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mygif

Reid is an old man who used a term that was common when he was a young man.

And I never thought I’d say this, but I miss by-comparison-sane conservatives of the Reagan era.

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mygif

I feel for Reid, but mostly because the man had to apologize for something that really wasn’t worth apologizing for. In a private conversation, he didn’t choose his words carefully as he might have in a public one. He didn’t say anything that was actually offensive, just pointed out observations he saw and believed to be true. And used the word “Negro”… But he didn’t, from all accounts, use the word in a hateful way.

My heart always goes out to the good people who get caught in these situations. We all say things behind closed doors in ways that we wouldn’t say them in public.

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mygif

I agree completely with everything said here. I bet we hear more “Dr. King was a Republican and Democrats filibustered the civil rights amendment” bullshit this weekend. (forgetting to mention that King supported JFK, Strom and Jessie lived out their political careers as Republicans and LBJ actually signed the legislation).

The whole Reid incident has been weird. The comment, with it’s clumsy 70-yeah-old man language, the book, which burned the source, George Will (!) defending the statement against Liz Chaney (!) on national television.

But the whole incident seems to have saved Michael Steel’s job, which is the best outcome the Democrats could have hoped for.

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mygif

I completely agree with you. The people criticizing Reid are only doing so simply because they need to criticize. They think all they need is another political scalp. That to ‘win’ the political debate is to shame and embarrass and humiliate their opponent rather than on actual merit. That you’re right: what counts are deeds, not words.

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mygif

I’ll agree that everyone’s racial. Not everyone is racist.

Negro is kind of a gray area in terms of racism. The United Negro College Fund uses the name to this day and as such it seems a little out of place to characterize Reid as a blatant racist or as much of one as the droolers who burn crosses and such. Regardless, it can still be perceived as a hateful word that reduces the black people to the color of their skin.

I think we should erase race.

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mygif

“Negro” isn’t so much a slur as it is a really, really antiquated term that makes you sound backwards.

I mean, I’m sure some people get offended by it and that’s as good a reason as any not to use it, but it doesn’t have the inherent hatefulness of an outright slur.

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mygif

Chris, you might be interested in this analysis of the Reid situation:

http://living.jdewperry.com/2010/01/harry-reid-and-light-skinned-negroes/

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mygif

I’ve been so torn with all the “Should Harry Resign” polls popping up on news websties. I think he should resign because he’s an ineffective majority leader who couldn’t guide the senate out of a paper bag, and because he’s too timid to call the Republicans on their nonsense, not because he’s an anachronism.

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mygif

Re: the point about PC, THANK YOU.

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mygif

The funny thing is Obama’s prepared and entirely generic statement summed up my feelings perfectly…the economy is on the verge of shambling, we are fighting two wars in hostile countries that are unlikely to be won, and health care reform threatens to divide this country further into red states and blue states. Let’s focus on something worthwhile people.

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mygif

One of the smartest things I’ve read all week.

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mygif

MGK, not to pick nits, ’cause I totally agree with everything you wrote, but Reid did not in fact call the President a negro. He used the term in reference to the dialect that Obama specifically didn’t use.

It’s like Chappelle said (pretty sure it was him, and not Chris Rock): black people are bi-lingual, able to speak both “street” and “job interview”. Add in to this that nebulous quality in someone’s voice that says “black”, and you’ve got, to use blunt language, situations where someone can “talk white” but still “sound black”, which is exactly what Reid noted was missing from Obamas oratory.

Again, great piece, I agree 100%, but remain doubtful that any of this will calm the hysteria over on the right about all this.

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mygif

Again, great piece, I agree 100%, but remain doubtful that any of this will calm the hysteria over on the right about all this.

Nothing will calm the hysteria from the right, because the hysterics are the entire point. It’s just a convenient excuse to be assholes, and they’re not about to let the fact that they don’t actually have any excuse stop them from being assholes.

