Sunday, January 4, 2009

Paddy The Magic Catholic

Chip Saltsman wanted to be the head of the RNC, but basically took himself out of the running with the ill-advised, but revealing, act of sending out a CD full of conservative ditties including the offensive "Barack the Magic Negro," made infamous by national racist talk show host Rush Into Limbo.

The right wingers have their faux outrage going on big time about this, including local blogger Mary at Freedom Eden and MJS lead squawker, PaddyMac.

Mary's big beef is that she feels that anyone complaining about this is hypocritical, because the left was so mean to George W. Bush. What she fails to comprehend is that the song ridicules Obama for his race, while people are critical and sardonic towards Bush is that he was one of the worst, if not the worst, president in US history. It was Bush that started the Iraq war and cost thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens their lives. It was Bush that neglected his duties when Hurricane Katrina headed towards, struck, and nearly destroyed New Orleans. Neither of those disasters have been cleaned up yet.

As offensive as Mary's hypocritical stance is, Paddy's is even worse. He tries to defend the song at parody, and takes the wild position that the song has no racism in it at all.

Um, Patrick, the song wouldn't have been written at all if Obama wasn't black. As one of his commenters pointed out, the cacophony of right wing outrage would be deafening if someone made a song called "George the Magic Christian." There would have been controversy to no end as the pseudofaithful claim foul and said that their beliefs were being mocked.

Patrick then goes on with this:
So we’ll go on, having to pretend not to notice the next president's ethnicity unless we swaddle the mention in a protective context of praise. This is going to be a hilarious four years, I can tell already, especially if anyone starts prattling on about how, under Obama, we can now have our long-delayed national conversation about race. Good luck, when half the country is barred from the subject.
My question to Patrick, since he and his overlords have seen it fit to ban me from commenting on any of their sites, is this: What does Obama's race have to do with any of his decisions and/or policies that he will be setting forth in the next four or eight years?

Just by feeling the need to make that an issue shows Paddy's latent racism. He also let the cat out of the bag regarding what the right's arguments are going to be for the foreseeable future: Obama's only doing this to get back at the white man.

How preposterous these people can be!

To add to the fun, Paddy then brings up the fact that Obama is going to be sworn in using his full name, which holds to tradition of any person being sworn in as President. One of his commenters points out the fallacy of Paddy's faux oversensitivy by writing this (grammatical errors included):
This is another typical lazy straw-man argument. It is not the words being used but their intended usage and YOU KNOW IT. The magic n***o thing was simply a ploy to try to evoke a response that right wingers could decry as PC and it just made these people look dumb and ignorant (if the shoe fits right?). The Obama middle name thing makes me laugh the hardest. How many times did people refer to mccain by all 3 names? Uh, none. Why did right wingers put obama's middle name in caps or emphasize it in their blood thirsty rallies? It wasn't that they used it but they clearly intended to use it to play on some peoples fear and hatred of anything muslim. Trying to evoke some of the worst in mankind using this approach is the very definition of racism. I could care less about words, it is the intent in which they are used. You know this is true Pat but you are just subscribing to the same play you and your ilk use over and over and over again, conservatives are always the victims. Pathetic
Pathetic indeed.

4 comments:

  1. I'm not for going over the top on Bush Dan, but you'd have to be totally blind or in the tank to believe Bush did not earn the animosity.

    False scandals? You must be thinking of the accusations against the Clinton administration.

    ReplyDelete
  2. He grew up in an all-white environment and continues this level of association. He could be called color-blind, because he has never known color to begin with.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Did you actually read the opinion piece by David Ehrenstein, Dan? If you had, you would have known that the title referred to a folk culture figure -- one meant to assuage white guilt. If anything, the opinion was a scholarly look at stereotypes.

    The key being the word "scholarly". In other words, not something the Republican operatives who created the DVD, Rush Limbaugh, or you would understand.

    ReplyDelete