Tancredo says Obama won because we lack a ‘literacy test before people can vote in this country.’
Tancredo says Obama won because we lack a ‘literacy test before people can vote in this country.’
Yesterday was the start of the National Tea Party Convention, which is “aimed at bringing the Tea Party Movement leaders together from around the nation for the purpose of networking and supporting the movement’s multiple organizations’ principal goals.” One of the featured speakers during the convention’s kickoff was former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo. Tancredo told the audience that the country had elected “a committed socialist ideologue in the White House” because “we do not have a civics, literary test before people can vote in this country“:
The opening-night speaker at first ever National Tea Party Convention ripped into President Obama, Sen. John McCain and “the cult of multiculturalism,” asserting that Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”
The speaker, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., told about 600 delegates in a Nashville, Tenn., ballroom that in the 2008 election, America “put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House … Barack Hussein Obama.”
Given that the convention is being held in Nashville, Tennessee, Tancredo’s remarks are particularly offensive. For years, literacy tests were used across the South to disenfranchise African-American voters, who generally had illiteracy rates 4-5 times as high as whites due to historical discrimination and lack of opportunity. Unfortunately for Tancredo, the 1965 Voting Rights Act makes literacy tests illegal.
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Chris Matthews on Obama during SOTU: ‘You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.’
Chris Matthews on Obama during SOTU: ‘You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.’
MSNBC host Chris Matthews praised President Obama after his State of the Union address, saying that he had become “post-racial.” He then said that while watching the speech, he even “forgot he was black”:
MATTHEWS: You know, I was trying to think about who he was tonight, and it’s interesting: He is post-racial by all appearances. You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know, he’s gone a long way to become a leader of this country and passed so much history in just a year or two. I mean, it’s something we don’t even think about.
I was watching, I said, Wait a minute, he’s an African-American guy in front of a bunch of other white people. And here he is President of the United States and we’ve completely forgotten that tonight — completely forgotten it. I think it was in the scope of his discussion. It was so broad-ranging, so in tune with so many problems, of aspects, and aspects of American life that you don’t think terms of the old tribalism, the old ethnicity. It was astounding in that regard — a very subtle fact. It’s so hard to even talk about; maybe I shouldn’t talk about it, but I am.
Watch it:
Matthews’ comment seems to imply that a man who is too “black” still can’t become “a leader of this country.”
Inhofe: ‘I believe in racial and ethnic profiling’ because ‘all terrorists are Muslims or Middle Easterners.’
Inhofe: ‘I believe in racial and ethnic profiling’ because ‘all terrorists are Muslims or Middle Easterners.’
Since the Fort Hood shootings and the failed Christmas Day terror attack, some on the right have called for more racial and ethnic “profiling” and “discrimination,” saying that the Obama administration is more interested in “protecting the rights of terrorists” than “protecting the lives of Americans.” Today during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing looking into the Fort Hood rampage, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) became perhaps the most powerful proponent of outright ethnic profiling, saying it’s “by and large true” that “all terrorists are Muslims or Middle Easterners”:
INHOFE: I’m, for one — I know it’s not politically correct to say it — I believe in racial and ethnic profiling. I think if you’re looking at people getting on an airplane and you have X amount of resources to get into it, you get at the targets, and not my wife. And I just think it’s something that should be looked into. The statement that’s made, it’s probably 90 percent true with some exceptions like the Murrah federal office building in my state, Oklahoma. Those people, they were not Muslims, they were not Middle Easterners. But when you hear that not all Middle Easterners or Muslims between the age of 20 and 35 are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims or Middle Easterners between the age of 20 and 35, that’s by and large true.
Watch it:
In addition to being an affront to civil rights, ethic profiling is ineffective. Inhofe says he is worried about limited resources, but ethnic profiling actually wastes law enforcement resources by chasing false targets. Moreover, many terrorists — including “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, al Qaeda recruit Adam Pearlman, and “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski — don’t fit Inhofe’s profile. As former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told NPR last month, the recent Christmas Day bombing attempt illustrated “the danger and the foolishness of profiling because people’s conception of what a potential terrorist looks like often doesn’t match reality.” (HT: Washington Independent)
New basketball league open to whites only, to get away from the ‘street-ball’ played by ‘people of color.’
