Monday Reads: No Joy in Mudville
Posted: December 8, 2014 Filed under: 2014 elections, morning reads, racism, religious extremists 38 CommentsGood Morning!
Well, the Southern Strategy is alive and well and still working in the South where Republicans have officially run a campaign for a know nothing and do nothing crook based on absolutely nothing but racist dog whistles. The whistles were really loud and clear. They worked too.
All you have to do is ask a Cassidy voter what said congressman voted for or against, or what he stands for or against, or anything based on issues or record. They go silent. Ask them about the fact he is now under investigation for bilking Louisiana taxpayers out of money and ignoring the details of his outside work agreement granted by Congress and they scream “they are all crooks”. This is just a new one. The only other thing they say is that “Miss Piggy” is with Obama and Obama is bad and then they add something about not being racist and trying to be politically correct but Obama has run the country into the ground. Then, they ignore any and all contrary facts and accuse you of dissing their valid opinions because you are a libtard and a sore loser.
They cannot tell you not one thing about him other than he’s not a white woman in the party that brought you a black president. I am clearly appalled by the audacity of it all.
Many African-Americans saw Cassidy’s TV ads as a primer in race-baiting. The spots evoked the primal myth of the Old South in which white womanhood must be defended. In ads that ran around the clock, viewers saw Landrieu’s face pictured cheek-to-jowl with the black president like uneasy lovers in a Valentine.
“They’re pandering to the lowest common denominator,” bristled Stanley Taylor, a retired African-American member of the National Association of Letter Carriers, speaking by cell phone as he canvassed voters before the election. “Those spots are racist and totally dismissive of people’s ability to figure out their own self-interest.”
The blowback of racial politics marks the end of an era that began in 1970 when the senator’s father, Moon Landrieu, as the newly-elected mayor of New Orleans ushered African-Americans into local government, while guiding an era of dramatic urban growth. New Orleans had a white voting majority at the time; today it is about 60% African-American.
“Rather than suggest some policy objectives, it’s been easier for the Cassidy campaign to enflame racial fear to motivate Republican voters,” brooded community organizer Jacques Morial, whose father Dutch was the first African-American mayor of New Orleans, succeeding Moon in 1978. His brother Marc later served two terms as mayor and is today president of the Urban League.
Landrieu’s loss showed yet again that the great power in American politics is to make people believe that something false is true. Cassidy’s campaign recast the three-term senator as a projection of the black president largely reviled by the majority of white voters here, as in the rest of the South.
I’ve found a bevy of ways that white folks can say they’re not racist while saying racist things. One of my major clues is when they start any sentence “I’m not racist”. I’ve been astonished at the number of racist things people say shortly after they couch it with “I’m not racist but …” There was a Face the Nation conversation on Racism on Sunday about an interview that the President has given BET that basically states that “Racism is deeply rooted in our Nation”. This conversation surrounds the recent spate of police murder of unarmed black citizens where threat wasn’t really present. The central pale question was why hasn’t President Obama has made everything all better when it comes to race relations. I can give you my take. Many people are so deeply racist that they don’t even see it and refuse to see it. Others are unabashedly racist and think they’re justified for whatever reason. Many people seem to just be willfully ignorant which makes me wonder if they will ever learn. No one black man can overcome years steeped in white privilege just as one woman serving in a public office can’t overcome years of shoving women into subservient roles based on outdated notions. It’s not their fault. The faults lie within us.
In a special segment, “BET News Presents: A Conversation with President Barack Obama,” the president will help find meaningful solutions to unrest after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner sparked nationwide protests.
“This isn’t going to be solved overnight,” Obama said in an excerpt of the interview to air Dec. 8 at 6 p.m.
The interview, hosted by BET host and TV journalist Jeff Johnson, marks the president’s first network discussion outlining his strategy to investigate the incidents and ways the country can unify during this time.
