I’m Not a Racist, I Just Send Racist Emails
By John Cole April 16th, 2011
The Weekly has obtained a copy of an email sent to fellow conservatives this week by Marilyn Davenport, a Southern California Tea Party activist and member of the central committee of the Orange County Republican Party.Under the words, “Now you know why no birth certificate,” there’s an Obama family portrait showing them as apes.
(Donald Trump must be elated to finally have an explanation about Obama’s true birth circumstances.)
Here’s the image attached to the email:
Reached by telephone and asked if she thought the email was appropriate, Davenport said, “Oh, come on! Everybody who knows me knows that I am not a racist. It was a joke. I have friends who are black. Besides, I only sent it to a few people—mostly people I didn’t think would be upset by it.”
Really, I think I said it best with “asshole.” This must be part of that whole affirmative action baby/black privilege Mickey Kaus was talking about.
Posted in Assholes, Post-racial America, Teabagger Stupidity
Obama’s white privilege in a nutshell. He has the privilege of white people thinking they can say this kind of thing about him and get away with it.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:06 pm
wallah.
that is just unbelievably offensive.
i dont get what passes for wingnut humor anymore.
They took my codebook when i switched sides.
:(
April 16th, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Holy moly.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:07 pm
Who is going to fall for that excuse, I’d like to know?
Then again, Orange County. All I need to know.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:07 pm
(That required less editing than I thought)
April 16th, 2011 at 4:07 pm
It’s only racist if you think that picture is racist.
– Anonymous racist
April 16th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Jeebus christ, I bet they figure out how to pin a banana to their caps for the 2012 GOP convention. Sort of a sequel to those little purple hearts for Kerry.
Though I once saw a sequenced pinup in a pawn shop with Bill Clinton evolving into an ape. Never could figure that one out.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
The sneering pile of shit is pulling the Coulter gig – say something completely beyond bounds, and then grinning like the 12 year old class bully who just cut a greasy, foul shart in the middle of class.
“It was just a joke” – my ass.
Fuck her.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Speaking of Trump, he’s apparently gone all-in on every Obama-related conspiracy theory around:
(TPM, summarizing a Trump/Hannity interview)
Hey Donald! I hear that Obama had Vince Foster killed…
dms
April 16th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
Just getting ready for to run for Governor of New York…
April 16th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
Wow, the level of self-delusion is strong in that one.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
The stops were all pulled when a black man became president.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
I’m not a player. I just crush a lot.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
The first defense of someone who sends racist material – “I have friends who are black.”
Not anymore. And if you had any goddamn respect for your black friends, you’d have never been thinking like this in the first place.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Did you send it to any of your “friends who are black”?
I would guess “no”.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Only a real racist would think that picture is racist!
Me? I don’t see color…
April 16th, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Cagle post had this cartoon
April 16th, 2011 at 4:13 pm
i guess all we have to do is photoshop a pic of Marilyn’s face doing the nasty with a farm animal and say that’s its just a fundraising joke or some such.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:13 pm
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
Of course not. A cookie thief knows no color.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:15 pm
Is it just me or is this the most generic ‘sorry you were offended by me saying racist shit’ statement in history?
April 16th, 2011 at 4:17 pm
@WereBear: Other racists just like her. That’s who will fall for it, because that’s who it’s aimed at.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:18 pm
are you gonna believe Marilyn or you lyin’ eyes?
speaking of Obama, we need a thread on Libya. Looks like new goal post is definite removal of Gaddhafi
April 16th, 2011 at 4:18 pm
@piratedan: Someone with the skills please make this happen.
They really don’t get this internet thing, do they?
April 16th, 2011 at 4:18 pm
@piratedan: Do we know her email address? Maybe one of our talented people here could photoshop that and those who are inclined can send her a personal email with “photo”, explaining we are sure she understands that it’s just a joke, all in good fun.
Edit: it makes me sick to think of Sasha and Malia seeing that, or any other black child, for that matter. Do these people not understand the concept of going too far? This one crosses a line that is far, far beyond just bad taste.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
I’m actually more offended by the poor quality of the photoshop. C’mon racists, take some pride in your work. That looks like a MS Paint job.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
Wow, that is Onionesque. If you were to write a parody of a racist email you couldn’t do better. “Some of my best friends are black”, srsly?
April 16th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
This makes the point that this birther nonsense is just thinly veiled racism.
I suspect that much of the bagger Manchurian Candidate nonsense has a similar origin.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
“Asshole” is way too good for these folks, Cole.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
@salacious crumb:
I’ve been troll OT posting on this, but so far no troll Libya post to troll.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
@Corner Stone:
That’s what Hillary said.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
Fix’t
April 16th, 2011 at 4:21 pm
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
Do you see species?
April 16th, 2011 at 4:22 pm
Well, in her defense, she may have had friends who were black.
And maybe she just wanted a quick way to have to stop hanging out with them. In which case, points for efficiency.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:23 pm
@Corner Stone: I just want a thread on it, thats all.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:24 pm
@licensed to kill time:
Now, let’s not get carried away. She didn’t say they’re some of her best friends. I mean, it’s acceptable to have some of Those People as “friends”; they’re useful as rhetorical reinforcements when some missive that happens to include a wholly innocent and lighthearted jape is inexplicably misconstrued as containing the faintest overtones of racial prejudice – but some semblance of standards must be maintained. “best friends”, indeed. The merest suggestion has quite unsettled me, and now I must retire to the gazebo with a mint julep.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Could someone please remind me again what it is that the Tea baggers PRETEND to be about? ‘Cause the pretense is pretty hard to hold on to once you’ve seen this.
Edit: Hey, a republican said something I agree with!
