Pic Of The Day -- The Trump Effect

News item: "Three University of Mississippi students have been suspended from their fraternity house and face possible investigation by the Department of Justice after posing with guns in front of a bullet-riddled sign honoring slain civil rights icon Emmett Till.

"One of the students posted a photo to his private Instagram account in March showing the trio in front of a roadside plaque commemorating the site where Till’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River. The 14-year-old black youth was tortured and murdered in August 1955. An all-white, all-male jury acquitted two white men accused of the slaying."

BONUS:   The Trump Effect isn't confined to the Deep South, of course.  The contagion has spread to one of the most prestigious institutions in our country.

QOTD -- Telling The Truth About Trump

Margaret Sullivan, media columnist, in today's Washington Post:

It makes good sense for media organizations to be careful and noninflammatory in their news coverage. That kind of caution continues to be a virtue.

But a crucial part of being careful is being accurate, clear and direct. When confronted with racism and lying, we can’t run and hide in the name of neutrality and impartiality. To do that is a dereliction of duty. [snip]

Journalists don’t need to see themselves as political advocates when they say obvious things in plain terms. And doing so doesn’t make them Democratic operatives as their pro-Trump critics are sure to charge.

It just means they are doing the most fundamental job they have: telling the truth as plainly and directly as possible.

Her own paper is (finally) getting the message, both in its reportage and its editorial page, clearly labeling malignant dimbulb Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump's recent racist outbursts for what they are.  Other media outlets are finally reaching the point where they can't avoid the obvious, but far too many are still using euphemisms or couching his racist remarks as "some are calling" or other weaselly crutches.  We see you, and history will judge you harshly.

BONUS: The Daily Show has a humorous take on the not-so-humorous weaselly euphemisms.

The National Memorial For Peace And Justice

On April 26, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, AL. The memorial is "dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence."  Jamelle Bouie has a must- read essay about what the lynching memorial signifies for the history of the period from the post- Civil War Reconstruction to the mid- 20th Century, as well as the echoes of that history in our politics and culture today. Here's a snippet:

Lynching echoes in other ways. Our politics are in the grip of a backlash defined, in large part, by deep racial entitlement on the part of many white Americans. Indeed, racial violence—or the promise of such—remains a potent tool for defining the boundaries of white racial community. As a candidate for president, Donald Trump promised state action against Hispanic immigrants and Muslim refugees. Not as punishment but as defense—a way to keep America free of people that, in his view, cannot assimilate. How did he describe these groups? As “rapists,” criminals, and drug dealers—dangerous gang members who defile and kill innocent American women. Far from repelling voters, this language primed and activated racial fear and resentment among many white voters, supercharging its electoral potency. Trump wasn’t just defining an enemy, he was speaking a language of racial threat—of purity and morality—that has its roots in the lynching era.

The memorial itself is a punch to the smug gut of American "exceptionalism." From the memorial's web site (link above):

Set on a six-acre site, the memorial uses sculpture, art, and design to contextualize racial terror. The site includes a memorial square with 800 six-foot monuments to symbolize thousands of racial terror lynching victims in the United States and the counties and states where this terrorism took place. 

The memorial structure on the center of the site is constructed of over 800 corten steel monuments, one for each county in the United States where a racial terror lynching took place. The names of the lynching victims are engraved on the columns... 

Due to the malignancy in the Oval Office and the Komplizen in his regime and the Republican Party, millions upon millions of his worshipful followers have felt empowered to emerge from under the rocks where fear and resentment have always existed. Of course, racial intimidation in service to a white supremacist hierarchy can be seen today in excessive police violence in minority communities, in voter suppression and racial gerrymandering, and in individual acts of cruelty large and small.  This memorial is an opportune reminder of what happens when a vicious racial philosophy is allowed to take hold, and why we can't let that happen again.

Sunday Reflection - Statue Symbolism

Some musings on statue symbolism this morning. As always, these are snippets; please go to the links for the full essays.

