A few weeks ago was the great UCSD revolution, where black students at UCSD first were hit with the Compton Cook Out, then the noose in the library and finally (at least what was reported) a Dr. Seuss statue dressed up as a KKK member. I felt very little was done. While I tried to alert people to the shame of this, trying to get anyone who listened to say this wasn’t some isolated incident, the national and even the city’s response to it was tepid. A few marches, pledges of having discussions seemed to be the best anyone offended by this action could muster. The galling part was those either in the middle or opposite side who chalked it up to childish pranks or over sensitive students who should be on their hands and knees thanking G-d their superiors allowed them to have an escape from their dysfunctional ghetto lifestyle.

The general consensus was for the students to shut up and by their lackluster response they did.

I wasn’t too motivated when someone told me about the Wal-Mart incident in NJ. From the accounts a juvenile has been arrested, accused of going on the intercom system and announcing all blacks would have to leave the store. I’m sure there are many who would call this issue a prank and dismiss it.

I would ask do people remember the old axiom that said when they came for the Jews I didn’t say anything because I’m not a Jew, when they came for the gypsies I didn’t say anything because I’m not a gypsy, when they came for the gays I didn’t say anything because I’m not gay, but when they came for me there was no one there to speak for me? I may not have the line completely correct but the point is we can’t let little things we don’t think affect us because in the long run those little things give excuses for bigger things and when the time comes when things get outrageous, there are few people left to oppose it.

For a few years we have seen Rush Limbaugh spew political hatred. We have dismissed him as a buffoon, an idiot and as someone most of America doesn’t listen to. He begat Sean Hannity, Lavin, Savage, I hate to even mention the next person because I loved his work in Babylon 5 but Jerry Doyle and a host of other national and local right wing gasbags who spew hatred over the air. We dismiss them. Every once in a while one of them might say something to get us upset, like calling a women’s basketball team nappy headed hos. We get upset, maybe even kick them off the air, but a year or two later they’re back, and that doesn’t stop the vast majority of other radio hosts from continuing.

Now we have television with a whole network devoted to the right wing agenda. With Hannity, O’Reilly and the new standard bearer Glenn Beck, the station is outwardly committed to the ‘fair and balanced’ destruction of anyone they feel isn’t part of mom, apple pie and buy American. Glenn Back, like a revivalist preacher, strings all sorts of fear and loathing to his obedient sheep via his magic chalkboard. Sean Hannity hold rallies for the troops to give money to the children of the fallen soldiers, yet by some accounts very little goes to the kids. Even the reporters of FoxNews show a sense of disrespect to anyone who doesn’t see their worldview. It’s one thing to have commentators on a thinly veiled talk show tow the conservative agenda but it’s more frightening when a newscast is laced with eye rolls, tonal inflections and other signs against anyone not spouting the company line.

We complained but laughed because it seemed insane that anyone would believe the rhetoric being spewed.

Last year we had the start of the Tea Party movement. These, we were told, were ordinary citizens concerned about health care. They were expressing their concern about the socialist takeover of one sixth of the economy by a President who had ties to Muslims, Marxism, socialism and who couldn’t even produce a legally binding document to disprove the very real concern that he was a plant by some unknown socialist entity to destroy our great country. Democrats were out to enslave our children. The great fear was this undocumented President, talking to children encouraging them to stay in school, was someone going to implant some secret code into the speech turning young Jonny and Jane into secret Hitler youth who would tell the government, through that demon device called the internet, about their parents who didn’t drink the liberal Kool-aid.

We heard these stories and we didn’t care. We thought of this movement as a bunch of John Bircher kooks that any rational American would see for the craziness they were. We thought who could really believe the government was going to set up death panels, or that the health care bill would be a way for illegal immigrants to come into this country and steal jobs from hard working ‘real Americans?’ In underestimating the ability of Americans to fall in love with the most inane concepts, even when the facts showed otherwise, the summer showed tea party members heckling politicians, rallies of real Americans worried about the socialist overthrow of the economy, and of politicians, worried about re-election as well as trying to capitalize on the fear of the constituents, decided it was better to feed the fear rather than to educate.

