We're all wondering why Obama is where he's at. How he got here. Everybody in this room is stunned we're in this position.Let me posit a working theory here--if you truly believe that black people get a leg up in this society, that Barack Obama is only where he is because he got into Harvard Law because of east coast elites favoring him over some salt of the earth hard-working white guy, then you would be stunned. I don't think the AA piece works solo, but it does work in consort with all the other factors I listed below. Basically the word has been--from McCain down--Obama is not worth you respect, or your concern.
This is why I tell my son--over and over--not to give a damn about people verbally slighting him. When time comes to show and prove, all the disrespect in the world doesn't hurt the disrespectee--it hurts the disrespecter. Electoral politics are about showing and proving--no amount of Affirmative Action can get you to the presidency. You have to compete and win. If you're the sort of voter who shows up at one of these dead-end rallies, who likely believes that Obama never deserved the hype he got, that he was only a big deal because he was the "black guy," then, yeah, you are liable to be stunned when he Buster Douglasses that ass. When you're on the canvas searching for you mouthpiece wondering, How the fuck, did I lose to a nigger...
UPDATE: Video of Tyson-Douglass, for the unitiated. The background is Tyson took Douglass lightly, and Douglass basically trained like a mad man. Also his mother had died, like, the week before, so he was ready to go. Tyson, on the other hand, had grown sloppy and he underestimated Douglass, and paid for it.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
That Buster Douglas shout-out is going to send a lot of people scurrying to Wikipedia.
Similar thing happened with the Clinton campaign. I'm not sure they thought he was nothing, but they couldn't imagine how he could
The age gap does allow McCain some leeway - a large part of this is simply 'who does this young punk think he is' age gap, and McCain would think anyone is a joke compared to his brilliance.
But he knows why most of his supporters are outraged. It's not because Obama is younger, and to fan that, my friends, is to reap a whirlwind.
However, I'm inclined to think you are starting to see the beginning of the end of 'conservatism' as it has become.
I hope to God something approaching actual conservative principles can takes it place; that would be better for the country as a whole.
But in the meantime enjoy as the cancer destroys its host. This is 90s conservative Britain writ large. They're about to get back in power, but they had ten miserable years of having to get the bigots to either leave or be quiet.
Sometimes I think that the hardest thing for some of these wingnuts to deal with is the fact that Obama:
- Is smarter than them.
- Does have a much better grasp than John McCain on the pressing issues of the day.
- Is probably the best decision for the country.
- And they'd probably enjoy having a beer with him.
I've got to imagine that having spent their entire lives with the assumption that every Black person was an idiot it really must worrisome to have their entire concept of the world overturned.
It's not Obama that's the problem, it's that THEY THEMSELVES KNOW Obama is the better choice that is the problem. They're simply acting just like a lot of others would after realizing that a fundamental truth on which their entire life was based has been revealed to be a flat-out lie!
Bless'em, I hope they persevere through their troubled times.
you should check the video. i think the guy who asked that question at the rally was black.
Nope, he's white. There was another black guy there who was imploring McCain to attack on Wright. He's a conservative radio host.
TNC,
You have your -er and your -ee mixed up in this post:
"When time comes to show and prove, all the disrespect in the world doesn't hurt the disrespecter--it hurts the disrespectee."
Did you accidentally switch "disrespecter" with "disrespectee"?
What would I do without you guys...
TNC,
Never mind the errors. You are on fire today. Keep it coming.
For the person above James T. Harris was the black fellow who was literally on his knees "beggin" McCain to take Obama out.
Something makes me uneasy about seeing a grown black man on his knees beggin the old white man to take Obama out.
One can't help but think of a certain speech from Malcom X. But maybe I should keep that to myself.
We're all wondering why Obama is where he's at. How he got here. Everybody in this room is stunned we're in this position.
I've heard this said before, only it was by those in the Hillary Clinton campaign.
The projection of entitlement is usually quite ugly.
I remember the night of that fight. I was leaving the bathroom at a bar, and some drunk guy told me Tyson lost. I thought he was lying so I didn't even tell my friends.
I recall Tyson saying "I slipped on a piece of soosi...its raw fiss..."
TNC -
One of Tyson's big probs is that he had affirmative action trainers/cornermen. (If you REALLY remember the fight & the times, you'll know what I'm talking about).
Buster Douglas! Buster Douglas!
Earlier in the campaign, Senator Obama was being compared to Ali. Now, Buster Douglas! Who's next? Jimmy Ellis?
Does that make McCain Jerry Quarry?
"We're all wondering why Obama is where he's at. How he got here. Everybody in this room is stunned we're in this position."
Is it just me or is there nothing inherently racist/condescending/whatever about that comment at all. Now I wasn't there and I didn't see anything on Ben Smith's page to put the quote in context so I have no idea weather it was or not. But, looking at it myself, without any context, I'd assume someone would be referring to the up and coming new guy doing shockingly well.
I just thought it should be mentioned that it's conceivable that offense is being taken to the nonoffensive.
Is there a video or something?
I completely resent the implication that John McCain is in any way representative of Mike Tyson in 1990.