April 16th, 2011 at 4:26 pm
@General Stuck:
Short memory? (from Wikipedia article on Toni Morrison)
In writing about the impeachment in 1998, Morrison wrote that, since Whitewater, Bill Clinton had been mistreated because of his Blackness>
Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.[14]
The phrase “our first Black president” was adopted as a positive by Bill Clinton supporters. When the Congressional Black Caucus honored the former president at its dinner in Washington D.C. on September 29, 2001, for instance, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), the chair, told the audience that Clinton “took so many initiatives he made us think for a while we had elected the first black president.”[15]
April 16th, 2011 at 4:28 pm
@Warren Terra: Warren, you’ve been hanging out with Sarah Proud and Tall, haven’t you? ;)
April 16th, 2011 at 4:28 pm
@WaterGirl: was only suggesting it just to allow Marilyn to see just how outrageously funny it is, my gosh the possibilities are endless.
I’m guessing she’s a proud graduate of the Carl Paladino school of comedy
April 16th, 2011 at 4:29 pm
“Well, you guys called GWB Chimpy,or Chumpy, with simianliar pictures didn’t you?” in 5….4…...3…....2…...
April 16th, 2011 at 4:30 pm
I am so sick of this sh*t. As a black/puerto-rican woman, i knew things were going to get… bad when we elected Obama, but damn
The racism in this country is freakin’ overwhelming at times.
Sorry don’t mean to imply that white folks aren’t feeling the same thing… but jeez where is Kanye West when you need him? Someone please just say “the Republican party doesn’t care about black people… (or brown people, or liberals or women, or the poor)...”
I call uncle. These people are exhausting. :(
April 16th, 2011 at 4:30 pm
No comment (too sick and tire of being sick and tired of this kind of shit to). I’d just like to buy Lysana a drink.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Hey everyone, just remember that Lincoln was a Republican and that Robert Byrd was in the KKK. Thus, all the real racists are Democrats (Jonah Goldberg told me so).
The reason 90% or more of African-Americans vote Democrat is false consciousness.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
...mostly?
April 16th, 2011 at 4:34 pm
@maya: Already under way. Check the comments to the OC Weekly article.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:36 pm
@efgoldman:
Yea, I thought of that “first black president” thing, and you are likely right on the pinup origin. I just went with the simple stupid wingnuts having their usual fun in the usual idiotic offensive way.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:36 pm
Prediction: instead of apologizing, she doubles down and refuses to resign. Then she sues when she gets canned for wrongful termination. After all, she’s the victim here can’t you see that?
April 16th, 2011 at 4:37 pm
So, in other words, she knew that it would upset people. And that there were only a few people who would not be upset by it. And, other than that it is racist, why would anyone be upset? PETA members maybe?
April 16th, 2011 at 4:37 pm
@James E Powell: sounds like a Ron Schock routine, i.e. “most people were surprised when the airplace crashed into the hotel, so that means there must have been somebody expecting it….”
April 16th, 2011 at 4:39 pm
Did anyone ask the obvious follow-up question: “Did you send it to any of your black friends? Why not?”
April 16th, 2011 at 4:41 pm
@WaterGirl:
it probably goes without saying, but you are asking the wrong group.
These folks are nostalgic of the past…the way things were you know when the GI’s came back from WW2 and vanquished a monster, life was simple..no feminists or minorities asking for equal rights or trying to shake up the order. Women knew their place in the family and gays just didn’t exist back then. It’s this that makes John Boehner weep and the now dead Tim Russert flatulate about how folks back then had wisdom, you know, unlike now, where we have turned into a degenerate society.
These Tea Partiers want that society back, a reversal to the past and this is their final battle cry. They have marked their territory and shown us where they stand. you either believe what they believe in or you are with the enemy. You dont have to worry about the morality of it all. U just have to believe it because they have the narrative to justify it. It doesnt matter what the facts are. Reinterpreting the Constitution, revising history of slavery etc is what they are doing to justify their narrative. So putting a bunch of monkeys pics is what they do because they and people who are worried about what the country has become snicker and quietly encourage this kind of behaviour. You honestly for a moment think the OC conservatives are truly upset about this? They are upset this pic went out. Its like Abu Ghraib pics. One day historians will find more disgusting pics these morans drew on the First Family that will make this pic look mild in comparison.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
@dmsilev: He also believes Obama’s book Dreams From My Father was written by Bill Ayers. I think the birthism thing is losing steam, so he needs to pick another controversy, or maybe he’s just insane. Who the hell knows.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
There is something about this that is reminding me of Geraldine Ferraro and how she didn’t find anything wrong with the comments she had made about President Obama.
I also find my self thinking about those psychological tests that people flunk so they can’t get into the military, or the police academy, or whatever. I have always wondered how people could flunk those when the answers you should not choose are so obvious, but I guess if you’re really screwed up, then the obvious answers aren’t obvious?
Apologies… I am so angry about this that I am beside myself, trying to make sense out of how people like this could even participate in polite society or attain a leadership position in anything.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:47 pm
All my racist friends know I’m not a racist person. They absolutely know it. That’s why I’m comfortable yukking it up with them about Obama being a nigger, because there’ll be no mistaking. They won’t, all of a sudden, unknow it. Like my black friends would.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:47 pm
@Anya: I think Donald Trump believes exactly one thing: that his combover has us all fooled that he’s not balding. Otherwise the man wouldn’t know a principle if he got dropped into the middle of a school administrator convention. Ask Ivana. In fact, I keep waiting for Ivana’s whole opinion on this.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:48 pm
@WaterGirl:
He’ll be thrown under the bus as a RINO any minute now.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:50 pm
@salacious crumb:
Thank you. For some reason, I find your comment calming. Now I just need to find the Chris Rock video where he says these people are losing their minds because they know it is the end of an era.
I love Chris Rock, not just because he’s really funny, but because he tells the truth. He’s a great at social commentary.
Edit: @Roger Moore:
You are probably right!
April 16th, 2011 at 4:52 pm
It’s Orange County. I live here. None of this surprises me.
