I’ve always been sensitive to media portrayals of people of color, and of Asian Americans in particular. For example, a non-Asian American portrayed in a Mao suit (Hillary Clinton on the cover of the conservative National Review in 1997, satirizing the Clintons’ Asian campaign donation problem) is one thing. But with her slanted eyes and buck teeth, the satirist had crossed the line. Clothing is mere costume; give the caricature genetic traits such as deformities, and there’s your DNA evidence for racism.
So I was ready to pounce when I heard about this week’s New Yorker cover. But then my subscription arrived in the mail.
If you’re not laughing at the New Yorker cover featuring Barack and Michelle Obama (to whom we shall affectionately refer as “BOMO”), then you’ve lost all sense of satire.
BOMO in terrorist drag? Jonathan Swift must be laughing in his grave!
Swift, you’ll recall, is the “Godfather of satire” who in 1729 came up with a brilliant way for Ireland to deal with dire economic times: Feed all those starving babies amongst the poor to the upper classes!
Swift wrote: “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”
It’s Satire 101, so over the top that it brings people back to their senses.
Yet, if Swift wrote his Modest Proposal today, no doubt he’d be under siege from the left and right, family and religious groups, animal rights and civil rights groups, not to mention grassroots cannibal rights groups, gastroenterologists and some discerning East Bay foodies.
In these modern times, the taste for real satire is lost when we’ve been weaned on the easy joke. We’d rather just laugh, not think. For most, the rubber knife is preferable to the double-edged sword. Even when an outrageous satire like the New Yorker cover stares us in the face, we miss the point.
Beyond the Joke
That everyone is arguing whether the New Yorker Obama cover is offensive is perhaps the real sign that the satire has succeeded.
People are talking and debating. Even if they’re missing the point, the discussion has begun. The issue? The wrongheaded and racist view that Obama and his wife are fist-bumping Muslim terrorists.
The cartoon makes fun of and exposes that folly. It reinforces the idea that if you really think the Obamas are card-carrying terrorists, then we’re in trouble because you probably think Homer Simpson really exists as a nuclear engineer in some town named Springfield. Or that there really is a guy in a blue leotard with a big “S” on his chest who will save us all.
The Political Spin
Of course, the political camps are going well beyond the joke. They’re just using it to their advantage, which means that everyone is OUTRAGED. The Obama-ites. The McCain-ines. The misinterpretation of the cartoon by both sides shows a real bi-partisan political correctness.
But they’re just using the cover as cover.
The McCain-ines don’t want their guy to look like he’s a racist who buys into the “Obama as Muslim” thing. Reacting as they have gives them the appearance of the high road. Yet, secretly, they know they benefit from any misinterpretation among the general populace.
Obama-ites don’t like anything that even brings up any race issue because they’d rather avoid controversy. Obama is staying above it all, as he should. But he has his surrogates on the knee-jerk attack.
Black talk hosts are denouncing the cartoon as racist and find themselves in an odd alliance with conservative talk hosts who denounce the cover as bad satire. But they should all be applauding how we can now discuss the real racism that exists in this country — the persistent public perception that Obama is a Muslim.
In April, a Pew Research poll showed that 10 percent of American voters still believe Obama is a Muslim despite his frequent mentions of his Christian beliefs. The misperception even crosses party lines. Broken down by party, 14 percent of Republicans and 10 percent of Democrats still believe Obama’s a Muslim.
That Muslim is actually code for “Not American” is the racist notion the New Yorker column targets.
But now, instead of being ignored and allowed to fester, the idea has been ridiculed, outed and satirized for our protection.
The target was correct, though unseen on the cover. It wasn’t the Obamas. It’s the people who can’t let go of despicable anti-Muslim sentiments.
See the blog at amok.asianweek.com or e-mail emil@amok.com.