First, if you aren't already aware of the origins and true meaning of Confederate statues, Prof. Karen Cox is here to enlighten:

Almost none of the monuments were put up right after the Civil War. Some were erected during the civil rights era of the early 1960s, which coincided with the war’s centennial, but the vast majority of monuments date to between 1895 and World War I. They were part of a campaign to paint the Southern cause in the Civil War as just and slavery as a benevolent institution, and their installation came against a backdrop of Jim Crow violence and oppression of African Americans. The monuments were put up as explicit symbols of white supremacy.

(If you're familiar with the KKK- glorifying 1915 D.W. Griffith movie, "The Birth of a Nation," think of these statues as static representations of the same era and racial perspective.)

Infidel 753 on the claim that the Confederate statues represent Southern "heritage:"

To really see how bizarre this is, imagine if some Germans insisted on displaying Nazis flags and statues of Nazi leaders, but claimed that this was out of pride in their German heritage and nothing to do with anti-Semitism or fascism.  Germany as a culturally-distinct region is more than a thousand years old and can boast world-class achievements in science, technology, music, literature, architecture, and on and on.  To ignore all that, and choose symbols representing solely Germany's twelve-year lurch into the darkest depths of evil, would strongly suggest that what they were really commemorating was not German heritage at all, but rather that very evil.

So it is with the Confederate flag and statues.  To treat these as if they were the epitome of the Southern heritage, the symbols best suited to express it, actually demeans that heritage by presenting only its worst face as if that represented the whole. 

Christine Emba on why she's tired of explaining why she and other racial and religious minorities matter in the "debate" over Jim Crow- era monuments:

There are the appeals to reason, grown tedious for having been so often repeated: No, taking down a monument is not an “erasure of history.” No, it is not a slippery slope from removing mutinously erected statues of Lee to dynamiting monuments to George Washington. No, even if all the Confederate monuments disappeared overnight, we would not as a country forget that the Civil War ever happened or what it meant. After all, we still have books and museums and cemeteries and preserved battlefields and structural inequality. 

Then there are the analogies, the individual stories, all the more painful for being constantly retold: No — I can’t just “get over it,” because I can’t just take off my dark skin, which permanently marks me as the other. No, they aren’t “just statues”: They bring up personal, painful memories of current racism and marginalization — shall I recount those for you, again? [snip]

...Why would so many Americans rather undergo one million mental contortions than admit that someone else's safety matters? Why is it so hard for you to care? 

The answer, I think, is not one that I'll like. But perhaps you can take up the burden of explaining that to me.

Sadly, the majority of Americans (!) still believe the statues should remain, though at the same time they claim to oppose white supremacy and the KKK by large percentages. We have a lot of explaining to do, don't we?

(Photo: The Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, VA)

Video Clip Of The Day

This is a powerful and empowering 4 minutes (h/t Silver Spring Bureau Chief Brian).  Please take time to look at it:

Tweets Of The Day

(click on images to enlarge)

Nov. 2008: PBO was not even be sworn into office until 2 months later & the racists went ballistic immediately. pic.twitter.com/cyAejFj5LL

— Monie (@MonieTalks_1) July 9, 2016

For "Obama has divided this nation" folks: Just 1 week after his election, wasn't even sworn in for another 2 months pic.twitter.com/b52kutv4YK

— Monie (@MonieTalks_1) July 9, 2016

The noxious hatred was already well underway well before Barack Obama became President.  As one of the embedded items says, he only brought the racist rats out of the woodwork.  To believe otherwise is to show one's ignorance.

Bikers Exercise Second Amendment Rights In Waco, Texas; Nine Die

Nine members of several bike gangs were killed in a shootout in a "Twin Peaks" breastaurant (think "Hooters," but less classy) and parking lot in Waco, Texas on Sunday.  Nearly 200 people were arrested in the aftermath of the carnage.  These thugs good ol' boys had plenty of guns and ammo at their finger tips (over 100 1,000 weapons were seized at the scene).

