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Tag Archives: TV
Glenn Beck & The Right-Wing Media
(WATCH VIDEO: Crooks & Liars “Glenn Beck ‘You’re Going To Have To Shoot Them'”)
I see Glenn Beck as actually dangerous, and not just abrasive and dishonest like other right-wing media pundits.
I first became mildly aware of Beck when he was scathing the Bush White House, but back then he never ever called himself “conservative” and only called himself “libertarian.” Today he has fashioned himself a New Media Joe McCarthy and wants to teach the children of America a distorted and fictitious version of U.S. History.
What has actually risen to the level of public danger is centered on the TV show aspect of what he has done with his career. If anyone doesn’t already know he has mocked setting people on fire, shown a shaky rape video for no reason beyond fear mongering and to cap it all off he called a sitting president a racist on live TV.
Because television gives the illusion of credibility putting the character (I believe he is playing everyone, he said so in an interview around when he got all freaky) of Glenn Beck out there has sent horrible and extremely dangerous repercussions into the nation that can never be taken back.
Without pulling out a pack of URLs it’s quicker to just say that historically the U.S. has kind of “self-policed” this kind of extremism and incitement to violence disguised as free speech when it has happened before and always the figure that resembles Glenn Beck of today had a fall from grace. Usually getting fired. The best recent example is “Dr.” Laura getting the axe: she went into something from a KKK rally and that was the “the line.”
It sounds too simple, I know, but the most serious offender here is News Corp and Fox News.
Glenn Beck is only especially dangerous because his bosses won’t fire him no matter what “line” he crosses. If you minus Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers from this situation then Beck would have been canned for being disrespectful to a sitting president or too libel for his “here’s some violence, but don’t do violence” message he delivers regularly. Since this heartless media empire keeps him alive the kind of normal “quality controls” are not coming into play.
In the wake of the Tucson shooting, another act of domestic terrorism that the mainstream media refuses to label as such, and the moving speech delivered by President Obama there is a strong need to assess ourselves in our words and also more deeply to our mind state. This cannot, however, negate the need for people to speak their opinions about the current state of the nation.
America is on a road of a long, slow decline into moral ambiguity and a complete lack of ethics, and Glenn Beck combined with Fox News and the tea party is the first step toward this destruction of all that is good and decent in America. I don’t say these things to get a rise out of anyone or to single out Glenn Beck, but rather only because I see these words as the simple truth.
If Beck and those similar to him would only stop the incitement to violence, racism and bigotry then I would never raise issue with them beyond to merely disagree. Since this next evolution of political dialogue looks more like McCarthyism and Nazism combined I simply refuse to call it anything else.
Meg Whitman Booed At Women’s Conference
Meg Whitman showed a clear disconnect with California voters when refusing Jerry Brown’s offer of taking down all but the two positive ads from both candidates. People in this state are not looking for the best smear agent, we are looking for the person best qualified for the job as governor.
Another aspect to Whitman’s reaction to this proposal that I have not heard discussed is that of the huge sums of money she has spent on the political attack ads flooding the media–they have effectively committed her to the political strategy of negativity since she decided to make the majority of the ads negative instead of positive. Now that they spent millions trying to convince people the “other” is so awful it would be somewhat like throwing all that money away to suddenly switch stance to a “I’m the better choice” position.
If Whitman was a smart, pragmatic leader she would have taken up Brown on his offer to cut the TV ads down to the two positive ads from each. It appears she lacks the ability to think in terms other than dollar signs, or so it seems.
I find this sort of thing very typical of the conservative-Republican side of things. They never want to actually agree to being held to ethics and standing against the smear season tactics. When the chips are down and both sides are ready to deal on how negative things are getting, it always seems to be the right-winger who simply refuses to make it more civil. Perhaps because they understand that the Republican base seems to be fueled by negativity, scapegoating and fear mongering.
YouTube Changes Its Face On Us
This new streamlined YouTube is improved in the sense that we can see a billion & one videos lined up, but somehow it feels like they just made the whole site a video version of Twitter.
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I think it’s all a big grand master plan to get everybody on Facebook in the whole universe. We will make you Facebook even if you don’t own a computer, all devices must have Facebook Apps to be worthy of creation!