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Emil is one of those ethnocentric types (and an extremely shabby “journalist” at that”) who only sees and is outraged by racism when it’s directed at his own ethnic group (i.e., Asian-Americans). He’s repeatedly used his column to decry real or imagined (i.e., the Kim Family tragedy, which Emil placed squarely on the shoulders of a white gas station attendant, despite the fact that it was Kim’s arrogance and alpha personality that led to his demise) racist acts against people of Asian ancestry in the U.S. Of course he doesn’t find the New Yorker cover at all racist. Its creator was only poking fun at those who continue to believe that Obama is a Muslim, despite the Democratic candidate’s repeated denials of that particular religious affiliation. But register Emil’s outrage at the Hillary Clinton caricature. Certainly that cartoonist “crossed the line.” Asian-Americans are sancrosanct, Emil seemingly insists; African-Americans are fair game. The anti-black racism that permeates Asian-American communities in the U.S. is disgraceful.
Yes, Christian:
The anti-black racism that permeates the Asian-American community IS “disgraceful.”
But, for sure, that “racism” is but a pale reflection of the anti-black racism that permeates, as it has since the first slaves were enchained out of Africa, the “mainstream” WASP community, house slaves and window-dressing dummies, well, make that hand- or lap-puppet, like Blair to Bush, or Bush to Cheney, has truly disgraced itself in the eyes of God and humankind.
It isn’t the fact of simple exploitation and denigration, it’s the continuing enslavement and enchainment of half the blzck youth and almost all of the rest in the inner-city ghettos. Legally, by way of laws outlawing “criminal” drugs that are no more and no less deleterious to society.
Black women, prepuberty, are condemned to motherhoods a condom or simple “education” could forefend but for those Bible-pounding idiots who insist human “life” is sacrosanct in Petri dishes but ever expendable thereafter.
And don’t forget the “Red” population, no, not the political, but the perceived pigmentation. Read Jeffrey St. Clair’s Counterpunch piece on the Apache today.
That said, “racism” is double-edged. It “kills” the hater as well as the hated in more ways than one.
So, friend Christian, belay the spotlight on one group of “racists.” Besides, the identical Asian-American community also boast the likes of today’s “Blasian” phenomenon, albeit another “minority,” likely.
Save your ammo for the “racists” who literally kill and main and nnnihilate, and I DO mean our very own tribe of theoneocons, from Gardasil to Enron to Blackwater and Cheney’s outfit.
And there should be, must?, a special place in the very innermost circles of Dante’s “Hades” for the likes of those Wall Street profiteers of pencil-pushing succubi.
And a good-day to you as well.
Frank Eng
P.S.: You’re wrong about Emil’s “writing.” Although I must confess that on this particular peg and issue, I, personally, find him overly impressed by the New Yorker imprimatur, aura, seeming omniscience as the ne plus ultra of Yankee wisdom, chic, AND “taste.” Sy Hersh is great, but others preceded and out-outed his efforts. As for the rest, chacun a son gout.
Oh, forgot to add:
Jonathan Swift was an “original,” and so was Mark Twain and Will Rogers, each in their own time.
But to “credit” Swift as the fount of “satire” is problematic, insofar as, it seems to me, ALL tribes and all cultures in all times likely produced their own. I rather like to think that Chuang-tze was a progenitor, but, then, he was no earlier than the Greeks or the Persians or the Egyptians. Maybe the Outback aborigines as well?
Frank Eng, commentor on all posts, I never intended to imply that the anti-black racism that seemingly permeates the Asian-american community is not reciprocated, nor that it’s the only form of racism that bedevils America. By no means. I’m as yet unaware of an Asian-American equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan; I’ve never heard of gangs of Asian supremacist kids who roam the city looking for (usually solitary) members of other ethnicities to beat, rob and even kill. Conversely, I’m painfully aware of the gang of white racists who jumped those Chinese-American teenagers a couple years back and received the equivalent of a slap on the wrist, if they were prosecuted at all. And I understand that those Asian-Americans who do uncritically embrace racist ideas about black people usually glean them from the dominant (i.e., white) status quo and culture. My point is that since Asian-Americans are themselves the targets of racism and discrimination, they should develop an almost instinctive aversion to the racism that permeates the social order in this country, and reject it out of hand, regardless of whether it’s directed at themselves or other peoples of color. I persist in my belief that Emil is a sub-par journalist and that far too frequently he indulges in racial and ethnic chauvinism.
Dear Christian:
For I find you “dear,” as in “endearing.:
And I question not one line in your riposte other than that NO “community,” of any stripe, is ever “free” of its lowest common-denominators.