While some bikers directly participating in the violence were cuffed, here's a photo of another group after the shootout:

(AP Photo - Rod Aydelotte)

Are you noticing anything...  odd?  Like maybe the biker on his cell phone, others hanging around like they were maybe getting a "time out" from the cops?  Oh, yeah.  They're all white.  They're also potential shooters or, minimally, witnesses to the shootout.  Charles Blow detects a teensy disparity between the treatment of Waco and these good ol' white boys and the "blahs" in Baltimore:

Wonkette wonders if the gun-fondlers in the National Gun Manufacturers Rifle Association will come up with a catchy new slogan defending the Second Amendment rights of the bikers to use their shootin' irons in such a way, and adds:

As of press time, we have not yet heard from Alex Jones on the matter, so we aren’t certain whether the bikers were all crisis actors pretending to have a shootout so the feds can seize all the guns, or if the incident is part of Operation Jade Helm 15, and hence a slightly different flavor of false flag incident staged so the feds can seize all the guns. The one thing it couldn’t possibly be was a bunch of armed thugs blowing each other away because guns are always the solution.

Because an armed society is a polite society!

#CancelColbert: What Jezebel Said

For anyone just catching up to the s**tstorm that billowed up from a recent Stephen Colbert segment (and subsequent misattributed Tweet) incorporating a racist Asian stereotype in mocking Washington NFL owner Li'l Danny Snyder's offensive, diversionary Native American foundation (you might still see the segment embedded here, unless Viacom has it pulled for copyright infringement), we think this piece by Erin Gloria Ryan  at Jezebel sums things up pretty well.  Here's the finale:

Good rule of thumb, just, for life in general: If Michelle Malkin is cheering you on, you are almost certainly doing something wrong. Malkin is a third rate conservative shock jock who isn't smart enough to be offensive in the ways she is trying to be. Michelle Malkin is to Ann Coulter what Drive Me Crazy is to Heathers. 

Malkin and her ilk are likely excited about the #CancelColbert hashtag because the show makes people who agree with her (but who, unlike Michelle Malkin, are important enough to warrant the show's attention) look like fools. The shitstorm has also successfully diverted attention from the issue that Colbert was trying to skewer in the first place, an issue with which many social conservatives vehemently ignore, or brush off, or dismiss: 

The fucking owner of a team called the goddamn WASHINGTON REDSKINS started a charity FOR NATIVE AMERICANS that uses the word 'REDSKIN' in the name of the charity and that is shitballing ridiculous. 

But instead of talking about that, we're talking about an out of context Tweet that people misattributed to a sketch that most people didn't even watch in its entirety before they decided an entire show's worth of people — writers, producers, editors, directors, camera operators, sound people, interns — should lose their jobs.

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog pretty well expresses our feelings.  Bottom line: before you go DEFCON 1, take a breath, understand the origin of the Tweet, understand the context of the segment, and then focus on the real villains - not a character played by someone who is one of the good guys in the media.

Racist Dimbulbs Attack Miss America

This past weekend, 24-year-old Indian American Nina Davuluri, born in Syracuse, New York and representing New York, was crowned Miss America. Upon winning, Ms. Davuluri had this to say:

"I'm so happy this organisation has embraced diversity.  I'm thankful there are children watching at home who can finally relate to a new Miss America."

Ms. Davuluri is believed to be a practicing Hindu.  A nice moment to show the world that Americans can celebrate their diverse heritage, right?  Well, maybe not to some mouthbreathers out there:

One Twitter user, DallasRobinson8, wrote: "I am literally soo mad right now a ARAB won. #MissAmerica"

Jakeamick5 added: "How the **** does a foreigner win miss America? She is a Arab! #idiots"

Emi_adkins said: "It's called Miss America. Get outta here New York you look like a terrorist. #bye #americanforamerica"

And another user said: "Well they just picked a Muslim for Miss America. That must've made Obama happy. Maybe he had a vote."

