Laurie Fendrich, one of the lefties in the stable of regular essayists at the Chronicle of Higher Education (don’t worry; there are a couple of regular conservatives as well), confesses at the very beginning of her rant today against Arizona governor Jan Brewer, “Scary Black Man (Oops, I Mean the President) Threatens Governor“:
You know how we liberals are—always looking for ways to play the race card? Well, I’ve held back, but today I’m here to play it.
And play it she does, actually playing two cards, not one:
Let me spell it out for the governor: For her to tell the media that she “felt a little bit threatened, if you will, in the attitude he had,” was inexcusable. She was disrespectful to the president individually, as well as to the Office of the President.
Saddest of all, you don’t need to be a Freudian to know they were deeply revealing. The woman couldn’t help herself. A scary black man showed up on the tarmac.
So, Gov. Brewer was “disrespectful” to presidency and the president (something liberals never were to President Bush), and because the president is black she’s a racist to boot.
It’s a good thing there are liberals like Fendrich. Otherwise we’d have to invent them.
She makes much of Brewer’s use of the word “threaten,” but it is quite reasonable for an ordinary American to feel threatened by evidence of animus on the part of a president; remember what happened to Joe the Plumber when he challenged Obama.
Brewer, being a governor already publicly at odds with a president, wasn’t incurring much additional risk by responding rudely to his rude behavior. But if anyone were justfied in showing the “race card,” it would be Brewer, whose state is a chief target of Obama’s openly racist attorney general and his racialized Department of Justice.
Every time the left dishonestly attributes the normal actions and reactions of normal people to “racism,” they make it that much more difficult to sell the notion of racism as a causal factor in the future.
In other words the race card is just about maxxed out.
This is what happens when someone has nothing intelligent to say, no persuasive arugments to make. They fall back on name calling.
I was not on the tarmac that morning and I don’t know exactly what Obama did. But if Governor Brewer says she felt threatened, then odds are she did, and not because Obama’s is a quasi-black man.
The left wants to keep the focus on his skin color as a way of distracting people from looking and thinking about his policies and agendas. It really is that simple. Why? Because they are intellectually dishonest and ideologically bankrupt. They have no ideas that work which they can call their own. Their own ideas fail, and fail miserably most of the time, often exacerbating the very problems the left pretends to want to solve. They cannot confront this, and so they are reduced to name calling and character assasinations.
Observe them closely and remember what you see, this is what evil and incompetence look like.
I can only IMAGINE what the response on this board would be if Rep. Maxine Waters, or Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee were pictured wagging their finger in the face of President Bush, or (gasp) Vice President Cheney.
–Cobra
Heh! I win. I had a little bet that Cobra would take the bait.
Indeed, Cobra would *have* to IMAGINE such a response, because it wouldn’t happen here. Inappropriate behavior from Waters and Lee is so unremarkable that no one pays any attention, and so is people being rude to presidents. I infer that Cobra chose his illustrative example in the belief that rudeness directed by a black public official toward a white president would somehow elicit more outrage from Discrimination readers than the reverse. Actually, I think he’s got that exactly backwards.
Actually, wagging a finger in a personal conversation is considerably more polite than the sort of things Maxine Waters and Sheila Jackson Lee routinely said about President Bush a dozen times a day before breakfast. It’s hard to find a public comment by Waters that doesn’t call him a liar, immoral, etc., etc. All Obama’s defenders accomplish by robotically denouncing his critics as racists is to tell Americans that if they want to retain their freedom to criticize and even “disrespect” their president they better not elect another black.
Linda writes:
“Heh! I win. I had a little bet that Cobra would take the bait.”
Was it one of those little $10,000 Romney-style bets? If so, congratulations!
“Inappropriate behavior from Waters and Lee is so unremarkable that no one pays any attention, and so is people being rude to presidents. I infer that Cobra chose his illustrative example in the belief that rudeness directed by a black public official toward a white president would somehow elicit more outrage from Discrimination readers than the reverse. Actually, I think he’s got that exactly backwards.”
What blog have you been following over the years? Certainly not Discriminations. My little bet (non-monetary) with you would be for you to scan through the archives of this blog and find a notable “black public official” without an (R) at the end of their name that did NOT elicit disdain or outrage at some point by this blog’s author or loyal readership.
Surprise me, Linda.
John writes:
“It’s hard to find a public comment by Waters that doesn’t call him a liar, immoral, etc., etc.”
Oh, don’t get me wrong….they criticized Bush harshly. They still respected the office never wagged a finger in his face. And they NEVER pulled a Republican Congressman Joe Wilson on Bush during the SOTU:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgce06Yw2ro
Lee Reynolds writes:
“I was not on the tarmac that morning and I don’t know exactly what Obama did. But if Governor Brewer says she felt threatened, then odds are she did, and not because Obama’s is a quasi-black man.”
Are you Newt Gingrich’s speech writer? LOL. I mean, where would you like to go with your post? Are you questioning the definition of race in American Society and the historical significance? Or are you saying that Governor Brewer is an unimpeachable witness, even though unlike yourself, there were people on the tarmac with her who don’t confirm her account.
“President Obama didn’t exactly walk away from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) during their disagreement on Wednesday on an airport tarmac near Phoenix, said one of the only people to witness the exchange up close. The president simply began talking to the other two elected officials who were there to greet him.
Mayor Scott Smith of Mesa, Ariz., declined to say exactly what he heard Obama and Brewer talk about during their now-infamous tiff next to Air Force One.
But the mayor said he was standing right next to the governor when the exchange took place and Obama didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry to leave.
“There was no sense that he was running to or from anything,” Smith told TPM. In fact, he said, the president stayed and had a pleasant conversation with Smith, who’s a Republican, and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, a Democrat.
It was “just the four of us,” Smith said. “Mayor Stanton and I had a decent talk with him.”
The portrayal of a calm, friendly president seems to at least partly contradict what Brewer has said about the encounter in numerous interviews since Wednesday afternoon. She described the president as “tense” and said he walked away from her while she was in mid-sentence. She told a Phoenix television station she felt “a little bit threatened” by the encounter.”
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/mayor_seems_to_contradict_gov_brewers_story_on_oba.php?ref=fpa
Heh.
Lee, there was a time in America, not really all that long ago, where a Black man’s life could be in jeopardy just on the word of a slightly agitated White woman (Emmit Till).
That time is over, sir.
–Cobra
Deluded people interpret evidence either neutral or even contrary to their delusions as evidence in support of them. If you ask Professor Fendrich to support her accusation of racial prejudice against Governor Brewer with evidence other than her own imagination, she will conclude that you are a racist for asking the question. If you point out that this is circular reasoning, she will call you anti-intellectual.
Jack Olson writes:
“Deluded people interpret evidence either neutral or even contrary to their delusions as evidence in support of them.”
Such as Governor Brewer saying she felt “threatened” by President Obama when she met him in an open air, public meeting surrounded by Secret Service agents, the media, and other Arizona mayors?
Fear of a Black POTUS. Nothing more.
–Cobra