New basketball league open to whites only, to get away from the ‘street-ball’ played by ‘people of color.’
A new professional basketball league called the All-American Basketball Alliance (AABA) sent out a press release on Sunday saying that it intends to start its inaugural season in June, with teams in 12 U.S. cities. However, the AABA is different from other sports leagues because only players who are “natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league.” AABA commissioner Don “Moose” Lewis insists that he’s not racist, but he just wants to get away from the “street-ball” played by “people of color” and back to “fundamental basketball.” Lewis cited the recent incidents of bad behavior by NBA players, implying that such actions would never happen with white players:
“There’s nothing hatred about what we’re doing,” he said. “I don’t hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here’s a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like.” [...]
He pointed out recent incidents in the NBA, including Gilbert Arenas’ indefinite suspension after bringing guns into the Washington Wizards locker room, as examples of fans’ dissatisfaction with the way current professional sports are run.
“Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch?” he said. “That’s the culture today, and in a free country we should have the right to move ourselves in a better direction.”
The AABA is targeting Southern cities, but one proposed city — Augusta, GA — is opposed to the league. Several other cities have reportedly told Lewis to “stay out of town.” Watch a report by August tv station WJBF:
O’Reilly laments that you can’t make fun of Arabs anymore: ‘What has changed in America?’
O’Reilly laments that you can’t make fun of Arabs anymore: ‘What has changed in America?’
On Friday, Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly hosted country singer Ray Stevens — who proudly described himself as “right of Attila the Hun” — to discuss Stevens’ new right-wing parody song about “Obamacare.” O’Reilly praised Stevens, who performed parodies on the Andy Williams Show, and said he has been a fan “since I was a kid.” He then highlighted one of Stevens’ songs from 1962 called “Ahab the Arab” — about a cartoonish “sheik of the burning sands” who rides a camel — and lamented “you could never get away with it [today]“:
STEVENS: That was ‘62. [The Council on American-Islamic Relations] wasn’t around. You know, there wasn’t evil or an intent in that song except for fun.
O’REILLY: Right.
STEVENS: And, you know, as a kid I read “Arabian Nights.” I was a big fan of the whole culture. And so I wrote this song as a comedy song just for fun.
O’REILLY: So 48 years ago — 48 years ago in this country we could make fun of Arabs. … We could make fun of people in a general way, and certainly, Ahab was the Arab was a general parody. But now, we can’t. What has changed in America?
STEVENS: I think we’ve gone overboard with the political correctness just like so many other people think the same way about that. And I don’t know. We’ve got to come out of that, I think.
Watch it:
Of course, many Arab-Americans would find Stevens’ parody offensive. In fact, the term Ahab has become a racial slur thanks to Stevens’ song. This doesn’t seem to bother O’Reilly, who also said “in jest” that Islamic women cover themselves because “the most unattractive women in the world are probably in the Muslim countries.”
The overwhelming diversity of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference: one woman, one person of color.
The overwhelming diversity of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference: one woman, one person of color.
Today, the Southern Republican Leadership Conference announced that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had agreed to speak at its April 8-11 event in New Orleans. The conference bills itself as “the most prominent Republican event outside of a Republican National Convention.” Reflecting the Republican Party’s difficulty in reaching out to minority voters — despite the RNC’s election of Michael Steele as chairman — the line-up of confirmed and invited speakers has just one woman (former Alaska governor Sarah Palin) and one person of color (Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal):
- Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (invited)
- Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (invited)
- Texas Gov. Rick Perry (invited)
- Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (invited)
- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (invited)
- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin
- Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (invited)
- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
- Fox News Host Sean Hannity (invited)
- Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (invited)
- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (invited)
- Radio Host Rush Limbaugh (invited)
When Steele became RNC chairman last year, there were only five African-American committeemembers — including Steele himself. There are no black Republican members of Congress; the three Cuban-Americans, one Vietnamese-American, and one Hispanic American represent the caucus’ entire minority membership.
Right Wing Rallies Around Trent Lott’s Segregationist Remarks To Attack Harry Reid
Right Wing Rallies Around Trent Lott’s Segregationist Remarks To Attack Harry Reid
Yesterday, Republicans moved swiftly to make political hay of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) “racially-tinged” reference to Barack Obama as “light-skinned” with “no Negro dialect.” In an effort to stir the faux controversy, top conservatives claimed a “double standard” exists because former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) was forced from office for making segregationist comments, while Reid remains.
