Monday Reads: No Joy in Mudville

Good 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?