In solidarity with the sites (including FTB) that are down for the day, I will not be providing original content today. I encourage you to poke around the archives. There’s nearly 2 years of quality posts to rummage through. Instead of writing myself, I have compiled a few interesting articles that I think you should read. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.
Racism ‘happens’: Inexplicable events haunt GOP primary
Trigger warning for Santorum
It’s the darnedest thing. Republicans have zero tolerance for anything racist. They’ll tell you so at the drop of a hat. It’s liberals and Democrats who are the real racists. Just ask Herman Cain, he’ll set you straight. After all, if a pizza CEO isn’t an expert on racism, then who is?
And yet, in recent weeks, all manner of seemingly racist things keeping popping up all around the GOP presidential primary campaign, which can only be explained in terms of mysterious and malevolent forces, out of movies such as The Exorcist, or Men in Black, or more recent low-rent fare, like the SyFy channel’s Ghost Hunters “reality show”.
First there was the matter of Ron Paul’s racist, homophobic and otherwise bigoted newsletters from the 1980s and 1990s. Of course he never read them. (“I never read that stuff. I was probably aware of it ten years after it was written,” he told Gloria Borger on CNN the week before Christmas.)
Read the rest of the article, leave your comments here.
Like this article? Call your senator, call your congressperson, tell them that you oppose SOPA and PIPA, and that ze should too. Not American? Neither am I.
Crommunist 
That’s… wow. That’s a lot to think about.
I think the discussions at FTB have been fumbling in this general direction, with all the cries of “But I don’t see race/gender!” from various folks arguing against tolerance. But it’s good to have a word for this – even if it’s a tad of a slam against blind people. ~;>
That article and the documents to which it refers lay out the situation rather well, I think. Thanks for the link.
Is it just me or did Atwater implicitly admit that cutting taxes hurts people and selectively hurts black people more than white people in the initial quote?
Probably depends on whose taxes are cut, whose aren’t, and whose supprt is shortened due to lack of funds.
So, tax cuts for the rich that are balanced by cuts in public education hurt blacks more than whites because of their relative proportion of depending on it.
This is one of the many reasons I (as a white gay male) won’t vote for any GOP candidate. They are also often blind to their homophobia as many of them say (after opposing any legislation that would benefit the glbt community) “I have many gay friends.”
Their mascot should be a horse with blinders instead of an elephant. (I suppose though, you could use the elephant (racism) in the room metaphor for this.)
I think it should be an elephant with a unicorn’s horn – because the GOP spends all its time remembering a time that never existed.
It amazes me that Ron Paul thinks people will believe a politician didn’t read the newsletter with his name on the banner.