“If [Lott] should resign, then Harry Reid should,” Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said. Karl Rove piled on: “If you didn’t accept Lott’s apology, to be consistent, wouldn’t have to reject Reid’s, as well?” RNC Chairman Michael Steele — who resisted calling for Lott’s ouster in 2002 — said “it is” right for Reid to step down, citing the Lott precedent.
Recall, Lott argued in 2002 that “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years” had segregationist Strom Thurmond been elected President. Fox News contributor Juan Williams noted this morning, “I don’t think Barack Obama would be in the White House if we had a segregationist country. That’s a major, major difference.”
Republicans are reportedly trying to further the story by using Lott’s comments to “press reporters to ask Reid what he really meant.” Fox News is assisting that effort by compiling a graphic of all the Democratic Senators who criticized Lott. After displaying the graphic, Fox host Martha MacCallum pressed contributor Bob Beckel on whether there is a double standard, arguing that then-Sen. Obama said “Republicans need to rid themselves of Trent Lott.” Beckel responded by observing the key distinction in the two statements:
BECKEL: Let me just make this point: what Trent Lott said was a racist statement. When you said in the opening, Martha, that this was a comparable racial statement, it is not comparable at all! What Lott said was that he thought we should support Strom Thurmond when he was a segregationist running for President. Harry Reid used the word in a positive sense. It was a bad choice of words, but I mean the two of those make no connection between themselves.
MacCallum quickly retreated, acknowledging “I hear what you’re saying…when you look at the context of the statements, they are different.” Watch it:
“It brings tears to my eyes to listen to Republicans wake up and defend Barack Obama because he’s been attacked by Harry Reid,” Fox’s Beckel observed. “Give me a break! … You guys can’t make anything that you don’t turn into politics against Barack Obama and the Democrats.”
Native-American GOP Congressman Calls Steele’s ‘Honest Injun’ Comments ‘Unacceptable’
Native-American GOP Congressman Calls Steele’s ‘Honest Injun’ Comments ‘Unacceptable’
On Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele attracted considerable attention for a controversial term he used on Fox News:
STEELE:Our platform is one of the best political documents that’s been written in the last 25 years. Honest Injun on that. It speaks to some core conservative principles on the value of family, faith, life, economics. Those principles don’t change.
Watch it:
Today, ThinkProgress received a statement from Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) in response to Steele’s remarks:
It’s unacceptable. And while I’m certain Chairman Steele didn’t intend it that way, it’s an offensive phrase in the Native American community.
Cole’s condemnation of Steele is significant, not only because he is a fellow Republican, but also because he is an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation and the only Native American serving in the House. Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI), co-chairman of the Congressional Native American Caucus, has also demanded that Steele apologize: “His insensitive comment undermines and threatens to reverse the progress we have made to correct those wrongs.”
Leeanne Root of Indian Country Today writes that a public apology from Steele — who has been blanketing the media to promote his book — is “well overdue.” “Steele’s use of this racist phrase — on a widely viewed national program, no less — disrespects a community that works hard to educate about the true history of the United States and wants to participate in its productive future,” she writes.
Beck: ‘African-American is a bogus, PC, made-up term. I mean, that’s not a race.’
Beck: ‘African-American is a bogus, PC, made-up term. I mean, that’s not a race.’
Today on his radio show, Glenn Beck wanted to discuss the census. “Apparently the census has come out,” he said. Beck’s co-host then chimed in, “Yeah and there’s a little confusion because there’s three boxes you can check if you’re a certain race. … I don’t know what the race is because there’s three different terms for them. Black, African-American, or Negro.” Instead of having any consideration to take issue with the term “Negro,” Beck launched into a tirade against “African-American”:
BECK: African-American is a bogus, PC, made-up term. I mean, that’s not a race. Your ancestry is from Africa and now you live in America. Ok so you were brought over — either your family was brought over through the slave trade or you were born here and your family emigrated here or whatever but that is not a race.
Listen here:
Previously, Beck has said that he doesn’t have “a lot of African-American friends, and I think part of it is because I’m afraid that I would be in an open conversation, and I would say something that somebody would take wrong, and then it would be a nightmare.” And recently on his Fox News program, Beck hosted a group of black conservatives and complained that some of them refer to themselves as “African-American.” “Why not identify yourself as Americans?” he asked, adding, “I don’t identify myself as white, or a white American.”
