There's a joke here--something about pots and kettles. There are many in fact. I'm overwhelmed though. Where do I begin? Yet again, the mind reels...Discussing the first lady's visit to a Washington D.C. classroom last week, Bruce incredulously recalled Obama's story about wanting to get A's in school and called out her use of a "weird, fake accent."
"That's what he's married to," Bruce said. "...You know what we've got? We've got trash in the White House. Trash is a thing that is colorblind, it can cross all eco-socionomic...categories. You can work on Wall Street, or you can work at the Wal-Mart. Trash, are people who use other people to get things, who patronize others, who consider you bitter and clingy..."
« Why Do Black Immigrants Do Better Than Native Blacks? | Main | The Party Of Stupid » We're All White Trash now23 Mar 2009 04:29 pm
Or are we all niggers? Don't know. But the day of figuring out this black-white shit is coming. Hate, however, is eternal:
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Bruce needs better dipilatory tactics for her closet unibrow.
She would be much happier I think.
;)
Hmmm.... let me know when you post the petition for Operation Whoop-@$$.
Comments from the ignorant - they never cease to amaze me.
I don't know who Ms. Bruce is, but I listened to the clip and was horrified and disgusted. Which was probably her desired result. Dammit!
The whole use of "trash" to describe our fellow humans is a bad idea. It's a class-based cruelty that tries hard (though it fails) to mimic the brutality of words that get hurled across racial lines.
I never heard of her before and I know why......she has no talent.
What's she trying to do become the female version of Rush Limbaugh?
Outside the fact they are both purposefully trying to be offensive the only other likely thing they have in common is desiring sex with men.
Michelle Obama isn't perfect, but "trash" is not a word I would associate with her or her family.
Apparently Ms. Bruce is openly-gay, pro-gun, pro-choice, ex-liberal-now-conservative-leaning independent. If you understand that, you probably understand her rage.
I know I'm primed to view comments like this as racial, but this reminds me more of the comments about the Clintons - which seemed to be unsubtle code for "white trash" - arkansas, child of a single mother, unsavory friends, corruption, accent, and the ever popular examination of that woman he married.
Maybe this is just the standard line to chase when there is a Democrat in office muddying up the carpets with his populism.
It seems like some people are in a pissing contest to see who can deliver the longest, most shocking stream of piss toward the O administration. If you look at each pisser individually, it gets to be tiresome. Why not save these examples of foolishness and have a piss-off every other week or so? It's going to be a long eight years if we go one-on-one with every one of these pissers. Hey, I nominate "are you punch drunk" Steve Kroft.
Tammy Bruce? Never heard of her. Michelle Obama? Have.
'Nuff said.
Trash, are people who use other people to get things, who patronize others, who consider you bitter and clingy..."
Why, I can't imagine why anyone would consider Ms. Bruce bitter!
Tammy Bruce is openly gay? Can we in the gay community disown her?
On a more serious note, one of those people - Michelle Obama and Tammy Bruce - is indeed trash. It ain't the First Lady.
I had never heard of Tammy Bruce, and wish I still hadn't. I am sure she's just another wanna-be saying outrageous things just to get attention.
But.
One thing that warms this white guy's heart is watching people - black, white, yellow, brown - rise up to defend Michelle Obama. She seems like a tremendous person, I'm proud to have her as a First Lady, and I'm even prouder to see my fellow Americans jump up to defend her. That we get to slap a fool like Tammy Bruce in the process is just gravy.
The subconscious blankie of white supremacy has been torn with Obama's ascendancy, and when a white person starts to feel insecure, inferior, low class, they will predictably throw these little tantrums. Notice the first thing she says after "trash" is how its "colorblind," Well, Miss Tammy, why would we think it WOULDN'T be colorblind? She's ashamed of the first association she has with the term-- why would you be defending against the racial connection if it weren't part of why you used trash? Notice how she backtracks, until "trash" just means arrogant.
Stop digging, Tammy- we know why you said it.
Tam-Tam Bruce is sounding pretty bitter and clingy.
Don't go away angry, Tam-Tam. Just go away.
She sounds mentally ill to me. Seriously.
To my ear, the whole rant sounded a bit staged. As though it had been workshopped for maximum outrage. It really doesn't make all that much sense otherwise. Calling Obama "trash" and then making a big deal of the inversion of the typical racial conotation that goes with it only makes sense if your goal is to get people riled up. Calling the accent fake just seems silly.
