoused by the sole African-American on this fantastic voyage.

Ward Connerly is the only black person in the National Review posse, a 67-year-old Louisiana-born businessman, best known for leading conservative campaigns against affirmative action for black people. Earlier, I heard him saying the Republican Party has been "too preoccupied with... not ticking off the blacks", and a cooing white couple wandered away smiling, "If he can say it, we can say it." What must it be like to be a black man shilling for a magazine that declared at the height of the civil rights movement that black people "tend to revert to savagery", and should be given the vote only "when they stop eating each other"?

I drag him into the bar, where he declines alcohol. He tells me plainly about his childhood – his mother died when he was four, and he was raised by his grandparents – but he never really becomes animated until I ask him if it is true he once said, "If the KKK supports equal rights, then God bless them." He leans forward, his palms open. There are, he says, " those who condemn the Klan based on their past without seeing the human side of it, because they don't want to be in the wrong, politically correct camp, you know... Members of the Ku Klux Klan are human beings, American citizens – they go to a place to eat, nobody asks them 'Are you a Klansmember?', before we serve you here. They go to buy groceries, nobody asks, 'Are you a Klansmember?' They go to vote for Governor, nobody asks 'Do you know that that person is a Klansmember?' Only in the context of race do they ask that. And I'm supposed to instantly say, 'Oh my God, they are Klansmen? Geez, I don't want their support.'"

The interview with Ward Connerly is easily the most entertaining exchange in this excellent article. He channels the down-trodden white man and berates Katrina victims for their dysfunction. Think "Boondock's" Uncle Ruckus, only a little more cleaned up for his trip through white heaven.

Rush Limbaugh's War Against Good Taste

A week ago Rush Limbaugh launched into a tirade against the "Stalinist" Media Matters. The reason: In the wake of the Don Imus scandal, Media Matters had dared to point out that Limbaugh had an equally ignoble history of sexism and race-baiting. In a flurry of outrageous statements, Limbaugh dropped this little gem.

I'm not going to let the Democrat Party or the left or some lackey watchdog group or a couple of race hustlers dictate my speech. They don't get to use the power of government to silence conservatives, which is their real purpose.

No wonder Limbaugh was feeling a little nervous. Public opinion is turning sharply against his brand of humor; his stock in trade. With the political movement he helped define in its embarrassing downward arc, what does he have left?

As per a Town Called Dobson, Limbaugh threw caution to the wind and let fly with an exercise in bad taste called "Barack the Magic Negro," sung to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon" by Al Sharpton impersonator Paul Shanklin. In it Limbaugh and his cohorts revel in the divisions in the black community over Obama's supposed lack of adequate blackness. For good measure, they throw in images of Obama dressed as a Klansman and "real black" man Snoop Dog's mug shot. Get it? "Real black men" go to jail. It gets worse from there. Enjoy!

NYC Jumps on Censorship Bandwagon

Make no mistake. I hate the n-word. I just hate censorship more.

New York's resolution is not binding and merely calls on residents to stop using the slur. Leaders of the nation's largest city also hope to set an example.

Other municipalities have already passed similar measures in a debate that rose to a fever pitch late last year after "Seinfeld" actor Michael Richards spewed the word repeatedly at a comedy club in Los Angeles.

At New York's City Hall, supporters cheered passage of the resolution, with many of them wearing pins featuring a single white "N" with a slash through it.

Hip-hop pioneer Kurtis Blow Walker said blacks need to stop using the word so "we can elevate our minds to a better future."

Others argue that use of the word by blacks is empowering, that reclaiming a slur and giving it a new meaning takes away its punch. Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx, for example, said he would not stop using the word, and did not see anything inappropriate about blacks using it within their own circles.

But in the uproar over Richards' outburst, black leaders including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and California Rep. Maxine Waters said it is impossible to paper over the epithet's origins and ugly history of humiliating blacks. They challenged the public and the entertainment industry to stop using the epithet.

And can we please take poor Michael Richards out of the stockade. That he has become the emblem for racism is, well... deeply indicative of the real problem.

I absolutely believed Michael Richards when he said he was not a racist. I think that's why he upset people so much. He reminded us all of what lurks in our deep subconscious, in that dark place right next to our fears. A friend of mine calls them "isms." My friend is a gay man who speaks of his own subconscious homophobia. He points out that these are inculcated attitudes that we ideologically and intellectually deplore. They can snap to the surface when we're triggered, as Richards was, by aggressive heckling.