Steele uses racial epithet to argue that the GOP doesn’t need to be more moderate: ‘Honest Injun on that.’
Steele uses racial epithet to argue that the GOP doesn’t need to be more moderate: ‘Honest Injun on that.’
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has been out aggressively promoting his new book, “Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda,” which was just released yesterday. He went on Sean Hannity’s Fox News last night to discuss Republican principles and insisted that the Republican Party does not need to modernize. “Honest Injun on that,” he said to underscore his point:
HANNITY: There are those that are saying for the Republican Party to be successful, they’ve gotta quote be more moderate.
STEELE: No, no! But that’s what’s gotten us into trouble, when we walked away from principle. Our platform is one of the best political documents that’s been written in the last 25 years. Honest Injun on that. It speaks to some core conservative principles on the value of family, faith, life, economics. Those principles don’t change.
Watch it:
“Injun” is a derogatory, offensive racial epithet used against Native Americans that has widely fallen out of favor. It’s ironic that Steele chose that particular phrase when talking about why the GOP’s core principles are still relevant. (HT: Matt Finkelstein)
RedState’s Erickson Stands By Assertion That Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Was An ‘Affirmative Action’ Award
RedState’s Erickson Stands By Assertion That Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Was An ‘Affirmative Action’ Award
When it was announced last year that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, RedState editor Erick Erickson tweeted that Obama only won the award because “the Nobel Committee had affirmative action quotas it had to meet.” During an appearance on the Colbert Report last night, Stephen Colbert asked Erickson if he would “be willing to repeat” some of his controversial tweets with his “face on camera.” Erickson said he would be willing to repeat his Nobel/affirmative action claim:
COLBERT: Now, speaking of standing on the issues, I, I am proud of some of the things I’ve said on this show. For instance, I said that Rosa Parks was overrated. Ok. I thought that was bold and I stand by it. She broke the law. But you sir, have put me to shame. You have twittered the following things. You said of Justice Souter that he was “a goat f#$king child molester.” You said that Linda Douglass, the White House health care spokesperson, was the “Joseph Goebbels of health care.” And you said of Nobel Prize winner Barack Obama, “I did not realize the Nobel Committee had affirmative action quotas.” Now…
ERICKSON: Yeah.
COLBERT: All of those things, all of those things, I think are refreshingly bold.
ERICKSON: Not exactly.
COLBERT: Ok, would you be willing to repeat any of those with your face on camera?
ERICKSON: The last two, yeah. The first one was not my finest moment.
Watch it:
Erickson defended his comparison of Linda Douglass to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels by claiming that Douglass had been “referring to those people who were opposed to health care as being brownshirts.” “I figured if she was going to refer to people who didn’t like the government taking over health care as brownshirts then maybe I would refer to her as Joseph Goebbels,” said Erickson. Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher writes that he “wasn’t able to find any record of Douglass having made such a remark.”
In his tweet and blog post referring to Douglass as Goebbels, Erickson didn’t link to his phantom example of Douglass calling health reform opponents “brownshirts.” Instead, he linked to a Fox News-hosted AP article in which Douglass criticized a misleading insurance industry attack on health care reform. Though Erickson now claims he was simply mocking liberal use of the word “brownshirts,” he himself has referred to liberals as “brownshirts.”
Minnesota State Senate candidate removes racist comments from his Twitter feed.
Minnesota State Senate candidate removes racist comments from his Twitter feed.
Local bloggers are reporting that Minnesota State Senate candidate Mike Parry removed more than 43 racist and homophobic tweets from his Twitter feed after progressives began researching and responding to him. The Minnesota Independent highlights one of Parry’s scrubbed tweets, which was apparently directed at President Barack Obama:
The day after the New York Times published an editorial on the Matthew Shepard Act and a week after it was passed in the House, Parry posted a tweet stating “what’s with Dems and Pedophiles?” After winning the GOP’s endorsement this week, Parry aptly described himself as “pro-life, a Christian, a second amendment rights supporter, a hard worker and not politically correct.”