I don't know, maybe this woman really is as bat-shit crazy as she sounds, but with people scared of the economy, dealing with team having just lost almost all political power, and generally having an excess of anger and a desire for targets to blame, that whole angry opposition shrill position has got to appear awful lucrative provided you can get yourself into the spotlight.
Of course, now we all know who tammy bruce is. Whee. Win for the attention whore.
I went to the HuffPo piece and read it - thought TNC might have left something out. I listened to the actual audio clip. I still do not understand what Bruce is trying to say.
And TNC - you are welcome to join us white trash anytime. You can't stay in my double wide but there is an abandoned trailer down by the crik you can use. And you have to dump Kenyatta. Any sisters or first cousins you can marry? You can marry a cousin and fool around with your sister or vice versa or both.
I'm confused, I thought the Obamas were arugala eating elitist snobs. How can they be trash too?
I think she needs to back to Rush and Rove and relearn her talking points and or s&#@ talking. She obviously missed the whole point.
As my mother always said, trash is as trash does. Rich or poor, black or white, trash is trash. It's defined by behavior.
Doing your best to raise well-adjusted children while enduring the most blinding media spotlight on the planet: not trash.
Attempting to further your own career by launching unhinged, semi-coherent rants at people in the aforementioned spotlight: trash.
Brian, didn't you hear? 'Trash' crosses eco-socionomic categories. Trash, are people who use other people to get things:
'Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out of my BMW.. and run off into the hills, or wherever.. Sometimes when I get a message on my fax machine, I wonder: "Did little demons get inside and type it?" I don't know! My primitive mind can't grasp these concepts.'
She's just a cave man.
Sorry Brian. Typed your name instead of mine.
wow...just wow....i can't come up with anything...it's just too much...too much mindnumbing retardedness...she makes JtP sound thoughtful.
btw wallyz ftw...
I will, of course, defend to the death this whack job's right to say what she wants, when she wants--along with the other loons-Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, Beck etc. But at what point do these hateful rants devolve into shouting fire in a crowded (with many of their equally crazy listeners) movie theater? What kind of carnage has to occur before the sane and the thoughtful conservatives call these folks out?
Yesterday it was "who is Tammy Bruce?"
Next week she'll be guesting on Glenn Beck. Trust me, there's a book tour in the works.
Can we shut the door on this skank ?
@brucds
yes...him crying like a bitch, and her yelling at the top of her lungs about trash socialism...great stuff!
Let me say this once and get it out of the way. This shit has to be nipped in the bud right now. I don't give a fuck if its some no name no talent trick bitch like Tammy Bruce or if its Laura Ingraham herself. Nothing like this has ever been said of a sitting first lady and if this shit just flys under the radar or people say just to ignore it then you can be assured that next week or the week after that more conservative assclowns will be trying the same type of bullshit. What needs to happen is people need to call that radio station and get the bitch banned from ever guest hosting there again. I don't give a fuck if she has something to say negative about Michelle Obama thats actually of substance but when you say some shit like she is trash then its time for your ass to go. Seriously. I am so pissed of behind this bullshit that words can't even describe it. I would love to have seen what would have happened if someone had called Laura Bush trash or Nancy Reagan trash.
Oh and seriously I know some folks might not like me calling Tammy Bruce a bitch but this one time when I have no sympathy for your cause.
I remember being in the parking lot of the Medford Mall with my Republican friends after a meeting of the weekly Tuesday morning breakfast meeting of the Rogue Valley chamber of commerce. It was just days after the 1992 GOP convention in Houston TX, and they were asking the exact same question.
Her illegal drugs no doubt cost a lot and somebody in the GOP must have offered her a tidy little bundle to say something really trashy on air about the First Lady. That's my educated guess.
Someone needs to start reading the RNC playbook. Her talking points are all confused.
Let me say this once and get it out of the way. This shit has to be nipped in the bud right now. I don't give a fuck if its some no name no talent trick bitch like Tammy Bruce or if its Laura Ingraham herself. Nothing like this has ever been said of a sitting first lady and if this shit just flys under the radar or people say just to ignore it then you can be assured that next week or the week after that more conservative assclowns will be trying the same type of bullshit.
Tell it.
Tell it.
Bruce can kiss my Black Ass, because our First Lady has more class in her pinkie than Bruce will ever muster.