“This is something that’s deeply rooted in our society, deeply rooted in our history. But the two things that will allow us to solve it: Number one: Is the understanding that we have made progress and so it’s important to recognize that as painful as these instances are, we can’t equate what’s happening now with what was happening 50 years ago. If you talk to your parents, grandparents, uncles, they’ll tell you that things are better,”
Speaking to youth on the music-variety series targeting African Americans, Obama also cited “progress” as the second most critical step.
Charles Blow was one of the speaker’s on the Face of Nation segment which debated the progress made or unmade in race relations since the President was elected 6 years ago. So was David Ignatius. How is it that so many people can completely miss the institutional differences in the way people are treated simply based on surface differences. Folks in hoodies are thugs and deserve it. Folks that don’ make the police feel safe must be themselves scary, threatening individuals whose life history must be slandered to protect the guilty. Our white male straight christian culture looks for ways to make every body that’s not them a culpable party. We’re all deserving of pain and violence simply by not being them. Hoodie wearers deserve to be shot. Slinky Dress wearers deserve to be raped. Loving any one outside a sanctioned straight marriage deserves to be bullied and turned away from your business.
SCHIEFFER: Well, Charles, let me — I want to get back to this — this first finding here, that relational — race relations are worse under a Black president than they were under a white president.
>hat — what do you make of that?
CHARLES BLOW, “NEW YORK TIMES”: Well, I mean they…
SCHIEFFER: Or at least they’re saying that’s what people say — are saying.
BLOW: Right. So — but you have to figure — ask yourself, is it a causal relationship, right?
Is it because of him and something that he has done or is it a reaction to him actually being the president, which is — which is not really about him, but about us, right?
And — and I think that is the bigger question, that is a bigger philosophical question as to how do we respond to people who do not look like us?
Do we believe that they have our interests at heart?
Do we believe that we can — we can identify and — and empathize with that person?
And — and if we cannot, then there’s — we kind of exacerbate something that may already exist in terms of bias, in terms of how we see race relations in this country.
And I think that’s a real question that we have to ask ourselves about who we are and whether or not things were, in fact, better before this president and — and just were kind of underneath the — kind of under the surface.
SCHIEFFER: David, what do you — and I don’t mean to suggest that it’s Barack Obama’s fault.
BLOW: Right.
SCHIEFFER: But I mean I found that stunning, that this would be the finding that a lot of people say that things are worse now than they were.
DAVID IGNATIUS, “WASHINGTON POST”: Sociologists sometimes talk about a revolution of rising expectations, where because of changes, the election of the first African-American president, having Eric Holder, an African-American as our — as our attorney general, people expect things are changing.
And then when they see evidence in these cases where young unarmed black men are being shot and they’re — they’re not — the people who shoot them are not being indicted, there’s a special anger because people thought things were getting better. They thought with this African-American president that it would be different six years on.
And I think that’s part of what’s behind it, is a sense of disappointment. You know, America has had race issues. This is our original sin. And it’s a continuum in our national story.
But I wonder if the explosion of anger now doesn’t have something to do with people saying it should have been better because of the changes we thought the country had made in electing Barack Obama.
SCHIEFFER: And — and it’s not.
IGNATIUS: And it’s not…
(CROSSTALK)
IGNATIUS: Here’s this problem that — I mean how many years have we heard about driving while black as an experience that African- Americans have?
You know, white people hear this, but do we really react?
I’ve been experiencing all kinds of deja vu all over again in all kinds of things relating to civil rights issues. Here’s another clueless white male–David Lowry–on why forcing a woman to return your kiss isn’t a form of sexual assault. But, but isn’t it cute that I want to invade her body space and physically do things to her she doesn’t want. She’s not saying no! She is just being coy so I won’think here a slut!!! Coy deserves to be force kissed!!!
National Review editor Rich Lowry on Sunday argued that “attempted forced kissing” doesn’t count as sexual assault.
During a discussion about the Rolling Stone story on an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia, Lowry suggested that the magazine “had an agenda.”
