Tag Archives: Obama

Time to Talk Back

A friend of mine emailed me this morning to share one of those internet “jokes” that make the rounds. He was astonished–and disheartened–to think that the relative who’d forwarded it evidently agreed with what might loosely be called its “message.”

On opening the attachment, the first thing I saw in large letters was “What a dumbass!”

In slightly smaller type, the text went on: “The problem with public housing is that the residents are not the owners.  The people that live in the property did not work for it, but were loaned the property from the true owners, the taxpayers.  Because of this, the residents do not have the “pride of ownership” that comes with the hard work necessary to earn the money to purchase the items.”

Following a couple more paragraphs of this were posted pictures of the President in the White House, with his feet up–a pose that evidently demonstrated his lack of pride and his usurpation of the premises from the “rightful” owners.

Let’s deconstruct this. Not only is the premise both incorrect and stupid–plenty of renters show a lot more respect for property than many “owners” (and plenty of “owners” are for all intents and purposes renting their homes from their mortgage holders)–but a President who won an overwhelming majority of both the popular and electoral vote is as “rightful” as a White House occupant gets.

But those are just factual objections. What is most distasteful is the obvious racism–the implicit message is that renter=black person=person who doesn’t respect property=illegitimate President. And what is even more irritating is the strong likelihood that the people who forwarded this particular bit of bilge would indignantly deny any racist intent–indeed, they probably don’t admit it even to themselves.

I think the only way to combat this ugly underbelly of what passes for political discourse is to call it what it is. When people of good will receive this sort of unAmerican bilge, we need to respond to the sender. We need to ask “why would you forward something like this to me?” And when the sender protests that their animus to this President is based upon “policy differences,” we need to press them on precisely what those policy differences are, and why they justify a portrayal that focuses upon the race of the President rather than on the failings of his policy proposals.

When we fail to respond, we enable the ongoing denial of racial motivation. It’s no different than remaining silent when someone tells a “joke” about “kikes” or “wops” or “spades.” If we don’t make clear that such labels are offensive–and not at all funny–we are complicit. If we simply hit the delete button, and don’t respond, we are equally complicit.

It’s time to talk back. We probably won’t convince the senders–they have demonstrated their obtuseness–but we may at least make them think twice before forwarding the next one.

And we’ll feel better.

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They All Count the Same in the Win/Loss Column

Numbers don’t lie, but you do have to ask them the right questions.

The most recent jobs report-as we all know by now–was awful. Totally flat. There were no net jobs added in August. If we ask “how many more people are working” the answer we get from these numbers is grim. The natural conclusion is that the administration is failing to enact policies that spur job creation.

If we ask a different question, however, we get a different picture–one with dramatically different policy implications.

In August, according to the report, hiring by the private sector was offset by job losses in the public sector. In other words, the savage attacks on public sector employees being waged by governors in a number of states (not just Wisconsin and Ohio), and their insistence on reducing the size of government, are preventing the sort of robust recovery we need.

This wholesale reduction of public sector employment has consequences that its proponents either don’t understand or prefer to ignore. A person without a job no longer pays taxes. He no longer consumes, or at least drastically reduces consumption, and that reduction means lower profits for businesses, which then pay lower taxes and forgo adding workers. Those consequences occur whether the lost job was in the public sector or the private sector.

Back when we had reporters with some experience and media outlets that employed such reporters, there would have been at least some attention paid to the issue of where the job losses occurred. But that was then, this is now.

As my husband reminds me when a bad call causes a team to lose a game they’d otherwise have won, fair or unfair, they all count the same in the won/lost column. So I guess this will count as Obama’s fault. Damn socialist!

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It’s the Obama, Stupid

Over at Political Animal, Steve Benen joined the discussion over Tim Pawlenty’s recent remark that “Any doofus can go to Washington.” (There has been a good deal of mirth in the wake of that remark, actually–since one interpretation is that Pawlenty himself is something of a “doofus.” ) But viewed in context, Pawlenty seemed to be complaining about the lack of bold action from both Congress and the Administration.

Benen noted the disconnect between Pawlenty’s complaint and the Tea Party’s dark view of President Obama.