Jon Stewart Castrates The Blogosphere
As is usually the case, it is left to the Comedy Central programming of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to point out these funny aspects of our media and our society that go mainly overlooked.
From “The Blogs Must Be Crazy” segment:
It’s almost as if these headlines are freakishly out of proportion to the content contained within them.
Oh, did you Comedy Central writers notice that too?
A good headline makes all the difference, and if somebody isn’t getting castrated, eviscerated and then decapitated its just not a good headline.
I guess the real title of this post is: Lightborn Eviscerates The Blogosphere
But I have a suggestion: the “versus posts.”
Someone vs. Someone, instead of Someone metaphorically cannibalizes Someone else.
Just a thought…
LiberalViewer Tackles “Citizens United v. FEC”
LiberalViewer of YouTube attempts to set the record straight on mischaracterizations of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.”
It appears based on watching this video that the ruling is greatly misunderstood by both sides and I myself am inspired to try and read the whole 180+ page Opinion of the Court.
I am in no way advocating the chilling of free speech by value of it simply coming from a corporation or union.
It is a falsehood to state that this ruling allows for “unlimited contributions to political candidates” and also a point that is not within the primary argument against this ruling, as it did not effect those existing limitations.
I believe, personally, that the argument made that this will benefit non-profit advocacy organizations over private sector special interests has some serious flaws in it, while it is not altogether untrue.
It’s true that some of the confusing regulations surrounding political advocacy have been discarded in this recent decision, but it is the structure and measure of what they have done that is so reprehensible.
Were it to be the case that a corporation had to declare their logo and “I Support This Ad” with the CEO standing there; then this decision would be far different in implications to our political process.
This logic that major multinational corporations will for some reason “not go there” with political issues is true to a certain extent but it precludes the simple truth that when seeing itself as threatened, as the insurance companies did the early days of the Health Care Debate, they will spend whatever they can as fast as they can to flood us with … media. Media like television ads.
How quickly we forget as a nation, as a people, that Sen. John Kerry was literally “slimed” out of his equal opportunity at the democratic process in a bid for president no less by what we now call “swing voting” but if you track this story out it was a bunch of frauds who demeaned their personal character in a outright smear campaign. One of them lives right here in Santa Cruz, California and just like the Bush administration itself they are taking no responsibility for this in public.
How easy it will be now for a nameless silent corporate partner to just bankroll a bunch of TV ads either pro or con for a candidate that had policies that just might ask them to give a little back after they take so much from the environment, for instance. If understand that McDonald’s is Pro-McCain, just as a random example, then many of my concerns go away. But as it stands the Sierra Club, the NRA and the example of the video clip Microsoft could all wildly flood a campaign with media while grassroots money and dedicated social advocates of any position would be overshadowed.
Also this argument that money doesn’t win elections is also partly false. Money is not enough, as the examples of Ross Perot and Mitt Romney illustrate, but the 2008 Campaign for the White House was in part decided on the dollars and cents. Of course you need the solid candidate, as the Democrats held with Obama, to seal the deal but my studies in Political Science completely disagree with the scoffing of this notion of looking at the financial impact and earnings to get the best picture.
As I stated before, I believe I may have to read this entire decision before I am totally satisfied I understand it fully.
For now, I am strongly standing with the words of President Obama in his State of the Union address calling this decision a means by which we will “open the floodgates” to foreign special interests and corporate lobbyist influence over the actual results of our elections themselves.
I feel both the SCOTUS and perhaps LiberalViewer as well have concerned themselves too much with entities that deserve very little concern or express protections of the court while neglecting to see the ramifications of said decision on the people that truly represent democracy at it’s core.
To put it plainly: this appears a “open door” policy in terms of slash-and-burn negative political ads at the end of a campaign cycle to force a candidate to lose based on hyperbole, as we have seen before in politics. Slime works, and I as I understand it the SCOTUS just ruled in favor of slime in our elections.
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UPDATE!
Russ Feingold at CounterPunch.org explains what Sam Donaldson was speaking about that I referred to as “inaccurate” in the above piece.