Coulter Says Obama Is ‘Specially Situated’ To Racially Profile Because He Attended A Madrassa
Coulter Says Obama Is ‘Specially Situated’ To Racially Profile Because He Attended A Madrassa
Following Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner over Detroit, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter has dedicated the last few days to reviving the myth that Obama attended a radical Islamic madrassa as a child in Indonesia. According to Coulter, that puts his administration in a unique position to institute racial profiling to prevent future attacks.
Coulter began the week on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor deceptively insisting that since Obama attended madrassas and has brown skin, that means that “if anyone can say we’re going to look for radical Islamists, it ought to be President Obama.” On the December 30 edition of Fox News’ Glenn Beck, Coulter once again promoted the madrassa lie as a way to justify and encourage racial profiling by the Obama administration:
…If anything, I mean — I mean, they kept using it as a selling point that Obama would throw Islamic radicals on their hind legs when they look up and they see someone who studies with [sic: studied at] madrassas and they see the “Great Satan” has a president with a brown face and the world is going to love us. [...]
And like I say, Obama can be doing more than Bush. He is specially situated that way, as having gone to madrassas as a child, not being a white male, which is, you know, the height of political incorrectness, but just the contrary, we’re moving in exactly doing the — making — repeating the worst mistakes of the Bush administration.
Watch it:
Media Matters points out that the madrassa lie, which was initially reported as truth in Insight Magazine and then promoted on Fox & Friends, was debunked back in 2007 by CNN. Though Fox News was forced to “clarify” its report two years ago, no one from Fox jumped in to correct or challenge Coulter’s claims this week.
Back in 2006, Coulter argued that profiling Muslims is justified because it’s just like “profiling the Klan.” Despite the growing chorus of right-wingers exploiting last week’s failed terrorist attack to renew their call for racial and ethnic profiling, data shows such tactics represent “a flawed law enforcement tactic that diverts precious anti-terrorism resources, alienates potential allies in the anti-terrorism struggle, and is inconsistent with cherished notions of freedom and equality.”
Gingrich: ‘It is time to go to profiling of dangerous people.’
Gingrich: ‘It is time to go to profiling of dangerous people.’
Yesterday on Twitter, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich called for more profiling in light of the failed terrorist attack on Christmas Day:
Gingrich then added another tweet, writing, “We need a new policy of systematically going after terrorists that involves explicit profiling and explicit discrimination for behavior.” He also promised more details on an “aggressive strategy” in his next newsletter. As ThinkProgress reported this week, the right wing has used the failed airline bombing to renew its call for ethnic profiling — even though it’s been proven to be ineffective. Radio host Mike Gallagher recently said, “There should be a separate line to scrutinize anybody with the name Abdul or Ahmed or Mohammed,” and Rep. Peter King (R-NY) raised the idea of profiling people based on their religions.
Right Wing Renews Calls For Profiling: ‘There Should Be A Separate Line To Scrutinize Anybody With The Name Abdul’
Right Wing Renews Calls For Profiling: ‘There Should Be A Separate Line To Scrutinize Anybody With The Name Abdul’
The right wing’s predictable policy prescription in the aftermath of any terror incident is to impose greater ethnic profiling of Muslims. For instance, following the Ft. Hood shooting, Sarah Palin said, “profile away.” After six imams were removed from a plane in Minnesota in 2006, Ann Coulter justified profiling Muslims by arguing that it’s just like “profiling the Klan.” That same year, after British authorities revealed a terrorist plot to blow up planes headed to the U.S., right-wing radio host Mike Gallagher said, “It’s time to have a Muslims check-point line” at airports.
They’re at it again. In the wake of the failed terrorist attempt aboard a Northwest airlines flight on Christmas Day, the right wing is renewing its pleas for more profiling of Muslims:
Radio host Mike Gallagher: “There should be a separate line to scrutinize anybody with the name Abdul or Ahmed or Mohammed.” (Note: Those are some of the most common names in the world.)
Rep. Peter King (R-NY): “100 percent of the Islamic terrorists are Muslim, and that is our main enemy today. So why we should not be profiling people because of their religion?”