“But what I found especially interesting about this line was Pawlenty trying to label President Obama as someone who wants to “maintain the status quo.” For a while now, it was a given in Republican circles that Obama was a wild-eyed radical trying to undo the entire American experiment, turning everything we hold dear upside down. The president, we were told, was responsible for pursuing too much change, too quickly. It led conservatives to stand athwart history, yelling, “Stop.”

And yet, Pawlenty apparently doesn’t see it that way. Obama, we’re told, isn’t radical enough when it comes to change.”

I usually agree with Benen’s analyses, but on this one, he misses the obvious. A substantial percentage of Americans–mostly Republicans–have a blind, irrational hatred of Barack Obama–and unlike the well-documented detestation of George W. Bush, that hatred is not a product of anything the President has or hasn’t done. Those who see an equivalency are quite simply wrong–Bush had sky-high favorability ratings the first couple of years of his first term and didn’t really hit bottom until after he was re-elected. In other words, as we got to know him, many of us came to loathe him. But it wasn’t immediate, and it wasn’t rooted in who he was. It was a reaction to what he did.

The animosity to Obama was immediate–even before he assumed office. And it is hard to believe that most of the animus–the accusations of “otherness,” the reluctance to believe he wrote his own books and excelled at Harvard and the like–aren’t a product of his skin color.

If Barack Obama suddenly walked on water, cured lepers with a touch, and had a halo, these people would accuse him of being an extraterrestrial invader.

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They Even Eat Their Own

As Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels considers whether to run for President, I can think of lots of reasons not to support him. Despite his focus on fiscal responsibility, he presided over the Bush Administration’s profligacy, helping fritter away the healthy economy left by Bill Clinton. While he’s never been a “hater,” neither has he demonstrated any moral compunctions against playing to the prejudices of the GOP base–if we had any doubts about his willingness to let personal ambition trump any tendency to do the right thing, those doubts were put to rest when he signed the bill de-funding Planned Parenthood, and effectively denied medical care to more than 20 thousand poor women.

What is certainly NOT a reason to oppose him, however, is his Syrian ancestry.

The same sorts of people who insist that Obama couldn’t possibly be a “real” American (he’s black, you know) are now throwing stones at Daniels because he received an award from an Arab-American group. Daniels’ family background is Syrian, and–like Jewish groups, African-American organizations, etc., this organization recognizes members of its community who have achieved. Bloggers have reacted by connecting the Governor to every anti-American act ever associated with any Arabs anywhere.

This has to stop. Being American means evaluating people based upon who they are and what they do, not on the basis of their “tribes”–their race, religion or national origin. Like Obama or Daniels–or dislike them–based upon their policies and behaviors, and cut the ugly crap out.

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When Will We Ever Learn?

I wasn’t one of those people who believed the election of Barack Obama was a sign we’d entered a “post-racial” society. But I also failed to appreciate the extent of racism that still festers in this country. The unremitting attacks on Obama personally–attacks utterly unconnected to any policy disputes and clearly motivated by outrage over his very existence–have shocked me.

Donald Trump’s racially-motivated slurs don’t just reflect his own long-standing bigotry (in the 1970s, the Department of Justice sued him for refusing to rent to African-Americans); they also are tacit recognition that a large percentage of the remaining hard-core GOP base is racist. Periodically, leaked emails and “jokes” from Republican officeholders and party officials confirm our worst suspicions: the Obama family portrayed as monkeys, the White House shown in the middle of a watermelon patch. Pretty disgusting stuff.

As if we needed added confirmation, yesterday the Tulsa World reported that during a debate on a bill to eliminate Affirmative Action in state government, Oklahoma State Senator Sally Kern testified in favor of the bill, saying : “We have a high percentage of blacks in prison, and that’s tragic, but are they in prison just because they are black or because they don’t want to study as hard in school?  I’ve taught school and I saw a lot of people of color who didn’t study hard because they said the government would take care of them.”

As appalling as her testimony was, the thought of this woman teaching is arguably more frightening. But of course, she is still teaching, and so are all of the people who pretend that their attacks on the President–their insistence that he is not a “real” citizen, their denial of his academic achievements–are just political differences of opinion. Those of us who enable them by refusing to call these attacks what they are, are also teaching. And the lesson is an ugly one.

What was the refrain from that old song from South Pacific? You’ve got to be taught to hate.