April 16th, 2011 at 4:52 pm
My brother is quick to point out that in 04 I sent him a W and chimp montage
http://politicalhumor.about.co.....panzee.htm
April 16th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Yeah, but the real question is: what does Herman Cain have to say about it?
/snark
April 16th, 2011 at 4:57 pm
The way these kind of racist emails keep coming out from the teaparty makes it a little hard for me to believe their profession that they only care about limiting government growth and welcome all people.
April 16th, 2011 at 5:00 pm
Keith, point out to your brother that there is a long history of picturing blacks as moneys or apes, that such imagery has a long history with racists. Picturing Bush as a monkey is insulting but not racist. Picturing Obama as a monkey is both. Ask him which would get the stronger reaction. Calling a white guy a n***** or a black guy? It’s the same word but the TARGET makes the difference.
April 16th, 2011 at 5:06 pm
If I sent a picture of Davenport around to a few of my good friends with a vagina for her head, it would in no way mark me as misogynist.
April 16th, 2011 at 5:06 pm
It’s actually too easy. You didn’t even have to know the story to be right with asshole. Conservative = Asshole. Therefore asshole is always the correct answer.
You want proof? Find me a conservative who is not an asshole.
I’ll be waiting.
I’ll be about +8,000 before you find me one and I’m about as close to being a non drinker as it gets.
ETA Now the Size of the asshole is a different question.
April 16th, 2011 at 5:10 pm
@WaterGirl: actually it wasnt a video, it was an article in the Esquire magazine..
http://www.esquire.com/feature.....iew-0311-2
April 16th, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Schroeder’s a typical racist teabagger, too:
Those are obviously apes (chimpanzees, specifically), not monkeys. But to this guy I suppose all simians look alike. Hell, some of his best friends are probably orangutans. (Though he calls them gibbons.)
April 16th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
Seeing this article brought to mind Alexandre Dumas pere’s famous rejoinder to a racist who had insulted his background:
I wonder if Marilyn Davenport was related to that guy…
April 16th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
@salacious crumb: You are so right! But I think I read it on the same day someone else had posted a link to a Chris Rock video, so I had it confused.
Edit: “And when I see the Tea Party and all this stuff, it actually feels like racism’s almost over.” Just reading that gives me hope.
April 16th, 2011 at 5:16 pm
No just a ShitHead.
No it wasn’t!
Bet they aren’t anymore, if you did have them.
Let me guess Tom Metzger, Orly Taitz, Andrew Breitbart, Jim Robinson, Haley Barbour
April 16th, 2011 at 5:28 pm
I find it funny that I am getting an ad for Dinesh D’Souza’s book at the top of this thread.
April 16th, 2011 at 5:32 pm
“It was a joke.”
Really? You think that’s an excuse? Like there are no racist jokes?
Whenever some Villager twit starts moaning about “civility”, I want to point out that back in the “more civil” days, officials immediately resigned if they were caught making a racist joke; they didn’t try to argue that “it was a joke” made it okay.
April 16th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
[...] man. Via Balloon Juice: Marilyn Davenport, Souther California Tea Party Activist: Reached by telephone and asked if she [...]
April 16th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
I wonder if this is the same idiot who sent out the ones with the watermelon theme. lots of idiots behind the Orange Curtain. I used to live there, three blocks from Karl Karcher’s house. Karcher was one of the geniuses who supported John Schmitz’s various candidacies. Schmitz was the congressman for my old district (I lived elsewhere at that time and we had more sense) and he was so bad that the John Birch Society kicked him out for being too radical.
April 16th, 2011 at 5:47 pm
@opie jeanne: No, but at the time she supported the person who was behind the watermelon thing.
April 16th, 2011 at 5:49 pm
And blames the media.
And blames the “coward” who forwarded her original e-mail.
Oops! Too late! She already has!
April 16th, 2011 at 5:50 pm
@Yutsano: Most of his kids are adults, right? What I don’t understand is, why don’t they take him aside and say: dad, you’re making an ass of yourself and embarrassing us, please stop it before we publicly disown you.
April 16th, 2011 at 5:51 pm
@Redshift: To me, the it was a joke dodge seems cowardly. One should own it; either apologize and take appropriate remedial steps or say, “Yeah, I said it. So what?”
April 16th, 2011 at 5:53 pm
@Anya: IIRC all his kids work for him in various parts of his legitimate management business. So my guess is they’re keeping mum to avoid getting thrown out on the street. Which would be even more delicious of him to do during a Presidential campaign. Plus Trump doesn’t strike me as the type to listen to his children about anything.
April 16th, 2011 at 5:57 pm
@WaterGirl: Then there’s another one in Yorba Linda (I think) who forwarded that same email to other Republicans, which included an African American woman who told her off about what’s racist and what isn’t.
The OC Republican Party has had their hands full the past four years, what with all the reprimands they’ve had to hand out. It got to be pretty funny watching them.
April 16th, 2011 at 6:08 pm
“I only sent it to a few people” Why? Everybody likes a good joke. Why not send it to everybody.
“people who wouldn’t be upset by it” But why would anybody get upset by it – unless maybe because it was RACIST & DISGUSTING?
April 16th, 2011 at 6:10 pm
@TooManyPaulWs: The friends she has are white. I’d bet the black friends she references are people she’s never had to dinner at her house. She may have eaten out with them because of necessity/convenience, but she’s never had them in her living room.
April 16th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Proving once again that while not all morons are Republicans, all Republicans seem to be morons.
April 16th, 2011 at 6:15 pm
@Redshift:
Hell, its not even ten years since Trent Lott resigned following misguided, but frankly less offensive comments in a speech.
Somebody said it upthread: the election of a black man as president gave permission to the racists to come out from under their rocks to unleash all their fury in public forums.
April 16th, 2011 at 6:15 pm
Did I say ‘morons’?