“Rolling Stone didn’t do basic fact-checking here, I believe because they had an agenda to portray UVA as the bastion of white male privilege, where basically rapists rule the social life,” he said.
CNN’s Van Jones then referenced the statistic that one in five women are sexually assaulted in college.
Lowry shot back that the statistic was “bogus” and complained that the survey used “includes attempted forced kissing as sexual assault.”
The ABC panelists then berated Lowry for his claim.
“It’s not a crime that the police are going to be involved in and prosecute,” he insisted.
Here’s another cluess white male with his christian privilege showing. Everybody’s beliefs are made up and not real except his. Other people’s religions deserve to be ignored.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson argued over the weekend that a Satanist holiday display should be banned from the Florida state Capitol where a Christian nativity had been erected because they did not practice a “legitimate religion.”
Last week, the Satanic Temple won the right to place a display of an angel burning in hell alongside other holiday displays in the Florida Capitol building after officials initially rejected it, saying the Satanic message was “grossly offensive during the holiday season.”
“I’m assuming that there aren’t a ton of Satanists in Tallahassee,” Carlson told Bible Based Church Pastor Darrick McGhee on Saturday. “I’m assuming there really aren’t any at all, and this is purely an attempt to stick a finger in the eye of Christians in Florida.”
“So the rationale here is that Satanism is legitimate religion,” the Fox News host complained.
McGhee explained that the Satanic Temple had met the guidelines set by Florida’s Department of Management Services.
“They must be pretty stupid guidelines,” Carlson quipped, later adding that Satanist should have chosen any of the “51 other weeks in the year.”
“Just to be totally clear, you would not have an objection if a Jewish group or a Muslim group or a Baha’i group or something legitimate other religion wanted a display in the state capitol, would you?” Carlson wondered.
“No objection whatsoever,” McGhee agreed.
“I mean, this is just an inability to draw reasonable distinctions between reality and what is a pretty offensive prank,” Carlson concluded.
And more of this crap from states trying to put white male privilege into law. Michigan wants to enact a religious right to discriminate. In other words, if it offends white male christians, they can do whatever they want to the rest of us.
The Michigan House of Representatives, led by Speaker Jase Bolger (photo, above, left, with Gov. Rick Snyder,) just passed a bill that would allow discrimination to become sanction by the state. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, akin to one that made nationwide headlines in Arizona but was vetoed, appears to merely force the government to step aside if a person’s “deeply-held religious beliefs” mandate they act, or not act, in a certain manner.
Supporters of these bills claim they allow people of faith to exercise their religion without government interference, but in reality, they are trojan horses, allowing rampant discrimination under the guise of religious observance.
For example, under the Religious Freedom law, a pharmacist could refuse to fill a doctor’s prescription for birth control, or HIV medication. An emergency room physician or EMT could refuse service to a gay person in need of immediate treatment. A school teacher could refuse to mentor the children of a same-sex couple, and a DMV clerk could refuse to give a driver’s license to a person who is divorced.
Michigan Speaker Bolger fast-tracked the bill, which passed on partisan lines, 59-50. It now heads to the Michigan Senate, and if successful, to Republican Governor Rick Snyder. It is not known if Gov. Snyder would sign it.
“I support individual liberty and I support religious freedom,” Bolger said today. “I have been horrified as some have claimed that a person’s faith should only be practiced while hiding in their home or in their church.”
MLive reports that Michigan’s RFRA is “modeled after a federal version that the Supreme Court has said should not apply to states.”
I’m just having a real difficult time handling all of this. Sometimes I believe that things will never get better. 
How do you fight back? These folks have media outlets spewing continual hatred and crap. They’re obviously not beneath running complete nonsense and obvious fear mongering ads and TV programs. They’re not ashamed to lie or slander. They also know exactly what to say and do to keep the angry sheep in line. I’ve got very few answers these days to anything
So, want to play a little Spot the Africa to pass some time?