Terrorism pundit Steven Emerson: “Remember, there have been so many complaints about quote, profiling, by the quote, Islamic civil rights groups, that they stopped basically profiling. And that basically led to not putting this guy onto the terrorist watch list.“
Unsurprisingly, Fox News has served as the platform for right-wing voices calling for more profiling. Watch a compilation:
Broad-based ethnic profiling is counterproductive for a host of reasons. It creates a false sense of security and causes law enforcement resources to be wasted in chasing the wrong targets. Terrorists come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. John Walker Lindh was white, while Richard Reid was Jamaican and British. As the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights has reported:
Terrorism profiling is a crude substitute for behavior-based enforcement. It violates core American values, including the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. It also hinders anti-terrorism efforts because it alienates people and communities that are critical to the success of the anti-terrorism effort.
Non-specific profiling of certain religions or races amounts to a witch-hunt against a class of people, creating the perception among the larger society that those individuals containing certain suspect features (skin color, foreign-sounding names, foreign-language skills, etc) are to be feared.
Yesterday, two Middle Eastern men were pulled off a flight heading to Phoenix because passengers reported they were engaging in suspicious behavior. The men were speaking in a Middle Eastern language. And on a Detroit-bound flight yesterday, a Nigerian businessman was taken off an airplane because passengers became suspicious that he was lingering in the bathroom for too long. The FBI confirmed that the individual’s behavior was due to a legitimate illness.
Fox Nation places Obama race story above 1991 photo of beaten Rodney King, Jr.
Fox Nation places Obama race story above 1991 photo of beaten Rodney King, Jr.
The Fox Nation website is currently featuring a 182-word article on President Obama addressing criticism that he isn’t doing enough for the African American community above the 1991 photo of a beaten Rodney King, Jr. Fox News’ excuse to place the nearly 20 year old image on its homepage next to the President? Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) referenced Rodney King’s “can we all get along” quote four days ago during the healthcare debate.
The beating of Rodney King, Jr. eventually led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots, among the most violent and divisive events in recent American history, in which more than 50 lives were taken. From its broadcasts to its website, the Fox Network has a long history of racializing just about everything it possibly can.
Beck Defends Founding Fathers’ Decision To Count African-Americans As Three-Fifths Of A Person
Beck Defends Founding Fathers’ Decision To Count African-Americans As Three-Fifths Of A Person
On his radio show today, an African-American caller questioned Glenn Beck’s deification of the Founding Fathers by bringing up the fact that the Constitution “didn’t even recognize my people as even human.” The caller was referring to the three-fifths clause — a provision which counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of congressional representation and taxation. Beck hit back with a full-throated defense of the three-fifths law, saying it was actually an abolitionist provision:
CALLER: I notice you reference the founding fathers a lot, and to me it’s kind of offensive because most of those guys were slave owners, the Constitution that they wrote up — they didn’t even recognize my people as even human. [...]
BECK: That is a common misconception. … Do you know who wanted slaves to be counted as a full person? … Slave owners. … The reason why they wanted that is because of the balance of power. The South could control the numbers in Congress. Their representation would go through the roof. … That’s why, in the Constitution, African-Americans were deemed three-fifths people, because the Founders wanted to end slavery and they knew if the South could count slaves as full individuals you would never get the control to be able to abolish it.
Listen here:
This is another example of Beck distorting history to fit his contemporary agenda. Beck paints a picture of infallible Founders fighting evil Southerners who want to keep their slaves. The problem with this is, of course, is that many of the Founders were from the South and about half of the Constitution’s framers — including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — owned slaves.
Beck also distorts the motives of the Founders to whitewash their actions by suggesting that Northerners allowed the three-fifths rule purely as an eventual means to ending slavery. But his theory doesn’t explain why the Constitution prohibited outlawing the Atlantic slave trade for twenty years after ratification nor why it included a clause requiring runaway slaves be returned to their owners.
And Beck ignores other serious injustices of the Founders, such as the disenfranchisement of women. The Founding Fathers existed in a different time with different norms that excused discrimination. But Beck cannot be excused for his defense of a law that allowed slavery to persist for decades. Beck’s other previous racially-charged comments have cause him to lose 92 sponsors.
Palin left college in Hawaii because Asians made her uncomfortable: ‘They were a minority type thing.’
Palin left college in Hawaii because Asians made her uncomfortable: ‘They were a minority type thing.’