Ok, we all agree...she's a hoebag...can we atleast stop referring to her as Bruce??!
I hear the thing and wow, it is so repulsive. I shrug off a lot hateful things that people say because sometimes they are just clowning. Like, I can hear Michael Savage saying horrors about we gay people and it doesn't really make me mad. Somehow his hate doesn't get to me and he is --I think-- mostly clowning. Same goes with Ann Coulter. But what is so seriously wrong with this woman whatever her name is?. Her hate is so pure and visceral it is really, really toxic...she can't even really articulate it. Man!
sgwhiteinfla is right: that wouldn't happen to any other First Lady sitting or not.
The only good thing is that Michelle Obama is the type of person that grows very slowly but steadily on people. In 2012 or 2016 Michelle will be way more popular that Barack. You will see.
SG, Rikyrah,
I was outraged by the comments too, and am all for the kind of collective action that put Imus on time-out. Having said that, while Laura Bush or Nancy Reagan were never subjected to these kind of attacks, Hillary Clinton ( and I was by no means pro-Hill last year) certainly was. So this is nothing new, its just more virulent because the First Lady (and Mother and Wife and Female Role Model, etc.) is darker than these fools ever thought she'd be in their lifetime.
TNC -
After the intense discussions on Oscar Grant, I was hoping there would be some discussion on the shooting and killing of four oakland police officers. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/us/23oakland.html?ref=us
@Juba
Hillary was very unfairly and viciously attacked and the things they said about her were worse than "trash". But the hate I sense from what I heard from this woman is in whole 'nother level. As I said, she can't even articulate why Michelle is trash.
Sg,
I get your point, but can we not do the "trick bitch" thing?
as the white mother of three black children, I experienced a summer vacation with my kids, at LGBT Family Week in Provincetown. There were all these upper middle class gay men with one, maybe two perfectly dressed children. The lesbians didn't have the well-dressed syndrome, but suffice it to say that there were very very few single moms with three kids 36 months apart. I felt totally "outclassed" in the "status" department. And, I didn't know what to call us, even in jest......couldn't be white trash, so I just settled on trailer trash, as our unofficial working class name.
Long live trailer trash.
Had no idea who she was, so I googled her. Tammy Bruce has man-face.
I know that's not the most enlightened thing to say, but dems the facts.
...I think I'm almost too confused to be outraged.
The words "trash" and "Michelle Obama" ...there's no way verbalize how far apart those two concepts are.
Also, accent? You mean, her American Midwest accent? The one that sounds just like every other person in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio? (I'm sure I forgot some states, but you get what I mean.)
The whole rant is just so bizarre, even with media coverage, I'm sort of more inclined to put Tammy Bruce in the same column as I put sandwich-board-guys and anonymous internet trolls. Just crazy.
Coatesie-
Come on baby. You're waaaaay to good a journalist to bite on this head fake. She wants pub, and with "analyst" like this you only feed their real need (to get noticed as opposed to offering cogent analysis) when you serve them up to your audience.
My Dad had a saying when my brother and sisters and I were dating. He would say you're not bringing any "trash" in this house.
I know it's your blog, but please don't bring this trash in here anymore. Or if you do can you just give it a K1 rating so I know to skip the content and subsequent discussion, please?
If you're running short of content just pull a McCardle and leave us hanging while the biggest economic news of the year and the biggest move in the market takes place...but I digress.
k1
You can't use the words Michelle Obama and "Trash" in the same sentence unless they involve the words "taking out" as in
"Michelle Obama took out the trash" which is why, apparantly, Tammy Bruce is so mad.
Tammy Bruce got taken out right along with Anne Coulter and the rest of the trash the day this president was elected.
My reaction: I simply don't get it. I do not understand what Michele Obama did that can be described as "trashy". I am a big Obama supporter but winced at his Special Olympics comment and can even understand but disagree with the Socialist tag but this one I don't get.
A while back, I remember someone saying it was only a matter of time before one of these fools let the n-word fly. Should we get a pool going? In all seriousness, some of these people are just beside themselves that there is a black family in the White House--its truly pathological. Michelle, with her as Melissa Harris Lacewell called it, "black from a distance[ness]" seems to bring out their visceral hatred. The fact that she is out there, that people like her, and that she's committed herself to advocating for the underprivileged seems to infuriate these people. How dare she inspire black children to achieve academically? How dare she volunteer her time at a food bank! How dare she plant a garden! How dare she bare her arms! Sigh, it's all so absurd.
damn.
