Palin is so determinedly American that, when she went into labor with Willow on the Fourth of July while kayaking on Memory Lake in Wasilla, she writes, “I so wanted a patriotic baby that I paddled as hard as I could to speed up the contractions, but she held out until the next day.” — Maureen Dowd, New York Times — Read Her Column Titled: “Rogue American Woman“
Just last week Fox’s syphilitic LIAR Sean Hannity misleadingly aired video from the 9-12 March on Washington while discussing Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) much smaller November 5 anti-health care reform rally to claim that “twenty-thousand plus” people showed up to Bachmann’s protest. Hannity’s video switch-up — which Jon Stewart highlighted on The Daily Show — is just the latest example of Fox News hosts’ extensive history of deceptively using video and photos to advance a false or misleading story line. [ READ MORE ] [ Hannity Apologizes For Lying ]
Video Fox’s Jarrett claims is “just coming in” of “huge crowds” on Palin book tour actually 2008 campaign footage
Norah O’Donnell stumps STUPID Palin supporter by asking about Palin’s support of bailouts
On Limbaugh’s show, Palin fearmongered about “jail time as punishment” in Senate health care bill
Mark Levin to Palin: “You’re absolutely right about” “death panels“
Palin visited with ‘King of Mis-Information‘ Sean Hannity last night — during which she admitted she is was a ‘D’ student — among many other things
Palin is “all for” “profiling” in order to “save innocent American lives“
Palin cites Newsmax, the right-wing LIE Magazine as one of the sources she reads
Palin and Hannity commiserate over McCain campaign’s supposedly insufficient use of Ayers and Wright
References:
1.Sarah Palin’s ‘rogue’ Christianity — Did God plan for her to become Governor of Alaska. If so, did God plan for her to step down. Did God plan for her to run for Vice President? If so why did she and McCain lose? Did God plan for her to have a child with Down’s Syndrome? If so why did she consider an abortion? Did God plan for her to have a huge wardrobe? Then why did she apologize for it? [ READ MORE ]
By: Prof. Jonathan L. Walton … in Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, “Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he’s white. Newsweek magazine told us this. We know that white students are destroying civility on buses, white students destroying civility in classrooms all over America, white congressmen destroying civility in the House of Representatives. — Rush Limbaugh, Sept. 15, 2009
Ever the statesman, and often candid to a political fault, former President Jimmy Carter said recently that much of the animosity directed toward President Barack Obama is “based on the fact that he is a black man.”
A lifelong Southerner, Carter acknowledged that the inclination of racism still exists, and that “it has bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.”
Though courageous, the former president’s pronouncement will surely be considered controversial to many Republicans and Democrats alike. Some will view Carter’s comments as politically inexpedient.
The topic of race in general, and charges of racism in particular, is political dynamite that typically explodes in the hands of the accuser — just ask [Harvard] Professor Skip Gates, [New York] Gov. David Paterson, or Obama (whom I will return to momentarily).
Unless someone is wearing a Klan hood while yelling, “Nigger, Go Back to Africa,” the charge of racism seems to offend the accused these days more than the actual victims.
This is true, in part, due to the most prevalent view of the problem of race and racism in this country. In the eyes of many, the responsibility of moving beyond racial conflict in America is placed at the feet of minority communities of color, as opposed to the dominant society.
We’ve all heard it. America will move beyond race to a colorblind society only when minority groups cease dwelling on difference. Such a view permeates the melting pot ideal of American folklore, the myth of meritocracy and even the “post-racial” dimension of electoral politics.
Thus, for Carter to call out this segment of the white community, he is disrupting the conspiracy of silence concerning racial injustice that demands the allegiance of politicians on the national scene.
Think about it. Is this not the racial bargain that Obama accepted to become the nation’s first African American president? Matters pertaining to race have been avoided unless absolutely necessary (cough, cough, the Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright).
And in terms of policy, obstacles faced by any particular group, like disproportionate unemployment among communities of color, for example, are obfuscated by anemic and ineffectual broad-based prescriptions. Rising tides lift all boats, right?