I sincerely apologize to morons for associating them with Republicans. What I MEANT to say was “assholes.”
Must’ve been a typo.
April 16th, 2011 at 6:16 pm
@Hart Williams: I’m guessing that wasn’t intended as a factual statement…...
April 16th, 2011 at 6:20 pm
@efgoldman: Technically, Lott didn’t resign. He just gave up his leadership position. He continued to serve as a US Senator.
April 16th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
@Hart Williams: You realize that you are just begging for a defamation suit brought on behalf of assholes nationwide, right?
April 16th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
If I’m not mistaken (and I could be) didn’t this very same woman do something very similar a couple years back? The situation sure rings a bell and I believe it was some SoCal woman affiliated with the OC Repub party committee.
April 16th, 2011 at 6:35 pm
Didn’t everyone call Bush chimpy for 8 solid years? What am I missing here?
April 16th, 2011 at 6:38 pm
@D. Mason: 450 years of racial issues.
April 16th, 2011 at 6:43 pm
@D. Mason: it was only because of the poo flinging…..
April 16th, 2011 at 6:43 pm
I suppose few people here need to hear this, but let me spell it out plainly in any case:
The concept driving jokes comparing Bush to a chimpanzee is that Bush is stupid.
The concept driving jokes comparing Obama to a chimpanzee is that blacks are sub-human.
Which one is and which one very much is not acceptable discourse?
April 16th, 2011 at 6:44 pm
Well, that’s because he was a chimp-like imbecile who couldn’t be bothered to learn much at all about the country he was asked to invade.
April 16th, 2011 at 6:48 pm
@D. Mason:
Son, I’m going to beat you down with a vhs copy of Bamboozled.
April 16th, 2011 at 6:48 pm
[...] (via) [...]
April 16th, 2011 at 6:50 pm
a what?
April 16th, 2011 at 6:51 pm
@D. Mason: You would prefer Betamax?
April 16th, 2011 at 6:56 pm
Someone please; interview this idiots black friends and see if they think this is just a funny little joke.
Didn’t someone else in Southern Cal send out fake food stamps with fried chicken on it when Obama was elected? Probably this idiots friend.
April 16th, 2011 at 6:59 pm
@Hal: How does one conduct an interview with an imaginary person?
April 16th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
@WereBear:
Yeah- I live here, and it is pretty bad- not the redneck unsophisticated type, but the privileged, yacht club types who smile pleasantly to the black man at the store, then speak in sotto voce code words to each other.
This email was just a case of one of their tribe speaking in too crude of terms for them and accidently opening a window they prefer to keep shut.
April 16th, 2011 at 7:07 pm
@WereBear:
Yeah- I live here, and it is pretty bad- not the redneck unsophisticated type, but the privileged, yacht club types who smile pleasantly to the black man at the store, then speak in sotto voce code words to each other.
This email was just a case of one of their tribe speaking in too crude of terms for them and accidently opening a window they prefer to keep shut.
April 16th, 2011 at 7:07 pm
.@D. Mason:
Any sort of background knowledge about racial issues in our society?
Imagine you’re the mayor a city that has ethnic neighborhoods. The neighborhood association in the Puerto Rican neighborhood has a clean-up day, and invite you speak at the party afterwards. You show up, and the neighborhood just looks great.
Do you include in your remarks the observation that the place is spic and span? Why not?
I don’t think that feigning ignorance about context is quite as impressive an argument as you seem to believe.
April 16th, 2011 at 7:13 pm
@Omnes Omnibus
I suppose the assholes could sue for defamation, but then, discovery would require them to legally prove that they ARE assholes.
The best defense against libel is the troof.
April 16th, 2011 at 7:18 pm
@Hart Williams: Wouldn’t suing you over something like this be definitive proof? I think a judge could take judicial notice of this fact.
April 16th, 2011 at 7:20 pm
@D. Mason:
A functioning brain, apparently.
April 16th, 2011 at 7:22 pm
@Pirate dan:
I figure if anybody’s still a Republican at this point, they are unquestionably an asshole. They’ve had plenty of time to reject the racism, hate-speak and bashing of underclasses by now.
In other words, it WAS a factual statement, and I AM sincerely apologetic to morons for associating them with Republicans. They’ve got a tough enough row to hoe without being saddled with THOSE hoes.
April 16th, 2011 at 7:23 pm
@joe from Lowell:
And the main context in this case, is the relative rank she has as a GOP official, and generally how we have seen this sort of thing happening from street level tea baggers, all the way up to it’s gooper members of congress.
Both parties have a rank and file fringe. Only the GOP that fringe is 80 percent or more of the whole, that either practices this kind of pol speech, encourages it, or does not oppose it.
having said that, I never got the chimpy Bush stuff, most of the time I looked at him, I thought of my misspent youth and endeavors pondering the high brow literature of Mad Magazine
April 16th, 2011 at 7:25 pm
@Catsy: Just to amplify what others have been saying, depicting Bush as a chimp (as the Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell did magnificently for many years) made the point that he was a bumbling, incurious cretin. Note that the picture circulated in the email which is the point of departure for this post aims to make an (allegedly humorous) point about Obama’s ancestry and that of ‘his kind’.
April 16th, 2011 at 7:36 pm
@Hart Williams: Of course, at least actual assholes – as in, the body part – serve a useful and necessary function. This woman, on the other hand, is more akin to what passes through the asshole rather than the asshole itself.
April 16th, 2011 at 7:38 pm
@Hart Williams:
That, or they are horribly incurious, uninformed, and/or misinformed. The existence of the Fox propaganda network really has allowed them to construct a self-contained alternative reality for the people who only get their information from Fox, and the damage this has done to this country is immeasurable.