I was under the impression that he was saying that Soft Money limits are now gone under this ruling but in fact it he was speaking to the issue of spending directly out of the treasury without limit.
***Thanks to Paul J. Rourke for bringing this to my attention and providing the link.
Fox “Not-a-news-agency” News is Banned From White House Porch
(Chicago Tribune: Swamp Politics)
Is it a good idea to single out just one outlet in the manner that The Obama White House recently has in the case of removing Fox Broadcasting from the press pool?
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At first, I was in favor of the move to ignore the Fox Broadcasting Company by Barack Obama.
His efforts to clear his name on the website “Fight The Smears” stem almost entirely from Fox. He has every right to defend himself from these smear-merchants and radical right-wing propagandist supporters.
The right-wing lobby called “Fox News” (as in the cable pseudo-news) and “Fox News Talk” (as in the radio pseudo-news) is still “not a news organization” in my opinion. But I think this label should include everyone from COMEDY CENTRAL to HLN to CNN to MSNBC, everyone except PBS and C-SPAN.
It’s been televised tabloidism in place of televised journalism for far too long. In my view.
Any White House that would send a clear signal that The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Countdown, The O’Reilly Factor, and The Glenn Beck Show are all the same thing would be nothing but a benefit in this age of media-hate & mass misinformation.
These programs are not news, they are purely entertainment-television.
Each of these programs has an agenda, as does the network behind each.
There is nothing wrong with doing agenized-news. But it is dishonest and unethical to claim objectivity if you are playing toward a specific political wing, or any specific agenda. This is the greatest offense of the so-called “Fair & Balanced” Fox Broadcasting. As a network they cater to right-wing political agendas and refuse to declare themselves as a format that promotes conservative ideology. In that case I see it as a function of false advertising on behalf of the network.
All these programs, it‘s important to point out, are television-propaganda toward that agenda. Which might be only the agenda to make you laugh.
The broadcasting produced by this political lobby / news agency / entertainment format in only the viewing of it is not dangerous. It is taking these kinds of broadcasts as serious news formats that is problematic in a democratic society.
The informed viewing of propaganda is merely educational. However, to those who refuse to see the difference between opinions and facts the viewing of the propaganda of reckless liars, there is a dangerous situation produced.
Mine is a somewhat complex argument in regards to The News Wars between The Obama White House and Fox Broadcasting Company:
It is a good move that Obama is standing up to bad journalism mixed with bad business practices, but a bad move that he singled out FOX alone when all the news agencies screw something up.
FOX is just the biggest offender of the smears.
I believe radio and satellite should remain untouched by sweeping regulations, but televised broadcasting of race baiting and McCarthyism is just too much tabloidism for me to handle.
This sensationalist-reporting on politics that has been going almost entirely due to FOX NEWS is not exclusive to them, so I think it would be wise to pick out a few other agencies, perhaps CLEARCHANNEL and COMEDY CENTRAL, to also declare as non-news formats.
It is clear to me when a news group is run by an agenda, thus becoming more like a political lobby than a news group, but it is not clear to everyone.
A President who stands for educating the public should seek to educate people on what exactly “bias” is, and hopefully shed some light on the issue.
The specific near-criminal acts of failure to disclose vital information of a story committed by FOX NEWS should be spoken of plainly and openly if not handled more severely. This tactic of isolation is my only qualm with Obama’s approach to dealing with fake news.
If it is the desire of this White House to tackle the specific crimes against society that Fox has committed, then I would hope the case was made in specifics.
It is my personal view that a news group, of any sort, can lose it’s status as “press” if they fail to uphold the journalistic truth as a matter of course.
I believe Obama did not go far enough to fight unethical journalism and false reporting.
But I certainly agree with the point that FOX has become something other than a news agency when they promote bad journalism that is not related to their opinion-makers.
Did Glenn Beck Commit a Murder-Rape in 1990?
(Times photo, 2000: Fraser Hale)
Did radio and television personality Glenn Beck of Fox Broadcasting commit a murder-rape in 1990?
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This blog posting exists only to try and help examine the vicious rumor that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. I don’t claim to know the truth of this matter. I only claim to know of a rumor floating around saying that Glenn Beck committed a murder-rape, and I believe that this should be discussed. So I, along with others, are going to do our part to get to the bottom of this.