Yet Obama’s enormous success in life, whether as a highly educated community organizer or as America’s commander in chief, exposes the paradox this sort of faux post-racialism presents.
It’s a one-sided deal for people of color; as “post-racial” in effect means post-black, post-brown, post-red and post-yellow, while leaving the normative racial framework of whiteness intact. Race is the challenge people of color must confront and, dare I say, “get over.”
But a post-racial America does not demand the same of those who identify with, and claim the social construction of, whiteness and perceived privileges and cultural superiority therein.
This is why, it would seem, Obama’s body standing behind the American presidential seal has a critical segment of America losing its hold on reality — a reality, I would argue, few have ever been forced to acknowledge up to this point.
Whether it’s the birthers, tea-baggers, deathers, indoctrinators, or “You lie!”-ers, they have neither veiled their racial animus nor cloaked their white nationalism. The prevalence of racist images of Obama brandished by protesters juxtaposed with calls of “taking our country back” are reminiscent of D.W. Griffith’s fictional America as depicted in the film Birth of a Nation.
Herein lies Carter’s perceptive point. Obama can’t win with these folks, because they are blinded not just by his race but also by an uncritical devotion to their own. His pigmentation rather than his policies cut against the grain of what these persons wrongly consider “natural” or “American.”
More specifically, his very being is a haunting rejoinder to such white Americans of what they are not — indeed what they have never been. This African American man with an Arabic name has dared to usurp all of the cultural and cognitive tropes that white supremacy has historically claimed for itself. He is calm in the face of their unrestrained emotion. The more illogical they act, the more rational he comes across. And, of course, the more eloquent and erudite he presents himself, the more he provokes the Joe Wilsons of the world to mindlessly blurt out, “You lie!”
In the process, Obama has transformed such opponents into the racial other, an uneducated and uncultured blob of white (and largely Southern) backwardness that is beyond the pale of social redemption or acculturation. Wilson and the remaining Sons of Confederate Veterans have, in effect, become this “black man’s burden.”
Maybe this helps explain Glenn Beck’s ridiculous yet probably heartfelt assertion that the president has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”
Beck: Obama has “exposed himself as a guy” with “a deep seated hatred for white people“
The president reminds Beck, along with those who identify with Beck’s form of white neo-nationalism, of the lie of their own professed superiority — a place of comfort and privilege in America that was neither deserved nor ever attained, yet still claimed based on the pinkness of their skin and straightness of hair. Obama’s apparent success only further dismantles this lie and pours salt in socially insecure wounds.
Similar can be said of those who need the president to be Adolf Hitler. If Obama is Hitler, that means protestors can liken themselves unto the Jews; only this time it’s a victimized-yet-devout group of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who want nothing more than to restore a nation that God, or more appropriately, Jefferson Davis, decreed as divinely their own.
The ability to make such ludicrous claims on conservative radio, Fox News, and on Capitol Hill, however, represents the kind of power that they unduly still possess. As tasteless as Wilson’s heckling of the president was, it still takes an immense level of privilege to be a jerk on the floor of Congress.
My point here is simply that the problem of race in America has never been solely or predominantly a minority issue. It is first and foremost, as Carter said, a problem of whiteness.
Just as racial segregation in Wilson’s fond memories of idyllic South Carolina was less about black people but a matter of white phobia, the lie of whiteness projects its fears upon minority bodies like the president’s in hopes of maintaining its own unhealthy and unrealistic sense of being in charge.
This is why James Baldwin rightly suggested years ago that “the vast amount of the energy that goes into what we call the ‘Negro problem‘ is produced by the white man’s profound desire not to be judged by those who are not white.”
I believe this applies to our current president and his most vocal critics. If he is framed as the foreigner, incarnate evil and indoctrinating Nazi, many won’t have to acknowledge that he may just be smart, sophisticated and a devout patriot. God forbid.