We’re at the point where I really think there is a strong argument to be made for making lying to the public by an elected official a criminal act. And I’m perfectly fine with the fact that this will cut both ways—I don’t like it when Democrats lie to me any more than I do Republican lies. Set a high bar for proving that it was a lie, carve out an extremely limited national security exception for things like covert operations and espionage, and get around the First Amendment issues by making them swear an oath not to lie to the public as part of their swearing-in.
But this shit has really gone too far, and I think Fox would have a much harder time maintaining their alternate reality if the Republican officials that came on their network couldn’t lie without risking prosecution.
April 16th, 2011 at 7:46 pm
@Hart Williams: I figured as much, I just had to riff on my “favorite” Senator Jon Kyl (drawing up spittle and expectorating it on the ground beside me) in regards to his Planned Parenthood statements. He’s the living embodiment of the descriptive term “fucktard”.
April 16th, 2011 at 8:00 pm
@D. Mason:
Bush wasn’t of the race people derogatorily compare to monkeys.
April 16th, 2011 at 8:01 pm
And the winner of this comment thread is….
@Catsy:
I applaud you Madame…(or Sir, pretty sure a Madame, though)
April 16th, 2011 at 8:03 pm
I was guessing her black friends were Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain and Uncle Ruckus from Boondocks
April 16th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
@Alison:
I stand corrected. You are unquestionably, er, left.
@catsy
Exactly. This has moved beyond an honest difference of opinion. I just listened to the Princess of Moosylvania, her mentor in attention whoring (Nobody trumps Trump) and Former Minn. Gov. zzzzzzzzzz on the 5 o’clock radio nooz, and they are just about hating anybody who disagrees. There’s no democracy there: only the yowl of the terminally selfish. In a body, we call such cells “cancer,” in a body politic, we call it the current incarnation of the GOP.
@piratedan
Fucktard? Absolutely. His pronouncements? Fuckwitticisms.
April 16th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Ah Ha! I knew that with a little effort I could find this classic cartoon of GWB as a chimp.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cart.....55,00.html
April 16th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Don’t these dumb, racist Republicans realize that the only polite way to share racist jokes these days is to forward a story about dumb, racist Republicans sharing racist jokes?
Well, bless their dumb, racist, Republican hearts, I’m going to forward this to my privileged white friends and we will all get a big chuckle over how stupid the dumb, racist Republicans are.
April 16th, 2011 at 8:25 pm
@Alison:
I think the implication that if one is an asshole the only thing that comes out is shit. And given conservative speech and actions, that is right on the money.
April 16th, 2011 at 8:28 pm
@D. Mason:
Find us the cartoon showing Bush Sr. and Barbara Sr. as chimps and then you’ll have a point.
It’s not only the slam on Obama that’s the problem here—this is calling his ancestry into question the same way racist assholes have done for hundreds of years.
I’m just glad that a picture of Sasha and Malia as apes hasn’t made it into the public eye yet. I know it’s coming because I guarantee you that it’s out there, but I’d rather put that day off as long as possible.
April 16th, 2011 at 8:44 pm
@Gustopher:
Have you decided to pick up where D.Mason left off: i.e., in the “missing something” dept.?
I think it’s pretty obvious from the comments on this thread that (at least in the opinion of the BJ commentariat) there really ISN’T a way to “politely” share racist jokes. And that since it was a Republican (and Tea Party, to boot) official who devised and forwarded this stupid crap around: well, yes: “dumb racist Republican” is an appropriate judgement in this case. And if you want to make a partisan deal about it, fine: find and post a similar obnoxious racist email circulated by a Democratic official – and see how much approbation it gets here.
April 16th, 2011 at 8:47 pm
Well I live in OC and my dad retired in Florida sent me that email last week. I don’t have words for how sad it makes me.
April 16th, 2011 at 8:50 pm
@salacious crumb:
They’re nostalgic for their idea of the past, not the actual past itself. The same things they bitch about now were around in the 40s and 50s too, look at the percentage of people who were unionized back then and things like the tax rates and crime rates. They want to bring the country back to a point in time that, if it ever existed outside of their own minds and collective memories, most closely resembles the early 20th century.
April 16th, 2011 at 8:51 pm
@Matt in HB: That is really sad. I got tears in my eyes when I read what you wrote.
April 16th, 2011 at 9:10 pm
@WaterGirl:
It choked my up some too. My pappy is a wingnut, but I doubt he’d send an email of something like that. I learned early on the best way to not let the demons of my father haunt me day in and out, was just go all out to disappoint him thoroughly in about every way I could think of just short of landing in prison.
It worked, mostly.
April 16th, 2011 at 9:22 pm
@Fuzz:
They’re also nostalgic for the idea that you could lock black men out of the economy and voting booth, and pay him about 20 percent of what a white mediocrity would be paid for the same work. Only in that environment could you have a slackjawed white guy make a genuine living as the windshield bug wiper or the dipstick checker at a Texaco station.
April 16th, 2011 at 9:38 pm
@licensed to kill time: if SNL had any balls, they’d make a commercial for “a black friend finder” dating-like service for people who’ve sent racist emails.
April 16th, 2011 at 9:49 pm
To head off any more of the but-you-guys-called-Bush-a-a-chimp nonsense, I offer a thought experiment: Imagine you’re at a cook-out. It’s a hot summer day, and you turn to your neighbor and say “I can’t believe nobody brought any watermelon!” No problemo, right? Now imagine that your neighbor and most or all of the other attendees are black (you are not). Is that still an okay thing to say? Even if it’s motivated by a sincere love of watermelon rather than racism, you’d immediately realize that you’d fucked up, wouldn’t you?
April 16th, 2011 at 9:55 pm
Uloborus said it best:
If they don’t understand after reading that, they don’t want to understand.
April 16th, 2011 at 10:23 pm
@Mnemosyne:
Thank you for saving me the typing. Bingo. (I might not have been as respectful anyway.)
I took people to task for low blows even against W – attempting to respect the office, as ‘The West Wing’ taught me. It’s so much less subjective to call W and Cheney liars, torturers and murderers who can’t land in prison cells soon enough.