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Why does Glenn Beck not address these charges?
Why would Glenn Beck seek arbitration outside of the U.S. courts instead of coming forward to clear up the rumor?
I’m not saying I think he did it. I, in fact, think he is innocent of these serious criminal charges.
I’m saying that we should discuss this seriously as a nation, and a people. We should ask our friends, our boss, and our colleagues.
The Freedom of Speech must be heard over this specific matter. The voice of the people must come to be known throughout the United States on this very serious national issue we all face.
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Bill Clinton Downplays the Anti-Obama Rhetoric
Former President Bill Clinton appeared on NBC’s “Meet The Press“ and when asked about the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ that smeared him during his presidency he said this:
GREGORY: “Is it [the right-wing conspiracy] still there?”
CLINTON: “Oh, you bet. Sure it is. It’s not as strong as it was, because America’s changed demographically, but it’s as virulent as it was, .. I mean, they’re saying things about him [Obama] — you know, it’s like when they accused me of murder and all that stuff they did,”
I agree with the former president’s assessment that we have changed demographically as a nation and that the virulence of the right-wing smear factory is as virulent as ever, but Clinton failed to touch on two critical points surrounding this current crusade of baseless slanders against these two democratically elected leaders.
Point One:
The major platform to carry the broken logic of these claims was primarily talk radio when Clinton held the White House. Today these same kind of untrue slanders are carried by FOX News Talk Radio, FOX Cable News, and other talk mediums that include satellite broadcasting which did not even exist within the time he was in office. Then add on top of that a new spinster has come to rival Rush Limbaugh: Glenn Beck.
Point Two:
The McCarthyist and anti-democratic rhetoric coming from the right-wing did not start until several years into the Clinton presidency but have begun almost immediately in the Obama presidency.
Likely he seeks to try to disempower the media-jackals of FOX News, by evading the heart of the matter of the foundation-less smears directed against President Obama; he is trying to avoid giving them bait.
But it must be said: these smears have propagated themselves in much more virulent manner and much sooner than they did for Clinton. It took them years to get around to accusing him of anything even half as extreme as some of the myths about Obama that have been floated around from several months back.
What is worse is the very foundation of this conspiracy is not the same as the one that attacked Clinton. Only the tactics and one of the actors (Limbaugh) remain from that old sideshow.
This is far, far worse and I can not label it anything less than fundamentally un-American.
It seeks to undermine our very system of democracy and our very system of public discourse.
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The government is trying to kill you and everyone not with you is a “shill”.
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Or … if it’s not the wild conspiracy theories of those like Alex Jones, it’s the equally wild claims of those like Glenn Beck.
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The government is trying to control your life and everyone who doesn’t think so is a “Marxist”.
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All of this is simply designed to sow fear and distrust for both anyone who supports any not of their opinion then simultaneously spread fear about the government at-large.
In a democratic society we cannot afford to simply forgo coming to the table to discuss our positions with facts and reason then replace this with media-crusades and continuous vicious untrue labeling without dire consequence.
Those who refuse to educate themselves except from known liars need to be recognized as dealt with non-credible.
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The insidious plot that is in play here is of another caliber entirely.
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It is a giant media body larger and the message is wholly anti-democratic, then you add that we have race baiting going on against the first African-American president by both Beck and Limbaugh, but nobody on the right wing ever cares that they engaged in it and continue to do so at their whim.
A certain element of racism exists not just in what Jimmy Carter said about some white people in the US not feeling a black man should lead this great nation, but also within this intense rush to judgment of Barack Obama in terms of the full scope of his presidency.
The matter of those on the right who wished to keep their children home from school because Obama would address the class in a video is more short-term example of this same rush to negative judgment.
I personally will allow no person to wrap themselves in this claim that anyone is saying that everyone anti-Obama is by value of that a racist.
What is disturbing is the number of people who obviously have never looked into what people are calling “racist” or “racialist” on the left but truly have a high level of indignation more about the fact that the issue is being discussed than anything else.
To not even entertain thought long enough to form any kind of argument begs the question if they are within heavy stages of denial.
