The New York Times
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: March 26, 2010
The far-right extremists have gone into conniptions.
The bullying, threats, and acts of violence following the passage of health care reform have been shocking, but they’re only the most recent manifestations of an increasing sense of desperation.
It’s an extension of a now-familiar theme: some version of “take our country back.” The problem is that the country romanticized by the far right hasn’t existed for some time, and its ability to deny that fact grows more dim every day. President Obama and what he represents has jolted extremists into the present and forced them to confront the future. And it scares them.
Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy.
Hence their anger and frustration, which is playing out in ways large and small. There is the current spattering of threats and violence, but there also is the run on guns and the explosive growth of nefarious antigovernment and anti-immigrant groups. In fact, according to a report entitled “Rage on the Right: The Year in Hate and Extremism” recently released by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “nativist extremist” groups that confront and harass suspected immigrants have increased nearly 80 percent since President Obama took office, and antigovernment “patriot” groups more than tripled over that period.
Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/opinion/27blow.html
Showing posts with label bigotry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bigotry. Show all posts
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Monday, August 27, 2007
Bigotry's cheerful enablers
By Richard Lipez
August 27, 2007
Boston Globe
IT'S STILL uncertain when or where shock-jock Don Imus will return to the airwaves, now that he has settled his suit with CBS. But a more interesting question is this: When Imus does come back, will distinguished American media personages such as Frank Rich, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Tom Brokaw continue to show up on his show, lending him respectability and cover for his racist, misogynistic, and gay-baiting rants?
The willingness of apparently decent people, some of them liberal icons, to serve as Imus's cheerful enablers has been one of the more depressing features of the media landscape over the past decade. Tim Russert, Howard Kurtz, Jeff Greenfield, and James Carville all tut-tutted over the "nappy-headed ho's" remark about the Rutgers women's basketball team that got Imus fired last spring. But not one of these people had ever challenged Imus's long history of making or encouraging similar slurs against blacks, women, and gays. African-American journalist Clarence Page did once ask Imus on the air to cut that stuff out. Page was never asked back on the program.
Imus was usually careful not to rail against "fags" and "towel heads" and "our urine-colored brothers" in the middle of an interview with, say, author Goodwin. Most of the hate speech was saved for before and after chats with Goodwin, Tom Oliphant, or Maureen Dowd. On those rare occasions when Imus lost it and spouted some foul epithet or accusation during an interview, more often than not some mild tsk-tsking ensued, or just an awkward silence. Nobody ever had the guts to say to him, "I-Man, you're a mean, ignorant, infantile old fool. When are you going to grow up?"
And this went on for years. The writer Philip Nobile has kept a running record of Imus's bigoted venom. In 1999, when his sidekick news reader Charles McCord reported the indictment of two white state troopers for the attempted murder of two young black athletes on the New Jersey Turnpike, Imus had advice for the athletes: "Eenie-meenie-minie-mo. Get over it."
Imus and his producer, Bernard McGuirk, regularly used epithets like "brillohead," "dark meat," and "knuckle-draggers." Women Imus didn't like were "ugly ho's." (His own attractive wife, Deidre, was merely a "ho" and a "moron.") Lesbians were "that big old lesbo" and far worse. Gays were "fags" and "homos" and "queers." A running gag for a time involved Abner Louima, the New York City man savagely sodomized with a broomstick by two cops, who were convicted of the attack. This was an occasion for many yuks among the I-Man and his friends.
So, as Imus himself might ask, what's the deal here? Why did people who presumably do not hold such irrationally contemptuous views of entire groups of Americans appear on his show, and why did lots of nonbigoted people listen to Imus?
[To read the entire article, go to: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/08/27/bigotrys_cheerful_enablers/ ]
August 27, 2007
Boston Globe
IT'S STILL uncertain when or where shock-jock Don Imus will return to the airwaves, now that he has settled his suit with CBS. But a more interesting question is this: When Imus does come back, will distinguished American media personages such as Frank Rich, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Tom Brokaw continue to show up on his show, lending him respectability and cover for his racist, misogynistic, and gay-baiting rants?
The willingness of apparently decent people, some of them liberal icons, to serve as Imus's cheerful enablers has been one of the more depressing features of the media landscape over the past decade. Tim Russert, Howard Kurtz, Jeff Greenfield, and James Carville all tut-tutted over the "nappy-headed ho's" remark about the Rutgers women's basketball team that got Imus fired last spring. But not one of these people had ever challenged Imus's long history of making or encouraging similar slurs against blacks, women, and gays. African-American journalist Clarence Page did once ask Imus on the air to cut that stuff out. Page was never asked back on the program.
Imus was usually careful not to rail against "fags" and "towel heads" and "our urine-colored brothers" in the middle of an interview with, say, author Goodwin. Most of the hate speech was saved for before and after chats with Goodwin, Tom Oliphant, or Maureen Dowd. On those rare occasions when Imus lost it and spouted some foul epithet or accusation during an interview, more often than not some mild tsk-tsking ensued, or just an awkward silence. Nobody ever had the guts to say to him, "I-Man, you're a mean, ignorant, infantile old fool. When are you going to grow up?"
And this went on for years. The writer Philip Nobile has kept a running record of Imus's bigoted venom. In 1999, when his sidekick news reader Charles McCord reported the indictment of two white state troopers for the attempted murder of two young black athletes on the New Jersey Turnpike, Imus had advice for the athletes: "Eenie-meenie-minie-mo. Get over it."
Imus and his producer, Bernard McGuirk, regularly used epithets like "brillohead," "dark meat," and "knuckle-draggers." Women Imus didn't like were "ugly ho's." (His own attractive wife, Deidre, was merely a "ho" and a "moron.") Lesbians were "that big old lesbo" and far worse. Gays were "fags" and "homos" and "queers." A running gag for a time involved Abner Louima, the New York City man savagely sodomized with a broomstick by two cops, who were convicted of the attack. This was an occasion for many yuks among the I-Man and his friends.
So, as Imus himself might ask, what's the deal here? Why did people who presumably do not hold such irrationally contemptuous views of entire groups of Americans appear on his show, and why did lots of nonbigoted people listen to Imus?
[To read the entire article, go to: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/08/27/bigotrys_cheerful_enablers/ ]
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