Was DNC Chair Howard Dean’s “Hotel Staff” Barb Racist or Racial?

[candy331]

Well worth the read:


Black civil rights and congressional leaders said Tuesday that a recent joke made by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the recently-elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was not offensive and is being purposely exaggerated by the GOP to gain traction with blacks.

During a meeting last month with black Democrats in Washington, D.C., Dean joked during a speech, “You think the Republican National Committee could get this many people of color in a single room? Only if they had the hotel staff in here.”

Republicans branded Dean’s remarks as “racist” and “insulting” to blacks, and some even suggested that Dean should resign.

“The point he was trying to make was that the Bush administration is extremely hostile and threatening to the interest of black people,” Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, a former Democratic presidential candidate, told BlackAmericaWeb.com Tuesday. “He was saying that although the Republican Party has leading blacks in high positions, they are not black leaders who can deliver voters.”

Republicans immediately seized on what they perceived as a political miscalculation by Dean, with Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele and former congressman J.C. Watts -- both prominent black Republicans -- calling on Dean to apologize, and RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman telling the ABC Radio Network that Dean's remark was “pretty offensive. It's pretty racist, if you ask me.”

-more

www.blackamericaweb.com

[cestpaspossible]

1. Only in the bizarro Republican world

is acknowledging the negative effects of institionalized racism considered racist.

[DBoon]

2. It isn't anti-Black

It's just stating a truth about Republicans - that they treat ethnic minorities as window dressing.

The truth hurts too much, so they have to obscure the issue

[MADem]

3. Brutal, shameless bastards

You would have to be totally OBTUSE to not understand what Dean meant. By contrast, the GOP is the group desperately trying to play the darker complexioned Americans for total fools. Anyone with one fourth of a brain understands the GOP attitude towards those with a bit of melanin--sure, there are toady exceptions, but we know how they feel about the rest of their bretheren--there's the "?talented? TWO percent--the idiots who go GOP" and the rest, who are trying to live, love, survive, enjoy and get by. And who have a conscience, and who care about their fellow humans...

I find this attempt at WEDGING every bit as dispicable as the "GEEZERS LOVE SODOMITES AND HATE THE MILITARY" theme they were pushing WRT AARP.

It's clear, and it is quite plain: THEY HAVE NO SHAME. They respect no one, nothing, and certainly not themselves, the disgusting pigs.

Anything, anything at all, to win. How can they sleep at night?

[Cha]

4. This says it all to me..

"We knew when we left that the Republicans would grab onto it, record it and promote it for their own agenda,” Jackson Lee said in an interview Tuesday.

On whether Dean should apologize, Jackson Lee she said Republicans are raising the issue – not blacks in communities around the country.

“The call for an apology is coming from people with an agenda,” she said."