Remember back when Sarah Palin was baiting David Letterman over his stupid joke? (I know. I wish I didn’t either.) Remember the best part of that, when the pro-Palin people started slinging rape accusations around? And then mounted a shame-on-you media campaign against Letterman’s advertisers?
Turns out the liberals might be a little better at that shtick than the conservatives (ignoring that whole “put the Christ back in Target’s Christmas ads” blip). Color of Change, which calls itself the largest online African-American political organization in America, has opened a petition to pull get Glenn Beck’s major advertisers to pull their ad spots. Why? Cuz Beck said this:
“This president has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people….This guy is, I believe, a racist.”
(And just in case you’re reading the blogs that are only giving you a clip of that quote — just as I am doing right now — the ‘Obama is a racist’ accussation comes at 2:01 on the video embedded at Color of Change.)
So far, Color for Change has convinced 12 companies to pull their ads. That’s some serious grassroots power. And that’s an objective argument: If the Palin folks had been more successful, I’d be saying the same thing.
The unobjective argument? People respond when you make a real argument. But I’ve said this before.
UPDATE: A Times piece.
Racist is a term that is applied “liberally” to most whites whenever they make a statement that fits certain criteria. It is NOT applied to blacks with the same measuring stick. Spike Lee said to a journalist from FOX who was trying to ask him a question, “I don’t do Fox News.” Racist comment? Hell yes. When Obama said that his grandmother was a “typical” white person, was that a racist statement? Hell yes. When considered with the same criteria that is used to judge white persons’ statements it is. What’s his name that Obama used to go to his church is a racist to the nth degree. No flippin question. The Harvard law professor a racist? By all means. I am acquainted with black trash, white trash, Asian trash, Mexican trash and I’m not a freakin racist. I watch Glenn Beck. I’ve also watched Charles Wrangle, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Beck’s no more of a racist than they are.
Wait, isn’t the issue that Beck called the President a racist, not whether Beck’s a racist? I mean, yeah, that could be the next question, but Beck isn’t that interesting in and of himself, and the post is about the first point, anyway.
I really liked this piece in the New Yorker, that picks up on some of the examples you mention and digs a little deeper into differing interpretations in America about what racism is–and why two people who use the same word can mean very, very different things, one of them systemic and structural. (I like people think about systems and structures, so maybe that’s what appeals to me).