What's worse. Richards's meltdown -- explained beautifully by Elayne Boosler -- or this:

State Senators Robert Ford and Darrell Jackson are considered key black political leaders in South Carolina because they backed John Edwards in 2004 and managed to hand Edwards 37 percent of the vote in a state where half the primary voters are black.

For those of you who don't understand why we keep harping on early primaries, it's simple. If a presidential candidate wins an early primary state -- like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina -- deep-pocket donors keep funding their campaigns.

The losing candidates are well on their way to becoming also-rans.

So you tell me why Ford and Jackson found it necessary to tell reporters that they were driving Miss Hillary so early in the game.

"It's a slim possibility for [Obama] to get the nomination, but then everybody else is doomed," Ford told a reporter with the Associated Press on Tuesday.

"Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose because he's black and he's top of the ticket. We'd lose the House and the Senate and the governors and everything," he said. "I'm a gambling man. I love Obama," Ford said. "But I'm not going to kill myself."

This, from a man who claims in his bio that from 1966 to 1972, at the height of the civil rights movement, he was arrested 73 times as a staff member with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Here's a tip. One has tangible consequences.

Anyone who thinks we can unwrite our "isms," or thoughtcrimes, by excising a word from the lexicon is naive. We would do better to grab hold of teachable moments, like Richards's outburst, and open a real dialog. Anything less is just sticking our fingers in our ears and going, "la, la, la, la!"

A Still Tongue Makes a Happy Life

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak
is to narrow the range of thought?
In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible,
because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept
that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word,
with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings
rubbed out and forgotten.

-- George Orwell's "1984"

What if we could make hate disappear by eliminating offensive words and limiting discourse? Would that be possible? Would it be ethical?

Such questions arise when looking at a national trend in legislation to ban a racial slur.

PATERSON, New Jersey (1010 WINS) -- Paterson has joined a nationwide effort to get people to stop using the n-word by passing a resolution to abolish the racial slur.

The resolution is symbolic, though, carrying no penalties. Council Anthony Davis, the sponsor of the bill, says the word is negative and young people need to stop using it. Councilman-at-large Jeffrey Jones voted for the resolution, but says that it has no legs because there is no one to police it.

Paterson is following in the footsteps of Irvington, which passed a similar resolution earlier this month. Other places are also considering a ban. But some people don't think it will change anything.

Paterson resident Lamont Adams says using the word is part of how he associates with his friends.

And it arises again in the blogosphere, where a battle is raging over free speech. As I wrote some time ago:

Web sites are private property not "free speech zones." Site owners do not have to respect First Amendment protections. That much is a fact. But you'd think that some of these site owners would display enough self-awareness not be total hypocrites; criticizing Bush for silencing dissent one minute, silencing their own dissenters the next. Unfortunately each site develops its own culture and its own taboos, which are enforced not only by the management but by self-appointed enforcers of societal norms. The result is that most of these sites ultimately become stifling environments and self-reinforcing echo-chambers of group-think.

Exhibit A: The Daily Kos. A few days ago, Hunter put out the latest encyclical on conduct and penalties for kossacks. It's a humdinger. Here are some of my favorite bits.

Autobanning

Through the ratings system, the community has been given the tools to, in most cases, police itself. Users who consistently bring good arguments, well thought out discussions, or simply happy doses of humor will be rewarded with "recommendations" from other site users: those that engage in offensive, disruptive, or forbidden behavior will find themselves "troll rated".

If a user constantly engages in disruptive behavior over a certain period of time, such that the community repeatedly trollrates the comments of that user, it may trigger an automatic banning of the user known as autobanning. This is the tool given to the community to police itself, and should be taken very seriously.

Autobanning is an entirely automated process -- there is no human intervention. The exact number of trollratings needed in a certain period of time to trigger autoban has not been publicly stated, but the algorithm, generally speaking, is calibrated to be very, very lenient -- you have to be very much an ass, for a prolonged period of time, before it will kick in. A mere bad mood in a comment thread or two won't do it, except in extraordinary cases. A prolonged history of trollrated comments will.

For that reason, you don't really have to worry that trollrating a single offensive post by an otherwise productive community member will get them banned: that doesn't happen. Five or ten such comments from that user, though, and they begin to be on thin ice indeed. If you are having a bad night, as a commenter, and find yourself being repeatedly troll-rated, stop what you are doing. This is considered a social IQ test: if you fail, and get autobanned, don't expect much sympathy.