April 16th, 2011 at 10:33 pm
I removed someone from my Facebook friends list this week for posting this… I’m all for people having their political opinions, whether I agree with them or not, but I’m not willing to be associated with someone who would post something like this as a “joke”
April 16th, 2011 at 10:37 pm
The real racists are those like me who are offended by this. I’m a bad, bad person for even thinking this woman might be a racist and by cynically injecting race into a clearly lighthearted and civil discussion about the humorous nature of Barack Obama’s genetically inferior father. I’m a bad, bad person. I only hope we vicious liberals haven’t hurt Davenport’s feelings, or David Brooks will rightly take us to task for our meanness of spirit, and David Broder will haunt our dreams, sternly calling us foul-mouthed, vitureative bloogers. And we deserve it.
April 16th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
I also really like how one of her excuses was that she only sent it to people she “didn’t think would be upset by it.” That’s a new one to me. Does that mean that you really aren’t a racist if you only admit your racism to other racists? I’m a little at a loss here. If a klansman hides his racism from everyone but other klansmen, and only lets it show when he’s wearing a hood over his head, is he not really a racist? Pathetic.
April 16th, 2011 at 11:03 pm
@General Stuck: It’s too late for me to do that: I’m 62 already. Dad’s 92. He probably wouldn’t like that particular racist email because it’s racist.
However, he did send me a terrible “Maxine” today, the one where she bemoans the high cost of health care and saying that old people should be given a gun and 4 bullets to shoot (and not necessarily kill, wtf?) four congressmen of choice, because then they’d get free health care, room and board for the rest of their lives, and they wouldn’t have to pay taxes.
I was so annoyed I told him that Gabrielle Gifford is probably laughing at that even as we speak. His answer was that it’s probably easier just to throw all the old people away. He’s 92 and no one is even close to doing that to him; what am I supposed to do about this?
April 16th, 2011 at 11:12 pm
@Yevgraf (fka Michael): They have those white guys in Oregon doing that exact job.
April 16th, 2011 at 11:13 pm
@Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): Apparently she misjudged her audience, because one of her friends blew the whistle on her.
April 16th, 2011 at 11:16 pm
@Joel: That would have been a job for Dave Chapelle, I miss him.
April 16th, 2011 at 11:23 pm
Has anyone asked Pat Buchanan what he thinks?
April 16th, 2011 at 11:28 pm
@opie jeanne:
I would say, At that age, not much to do but sigh.
April 16th, 2011 at 11:34 pm
@Joel: I remember when SNL had a “Rent-a-Dad” commercial for…I forget why, but it was funny.
Maybe they could do a “Rent-a-Black-Friend” service (for Not Racists®only, proof of Not Racist® status is declaration of same).
.
April 16th, 2011 at 11:57 pm
How could this possibly be racist when Obama’s white mother is also pictured as an ape? Clearly she is just upset about all this out-of-control spending.
April 17th, 2011 at 12:42 am
Totally racist, and you can’t talk your way out of that one no matter what you say.
However, what does racism have to do with birtherism? Can you not question the president’s birthplace without being a racist? They are two entirely different issues and points of view. Sure some racists think he was born elsewhere. Some African-Americans probably think that too. And plenty of racists probably think he was born here. They are unrelated.
So while I agree with the sentiment that this is racist, I don’t see why some of you have to yell “racist!” every time someone takes issue with Obama. It just makes you look like the ignorant one.
April 17th, 2011 at 12:55 am
@General Stuck: That’s sad, too, just in a different way, but I’m glad you’ve found a way to deal with it. Mostly.
April 17th, 2011 at 1:09 am
@caz
I’ve maintained for a long time that ‘racism’ is the wrong word. It’s ‘bigotry.’ That covers birtherism (Obama isn’t a Reel amuRikin”) anti-Muslim bigotry, which is a conflation of racism and religious bigotry in various gradations, etc.
Because we start splitting hairs, even though what we’re really talking about is hateful stereotyping according to some characteristic or a conflation of groups. The hate is the same, the bigotry is the same. ‘racism’ while often the right word is often the wrong word as well.
It’s bigotry pure and simple, and there ain’t no wiggle room on that score.
Frank Luntz has figured out that words actually DO matter. Why the hell can’t we?
April 17th, 2011 at 1:56 am
Aren’t jokes supposed to have some kernel of wit, humour, or dry observation?
This isn’t a ‘joke’. It’s the photoshop equivalent of painting your name in shit on the wall. It’s not funny, not clever, and it makes everyone and everything it touches stink to high heaven.
April 17th, 2011 at 2:10 am
Matt Taibbi made a list of things that stood out about the Tea Party Movement and the way they described themselves back on Rolling Stone:
April 17th, 2011 at 9:20 am
@salacious crumb:
But ironically, “the past” they want a reversal to is the 1950s. And the reason everything was so much better for white people back then, is that white people had unions, market regulations, and a social safety net to make sure they got a fair share of the wealth they produced.
So ironically, they’re fighting desperately in the name of the Fifties to prevent a return to the Fifties.
April 17th, 2011 at 9:45 am
The Teabaggers don’t want us to go back to the 1950s. They want us back at the 1890s, the Gilded Age, when American workers lived in astonishing poverty, being used and thrown away when broken.
April 17th, 2011 at 10:03 am
@Gustopher:
No they don’t, and that’s partly explained by this:
@Catsy:
Live in your own alternate reality for long enough, you start forgetting how to live in the real one… and for one thing, you start getting it into your head that jokes like this are appropriate and funny even to the people they’re denigrating.
I had at least one Republican friends who used to forward scores of emails like this (though never quite as offensive). One of them was an email about how there should be a Department for Useless People mooching off of government welfare, like public school teachers. Well, okay. But she thought the email was so funny that she proceeded to print it out and read it aloud to two blue-collar friends, both of whom had a public school teacher for a parent. You can imagine how that went: of course, she came away from it sullen and resentful and complaining that they were being mean and elitist to her.
