The woman below attend the 9-12 teaparty promoted by Glenn Beck. Photos from the whole, frequently racist screeds can be seen on flickr.
This woman had a double-sided poster; it says, “What’s the Difference between the Cleveland Zoo and the White House.” Look at the flipside, below. Rather cleverly, she claims that they both have “Africans” but one is “‘lying.” So, is this what she is mad about–the black president. Wow, and so clever too. Here’s the problem, the first lie is that he isn’t African, the second deception is the denial that Barack Obama is American, and the third, most horrible part of this, is the use of an old-time trope about African Americans, that they are somehow subhuman, wild, and uncivilized as justifications for things like slavery. This woman, probably a Clevelander, is exceptionally clever, even brilliant in the skilled way that she evokes rhetoric to express her hateful racism. Bravo.
Now, you’d think that someone in the media would call these events what they are. They are about remaking and reintroducing the original sin of the American Nation: racism as a basic tenet of citizenship and public life. You might think that a reasonable politician on the right would decry these hate-filled demonstrations, after all Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. You might think that Republican politicians who wanted to debate political issues might find such hate distracting. But, no. We just get more hate, more incivility, and more obfuscation. We get no discussion of real issues, just fear–very revealing about the priorities of the American right.
I am appalled. You should be too.