Take it back!
"How the fuck, did I lose to a nigger..."
i'm sure those are the sentiments of many republicans in the mccain crowds.
i'll give johnny mac the benefit of the doubt, however. i don't think any racial animus or element goes into his thinking or his bewilderment about losing to this young whippersnapper.
i just think that he cannot believe that he's lost to someone he believes to be so lacking in the kinds of qualifications he brings to the table.
i've said it before, maybe i'm being naive, but i attribute his attitude to the same kind of disdain he obviously had and showed towards mitt romney.
I think there is definitely a difference between views of Affirmative Action as ways of finding qualified candidates who are blocked out from normal paths, and thinking it is simply picking random unqualifed candidates. That is the difference between Obama and Clarence Thomas.
But I don't think the comment above has anything to do with Affirmative Action. The problem is that the people McCain is now attracting actually do believe that Obama is palling around with terrorists, and that his church was virilently anti-white. So they can't believe that someone who hates America could be winning.
Compare this to 2004 when, as Yglesias recently showed, the polls favered George Bush down the stretch, but most of the left and the media expected Kerry to pull it out because they couldn't imagine that someone who had bungled into Iraq and turned surpluses into deficits could get reelected.
It is certainly a case of denial. But I don't think it directly turns on race (except to the degree that race can be used to feed the delusion that Obama is unamerican).
JT,
nah, obama is a better looking leon spinks, a young, fresh olympian coming out of relative obscurity - even though he'd had a bit of fame at a lower level of competition - shocking and beating an old and decrepit former champion who just didn't have it anymore.
I think insularity is a large factor in this "who is this guy?" And ignorance. "Who is this guy?" is the sort of question you ask if you haven't noticed that Obama has been schooling McCain since about July 1.
The story of this campaign is this: Obama acts, McCain reacts. McCain throws shit, Obama says, "That's silly, we've got more important things to talk about" And we go back on track.
McCain has been all over the map with his economic plan (now up to Mark III, I think), with his health plan (Mark VII or so), and with his campaign strategy.
The right is going to the well that they've gone to since 1980. But it's gone dry. People laugh and roll their eyes at "welfare queens" and "communist" and "socialist" and "baby murderer". That stuff has lost its punch due to overuse and overexposure.
But the normal human response is not, "try something different" it's "try harder". As in TRY HARDER!!!!! Hit harder, be meaner, nastier. Lie more. Their position is melting as we watch them squirm.
How can the McCain camp be declared guilty of simultaneously "cast[ing] the spell of diabolical jingoism" with regards to Obama and of working to create the impression that "Obama is not worth you respect, or your concern."? One obviously contradicts the other
And where is the evidence that the quoted rally attendee was "the sort of voter who shows up at one of these dead-end rallies, who likely believes that Obama never deserved the hype he got, that he was only a big deal because he was the "black guy" or that this line of thinking exists to any great extent amongst McCain supporters? It would be more accurate to call your "theory" a supposition. A supposition which owes more to a tendency of your own - a tendency is to infer racial motivations - than any observed tendency amongst mccain supporters.
There is no reason to believe that McCain does not carry some significant racial bigotry around in his head. He comes from a Mississippi plantation owning family. His military experience was as a figher pilot - one of the most individualistic careers possible. His attitude toward veteran's benefits is typical of the officer class's disdain for the troops (give them too many benefits and they will not re-enlist). He's 72, with obvious issues of entitlement and anger.
It would be very unusual in fact for someone of McCain's class, career and history to not be pretty prejudiced as a matter of course.
Take a look at this George Packer profile of Ohio voters. I found this quote significant.
Which kind of sounds like a guy who thinks, "If I had been treated as badly as White America had treated African Americans, what would I do when I got in charge?" Sad.
This is in addition to not trusting government, being cynical about a message of hope, assuming black people don't achieve based on merit, the Muslim thing, the exotic thing, and the class thing.
"i'll give johnny mac the benefit of the doubt, however. i don't think any racial animus or element goes into his thinking"
Agreed to the extent that his animus doesn't seem that refined.
I wonder how much time that guy spent "wondering" about how Palin got where she is now?
"There is no reason to believe that McCain does not carry some significant racial bigotry around in his head."
tom in ma,
while it certainly possible that mccain harbors those feelings i do not think that we have any more than uneasy feelings in that regard and i think that more is needed before someone is tarred with that brush. i don't think that anyone should ever be put in the position of having to prove that they are NOT something horrendous. i think affirmative proof is needed.
i'm hesitant to do so with mccain because there is ample evidence that he treats just about everyone the way he is treating obama - and we saw it on full display in his treatment of mitt romney during the primary campaign - so i am more inclined to chalk it up to him simply being a grade a asshole, rather than attribute it to a racism that has never manifested itself before in his long years of service.
while the degree of his disdain is probably a bit higher, i'd attribute that to the fact that the stakes are higher and we are finally seeing him in an arena with just one opponent and not an entire field of candidates. frankly, i loved it when he tore romney a new one in the primaries, though i was a bit uncomfortable watching it. if he'd been alone on the stage with romney for many events and if he'd have been in competition with romney for months, with no other opponent to draw his attention away, i could easily have imagined the same kind of vitriol being directed at poor mittens.
