The Ugly Racism of the Right Will Be Their Undoing

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



The Ugly Racism of the Right Will Be Their Undoing

Posted by Leslie Savan, TheNation.com at 1:00 PM on August 3, 2009.

Watching the GOP morph into the National Association for the Advancement of White People should give us all hope, not despair.




It'd be nice to think that the recent surge in overtly racist rhetoric on the right has been a case of random opportunism, provoked by the coincidence of a wealthy black Harvard professor yelling at a white cop who arrested him in his own home. Like, who could've predicted that the professor would be a friend of the Harvard law school graduate who is president, or that president would then say on camera that the cops acted "stupidly"? Or that the incident would happen just as Congress was going into a clinch over health care reform?

The Henry Louis Gates imbroglio did come out of nowhere, and it did give President Obama's opponents a chance to howl about the onerous burdens "reverse racism" puts on the fading white majority in this country. You may not see how that justifies the big-time bigotry that took over the discourse last week, but hey, it's a white thang: There were Birthers insisting that Obama's presidency is illegitimate because he was "born in Kenya"; CNN's Lou Dobbs trying to legitimize the Birthers, and of course, an angry Rush Limbaugh fuming that Obama "is an angry black man." None of them, however, could hold a fuse next to Glenn Beck, who asserted that the biracial POTUS is a "racist" who has "a deep-seated hatred of white people," something so unhinged that even the Brown-Haired-Guy-Who's-Not-Steve-Doocy (the Fox & Friends cohost who had to apologize a couple weeks ago for blurting that Swedes and "other ethnics" are different "species") called him on it.

It's not only angry white male pundits who are waving the white victimhood flag. It's also the chair of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who last Thursday called the kettle dusky by excoriating Democrats who've defended Sonia Sotomayor for "giving cover to groups and individuals to nurture racial grievances for political advantage."

With every passing day it gets harder to think of this sudden dialing-up of whiny hate speech as sheer coincidence. Instead, it's beginning to look inevitable -- so much so that maybe the real question is, What is it about health care that brings out the latent racism in the GOP? .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/141736/the_ugly_racism_of_the_right_will_be_their_undoing/

[C_U_L8R]

1. They may be far beyond undone.

I just don't see how the GOP can rehabilitate themselves
after all this political buffoonery

[JohnnyLib2]

2. Wish I could be optimistic about this.

The ugly stuff appeals to too many people*, out of fear, need to feel superior, various levels of racism,and more. Scary, scary tactics and definitely not to be ignored, IMO.


*I do live in Kentucky and think the "ugly" is more pronounced here. ??

[Captain Hilts]

3. Their ugly sexism didn't do it. Perhaps this will. nt