Yes, “Chinese-Americans,” for sure, I know, because I’ve “been there” almost nine decades, are “guilty” of “racism,” and not just against “blacks.”
Their “racism” is egalitarian, applyiing even to their own “over yon hill” kith and kin who speak a slightly bowdlerirzed version of their own “tongue.”
So, pray tell, friend, what’s new, pussycat?
Not a hell of a lot, and the bulk of that bullshit.
When the WASP “majority” begins to recognize its own failings herein, wake me up.
If you can, that is.
Meanwhile, turn your spotlight on the surreal miscreants, the movers-and-shakers who move and shake ONLY for their own benefit, to Hell with the rest of us.
By the way, how’s your mom?
Frank Eng
P.S.: You overrate my participations herein. And, still, yet?, I disagree with you about Emil’s “writing” skills. He’s more than par for the MSMedia course, although, at heart, I grudgingly agree that he seems, to me too, a mite servile to the status quo and too provincial, “personal” as well. The compleat columnist should at the very least MAKE the effort to stand aside, as in an observer forsooth.
Well, Christian, even though I acknowledge many of your arguments that I’ve read in your posts, racism is a two-way street. Many Asians I know with a hatred of blacks comes from how they were treated usually from their school years. No Asian has ever owned an African slave, occupied African soil, nor oppressed Africans throughout history yet we always hear blacks say that Asians are more racist than whites. Many Asians I know say blacks are more racist than whites. Growing up poor in Richmond, CA, I personally can say I’ve been harassed and bullied by blacks more than whites because of my race. But I know better. It doesn’t mean I disregard racism from the African-American community as not important. Whites have especially exploited the tension even using it as an excuse to see their racism as less severe than Asians because of what blacks say. So black racists too undermine Asians all the time. My experience has been that blacks follow and believe demeaning stereotypes of Asians just as much as Asians do of blacks. If you think solving this issue is the responsibility of only one side, then you’re seriously mistaken. I would personally love to see a positive relationship forged between the African-American and Asian-American communities but I personally will never accept it bonded together through some false sense of Asian guilt. This is not a black and white world literally and figuratively. I’ve been called a racist by both blacks and whites fo daring to remind people that the majority of the world isn’t black and white. This country in politics and the media in the form of news, movies, and television certainly portrays the world as if it revolves around just black and white. That’s racist.
Jammer:
You are more than “right.”
Your experience is, likely, not all that different from ANY suffered at the hands of bullies.
But, may I suggest that, underneath it all, it is the bully who is afraid and who is needy and who projects his own fears and lacks outward.
“Race,” here, is the peg on which bullying and harassing and intimidating hangs its hat.
I’ve been bullied by my fellow “Chinese-American.”
And the bottom line is that each of us must stand up for ourselves in the best way we can, meanwhile, learning about and understanding the psychosocial mechanism itself.
It’s parallel to the fear and hatred underlying the jeering, name-calling crowd that is fixated on its juvenile and shallow perceptions and appreciations of life and living and sharing and caring, forget nurturing.
In the end, for each of us, the only “creative” response should be our recognition that the “names” can only “hurt” if we accept THEIR premises.
That, of course, only works so long as they don’t resort to physically acting-out their sick, destructive beliefs.
In which case, of course, it’s time for “self-defense,” like alerting the troops to organized racist groups AND doing one’s best NOT to become the next Vincent Chin.
That said, ignore the hell out of their idiocies. It’s their problem first.
As for the “colors” ot this rainbow, it’s essentially irrelevant unless it is institutionalized and universally practiced, as in the conventional wisdoms about inner-city atrocities, chiefly by the ruling class, whether black or brown or in-between. There are Asian “gangs” as well.
“Making it” is tough enough for each of us, and we must see that this specific interface is but one of the dilemmas we must overcome on our individual passage to hoped=for maturity and self-realization.
I think you’re doing fine. To hell with the “racists.”
Frank Eng
P.S.: Bullying and projected fears and hatreds can also coexist within the family itself. Life is a conundrum, no?
And Christian would do better to go after Rush or some of those cable types. After all, this site is a minnow in a rushing stream of pikes? Sharks? In a stream? Main or otherwise?