About The Author: Jonathan L. Walton is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California, Riverside. He teaches courses in African American religion; religion, media and culture; and religion and political discourse. His new book is, Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Religious Broadcasting (New York University Press). Visit his site at: http://www.jonathanlwalton.com/
MediaMatters: On his radio program, Fox News’ Sean Hannity claimed that The Washington Post is trying to “smear, besmirch, [and] demonize” Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert McDonnell (R) by going through “the great effort to dig up a graduate school thesis that he wrote,” adding that a thesis “by design is supposed to be provocative” and that McDonnell wrote his “20 years ago.” But during the 2008 presidential campaign, Hannity aggressively attacked Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton for college theses they wrote more than 20 years ago.
Hannity was referring to an August 30 Post article about controversial views McDonnell expressed in his 1989 master’s thesis at CBN University, which was founded by Pat Robertson and named after his evangelical Christian Broadcasting Network; the university has since been renamed Regent University. [ READ MORE ]
Here is Sean Hannity Smearing Michelle Obama During The 2008 Elections: In several broadcasts of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, Sean Hannity repeatedly distorted a passage from Michelle Obama’s 1985 Princeton senior thesis to suggest that Obama was asserting her own views when she wrote that “[i]t is possible that Black individuals either chose to or felt pressure to come together with other Blacks on campus because of the belief that Blacks must join in solidarity to combat a White oppressor.” [ READ MORE ]
The Fox is Always Wrong!
…..and these diabolical G.O.P. attacks on Michelle Obama NEVER WORKED!Michelle Obama’s detractors had very thin gruel to fuel their outrage: a happy remark in Wisconsin in February that “for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country;” a relatively downbeat primary-season stump speech that stressed the struggles of working-class and middle-class Americans; her imputed blame for the past and recent antics of the Obama’s long-time pastor, Jeremiah Wright; and a Princeton senior thesis written more than two decades ago that was been ignorantly described as an endorsement of racial separatism.
But this limited material generated endless hostile conservative blog posts, a series of tirades by pundits ranging from Bill O’Reilly to Christopher Hitchens, a cover article for National Review calling her “Mrs. Grievance,” and a racially tinged internet ad sponsored by the Tennessee Republican Party.
And where there was no “evidence” to distort of Michelle Obama’s supposed anti-American bitterness, radicalism, and racialism, was invented, as shown by the viral rumor, completely unfounded, that there was some video floating around showing her ranting about “whitey“–in some versions, in the company of Louis Farrakhan. [ More on Why The Blistering G.O.P. Attacks On Michelle Obama Never Worked ]
Reference: Media Matters offered an admirably comprehensive look at Fox News dog-man Sean Hannity’s most wet-brained (but creative!) Obama smears of the entire 2008 campaign. Here are the five cleverest
The protest against the presidential speech “shows at some level how desperate the right is to find an issue to challenge Obama on…They have gotten some traction on health care, but the mere fact that they have jumped on this reflects that this is a party without a voice. Are Republicans going to run in the mid-terms on a ‘Presidents shouldn’t talk to kids’ platform?‘ — Democratic strategistChris Lehane
SLATE: Republicans have accused President Obama of attempting to indoctrinate American schoolchildren after it came out that a forthcoming speech included a line asking students to “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.” The White House claims that the speech is intended to stress “the importance of education” and to encourage students to persist and succeed in school. “As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology,” remarked Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican Party. The language has since been revised to ask students “how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals.” The president will deliver the speech on Sept. 8, and as ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper points out, schools can still choose whether they broadcast it. [ READ MORE ]
Schoolchildren across the nation “will be forced to watch the president justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other president.” — Republican Party of Florida
The power of the word: Mr Obama is inspired by earlier orators. “He has certainly studied all of his predecessors, he is quite aware of the rhetorical heritage that he draws on.” “He clearly sees himself as a descendant of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.” “He is summoning the ghosts of previous leaders and presidents who Americans have learnt to revere.” — Ekaterina Haskins, professor of rhetoric at the University of Iowa.
By Stephanie Holmes
BBC News
US President-elect Barack Obama’s rhetorical skill, his ability to captivate and inspire audiences with his powerful speeches, has led some writers to describe him as the greatest orator of his generation.
What is the secret of his success – the words themselves, the way he delivers them, or the historical change he represents?
