My blood just hit red hot after hearing and confirming a story broadcast on MSNBC.

The story had to do with derogatory remarks made against Malia Obama, the President’s eldest daughter at 11 years old. The reaction to the picture illustrates the great work we still have to do in bringing America forward.

Before I get to this story, I want to link it to another story that has been popular the last week. A Philadelphia private pool, which was paid to have underprivileged black and Hispanic students used the pool, were returned the money and unceremoniously kicked off the facilities. There is a question as to the exact circumstances and what was said, however it was widely reported that some parents of the white pool were upset when the black and Hispanic students showed up. Many of the white kids were ordered out of the pool and some said racial comments were said. In a statement later disputed as being said by the club management, it was reported that the minority children were kicked out because they changed the complexion of the pool. Later they said it was because there were too many kids at the pool.

Back to Obama issue and the commentary. MSNBC decided not to repeat the messages placed by readers to FreeRepublic, the site that got the most attention for comments made. To be fair, in checking with other sites, the picture was placed on quite a few, including print papers and some of the comments were in the vein found on FreeRepublic. This blog probably got a lot of attention because it was listed in the DailyKOS blog and the blog took down the comments but later put them back up, giving a sign that they knew they stepped into a mess but then decided they didn’t care.

Just to put things in perspective, here are some comments that were made about the photo from the FreeRepublic:

"A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto thugs." "Ghetto street trash." "Wonder when she will get her first abortion. "Could you imagine what world leaders must be thinking seeing this kind of street trash and that we paid for this kind of street ghetto trash to go over there?" wrote one commenter.
"They make me sick .... The whole family... mammy, pappy, the free loadin' mammy-in-law, the misguided chillin', and especially 'lil cuz... This is not the America I want representin' my peeps," wrote another.

Hundreds of people made the similar comments on that site and others. I’m upset they said it about someone black but they said this about a child. Like the pool incident, you had supposedly intelligent people making the most ignorant statements and they made them to children. Would they want people to say things like that to their children?

The representative from FreeRepublic that was on MSNBC used the usual comments about how those on the right made comments on Sarah Palin’s kids. I am so tired of that excuse. Listening to some of the Senators talking about the nomination of Sotomayor used the same lame argument to try and mount opposition to her. It doesn’t matter what you do in life, but if we can find someone that looks like you that was bad, or if we can find a small time when we were pushed, we’re going to use that against you. Just because some might not like Sarah Palin and go too far, it doesn’t mean you should allow or accept people who would attack the 11 year old child of the President. Think of those black and Hispanic kids from Philadelphia. How do you think they feel about being kicked out of a pool because they’re a minority? How do you think they felt when white parents thought they might ‘do something’ to their kids?