“And I understand that those Asian-Americans who do uncritically embrace racist ideas about black people usually glean them from the dominant (i.e., white) status quo and culture.”
Christian, Frank Eng:
The anti-black sentiment of Asians arises directly out of interaction with blacksm, not from the racist indoctrination of the media. In fact, the small number of Asians who do not hate blacks, are the ones with little personal experience with blacks, and brainwashed by ivory tower black nationalism. True, I can recall being mistreated by whites for being Asian, or for that matter, unpleasant incidents with fellow Asians.
But for each one of those unpleasant encounters with whites or Asians, I can easily count 100 occasions where I was taunted and heckled by blacks. And my experience is typical of ALL ASIANS.
Recently, I have seen a poll showing the majority of Asians in Califronia alleging support for Obama. I just laugh, because around where I live at least, I have never met an Asian who would vote for Obama. They may say one thing to a pollster, knowing that they would never do such thing.
As a matter of fact, many Asians view this presidential contest, as an occasion to exact a small vengeance for Rodney King riots, the nightmarish harassment during the school years, their loved ones robbed, killed and raped.
My guess is that Latinos feel the same way, although to lesser extent than Asians. If Obama thinks Asians and Latinos support him, he’ll be in for rude awakening come November.
I have a feeling that Christian and Frank Eng went to all-white schools and don’t know what it’s like for Asians to attend “diverse” schools, so I post a 2005 article:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-13-asian-teens-bullied_x.htm
McCain is better for Asians than Obama because McCain supports private school vouchers. Poor Asian kids could use the vouchers to attend private schools where they can learn and at least don’t risk losing their lives. Asians supporting Obama are idiots.
Dear “observer”:
You are absolutely right about my personal education history, insofar as I was lucky to be one of only three? Chinese-American students at Horace Mann Grade School in San Jose, way back in the mid-’20s,
Half-”right” in the ensuing fact I attended Francisco Jr. High in San Francisco, ’30 to December ’32, where I recall a bruited “race war” between the two-thirds North Beach “Italian” student body and the lesser-third Chinese. It didn’t happen, but the ingredients were there.
That said, I believe you are absolutely WRONG in your proposed solution of “private” schools, which would HAVE to be “faith-based,” no?
And, even there, juvey bullyings would merely move off-campus onto adjacent streets and neighborhoods.
Observer, the problem is NOT so much with the bullies as with THEIR parents and peers and compadres.
Racism and abuse of others is a psychoemotional, psychosexual, psychosocisal phemonemon that is timeless and placeless and eternal, a sick and sad part of the individual human psyche that each of us must perecive and understand, then overcome and, with luck, “grow” to our individual “maturity” and self-fulfillment.
Idealistic bombast? Probably. Nonpragmatic? Likely.
Still, it’s a model that makes as much sense, no, more, than trying to “avoid” the root and real problem.
Personally, I fought back, twice, and, somehow, “won.” Both my self-respect and the termination, for me, of my problem. More importantly, I was NO LONGER AFRAID.
This website, and AsianWeek itself, was, ironically, almost blown off the online/publication map not all that long ago by another kind of “racism” masquerading as PC outrage over three “satirical,” ask the Chief High Poohbah of the New Yorker about “satire,” “guest” “xolumns” by one twenty-something Chinese-American youth in Brooklyn named Kenneth Eng.
Never read ANY of those “anti-” “white,” “Asian,” and “black” pieces, and it would appear said young man may be quite a “hater” on his own.
But his example reads like a sequel to the Associated Press article you posted above.
I, personally, “feel,” for ALL those young people terrorized by their ghoulish and gothic peers who believe in and trade in violence and abuse.
All the way to Columbine and Virginia Tech and beyond.
But the answer to one and all of same lie in the murky reaches of our individual psyches, and, very especially, to those of the parents of these “monsters.”
Monsters who “grow up” to become low-achieving skull-and-boners and pretenders to puissance and powers of “life-and-death” and even converse with “God.”
IF “we” can begin to stop the likes of the latter, in re “Iran” today, it may affect the overall aura and setting of today’s American polity to the extent that the young will not be able to point to their elders as having set the “ultimate” example, as in WAR.
War is humankind’s penultimate pestilence, bullying and abuse of the highest numbers and the lowest, basest motivations.