One of the things the founding fathers understood was that mob rule poses as much of a threat to the free flow of ideas as oppressive government. The autobanning policy is like handing kossacks cyber torches and pitchforks. Many have been slammed with troll ratings and even banned, not for aggressive or "trollish" behavior, but for stating divergent views. As Booman observes in Hunter's thread:

Hunter

the problem I see can be clearly seen in this thread.

There is a kind of mob mentality that has taken over. Someone writes something controversial, like saying soldiers should refuse to serve in Iraq, and they don't get respect, they don't get rebuttals...

They just get blasted with meanness, and snark, and troll-ratings, and recipes.

It's out of control, IMO.

More banning offenses from Hunter:

Misrepresenting your identity. It is perfectly acceptable to remain pseudonymous on the site, meaning that you wish to provide no personally identifying information about yourself. This is fine and accepted practice: many users may have reasons why they do not want their political opinions widely known in their workplace, for example. What is not acceptable, however, is lying about your identity. You may not pretend to be someone else, claim to be a race or gender or class or nationality you are not, lie about your military service, or background, or otherwise misrepresent yourself. You may refrain from talking about those aspects of your life, but you may not misrepresent them in an attempt to bolster your pseudonymous credibility or otherwise mislead other community members.

"Outing" other site users. If a user wishes to protect their pseudonymity, and has not freely provided information which would unmask or otherwise undermine that pseudonymity, then you may not reveal private, personal information about that user that might allow others to subsequently identify them. Period. For that matter, you may not do it on another site either, if you wish to participate here: we take pseudonymity concerns very seriously.

So you can't misrepresent yourself, buuuuut... no one can point out that you are misrepresenting yourself. So you're pretty safe to flout that rule. Full disclosure: I was banned ostensibly for outing someone who was misrepresenting himself. Of course the punch-line is that I didn't out him. I simply pointed out that he had outed and exposed himself as a fraud repeatedly in his own writing. I suppose it's a fine point.

Now this is a fun one:

Consistently rating up the posts of users who are themselves engaging in inappropriate behaviors, thus thwarting the moderation efforts of more responsible community members. More on this below.

Think about that for a moment. Even supporting unpopular ideas, without writing a word, is a potentially bannable offense. As 5hearts of My Left Wing learned when she chose to support the "wrong" side in a disagreement.

I would love to know by what algorithm this happy message gets vomited out:

You've Been Warned...
2007-02-12 20:00:55
Please stop rating up other users' fights in the comment threads. MLW and Booman fights should be left on MLW and Booman, not encouraged.
I understand the above warning (posting is no longer allowed until this is acknowledged).

I clicked on pyhrro's username (a link under a comment of his) at dKos and up it popped....

Which brings me to Exhibit B: My Left Wing. Proprietor Maryscott O'Connor astonished and impressed me the other day when she threw down the gauntlet on this issue, and came down hard on the side of free speech and thought. It was a brave move and she has opened herself up to widespread criticism from the enforcers of social norms. More astonishing still, she opened the floor for debate on that third rail issue, verboten on most liberal websites; the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Her diary on this and the heated debate it engendered can be found here.

Maryscott has ripped the scab off a festering wound in the blogosphere, and exposed a level of denial and hypocrisy that has astonished even me. The passion amongst a surprising number of site members for the suppression of ideas and the banning of dissenters, I find chilling. The idea that evil ideas, thoughtcrimes if you will, can somehow be stemmed by limiting discourse has found many takers. Dhonig for, instance, has written one of the most wrong-headed diaries I've ever read... and that's saying something.

Okay, so now on to the subject itself, why it is not just a matter of free speech, and why hate should be banned.

First, it is a mere aphorism that ugliness is cleansed by the light of day. And really, this is the theme for the rest of the diary. Some have argued that we should not shun the haters, but hear them, for by putting out their opinions they expose those opinions to "the light of day," where some magical process will cleanse them, or at least we will know them by the nature of their words. Unfortunately, this involves a utopian view of human nature, rather than a realistic observation.

Hate is ugly. Even the haters, if alone, know deep in their soulless little lizard brains that there might be something shameful about their point of view. They mostly keep it to themselves, huddling in the subterranean hovel of hatred. They suspect, perhaps even fear, that (a) they might not be right, and (b) their point of view might not be acceptable. But what happens when they come out, and their hate receives anything less than complete rejection, including rejection of the person and their presence forever? They get the message that somehow what they said was okay.

Their "soulless little lizard brains"... Now, where have I heard that kind of dehumanizing rhetoric used to describe a group of people before... Oh right!