“I believe Barack Obama embodies, more than any other politician, the ideals of American eloquence,” says Ekaterina Haskins, professor of rhetoric at the University of Iowa.
His speeches, she argues, are shaded with subtle echoes of great speeches past, consciously creating a sense of history, purpose and continuity.
Past ghosts
“He has certainly studied all of his predecessors, he is quite aware of the rhetorical heritage that he draws on,” Ms Haskins explains. “He clearly sees himself as a descendant of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.”
“He is summoning the ghosts of previous leaders and presidents who Americans have learnt to revere.”
ECHOES OF THE PAST
MARTIN LUTHER KING: I may not get there with you but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land
Martin Luther King “I have a dream”
BARACK OBAMA: The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.
President-Elect Barack Obama in Chicago
On winning the election, his Chicago address echoed two of the most famous speeches in US history – Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg address and the words spoken by assassinated civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King the day before his death.
Philip Collins, a speech-writer for former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, is in no doubt that Mr Obama owes his success to his oratorical gifts.
“He has shown the power of brilliant rhetorical force,” says Mr Collins, a leader writer for the UK’s Times newspaper.
Initially, Mr Obama’s speeches, peppered with references to lofty ideals like “change”, “promise” and “belief” prompted criticism that they were devoid of content and policy.
He began to add policy detail as the campaign progressed but his speech at the Democratic Convention was regarded as less engaging by some observers, precisely because of the number of concrete proposals it contained.
Peopled by personalities
Ms Haskins argues that Mr Obama has other techniques for avoiding the charge of pure rhetoric, adding weight and depth to the abstract with solid illustrations.
Barack Obama tells supporters ‘This is our moment‘ “Rhetoric always has the connotations of being about appearances rather than reality but he doesn’t sound false. He plays with the patriotic abstractions that allow for a certain kind of rhetorical manoeuvring and fills them with specific concrete examples,” she says.
His victory speech, delivered in Chicago, channelled broad ideas of the struggle of a generation through the eyes of 106-year-old Ann Nixon Cooper, who has become a celebrity in her own right.
But does the poetry of his campaign risk stumbling when it faces the more prosaic role of holding office?
Many commentators pinpoint the “A More Perfect Union” speech, made in March 2008 in the aftermath of a scandal about his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, as one of Mr Obama’s finest.
Evidence of Rev Wright’s inflammatory sermons risked irrevocably damaging Mr Obama’s candidacy but his response managed to tackle the question of race in US society with delicacy.
It was a speech which wrapped the experience of different races together, expressing understanding for the deep-seated, lingering resentments of each and presenting himself as the embodiment of unity.
His style of delivery is basically churchy, it’s religious: the way he slides down some words and hits others — Philip Collins, Journalist and speech-writer.
For Mr Collins, it remains the only speech, so far, that will not fade. Rousing campaigning speeches, however perfectly pitched and presented, he says, do not test the true mettle of a politician. What does is a speech that attempts to change the opinions of those who disagree with you.
“The weakness of Obama’s rhetoric so far is that it is so agreeable. There is almost nothing he says with which you can disagree. We need to wait for the big moments, the foreign policy challenges, for the great Obama speeches.”
‘It’s about the tune’
Yet print out and read a transcript of a speech by Mr Obama and you may be disappointed. Virginia Sapiro, professor of political science at Boston University, suggests this is because the way Mr Obama delivers his speeches is as important as his words.
“He looks at all times in possession of himself – he is very calm, with an inner peace in his delivery which, in a time of crisis, is very important.”
Ms Haskins agrees: “I’ve been going through his speeches textually. The text alone cannot tell us why they are so powerful, it is about delivery.”
He may have calmness, notes Mr Collins, but the range of his delivery – the way he alters his pace, tone and rhythm – is closer to song.
“His style of delivery is basically churchy, it’s religious: the way he slides down some words and hits others – the intonation, the emphasis, the pauses and the silences,” he explains.
“He is close to singing, just as preaching is close to singing. All writing is a rhythm of kinds and he brings it out, hits the tune. It’s about the tune, not the lyrics, with Obama.”