“Private” schools for children in this context are as logical and as effectual as “borders” and “fences” are to the “immigration” “question.”
There can be NO “security” from life and living and all its multifaceted, multithreat challenges.
There can only be the “best personal effort” to meet and embrace same.
And, thankfully, yes, it is simultaneously possible to make the effort “creatively,” a process we must each, individually, fathom and grope out on our own.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Columbine was about as “all-white” as possible these days. I worked with, lived with, and loved with blacks as well as other “races” for decades. Check Lee Mun Wah’s video, “The Color of Fear” for reference also. And as for Latino votes, at least one online poll reports about a three-to-one over McCain.
P.P.S.: Read the Willie Brown piece in today’s? SF Chronicle. Now, there’s a “black” for MY vote, and he even managed to get in plugs for Wilkes-Bashford AND Nordstrom’s. Not to mention his “white” bro, another Brown, you know, that former Guv and wannabe again. Jerry, yeah, nice guy.
Also, a Jewish guy’s clarification of the Lafayette High School situation:
Mike Berman’s Letter to AP
Dear Sir:
Today’s AP article, “Asian Youths Suffer Harassment in Schools” was informative but sadly misleading in one important aspect. The article’s author, Erin Texeira, states that Lafayette High School is situated in a neighborhood which is “historically home to Italian and Jewish families.” The impression is thereby intentionally left that it is Italians and Jews who are committing the assaults and harassment. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If you consult Fafayette High School’s 2003-4 Annual School Report at http://www.nycenet.edu/daa/SchoolReports/04asr/321400.PDF , you will find that Lafayette High School’s current ethnic composition is 11.8% white, 45.8% black, 25.1% Hispanic and 17.3% Asian. My Asian wife works in a building which contains Norman Thomas High School in New York and is a recipient of harassment on a regular basis.
My wife and I know who the true perpetrators are. They are of the same groups who claim to be the victims of intolerance. The impression which Erin Texeira left was disingenuous, and I would appreciate a response.
Mike Berman
New York City
McCain’s voucher plan will help poor Asian kids to escape public schools, and receive decent education at private schools, many of which are indeed “faith-based”, e.g., the Catholic schools, many others are “non-sectarian) but in any event, as private institutions, they do not tolerate behavior problems.
Students who want to learn at school and do not misbehave will be admitted to these private schools with the help of the vouchers, and have a decent shot at life. Students who don’t want to learn and misbehave will not be accepted to these schools, or be expelled quickly.
Thus, the voucher plan will help Asians and many whites to receive quality education, but most black/Latinos students will remain in the public school system. This is the real reason that Democrats like Obama oppose the voucher plan. Conscentious Asians should support GOP’s effort to expand opportunites to decent, deserving Americans.
Guys:
This “issue” is a “vicious” circle.
Endless and cyclical as well.
Whereas Mike Berman makes a point here, the obverse of that point, as with “observer’s” observation that the “decent” and the “deserving” will benefit from the McCain “voucher” proposition is equally telling, likely more so, insofar as both assertions/claims would lead to a deeper and deadlier “gap” in the “education” precinct.
The very conditions and circumstances that separate AND unequal schooling has crystallized in our ghettos and rural byways will be exacerbated and more virulent, just as oppressions and bombings and “clean” techno “war” has achieved in the Midewast and elsew2here.
Gated homes and commuinities bespeak a totally dysfunctional society, just as do the growing numbers of homeless and the untreated, or ill-treated?, returning vetrs from disreputable war.
It is difficult, impossible?, to separate our individual needs and interests from such as this very “public” issue, but “safety” and freedom from harassments are merely sidetracked on this route.
Besides, what will your “safe,” not to mention “decent” and “deserving,” student be offered in your “private” acaedmies?
Creationism? Or, worse still, the psychosocial “guilts” of “just say ‘no’!” ???
The true “xolor” of bullies and haters and taunters and baiters lies far beneath the pigmentation.
It is the “color” of oppression, dispossession, inequity, injustice, chauvinism, intolerance of all stripes, AND the fears and tremblings we ALL share to some degree.
Not to mention the lack of “a Chinaman’s chance,” remember him?, ro escape this death of the human spirit by way of totally human deconstructions AND self-serving “righteousness.”