You know how people complain about kids who’re too plugged into their video games and how it makes them unable to function in society? NewsCorp = similar effect, but far more powerful.
April 17th, 2011 at 10:06 am
California Uber Alles!
April 17th, 2011 at 10:35 am
@caz
What percentage of Birthers do not take issue with Obama’s race? You say that birtherism and racism are two “entirely” different issues, but as far as I’m concerned, they go hand in hand.
What kills me as an black person is when people come out to pooh-pooh any mention of racism unless it’s obvious. A Klansman on a white horse questioning Obama is racism. Anyone else is just curious bout that darn certificate!
Cops pull you over and search your car? Eh, it could have happened to anyone. White people regularly get asked if they are carrying any guns or drugs at routine stops.
The first black President’s validity to serve based on whether or not he’s an actual US citizen, and race has nothing to do with it? Even while all those doing the major questioning are mostly white conservatives. You really think the monkey lady isn’t also nodding her head at Trump’s bullshit?
April 17th, 2011 at 10:35 am
@Hal: Nicely put. For cryin’ out loud, these are not even remotely separate issues. Birtherism is a stand-in for the now unacceptable public expression of racism.
I’d also like to meet some of the black people Caz believes may also be questioning whether the president was born in the U.S. Because outside of Allen West and Herman Cain and the like, they don’t fucking exist.
April 17th, 2011 at 10:51 am
@Michael: Actually, they do want us to go back to the 1950s but they are so fucking uneducated that they propose to do so with means that would actually make it more like the 1890s Gilded Age, if implemented.
April 17th, 2011 at 10:58 am
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Exactly. They don’t want another Gilded Age; they’re so ignorant that they have zero idea that the policies they support will take us there.
April 17th, 2011 at 11:07 am
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): This
@shortstop: and that.
If you ask them for their dream decade, they usually point to the 1950s. They have no idea what made the 1950s awesome or what it would take to go back there, and they’re not pursuing a course that’s going to bring them back, but what else is new.
They do miss all the prosperity, though.
April 17th, 2011 at 11:44 am
I’m sure it’s just an amazing coinydink that the most vehement birthers I know are also the most openly racist people I know.
April 17th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
@Hal: Thank you for explaining that. I was going to try, but wouldn’t have done nearly as good a job.
April 17th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
being 19 and black you would think it got better over the years but it hurts on how this country acts..it angers me every time i think back to the times when people would say,”people aren’t racist..we have a black president.” then i read and look at things like this be is so flummoxed that im like what the f dude..i can say..although slavery was abolished the way that we were seen never changed..all of these years they were in power so they did not have to show their racist gestures but now since there is finally a black superiority that they have listen to and have running their county its just horrifying and outrageous to them of course now we are going to see how racist they really are…it’s funny to me bc i think that the republicans all in some way or another thinks this way but they aren’t going to publicly show it bc they know there would be repercussions…but when it do come out you see the rest trying to throw them under the bus so they can look like their the good guys in all of this when you know when they first saw this the had a little chuckle…then looking at meet the press today and listening to trump comment on how obama is going to be put as the worst president in our history books are you fucking kidding me..i dont think he was the one that put us in the war that no one can explain why we are still there with out sounding like a retard..or the one that put us in this huge depression(yea i dont see it as a recession)..but i do see him as being the one that got put into a situation where hes doing everything he can while battling the whole world and i think he is doing an amazing job in holding his own..but my personal questions are.1.would they be talking this much crap if it was a white person doing the same exact thing obama is doing..2.would they be talking this much crap if it was a republican doing the same exact thing obama is doing..3.would they be talking this much crap if it was them(the ones who dont have anything better to do but talk crap) doing the same exact thing obama is doing…well ill answer my own questions in one word “NO”..but i guess they dont care bc its not them…they arent getting their feeling hurt..no only we are..bc its not that you are only attacking obama i feel as though your attacking me as well..yea i think it is fair that davenport resigns but in the end i wonder how many people are going to lose their jobs by using unfair and mean tactics like this..i feel bad for them that they play this as a game and they play it the way that they do bc in the end hes still here..trying to make your america better after it was thrown under the bus and driving all over for a while when bush was the driver..what did you expect that he was suppose to come in and with the snap of his fingers it was all suppose to be fix just like that..know i call you ignorant..let me be officious and say it takes time sweetie better be glad he helped us out this far bc yes there is improvement the dent is just to big for you to see it..and last but not least seriously trump dont let your fame and money go to your head boo..putting another famous person in charge like schwarzenegger(who just ran california in to the ground) especially with more power would just be disastrous..
April 17th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
@No one of Importance:
Agreed.
It’s no mystery why conservative comics and humorists are never broadly popular, and why they sell exclusively to conservatives.
They’re never funny.
“Funny” on some level is always a revealed truth. The reason we laugh is because we recognize it’s true. It may be outrageous or a unique take but on some level what a comic says is true, or it isn’t funny. We realize we agree with him or her.
Since most decent people don’t think African Americans as apes is true, most decent people don’t laugh when when they see this. She did. She sees a kernel of truth in this or she wouldn’t be laughing.
April 17th, 2011 at 12:56 pm
It’s also birtherism, and she says it herself. I’m not sure how much proof commercial media need before they admit they’re promoting bigotry when they promote birtherism, but they are. They know this, as individuals. So they’re promoting bigotry because it’s helpful to their careers and to their bottom line. They’re following orders. There’s a lot of collateral damage, not to President Obama personally, because he’s more than capable of taking care of himself, but to the brutally and cynically duped GOP base and the public at large, because this shit sticks to all of us.
But they don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that. Gotta break some eggs.