Have a great day! What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
This man is filled with so much hatred I don’t know how he looks at himself in the mirror
These “religious” people are dangerous. Really, truly dangerous. All gays should die! OMG!!! This crazy has a forum to instigate murder in the “name of the bible”. Insane!
As the mother of a gay child this is more than disturbing since he has a platform to spew this insanity which poses a real danger in reaching some other gun toting nutjob thinking they are carrying out “god’s will”. Frightening to say the least.
This nation if full of hate. Hate on women, gays, ethnicity, and those who do not practice
their version of “Christianity”. Whatever that is these days.
“Do unto others” means “killing” anyone who does not fit the absurdity that this bible toting lunatic preaches. How is this any different than Sharia Law?
Does anyone else see the twisted ideology that sprang up in Germany during the 20s and 30s and preached similar bullsh#t that led to a world war?
Fasten your seatbelts: it is going to be a bumpy ride if what is happening across this nation is the election of these crazies to public office.
I fear for my child to be honest. It is long past time to continue tolerating this nonsense.
” How is this any different than Sharia Law?”
It isn’t!!!
No it certainly isn’t and those assholes are not really different from the Taliban either.
I bet you this guy is a self loathing gay man. The worst of them usually are.
But you are never “wrong” as long as you can wave that bible in everybody’s face.
The source of what ails the world.
He might be a total closet case. It always strikes me as curious when a person who is supposedly non-gay infers or outright states that being “gay” is a choice. The only scenario by which a person could make that claim is if they themselves “made a choice”. so he likely made a choice. Living your life as a gay person, just like living your life as a heterosexual person, is a choice, but being born a gay person or a straight person isn’t a choice. We could all make the decision to never have an intimate relationship of any kind, but what a sad and unfulfilling life that would be for most of us. In retrospect I can look back at my 6 year old self and clearly see that even then my attractions were all female. There was never a time in my life that I was emotionally, physically or sexually attracted to men. I like guys, but I looked at them as friends, pals. In high school I learned quickly to hide my attractions and fit into the heterosexual world. I had boyfriends, married and had children, but I was always a gay person, even from my earliest memories at 6 years old. Not so coincidentally my life pursuits have always been things that were considered more masculine than feminine. My choice of clothing, hairstyles, hobbies, etc have always been what society would consider more masculine than feminine. I have never consciously thought of those choices as masculine or feminine, I was just being myself. My behavior was very off putting to my mother who basically badgered me to dress more feminine, walk more feminine, talk more feminine and scolded me for not behaving like a “girl”. She would compare me to other female family members and ask “why can you act like her?”. She started that badgering when I was so young that I didn’t even understand what she was talking about and it basically continued until near the end of her life. I know she regretted it at the end, but you can’t take back 50 years of shaming with an “I’m sorry”.
yup. total agreement on that … the closet case made a choice to not be true to himself and wants to share his suffering with the rest of us and feel sanctified because he can’t live with himself under any circumstance. This guy doesn’t need a congregation. This guy needs extensive therapy to get right with himself.
My “libido” kicked in when I was 13 and developed a “mad crush” on Bobby Gray! Don’t remember making a “choice” at that age unless you count my interest in Elvis over Pat Boone. “Sex” had to play a role in drooling over the Bad Boy instead of Mr. Clean.
It’s not a choice but a biological fact that controls our preferences. Why is that so difficult to accept?
Oh wait, the bible says it’s so”.
You just have good taste.I’d take a dead Elvis over a live Pat Boone now. 🙂
I’m sorry you had to go through that, Anon. It must be very hard to feel rejected because of who you are.
But, as I think about it, all women feel a rejection of their very being.
It’s a matter of degrees.