It took a Gandhiji to incept the end of apartheid in South Africa.
And even if South Africans today manifest not all that much social “progress,” I, for one, believe it incumbent on myself NOT to subscribe to this seeming beginning of a new, old?, that too, apartheid herein, Brown? vs School Bozard notwithstanding.
It’s a big step BACKwards for America.
Frank Eng
P.S.: I don’t know about the “deserving,” but I sure as hell quiestion the “decent” in this debate.
A comment to a Matthew Iglesia’s column in AtlanticMonthly reinforces the idea that Asians and Latinos don’t vote for a black because blacks bully Asians and Latinos at school:
” … anyone who has spent time in Latin America knows that Latinos all agree that the most dangerous, dysfunctional neighborhoods in Latin countries are black ones. And Latins coming into America, despite the naive hopes of Jewish union organizers, Dem liberals and media – have not really gotten into the idea of a “black and brown brother solidarity movement” under the wise guidance and control of left-leaning Jewish and WASP Ruling Elites.
Big history of arriving Latino and Asian immigrants being bullied at school and criminally predated upon by American blacks and thereon expressing a strong desire to have nothing to do with them and live in safer, better, mostly black-free settings as they get more prosperous. …
Posted by chris ford | January 20, 2008 4:52 PM”
Observer, are you Kenneth Eng writing under a pseudonym? Or Dineesh DeSouza, perhaps? Your postings positively drip with the most racist ideas about black people. You’re also clearly a virulent anti-Semite.
And I wouldn’t find it too surprising if I discovered you hate gays and lesbians as well. What empirical evidence backs your assertion that “the most dangerous neighborhoods in Latin America are black ones?” You should investigate such racist assertions before uncritically spouting them in this forum. And yes, some black children taunt and bully their Asian classmates (as well as counterparts of other ethnicities), but to ascribe violence and brutality to all African-American children is both reckless and racist. I ride the 5 Fulton bus every afternoon in San Francisco, and the Asian kids are just as rambunctious as their black classmates. Indeed, recently myself and another passenger were compelled to intervene because two young Chinese American students were taunting a black classmate, calling her mother a crack addict and a welfare cheat. Even at their tender ages, these kids had absorbed the racist poison that permeates this society. The poor young girl was in tears. What infuriated me was the fact that only two of us insisted that they knock it off.
Christian:
God love ya!
Yes, indeed, it appears “Observer” deserves to be observed in full, spotlighted and outed, if only he/she, no genderism here, would own up to her/his identity.
The racism is obvious, only the provenance needed. Why?
On this last score, one might “understand” were he/she the victim of rioters in South Central L.A. post-Rodney King “incident.” Or, perhaps, “Koreatown”?
But even that would not justify such blank and blind animosity.
Seems to me that, as with Reader on another line today, there is an insidious thread, a leitmotif, in such as this pair of mucky maunderings, to wit, a continuing and sustained “campaign” to fracture, divide, and delude, dilute?, the APresence in domestic politics, from Obama to Chiu? Or is that McCain to Alioto?
And about those two Chinese-American louts on the 5-Fulton, you and your colleague should have demanded their names and promised to notify parents and school authorities of their actions. Then “post” the names. If the “shame” can’t nick the inherent racism thereof, it might modify the behavior.
But I doubt there’s much, if any, “hope” herein for the likes of “Observer,” whose sickness appears “mortal.”
Frank Eng
P.S.: For BOTH “Observer” here and tbe “Reader” of Phil Tajitsu-Nash’s column today on Big Bro, I have a bit of sad “news” for them, awarthur as well, to wit:
Not only “the polls” are proclaiming the figures to date on THE “race,” but the Obama people seem to be pre-empting the turf, overseas this weekend.
But, sigh, the latter appear also to be right-ruddering FAR too energetically, albeit the “surveillance” vote is more appearance than real. It’s the Afghani swamp that may swallow this er, ah, “black”? candidacy. And not forgetting the nouveau “Crusade.”