In dhonig's cartoon world, only evil ideas can be viral. Rebuttals to them cannot. Discourse has no real capacity to enlighten, so certain ideas must be denied a forum. This is, of course, demonstrably false. Even in my own lifetime I have watched public opinion morph on race and civil rights, gay rights, and, yes, Jews. Racism, homophobia, and antisemitism are decidedly out of vogue; out of the mainstream, if you will. And much of what has changed these views is that we have seen the ugliness of hate with our own eyes, giving full form to social undercurrents, and rejected it. Full-blown "haters" are in the minority. As I pointed out to dhonig, David Duke, who he himself invokes in his diary as an example of hate run amok, has been rejected by voters repeatedly. Why? Because his odious views are a matter of public record. Something that would not be the case were it not for a First Amendment that protects his right to spew racial hatred.

From Nonpartisan we learn that Jews are a special group, deserving of total protection from offensive ideas. Blacks are not because not enough of them have been killed.

Have six million of them been murdered in a single generation? (0.00 / 0)
No. So...no.

Vague terms? How about this: If you think what you're about to say could in any way be offensive to a Jewish person, or could even be CONSTRUED as being offensive to a Jewish person, DON'T SAY IT.

Similar to the grounds of civil discourse in society, huh? If you persist in violating these norms in civil society, then you get shunned and maybe fired. If you do so in blogtopia*, then you should be banned.

*coined by Skippy.

Well. I'm speechless.

Note: Both The Prisoner and Orwell's 1984 are availaible in the bookstore.

Can Obama Imitate Life?

I'm someone else. I'm white... white... WHITE!

-- Imitation of Life (1959)

Some years ago I worked with a woman, of Jamaican descent, who could have been fairly described as a light-skinned black woman. She confided in me, one day, about the problem she was having with her family over her Haitian boyfriend. Her family was furious that she was dating a "black" man. This was my first acquaintance with the caste system of the West Indies. She explained to me that because her family had a good bit of "white" blood and was lighter skinned, they considered themselves of a higher social class.

"When I look in the mirror," she told me, " I see a black woman." Thus did she dismiss her family pressure, and continue her relationship with her dark-skinned Haitian boyfriend. And good on her.

In the midst of this insane debate over whether Obama is black enough, or white enough, to pass as human enough, he seems to have reached a similar conclusion.

I’m not sure I decided it. Uh, I think, uh, you know, if you — if you look African-American in this society, you’re treated as an African-American, uh, and, uh, when you’re a child in particular, uh, that is how you begin to identify yourself.

To which Rush Limbaugh brings the following inisight:

So are we to conclude here that he didn’t define himself as black, that the way he looks does? (Sigh.) Okay. We’ve got Obama’s wife in here. We’ve got John Howard from Australia coming up, but, “I’m not sure I decided it”? Well, if you didn’t decide it, then how did it happen?

Well, when you look like that, that’s what you are.

Well, renounce it, then! If it’s not something you want to be, if you didn’t decide it, renounce it, become white!

This of course follows Glenn Beck's bizarre pronouncement that he's "colorless." The entire transcript from his radio show is worth reading and can found here, but here are the salient bits:

Yeah, I -- you know, I was driving in today, and I was seeing -- because I saw this piece with him on 60 Minutes -- and I thought to myself, he is -- he's very white in many ways. . . .

And I thought to myself: Gee, can I even say that? Can I even say that without somebody else starting a campaign saying, "What does he mean, 'He's very white?' " He is. He's very white. . . .

When he says -- yes. When he said, you don't notice his color, as a white guy -- and I don't know if African-Americans feel the same way -- but for whites, I think he's colorless. You don't notice that he is black. So he might as well be white, you know what I mean? . . . .

OK, until he starts talking about race issues and he says things, like on this 60 Minutes piece last night, he said, "When I hail a cab." And I thought, "What?" And then all of a sudden, I noticed his color. . . .

So when I say -- I mean, he's colorless -- or, for whites, he might as well be white, he's white. And yet, I guarantee you, there will be blogs today that will have me being a racist because I say that. . . .

Gee! Ya think?!

I suppose it's possible that this isn't just a preemptive shot, aimed at distracting us from his evident racism; that in fact Mr. Beck doesn't see his ruminations on whiteness as racist at all.

What Limbaugh and Beck seem too obtuse to recognize is that the implicit message of these rants is that it is obviously preferable to be white. That Obama should take these opportunities to trade up; to pass.

I, for one, will be glad when the media moves on to more important issues, like his wardrobe.