"We're all wondering why Obama is where he's at. How he got here. Everybody in this room is stunned we're in this position."
I think its fair to say that everyone at some point in time in this race has thought this. Hillary is stunned. Bill is stunned. Jesse Jackson is stunned. Tavis Smiley is tunned. McCain is stunned. Barack has come out of nowhere.
But, I think McCain is trying to stoke the 'How do we know he's not a terrorist?' line of attack more so than the AA line.
"no amount of Affirmative Action can get you to the presidency"
Except for George W. Bush. Legacies. The other affirmative action.
This is why Geraldine Ferraro's statement was absolutely ludicrous. No minority gets to the presidency with Affirmative Action. They don't make programs like that. You have to pay the [insert ethnicity here] tax of being twice as good, twice as sharp as your white counterparts with (or without) family connections.
"When you're on the canvas searching for you mouthpiece wondering, How the fuck, did I lose to a nigger..."
Must be how Stephen Colbert felt when he lost the Emmy to Barry Manilow.
Iron Pimp went way overboard, but Lon has it right - the idea that the denial is racially-based is a supposition. Unlike Iron, I think it could be racist, but it could also just result from the bias a supporter has for his side (or her side in Hillary's case).
If the Dem nominee had been a white guy trouncing McCain, that audience member might have said the same thing. Or maybe not if his motivations were racist. The statement, by itself, doesn't prove much.
The same people also use the inverse argument. I can't tell you how many people I know who have said Obama wouldn't have won the nomination if he weren't black.
Always makes my head spin. I assume these people aren't paying attention to who Obama really is and how and who and what he inspires.
I've been following Obama ever since his speech at the '04 convention. He blew me away. I remember: "We must ask ourselves, how do we measure up to the legacy of our forebearers...I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper...there is not a liberal America or a conservative America, not a black America or a white America, there is only the United States of America." And then he spoke about Iraq, in the most righteous terms, a powerful argument, finally, from a politician who is against this war. Wow. This is the guy we need.
I'm glad we have him. I'm glad he has us. I'm glad there is an "Us".
What's with all these people projecting racism on people who don't support Obama? I keep reading the same thing over and over again. There's an obsession with it.
Black this White that, race race race.
Might I suggest, that the people who are writing about it so much, dreadfully worried about it, talking about it, pondering up boogeymen and convincing themselves and others that those boogeymen somehow represent more than a slim fraction of society that exists for practically any wacky ideology... the people who do these above things, are THE ONES with the race issues.
Hey sam,
Might I suggest that stupid white men who have no clue about race or its implications (especially since they only see the world through the eyes of, STUPID WHITE MEN), either educate themselves beyond their own very narrow and limited world view, or just STFU and go away.
Buster Douglas, Frederick Douglass - no relation.
What's with all these people projecting racism on people who don't support Obama?
It's not a projection, it's an observation. When you have people like The Lady Lynn de Forrester complaining that he's "uppity", when you have half of McCain's supporters saying they couldn't ever vote for an Ay-rab, when you have supporters at a Palin rally calling black men "boy", it's trivially obvious that a substantial majority of anti-Obama sentiment is because he's black.
I mean you have to be stupid clueless not to pick up on that.
Chet, AFAIK, The Lady tjejabar used the word "elitist", not "uppity". Just had to defend Her Ladyship's honor . . .
The Lady tjejabar used the word "elitist", not "uppity".
I'm not seeing the difference, there. Maybe you just don't know what "elitist" means.
Thanks wb44 for demonstrating to the world that you are no better than those racists who you claim to detest and look down upon.
Chet: "I'm not seeing the difference [between uppity and elitist], there."
"Uppity" is not equal opportunity, it only applies to blacks. Describing Kerry or other white guys as "uppity" would make no sense.
"Elitist" is equal opportunity. Last I checked, Gore, Kerry, Howard Dean and Hillary are not black. Yet "elitist" was used to describe them as well (8 years later, "gore elitist" yields 709,000 google hits).
It's a simple difference, apparent to everyone who is not seeking to tar their opponents as racist no matter what they say.
All of this is interesting but if you can find a tape of the previous round you would be even more amazed at Douglas's upset. Tyson hit him with an upper cut that would have killed alot of people.
Douglas went down and most people, including Tyson, thought the fight was over.
I am getting tired of politics. Let's vote and move on. The next few weeks could divide this country even more than it is already. I am a Republican but it is not going to break my heart when Obama wins. Good luck to him.
After almost 200 years of legally sanctioned anti-Black racism that infected every social, cultural, economic and political (including our constitution!) aspect of our nation, I am always pleasantly surprised to meet so many White people who are not bigots. Hell, the system was so effective that a whole lot of Black people thought (and think) that White people are inherently superior (how do I love my hair weave--let me count the ways.) So as much as I know "we've come a long way baby" and even as Obama's lead in the polls continues to rise, I will wait and hopefully exhale on election night.