Frank, you’re correct to raise the spectre of the L.A. riots here, during which Korean-owned business were targeted for vandalization, and at least one white motorist (Reginald Denny) was dragged from his vehicle and beaten almost to death by a gang of African-American hooligans. But let’s not forget that a group of black men and women witnessing this horrifying spectacle on television, broadcast live by a news media helicopter, intervened and no doubt saved Denny’s life. I was also saddened by the fact that in what appeared to be a tit-for-tat exchange to compensate for a Semi Valley jury’s clearing the cops charged with beating Rodney King, the twelve men and women encharged with bringing Denny’s assailants to justice instead acquitted them, despite the overwhelming preponderence of evidence against them, no doubt fearing that the ghettos would again explode were they found guilty. Still, the riots were directly attributable to the long and sad history of LAPD violence in the blackl community. And I too lament Obama’s rapid shift right-ward. It appears that like any good (?) politician, he’s refashioning himself to appeal to the broadest possible spectrum of voters. The Democratic Party has the consistency of a weathervane when it comes to its politics. Is this really the best that democracy has to offer? It’s my own view that only some form of highly democratic socialism (i.e., the antithesis of what existed in the former USSR and Eastern Europe) will liberate this nation from its present, exploitative and oppressive state.
Christian:
What can I say?
There is no way I could agree MORE.
Were I black, both Wright and Farrakhan would be too tame for me.
Graham was a zero. Bennett is a scam. And “black” “Christians” in Ohio, especially those who rig voting machines or otherwise disenfranchise their own, are nothing less than shameful turncoats.
Watts was an icon of despair and self-hatred created by their inferiors of pomp and circumstance, and so were the descendants of Sleepy Lagoon and the Zoot=Suit Riots.
An ugly scenario. And, seemingly, continuing and inevitable, as in humanity’s selfishness vs. its own selflessness.
No one can, or should, expect another Gandhi, even an MLK or a Cesar Chavez. Nelson Mandela? He’s 90, and Africa is as benighted as we are.
As for “democratic” “socialism,” hey!, we already got that and a Hell of a lot of good it’s done us. As it did the Fabians, who were, in fact?, elitist as well.
Like a half-assed socialized medicine that is as workable and efficient as a four-sided wheel, a bureaucracy that is as competent and effective as its chiefest agency, FEMA, a “homeland” “security” apparatus that is more Gestapo than “National Guard,” and a “leadership” that is juvey jackanapes idiocy in full bloom and subject to Gollywood scenarists and cue-card orators of sinister mien.
No, Christian, this nation turned away from the likes of an Adlai Stevenson, still turns its back on a truly “God”-fearing and altogether decent and admirable man like George McGovern. OR Jimmy Carter.
And stakes its “bets” on the likes of McCain/Lieberman. Now, that’s a “ticket.”
As for Obama, well, today one London Guardian headline proclaims hms as a possible arbiter in Palestine and the Mideast, averring the man is neither Zionist nor jihadist, New Yorker cover “cartoons” notwithstanding.
Ah, such “interesting” “times.,” damn it to Hell.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Next time, be sure to get the miscreants’ names and social insecurity numbers.
“It’s my own view that only some form of highly democratic socialism (i.e., the antithesis of what existed in the former USSR and Eastern Europe) will liberate this nation from its present, exploitative and oppressive state.”
The bottom 10% in the U.S. are economically better off than 2/3 of the humanity, i.e., billions of people.
Socialism has never been successful in any society where it was tried with possible exception for some small, ethnically homonenous nation-states. Even those states are abandoning socalist policies to become competitive, I might add that those few successful socialist states (Scandinavian countries, Japan perhaps) are highly racist and discriminitory to ethnic minorities, even the native-born.
I would also add that, despite all their complaints, American blacks are not moving back to Africa. No government there will provide free food, housing, public education, medicaid, etc. As bad as South Africa was during apartheid, things have gotton far worse after blacks took over, for both whites and blacks. The crime is so rampant, many do not venture outside.
wake up america, a conservative blog noticed this picture in rolling stone of McCain in a cage surrounded by stereotypical squint-eyed asians, noting no evident protests over that image.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/21129038/
full_metal_mccain
Some people have no sense of humor. If Obama tanks (and he still might), it will be because of his evasive attitude towards his muslim heritage and his wife’s antiamerican gaffes in the tradition of angela davis.