Let the Little Brown People Do It

Lovely of Karl Rove to admit what the immigration "guest worker" policy is all about; importing Latin workers to turn the US into a Banana Republic-style oligarchy. I always assumed the agenda was something like this, but I'm still astounded to hear it in plain English. As per National Review's The Corner:

Karl Rove explained the rationale behind the president's amnesty/open-borders proposal this way: "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."

Slaves. That's what we're after. Non-citizens. Sub-humans to do our icky manual labor. Make no mistake. Bush's proposal stems from a racist, classist, exploitive agenda.

It will probably be the last time you'll ever hear me saying this but this NRO column is spot the fuck on.

Rove's comment illustrates how the Bush-McCain-Giuliani-Hagel-Martinez-Brownback-Huckabee approach to immigration strikes at the very heart of self-government. It is precisely Rove's son (and my own, and those of the rest of us in the educated elite) who should work picking tomatoes or making beds, or washing restaurant dishes, or mowing lawns, especially when they're young, to help them develop some of the personal and civic virtues needed for self-government. It's not that I want my kids to make careers of picking tomatoes; Mexican farmworkers don't want that either. But we must inculcate in our children, especially those likely to go on to high-paying occupations, that there is no such thing as work that is beneath them.

There is much more paleo-conservative, Republican cloth coat brandishing, economic elitism undermining, straight up wisdom at NRO. Read it.

Paris Hilton's Racism Exposed

Paris Hilton has been called out by gay leaders for using racist and homophobic slang.

Gay rights leaders in Los Angeles are calling on Paris Hilton to explain herself after making a series of anti-gay and racial slurs in a video that began circulating in cyberspace last week.

The video, which appears to have been taken by an amateur videographer at a private party, shows Hilton referring to someone using the derogatory 'f' word and describes herself and sister Nicky as "n**gas."

Rumors have been circulating for years about a tape on which she was exposed as a total hypocrite and racist. This write-up covers pretty well what I've heard about her notorious use of the "n" word and general contempt for all things non-white.

In 2004, Carole Aye Maung, reporter for the British tabloid News of the World, said that she viewed a tape that showed Hilton and Tommy Hilfiger model Brandon Davis in conversation with two African-American men who asked Hilton if she would model for them. After the men left the scene, Hilton allegedly referred to them as "dumb niggers."

After Carole Aye Maung's report, Hilton issued a statement saying, "I am deeply hurt by recent reports. Anyone who knows me knows that this is not me. I love everybody and am not a person who discriminates against anyone—ever."

Hilton's close friend Nicole Richie added: "She doesn't have a prejudiced bone in her body." Later, Davis claimed in a National Enquirer interview that Hilton frequently used the word "nigger" to refer to blacks and that she "puts down Jews and other minorities, too." Davis said he ended his friendship with Hilton, but has since been seen spending time with her socially, including an overseas holiday in 2005.

After a bit of digging, I'm wondering if the tape that recently surfaced is the one viewed by the British tabloid journalist. But perhaps I'll never know. The tape has apparently been pulled from YouTube and others. I wonder why and at whose behest.

A video was posted this week on YouTube, which appeared to show the heiress and her sister making racist and homophobic comments about other guests.

The video appeared to have been filmed at a party, although there aren’t any specific details in the video that would allow viewers to determine an exact date or location where the video was filmed.

AllHipHop.com reports that the video includes Hilton’s use of the "N" word, as well as comments about Jews and some racial stereotypes that can’t be included here.

As of Thursday morning, the video has been pulled from YouTube and several other video-sharing websites.

And here are some lovely song lyrics by Hilton that have also slipped down the memory hole.

I am a fat ugly Jewish bitch … I’m a little jap-y Jew … I am a little black whore, I got fucked in the butt for coke … I’m a nigger and I’ll (unintelligible) … I’m black and I steal shit, Yo I’m black and I steal…

And they say she has no talent.

Nabisco Embraces White Power

Originally published: Thursday, February 23, 2006

I'm pretty sure this is a reflection of America's greater cultural entropy, but watching television is becoming surreal. Copy writing has truly gone to hell. Advertisers now get away with statements like "Titanium: The world's sharpest metal." This is bad enough, but when Nazi punks are pimping chocolate chip cookies, something is deeply amiss. I nearly choked on my racially tolerant Oreos and milk last night, when I heard the refrain, "Chips Ahoy. Oi. Oi. Oi." My husband came out of the kitchen with a stricken look on his face and said, "What's next? Enjoy a Triscuit and go burn down a darkie's house?" So far the "Oi" shouting cookies are not thrashing across my screen in Doc Martens with red shoe laces, but I fear that's next.