April 17th, 2011 at 1:07 pm
@kay: John McCain was born in the Panama Canal zone. He made one statement about his birth and no one brought it up again. Barack Obama was born in the state of Hawai’i. He even showed the official legal documentation that proves this (which looks exactly like mine as I was born there as well) and the Right still needs to prove he’s somehow ineligible. Other than the partisan divide, what’s the difference between the two?
April 17th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
Why is everybody assuming this creature has “friends,” anyway – black or otherwise?
April 17th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
@Yutsano:
Barack Obama’s birth certificate would be accepted in any court in the country on parentage. I know because I receive and submit birth records from all over the country. No “long form” bullshit, if it’s got a raised seal, that’s the state record and that’s end of that discussion. Obama went further. He essentially provided testimony from the keeper of the record. That’s absurd, but that’s what he was forced to do. Two governors of that state, one Democrat and one Republican, have verified that what he provided is the official birth record of the state of Hawaii. I mean, this is ludicrous. Imagine if this were the standard for everyone? “Id like to accept your birth record, but I’ll require the record keeper and the governor to testify”.
Arizona is now NOT going to accept an official birth record from another state? WTF? I don’t think anyone can move there.
Yet, I see on Talking Points Memo that CNN is presenting this as a matter that is in dispute. They’re teaching the controversy.
Now, you tell me why they’re doing that. It isn’t because this is a legit question, because they all know that’s not true. So, why?
April 17th, 2011 at 2:24 pm
@Michael:
And the nostalgia-wallowing probably works, because most 21st-Century Teatards are middle-class white-collar folk, and view the Gilded Age as an ideal utopia – for their kind – where just about any white guy with a suit-and-tie job could earn enough to live in a nice house, hire domestic servants (Negroes for the run-of-the-mill, Irish for the real nobs) to keep their (properly submissive) wives from having to dirty their hands; maybe even get one of those new-fangled motorcars – SO much cleaner than horses!
The fact that they might have ended up as the exploited proletariat of the time – working long hours for low pay with no rights, and living in tenement slums rife with disease? Not a clue…
It’s what I call the Renaissance Faire mentality: the past re-imagined as a sort of dress-up party where everyone can tog out in velvets and walk around pretending to be privileged nobles. The actual history? The 90+% of the population who were pauperized serfs dressed in burlap? Ehhh – You’re the Prince or Princess – who cares about THEM?
April 17th, 2011 at 2:27 pm
@Yutsano:
It bothers me, because it’s an unsubtle way of repeatiing this: “you’re not one of us”.
I don’t worry a whole lot about Barack Obama. He’s powerful. He’ll be just fine. But what does it say to everyone who looks like Barack Obama, or is in some other way vulnerable to moronic and vicious bigots claiming they are “not one of us”?
That breaks my heart. It’s brutal, and it’s unfair, and if media are doing it to turn a profit or promote their own careers or following orders, they should be goddamned personally ashamed of their behavior.
There’s going to be collateral damage.
The whole thing makes me physically ill.
April 17th, 2011 at 2:33 pm
The Republicans seem to hate Obama so much that they lose their common sense. It is well known that they have already lost the Hispanic vote and, I guess, the same will happen with the Black vote. Simply, everything the Republicans do is a failure.
April 17th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
@kay:
Yep. Good post.
And the same is true of the “he’s a Muslim” meme.
April 17th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
@Chris:
I don’t know why the whole birther thing is treated as 1. a joke, or 2. a serious discussion.
It’s not funny and it isn’t credible as a controversy.
I want to know. If I can find a group of gullible morons who will join me on a crusade to keep repeating that Mitt Romney is not a Mormon but is instead a Buddhist, without producing a single shred of proof, will I get invited onto cable tv to expound on my theory?
Will media allow me to promote my lie for almost three years?
Why not? Shouldn’t Romney have to disprove each and every ridiculous claim from each and every grifter, careerist, and blithering idiot who wanders onto the national stage?
Because Obama has had to, and media have gone along.
Are the rules different for white candidates and sitting Presidents on this?
I think they are.
April 17th, 2011 at 3:52 pm
@kay:
I believe the rules are different white candidates and the sitting President who is not entirely white.
April 17th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
@Caz:
The not-needed-to-be-stated implication that Obama is a “kenyan muslim terrorist” is racist, yes. This matters even if nothing is said about his “blackness” directly.
Also, using an arguably less accurate term is not equivalent to being an ignorant ball of shit.
April 18th, 2011 at 3:27 am
this whole thing makes me sick…she IS an ignorant ball of shit (well put above) too many people like her are out there it’s depressing…wheres my lexapro??
April 18th, 2011 at 4:06 pm
I am just taken aback with this depiction of President Obama. He is the President and should be respected as such. No wonder other countries do not respect us….How can this person get away with this…this is AWFUL. Of all low things this is the worst. I am so fed up with this racism. Something has to be done. Is this the mindset of the Tea Party? I now believe “Yes It Is”.
April 18th, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Dear Marylin; Thank You for your subtle reminder that we are all just visitors on your planet. Thank You for showing your true colors and the inspiration you lovingly shared with most of us. Mostly Marylin, I want to thank you for 2012, when your Republican arse will be fried to a golden crisp and most of us can have the last laugh, byebye!
April 18th, 2011 at 6:08 pm
People like Marilyn and the other verbal gaffers in Orange County drift further from reality daily. In Costa Mesa, there’s a revolt against four city councilmen. The councilmen got “a taste of Wisconsin” and decided to cut half the city workforce. One worker jumped to his death the day that he received his notice. What did the Councilmen do? Party at one of their buddy’s Irish bars on St. Patrick’s Day!
Demography and stupidity like this is going to come crashing down hard on the local GOP here, and they are going to flip the freak out.
April 18th, 2011 at 10:39 pm
Get over it! Everybody is equal so everbody is fair game!
April 19th, 2011 at 1:56 pm