Media darlings such as Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney went to the previous beachheads of talk radio and FoxNews to stir the pot of emotional anguish. Republicans politicians outwardly said they were out to destroy the President, which in an unspoken way was only fitting since he’s not even an American according to them. People who would have cursed the other side for not granting passages of bills that would help the unemployed or that could bring the cost down on health care suddenly were for blocking legislation because it would stop the plans of the evil Democrats. It became acceptable, in the eyes of the sheep, to call the President a liar during the State of the Union speech. It is acceptable to carry a rifle or gun to a rally where the President is going to speak. It is acceptable to compare the President to Hitler, to a witch doctor. We were told this was all part of free speech.

There were some warning, but we didn’t listen. Actually the better answer would be we cared but didn’t know what to do. I know a lot of friends I know thought people don’t think like the Tea Party people. They thought of them as a small group, a group that didn’t hold a lot of power. In our superior way we figured anyone that listened to talk radio or FoxNews was just a few doughnuts shy of a dozen so why did they matter? Just a fun little fact to think about I learned today before I got the big reveal. When you take a look at Minnesota, the state Michelle Bachmann is from, see what the racial population is for the state. In 2008 the racial composition of the state was 88% white with the breakdown of Hispanics, blacks and Asians around 4% each and American Indians, multiracial and other races around 1% each. Most of the minorities live around the St. Paul area and once past that area the entire minority population is less than 5%. That translates into unless you live near a big city, of which St. Paul and a few other cities are the big cities, the chance of a white person seeing a breathing minority is going to be small. They will get their information from TV shows rather than from real interaction.

Now, you may scoff at that and think that has nothing to do with the topic, but how many people have really talked to someone with a fundamentalist faith? Many people, even the elitist liberal folks, will have an impression of what a fundamentalist person is by word of mouth, what they read in the paper and what they see on TV. They make the assumption and it’s hard to get that image out of their head. That’s why you could have students think that throwing a Compton Cook Out party, no matter who may have put them up to it, think it wasn’t a big deal. So many times I saw quotes in the paper and responses from comments where people who dismissed the racist event by saying that it was nothing more than what they would see on Comedy Central. Instead of knowing this might be something wrong they justified it by going to the only black people they knew that could confirm their own view, which was by turning to a comedian.

I went through this little history because, like I mentioned earlier, I had thought of talking about the Wal Mart incident. Had it been just that, as originally planned, I would have written a few paragraphs and I would have been done. I got an alert a few hours ago about a tea party rally in Washington. I figured there would have been one since the passage of the health care bill seems to be close to completion. I didn’t think much about it but there was another one where it was said there were words shouted at some Congress people. It was reported protesters called Rep. John Lewis and Andre Carson niggers.

Before I go on let me say something. Normally I would be politically correct and say the n-word but to me that’s just putting polish on a cowpie. The n-word doesn’t have the negative impact that nigger has, especially when said to John Lewis. Here is someone who was on the front lines of the civil rights movement, someone who has been through history of blacks gaining respect in this country. Unlike many of his peers back in the day, he has lived to see the day that blacks went from separate but equal to being elected President of the United States. Less than two years since that historic day, a day that many would like to say ended racial injustice in this country, this lion of the civil rights movement is called a nigger.

Also, not to exclude it because I’m just as outraged by the other incident, Rep. Barry Frank not only was called a faggot, but some in the crowd that called him that made sure to lisp the word, according to some reports. Do you know what’s really telling about these ugly events? Even FoxNews has a report of this on their website. There’s not a lot about it on their newscast but even they seem to think some have gone over the top, even though it could be argued they were the ones to fan the flames.

We keep dismissing events. Those who are upset with the discourse that is going on in this country, those people who are upset with the smearing that is going on keep hiding from the small stuff which allows the big stuff to occur. Why would a teenager in NJ think it was a good idea to get on an intercom system and tell black people to get out of the store? Why would a student (just to clarify for some who will inevitably say the girl was a minority, minority doesn’t just mean black. In this case the girl was Asian) think that leaving a noose in a library was a smart idea? Why would someone at UC Santa Cruz think it was OK to put faggot on the door of the LGBT building? All those people will think it’s OK because we let Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other blowhards get away with racial digs every day. It gets to the point where a crowd can feel at ease shouting nigger or faggot to Congress people. It becomes so bad that people feel it’s OK to bring guns to places where the President is speaking. It doesn’t take a mathematician or social scientist to map out what could happen with the way this anger could be manipulated.

 

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Why It Matters - March 20, 2010
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