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mygif

Oh, believe me Dan, I know. It’s just that I sometimes forget exactly who we’re dealing with, and ease back on the cynicism throttle, and allow myself to think that logic will be able penetrate their collective helmet.

Then it all comes back to me, and my little fantasy world of logic and reason comes crashing down about me.

Oh well.

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mygif

I know it’s not fair to blame Obama for being high yellow, but I really wanted to vote for a darker president. Does that make me racist, that my president isn’t black ENOUGH for me?

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mygif
Mary Warner said on January 14th, 2010 at 12:09 am

I agree with all your general points, but you’re wrong when you said Thurmond would’ve been ‘our first official segregationist president’. Woodrow Wilson was a staunch segregationist who expelled the last remaining Black civil servants from the Federal Government, and wanted to keep Black Americans out of the armed forces entirely (although the manpower shortage during the war forced him to back down from that position).
Warren Harding joined the Klan with an induction ceremony at the White House, though as far as I’m aware it didn’t influence his policies significantly.

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mygif

Question: he said this two years ago-why is it only now being used against him?

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mygif

Weirdly enough, “Negro” is how African-Americans are listed in the 2010 U.S. Census…so is the word really as archaic and supposedly offensive as some are claiming it to be?

And man, I just love watching right wing white guys lecturing black people on how to be black.

But the Republicans are no doubt furious at Haiti, what with the earthquake burying Reidgate in the back pages now.

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mygif

Reid is an old man who used a term that was common when he was a young man.

Yeah, I’m 38 years younger and I know that “negro” is not something you want to go around saying. Still…

Weirdly enough, “Negro” is how African-Americans are listed in the 2010 U.S. Census…so is the word really as archaic and supposedly offensive as some are claiming it to be?

For a long time, up until several years ago, I thought that “Negro” was to black people what “Caucasian” was to white people. I wasn’t going around using the word even back when I thought it wasn’t offensive, though; I’d say “black” or “African-American”, but that had more to do with the fact that I never heard anybody else use “Negro” in regular conversation and I heard them use one of the two other terms instead. So Reid may have been under the same impression I was about the word not being bad, and since he undoubtedly heard it used years ago in a non-hateful way–as in “the patient is a 34-year-old Negro male exhibiting signs of blah blah blah” or whatever–he’s probably used it more.

Anyway, the people making a big deal about this now seem to forget that before that election there was serious doubt as to whether the U.S. would elect a black president, just because of the fact that there were a lot of stupid voters or ignorant voters or hate-filled voters or a combination of the three. Those people wouldn’t vote for him because he was black, and Harry Reid appears to have been saying “Well, he doesn’t seem really black, so we probably can get a lot more of those idiots who care about skin color to vote for him than, say, Carol Moseley Braun.”

I think he should resign because he’s an ineffective majority leader who couldn’t guide the senate out of a paper bag, and because he’s too timid to call the Republicans on their nonsense, not because he’s an anachronism.

This.

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mygif

[…] 13th – What we have here is a failure to comprehend -Trent Lott vs. Harry […]

mygif

…and because he’s too timid to call the Republicans on their nonsense…

And this is why I want more Democrats like Howard Dean in office. Every time Dean howls, another conservative soils himself.

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mygif
Jonathon Boysen said on March 3rd, 2010 at 12:27 pm

Ugh. This morning someone linked me to your “what if Bertie were Batman” post, and I loved it and thought, “Why on earth did I stop subscribing to this blog?”

And now you go and remind me.

You probably really believe the incredible bullshit you’re shoveling here, but just in case there is a tiny crack in your skull through which an occasional fact or logic can get through, two words: Robert Byrd.

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mygif

You probably really believe the incredible bullshit you’re shoveling here, but just in case there is a tiny crack in your skull through which an occasional fact or logic can get through, two words: Robert Byrd.

The man who got a 100% approval from the NAACP some 60 years after he was a member of the Klan?

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