I agree sue. And as for the rejection over being gay, I’m acclimated to it.. And, please call me Mouse, everyone does. 🙂
We watched the Brotherhood of the Police Officers speak out, and take action against the step father of Michael Brown for inciting a riot. He predicted there would be violence, burning, and someone would get hurt. The Brothers of the Blue, who have the most powerful union, and have the strongest lobbyist, and donators for the band to continue their behavior without any accountability. They take care of their own. In other words, it’s not for us to judge them, but vice versa. You would think people would look see and hear this pastor, and call this what it is, because he is inciting violence and death against gay people. He is using disorderly conduct to incite hate, and his donors are the most powerful in this country, WHITE MALES. These churches are doing exactly what the blue is doing, taking care of their own. Go look at the 100 top mega churches, and you’ll see they are white males, and very few black, and less than few women. Why do we give them the right to incite violence and hate and even death from the pew? Why aren’t the blue going after them?
Just this morning I became aware that the Uganda Kill the Gays Pastor is being tried for crimes against humanity, that’s happening near BB in Mass. ………I think it is time for the US to join the World Court.
I love you Sky Dancers, you stand up, and wont’ sit down and be silent. You support human rights, and you engage us into become activist, to stop the violence, the hate, the killing, and to never quit the fight.
Oh, that guy is such a liar. Just ridiculous. If he had really read the bible from cover to cover at age 17 he would have thrown that thing in the garbage can and never looked back. He has the audacity to say that he doesn’t hate homosexuals, he just loves the bible and the bible says homosexuality is a capital crime. He just follows the bible and didn’t write it. Wow! This guy is just sick. He is the kind of person who the founders had in mind when they decided that Church and State should be completely separate. And how in the hell is HIV a gay disease? It started in the early 1900’s with completely straight people who probably butchered and ate a SIV’s infected chimp or monkey. And for the disease to proliferate it was a complete perfect storm of events that started with exploitation of ivory, enslavement of Africans, and civil war. But hey, lets not read up on these things and become informed lets just read a book full of myths and lies.
Well, I call Steven Anderson at the Faithful Word Church, and of course he’s not answering. I left a message for him, and wondered if his next sermon would be about stoning and beating and killing women? Wonder he should be allowed to show all violence and threats of death, because men like him consider gays, women, and people of color ungodly for the church. I next called the Temple Police and wanted them to pay attention to this church and pastor, as he poses a threat to people. I don’t think they are listening. The unholy bastards.
I filed a complaint with both Police Dept. and FBI in Phoenix, Az. I mentioned to the PD that the police were filing a case against Mike Brown’s step father for inciting a riot, and the line went dead. When I called back I was informed they did not pursue that claim. I was told that they are investigating the Church Pastor Steven Anderson. I then called FBI, and he said they too were investigating for hate crimes. There is a thin line between free speech, and action, so I was told.
If only we had about 300 million more people like you Fannie. Thank you.
I second that emotion.
Fannie, you rock!
The South is so mired down in 1900’s thinking that nothing will change it unless we can motivate people of color and young women to get out and vote. Demographically there is no reason Landrieu didn’t win. It will take a lot of organizing and work to turn the South around, but the demographics make it possible if we can get people out to vote.
We wonder why they are so intent on shoving religion into the school curriculum. We watch them gut Voters Rights and want to rewrite the history of this nation to cover the scourge that was slavery.
They prefer the ignorance of their positions to be “taught” in schools in order to produce a generation that will ignore history and the Constitution while maintaining the only way to be “safe” is to go to war every few years as a “protection”.
Then we sit back and wonder why so much hatred is directed toward us as we invade another country and plant our flag in the name of “democracy” when we hardly practice it ourselves.
I feel the same way today that dak does: a sense of doom that will pervade our nation until the people rise up and put a stop to it. But it will never happen in my lifetime.
Of this much I am sure.
Yes, you can pray in school. Just do it silently instead of forcing it out loud on everyone else!
From the mouths of geniuses:
Albert Einstein: American ‘sense of equality and human dignity limited to men of white skins’
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/albert-einstein-american-sense-of-equality-and-human-dignity-limited-to-men-of-white-skins/
Just thought I’d share my two cents on why the damned democrats can’t manage the Southern Problem.