Two points:  first, you can't spell "Twitter" without the twit, amirite?   More importantly, what this shows the world (the report we've linked to is Sky News in the UK) is that we have an underbelly of society that is stone ignorant, racist and not ashamed to show it.  Not surprising, of course, but always disheartening.

Luckily, we do have quality people in this country, starting with Ms. Davuluri, who said of the racist comments:

"I have to rise above that.  I always viewed myself as first and foremost American."

Butthole of the Week

Well, the week's not over, but we're figuring that there won't be much to top this from (former) ESPN.com contributor, and former NBA player Paul "Humanitarian" Shirley, to the people of Haiti:

"If it's possible, could you not rebuild your island home in the image of its predecessor? Could you not resort to the creation of flimsy shanty-and-shack towns? And could some of you maybe use a condom once in a while?"

ESPN fired the clown after he posted his noxious "thoughts" on another blog. If we could only drop him off in Haiti with his "thoughts" tattooed on his small forehead.

Already! An Ass of the Week!

From Crooks and Liars, we give you the Hackwhackers "Ass of the Week," Sherri "Don't" Goforth, legislative assistant to Tennessee Rethug State Sen. Diane "I'm Not" Black (Gatlinburg/Yahooville). Seems Goforth emailed a picture chart showing all the Presidents -- with the space allotted to President Obama represented by "spook" eyes. Sherri, you must be one of those "mean, thick, and angry" Rethugs John Batchelor was talking about (below)! Nice to meetcha!

Move over, Rusty DePass. Time to go forth and de-pass the mantle of gracious Southern Rethug bigotry to the new Ass of the Week: Sherri Goforth.

Showing Their True Colors

The Texas Rethugs were trotting out a new button at their state party convention. Makes you proud.

Cross burning to follow the evening keynote address.

Ronnie Raygun's Racial Politics

There's been a heated back-and-forth among a three New York Times columnists over whether Ronald Reagan was appealing to Southern white bigots when he opened his 1980 Presidential campaign at the Neshoba County, Mississippi Fair, not far from the site of the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964. Neocon putz David Brooks wrote in his column the other day that we should accept a benign explanation ("innocent mistake") of Reagan's statement at the Fair that "I believe in State's rights", a code phrase for segregation. Bob Herbert takes the argument apart in his subsequent rebuttal, as did Paul Krugman a couple of days ago. The "Southern Strategy" has been a fixture in Rethug politics since the 1960s, and was intended to appeal to the white racist vote. Ever since, the Deep South has been reliably Rethug in Presidential elections.

(photo: Reagan for President rally)

Making Bigots Pay

In 2003, a mentally challenged African American named Billy Ray Johnson was brought to an east Texas "pasture" party by a group of teenage whites, given liquor, made to dance and taunted, before being beaten by four Redstate thugs. He was taken to a dump site, and thrown unconscious on a mound of fire ants. He suffered permanent brain damage as a result. Yesterday, an east Texas jury found the four thugs liable for $9 million in a civil suit (the earlier criminal case resulted in aquittals for two, and light sentences for the other two for "injury to a disabled individual by omission"). Representing Johnston was the iconic attorney from the Southern Poverty Law Center, Morris Dees. Dees, who has spent a lifetime fighting right wing racists such as the Klan and Aryan Nation, successfully argued that this was a race crime, not merely assault. It's people like Morris Dees who should be getting the Medal of Freedom these days, but they certainly won't be getting it from Dubya. (photo: Morris Dees)

More I-Man

A must read: Gwen Ifill has the definitive slap-down of radio jock Don Imus in today's New York Times. Well said. Oh, and I-Man? Cowboy hats? You're a Noo Yawker. Male "ho's" have been known to wear them in Noo Yawk. Lose it, along with your producer, Jerk McGuirk.