In the New Yorker, Sam Tanenhaus has a new review of the book “Sarah from Alaska,” written by two reporters who covered Palin during the 2008 campaign, in which he flags a passage about how Asian-Americans reportedly made Palin uncomfortable while she was in college:
She is equally circumspect on the issue of ethnicity, pointing out that Todd, whom she met in high school, is “part Yupik Eskimo” and opened her to the “social diversity” of Alaska. (Wasilla is more than eighty per cent white.) Palin, though notoriously ill-travelled outside the United States, did journey far to the first of the four colleges she attended, in Hawaii. She and a friend who went with her lasted only one semester. “Hawaii was a little too perfect,” Palin writes. “Perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls.” Perhaps not. But Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to Conroy and Walshe. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.” In any case, Palin reports that she much preferred her last stop, the University of Idaho, “because it was much like Alaska yet still ‘Outside.’”
(HT: Isaac Chotiner)
RNC Adviser Alex Castellanos Admits That His Infamous Jesse Helms Ad Hurt Race Relations
RNC Adviser Alex Castellanos Admits That His Infamous Jesse Helms Ad Hurt Race Relations
Yesterday at the Newseum, consultant Alex Castellanos spoke at a 2010 elections preview hosted by the University of Virginia Center for Politics and Politico. Castellanos, who fashions himself as a the “father of the modern attack ad,” has helped produce ads for industry clients — like the Chamber of Commerce and the health insurance trade group — to kill health reform. Recently, after a top communications official was forced out of the Republican National Committee, Castellanos indicated that he will also advise the party on its communications strategy.
Perhaps what sets Castellanos apart from other political consultants is his use of subliminal, often racist, messages. In a profile piece, Eric Boehlert noted some of Castellanos’ most infamous work:
In 1990, working for Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, he produced perhaps the most racially divisive TV ad in campaign history. Called “White Hands,” it featured an angry white worker crumpling up a job rejection notice. He had lost out because “they had to give it to a minority.” More recently, in 2000, his firm National Media produced an ad mocking Al Gore’s stance on prescription drugs, flashing the word “RATS” on the screen for a split second. Castellanos denied using subliminal advertising.
ThinkProgress caught up with Castellanos yesterday, and asked him if he had produced a “White Hands” ad for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) last year — who Castellanos advised for the Presidential campaign — would McCain have won the election? Castellanos, in a rare expression of honesty, said no he wouldn’t because his own “White Hands” ad would have hurt the country in “race relations” since “most people knew Barack Obama is a black man”:
CASTELLANOS: No I think just the opposite. [...] I think most people knew that Barack Obama is a black man. I dont think that was a shot. As a matter of fact I think one of the things people wanted last election, was they wanted to move in a better place in race relations in this country.
Watch it:
While Castellanos admits his own race-based ads would have backfired last year, he is still up to his old tricks. In a recent ad he produced for the Chamber of Commerce against health reform, one scene features a factory boss forced to fire a white employee. As the worker is summoned to the boss’ office, he taps a black coworker on his way out. The black worker, still gainfully employed, looks directly into the camera for a moment before the white worker is dismissed by the boss. “This is the same old right wing dog whistle politics,” observed Eddie Vale, spokesman for the AFL-CIO. “They’re trying to use race and class to scare working people about a health care bill.”
Harlem Gospel Choir pulls out of Glenn Beck event.
Harlem Gospel Choir pulls out of Glenn Beck event.
The renowned Harlem Gospel Choir was scheduled to perform the opening act for the simulcast film of Glenn Beck’s novel “The Christmas Sweater — A Return to Redemption,” which premiers Thursday in theaters nationwide. But the choir has pulled out of the event, citing financial reasons. However, the New York Daily News reports that the likely motivation for the choir’s decision has more to do with Beck’s hateful statements:
James Rucker, executive director of Color for Change — which has helped persuade more than 80 advertisers to ditch Beck’s show — said the group did an about-face after he called the choir.
“We wanted to make sure they understood who Beck was,” Rucker said. “We believe their mission is about spreading the Gospel and and promoting harmony, and we thought Beck was the antithesis of that.” […]
Rucker sent the choir excerpts from some of Beck’s shows, including one where he said President Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people.”
Rucker said the choir “didn’t know about Glenn Beck.” Choir manager Anna Bailey insists that the decision to pull out had nothing to do with Beck’s politics. But Rucker tells the Daily News, “I think this whole matter makes them nervous. … Who wants to be on the other side of Glenn Beck?“
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