We need some bellicose populists that aren’t afraid to say outrageous things. No other way to run against campaigns based on fear. They win by saying looking how little has trickled down on you but wow you’re going to lose it to those uppity (fill in the blank with whatever minority or woman you wan) will take it from you. And, oh it’s not our policies that have let so little trickle down on you, it’s your government that doesn’t let the trickle get there. These folks believe that whatever Republican piss hits their head only gets there after government, minorities, and women suck it up first. The only way to get around that is with the kind of good old boy swarmy story telling of a Bill Clinton or a grand old outrage of the day by a King Fish. Most modern democrats are not comfortable doing that at all. Its beneath them to actual defend populist values by being outrageously populist.
“We need some bellicose populists that aren’t afraid to say outrageous things. No other way to run against campaigns based on fear. +
Absolutely right!!! Say what you mean, mean what you say and stop trying to be gop-lite
If women, gays, and minorities got off their respective duffs they could easily overturn a voting block of ignorant morons without breaking a sweat.
Less than 50% of eligible voters turned out to cast their ballots and the majority of them are of the Tea Party persuasion who hate Obama with a red hot passion.
Apathy plays a major role in this scenario since it has been well established that the GOP is going after privatization, gutting voters rights, defunding education, denying science, slashing social programs, repealing gay rights, and withholding funding for access to women’s healthcare, They no longer hide their intentions.
You would think that would be enough to ignite those who are to be effected. Yet they chose to remain apathetic in the face of this destruction designed to benefit their needs.
This is what is so overwhelmingly discouraging. The public has shown more interest in signing petitions to keep “Duck Dynasty” on the air than in supporting their own interests in the face of disaster.
It’s really hard to deal with the apathy. I myself, am pretty apathetic right now. I have the luxury of living in the PacNW, but even here liberal is a dying word. There’s few to vote FOR in the election, because WA set it up so only the ‘top two’ candidates get on the actual ballot. So, you can’t really vote your heart, you have to pick one of the two big parties and that often means only voting AGAINST. The repukes suck, but the demos aren’t that far behind in some ways. I still vote. Every election, even in the little ones. And it doesn’t seem to matter. Nothing changes. Yes, I’m feeling depressed and helpless at times. I still fight for what I believe in, but I’m afraid the rest of the country, except you wonderful people here and various other oases on the ‘net, doesn’t believe in the same thing :(.
Hear, hear!
Yes! And Democrats have to stay away from the DC Beltway speak. Talking about this or that bill doesn’t do anything for the average voter, who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re they are, let along understand them. Speak in plain language about what you want to achieve and how it will help everyone.
http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/11002509-123/stephanie-grace-with-cassidys-election
They will soon enough. Either by his own words and actions or an idictment that may be coming down on that strange looking head he is carrying around.
Go read the comments and you’ll see what we’re all up against in spades. They are resplendent with Ignorance and hate!
Wow! I guess there is some truth to “the South will rise again” judging from the comments section of this article.
Seems like we just moved back to the days of the Mason/Dixon Line when there was a demarcation between the North and the South with regard to attitude.
Sorry you have to live in such a state that offers only the lowest form of lawmakers running for office.
Weird thing is he moved here from Illinois and was a Dukkakis supporter in the past. Think he embraced the whacko form of christianity and mutated into butthead.
OT: But I remember meeting Dukakis when he was a presidential candidate.
I was surprised to discover I was taller than he was! It produced a sinking feeling at that time that he would lose since he wasn’t much bigger than Mickey Rooney!
You could barely see him since he was surrounded by the Secret Service who towered over him!
Looking back it was kind of funny. In heels I was much taller!
Tamir Rice’s 14-year-old sister was at the park with him when he was shot. She had gone to the restroom and when she came back she tried to run to his side. Police tackled her, handcuffed her, and put her in the police car where she had to watch her brother die on the ground.
And the also threatened to arrest the mother if she didn’t calm down. Fucking police are out of control.
That case is heartbreaking.