Make no mistake, once these neoconservatives no longer have an enemy to publicly defame and lie about they will go right back to trying to get people to vote for The Republican Party.
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Chris Wallace and Fox News are Lying to You
(Image: The Osterley Times)
Chris Wallace and The FOX Broadcasting Company have proven to me personally that not only do they work in a direct effort to both intentionally under-report and under-disclose vital information to the stories they cover, but also to outright lie in the name of presenting their case.
Wallace attempted to defend the ACORN slander artist, James O’Keefe III, by repeating false claims that have irrefutable evidence stating otherwise.
As is the par for the course, nobody cares to speak out against these truth-spinners and defenders of McCarthyism in the US.
MediaMatters.org has covered the story far better than I ever could hope to, but I think it needs to be understood that when Fox News reports via Megyn Kelly that O’Keefe and Giles were in fact asked to leave ACORN offices, while O’Keefe and Giles have previously denied these claims on the air of FOX News, it is the obvious responsibility of Chris Wallace to inform you of this lack of credibility native to these people along with any other claims or assertions he would like to make.
That failure to report this information, and the failure of FOX News to hold their employees responsible, is an affront to American democracy as much as it is to journalism in the modern age. If these people continue to lie to the public there may need to be some serious consideration made toward the goal of civilly disrupting and peacefully dismantling an agency dedicated to spreading misinformation, racist sentiments and un-American propaganda.
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.. Carter, who said racism accounts for most criticism of Obama, but says “That’s not what’s driving” Obama’s detractors ..
Words are important. To lie about the words of a former United States President, even in a cable news-ticker, is an insult to this nation and there is no doubt to me that this is far from some minor accident.
Look carefully at that sentence.
The whole statement is designed to make Jimmy Carter look like he is talking in circles, when in fact the Fox News organization is using their own language “most criticism” to put words in Carter’s mouth. A shameful and un-American thing to do, in my view.
Now look carefully at Carter’s actual quote:
Carter was quite clear and not all ambiguous like the false and downright slanderous “Fox News-version” of events.
The words are “intense animosity“, not “criticism“. And “overwhelming portion“, not “most“.
Jimmy Carter can defend himself. I will not dissect every angle of this for the sake of this singular posting.
I am simply saying you look at the words someone spoke for what they are. Not twist them around until they say what you want them to say.
And it amounts to a simple, and for some hard to accept, fact:
Fox News appears to be in the business of promoting and advocating for racist ideals in the U.S.
Until I see clear examples of the end of their unwillingness to accurately report on fabricated-scandals like ACORN, the controversy over Jimmy Carter’s words or something to the issue of finally questioning the wisdom in keeping an avowed racist like Glenn Beck on the payroll, I see no reason to think or say otherwise.
There are some good people who work at Fox News. But there are good people who work at the IRS, too.
Doesn’t mean they’re not working in a cesspool.
In Defense Of All Life (Abortion)
Lila Rose is the President of an anti-abortion group called Live Action.
Watch the video of Lila speaking here.
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If I could insist that as long as bombings of innocent civilians are legal in the US that we show the results of these campaigns to the public through the imagery of the dead children and the dead bodies of unarmed civilians published in newspapers and televised in the media.
Until we were so sick and tired of seeing the injustice that we would do away with it altogether.
Maybe then we might value all life, like we value American life.
Maybe then we might hear angels signing as we dismantle our blood-soaked war machine.
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My request is illegal in the US.
You cannot show the bodies of the dead in US media.
I am convinced that if we changed that law, and had a free press in a country that grants Freedom of The Press, we would see an end to war-profiteering and an end to American Imperialism.
But that life doesn’t matter to Lila Rose.
All the corpses of those killed in the name of finding WMDs don’t matter more than dirt to her.
All those murdered by contractors and tortured by interrogators don’t matter more than spit to her.
The only life these sort of people care to protect is unborn life. And in the process they want to harm, imprison and in some cases kill anyone who does anything but resoundingly agree with them.
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“Lila has since launched several successful undercover investigations exposing racism and statutory rape cover-up at Planned Parenthood. Her brave work has revealed new evidence to build a strong case against the abortion industry and lobby.”
