I used to comment that some of the yahoos I debated online were apparently looking forward to the glorious day when they could take their “Kiss Me, I’m a White Supremacist” t-shirts out of the closet and wear them in public without fear of being hissed and booed off the street. These were the ones who, if asked directly, would neither deny nor admit that they were racists, and were frequently saved from doing so by various online conservatives, moderates (and even a few infuriatingly naive liberals,) who would react to the question by scurrying to the defense of the yahoo. So long as the online racist never used the “N” word or uttered the words, “yes, since you ask, I
am a racist,” the onus would fall on whoever was rude or “confrontational” enough to ask the question invoking the “R” word.
Well, it looks like those t-shirts are about to come out, and the yahoos can barely contain their excitement. Some of them are coming out of the gate just a bit early, but the signs for them are plainly encouraging. On
Fox Nation, in the midst of messages denouncing the notion that racism has made a comeback, one poster has proudly declared “I am proud to be a racist!” and the only response so far has been from a liberal who had wandered onto the site. (And in the finest online tradition, it’s the
liberal who's been subsequently denounced – not the avowed racist.)
The right-wing is all atwitter and ablog about an incident on an Illinois school-bus related more to garden variety schoolyard bullying than race, but oddly silent about a black woman, an army reservist, being beaten in public by an insanely hateful white man screaming racial epithets at her. The overt racism of the overtly racist signs waved at many “Tea Parties” is being blandly dismissed by beltway Republicans. All shame has departed. Any and all pretense is probably the next thing out the door.
A nice little preview of upcoming attractions was offered by Rush Liimbaugh the other day, (via
Media Matters) when he asked the following:
“Can this nation really have an African-American president? Or will the fact that we have an African-American president so paralyze politically correct people in the media that the natural scrutiny and process through which all of our presidents are put through and vetted do not occur because of the fear in the State-Controlled Media of themselves being called racist and the desire to be able to call everyone else racist. In other words, we have a blank slate. We have a president here who is not scrutinized, who is not examined. There is no attempt to be suspicious of power anymore. So is it possible that we really have an African-American president? Or does having an African-American president paralyze the process by which people with that kind of power in our representative republic are kept, quote, unquote, honest?
See, it’s not that Rush is a
racist! Oh mercy no! It’s just that black Americans, and their liberal enablers, just aren’t
ready to have a president yet. They just can’t handle it, just don’t understand the need to vet the president, and they “paralyze the process by which people with that kind of power in our in our representative republic are kept quote, unquote, honest.”
You can almost hear the faux regretful sighs as these born again racists shake their heads and say, that, well -- it’s sad, really. Yes, racial equality was a good-hearted experiment, and we gave it our best shot, but alas, African Americans just aren’t ready for it yet….
That’s probably the argument that’s next on the horizon from certain quarters, and like most of what comes from Limbaugh and that ilk, there’s nothing new about it. I remember being taught, in my grade school days in the Jim Crow south, how awful it was during Reconstruction that so many black people ran for office and won before they were ready to take on the responsibility. D.W. Griffith’s notoriously racist film,
Birth of a Nation even includes a scene in which black legislators guzzle whisky and prop their bare feet on the desks.
Watch for it. Because this is how these people see our president.