In other words she has waged a slander campaign like that of the one James O’Keefe waged against ACORN. Most likely she lied to people and targeted this group that she personally feels animosity toward until she found what she wanted to find. Exactly like the false campaign on ACORN. These people are nothing but McCarthyists and propagandists.
And there is no such thing as the “abortion industry” nor the “abortion lobby”. That’s just political spin to make it sound like groups that are Pro-Choice are in fact pro-abortion.
An outright lie.
Tea Party Folks Did Not Vote In ‘08
“I was actually black before the election.”
— President Barack Obama
I well aware of how vastly arrogant my headline for this post is.
I’m not a TEA Party (“Taxed Enough Already”) person, nor a right-winger, nor a libertarian, nor a fringe radical. But I actually pay attention to both sides of the political spectrum, in fact all sides of the political spectrum, and I do it on my own without relying on the work of others to decipher it all for me.
I am stepping outside of my ‘box’ here, but what I’m telling you is based off of real comments of real people who didn’t get paid more if they screamed louder or lied harder.
And these people enraged with everything Obama does or says did not vote. Period.
They all sat home and decided that it was all a wash. Or the vast majority of them did at least. Maybe a few voted for the anti-American psychopath Alan Keyes.
Now Obama came out to say, in a very clever way, that the animosity against him is political and not racial.
I think very likely this is, for the most part, completely accurate.
A lot of these people are so angry because they didn’t vote. And that’s really it. There isn’t a lot more to understand.
Sure they are ‘anti-government‘, but not really. They are only anti-government when the government is run by mainly Democrats and their hatred for the government dissolves as soon as the Republicans are in power. It’s laughable and complete partisanship, but also not racist in any form.
The issue of this modern strain of racism is far more subtle and far more disguised than something so simple as overt anti-black statements.
This is part of why the rightwing cannot process the words of Jimmy Carter.
His courageous words involved looking at the world in more than a black-and-white, on-and-off, bumper sticker mentality. One must dabble in nuance and undercurrents to come to this conclusion.
It’s rather simple:
Some white people in this country are not willing to share power with non-whites.
If you actually read Carter’s comments, that is exactly what he said.
And it would be deplorable and insane if President Barack Obama was going to back up the words of Jimmy Carter. That would be completely wrong-headed and bad for the country.
So this whole issue has been a-swing-and-a-miss in terms of the conservative response to these charges. They constantly imply that Carter said that all rejection of Obama is based on race and everyone political knows that such a statement is completely false.
This example here of the TEA Party people and how they in fact placed no trust in democracy whatsoever during the election and then want to place faith in democracy through protest at this stage is just one of many examples that shows that it‘s not all racial motives.
Basically they came late to table and that’s part of their extreme bitterness. They are quite angry with themselves for the nonsense they were spouting, that I was listening to, that voting was completely pointless. Now they really wish they had gotten out there.
The big point a lot of people on the left fail to make about all this is that it is the failure to reject racialists like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and the failure to reject McCarthyist claims, that started long before Glenn Beck started repeating them, is the best example of racism in The Republican Party.
The howling silence from major ticket Republicans in regards to race-baiting and McCarthyism running wild in their party is pretty much the best evidence that exists that not only was Carter right, he understated the problem.
But I’m no brazen fool, I know exactly what I’m asking the GOP to do. I want them to throw away the Southern White Racists and throw away the White Nationalists, both of which really do vote Republican. So my request is for them to throw away votes.
And they won’t do that. Especially not now that they are wounded, limping party relying on media hounds to do CPR to their wrinkled husk.
But it’s about doing what is right for the country even when that might not be what is best for the party.
And this complete unwillingness to even admit that a boil of festering racism exists upon the fringe of the rightwing, makes me think that perhaps this veiled racism against any non-white leadership is actually present in a vast majority of cases.
Something Carter never said. Something I’ve never heard anyone say whatsoever.
But when many people won’t even explain why they believe Carter was mistaken and all they do is engage in bigoted insults against him, misrepresent what he said and just plain arrogantly insult anyone who backs Carter up; it truly does the beg the question if they just view the matters from a different lens or if they actually are so enraged because they know these statements are true and cannot abide by it being discussed openly in public.
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