It would be totally inappropriate to do a double shot of jim bean and offer to personally demonstrate exactly what 'trash' is for Ms Bruce, wouldn't it?
Beck's crockodile tears were kinda ironically amusing, but this... twit is stomach-turning disgusting. NOBODY talks that way about a First Lady. I want to see piles of outrage - like when Poor Hil got called 'a monster'. Call this hack out for the straight up ignorant racist she is and make an example of her!
This pisses me off on so many levels. Esp because as a white chick who went to a predominately black city school? I heard that line CONSTANTLY thrown at all kinds of minorities for doing well in school. It happened all the damn time. I am SO PROUD someone is in the White House that can even speak to it and address it!
I am so disgusted I'm physically nauseous.
People get paid to say this shit? Seriously??
BRUCE: [shouts invective on street corner]
COATES, HUFFPO, JEZEBEL:
"Did you hear that? That's some horrible shit. Didn't you hear it? No? Wait a sec.... Ms. Bruce, would come over here and stand on this soapbox and speak into this microphone? Let me set up the amp... okay, thanks. Now that thousands more people can hear you, what were you saying?"
BRUCE: [shouts invective into microphone]
LIMBAUGH, BECK, SCARBOROUGH:
"That's great stuff! Book her on my national show before the end of the week!"
COATES, HUFFPO, JEZEBEL:
"Isn't it horrible how these conservative jerks gave her a platform?"
Rinse and repeat with additional nutjobs for next 4-8 years.
If there's any karmic justice to be had, Bruce should get reincarnated as a cockroach and y'all should come back as large-mouth bass. Seriously.
One thing to keep in mind whilst some of you raise the torches and grab your pitchforks is that nasty, vile, comments about First Lady's are nothing new.
Andrew Jackson's wife's "virtue" was called into question and Abe Lincoln's wife was called a Confederate sympathizing nutjob.
Nasty things were said about Nancy Reagan and I personally consider Barbara Bush to be a first class rotten human being.
The right wing nutjobs would criticize any Dem Presidents spouse. Would they call them "trash"? I don't know. Probably not, but they would find equally vile stuff to say. Our politics and political culture is crass and craven. Always has been. Likely always will be.
Comments like Ms. Bruce make me more committed to ensuring that the Obamas stay in the White House for eight years.
Let Bruce and all the other wack jobs bring it, because it just does not work with the Obamas. They have some kind of authenticity that people sense and it cuts through all the media crap. Recently watched an old clip from Daily Show from right after the inauguration called Road to the White House (I think) that encapsulated all the stuff they threw at the Obamas during the campaign. With the perspective of a few months gone by, it was even more impressive that he made it to the White House after all the invective that went at them - terrorist fist jabs, the African garb picture, supposedly giving Hillary the finger during a debate, the flag pin thing,the bitter people, Michelle and the mysterious "whitey" video, he's not black enough, she's too black, he's arrogant, etc etc etc etc. Michelle Obama is going to end up being the most popular first lady ever is my prediction. It just drives them crazy that so many people like her.
"Why Do Black Immigrants Do Better Than Native Blacks?"
That seems like an odd question to me. Would it not be very surprising if they did equally well?
With respect to the initial question (wealth gap), I would like to add that wealth is not only the result of the performance in the job-market and the respective oppurtunities but to a great extent the consequence of previous wealth. If equal oppurtunity would be magically established right now, the average white person would still be richer than his equally qualified and equally performing average black co-worker, because he will eventually inherit his parents' wealth, accrued under unequal opportunities. This inherited wealth will eventually be passed to our average workers son, who would thus still be richer than the equally qualified and performing black son of the equally qualified and performing average black co-worker. As a result, the gap cannot be closed by equal opportunities alone.
The Repubs have now become a party of children tugging at mom's apron merely for attention. Because Mom knows this she keeps on ignoring him. Now the ap ron-tugging has morphed into wild tantruming. The best thing Mom can do is ignore the child and wait patiently for appropriate behavior, which is deserving of the attention...
Per "pots and kettles:" "Tammy" is a single-wide name. "Tammy Lou" would be the double-wide name.
Those with a family history of struggling to overcome lower socio-cultural conditions understand what Tammy is: she's the reaper, cutting down the tallest poppy. She cuts down the person who has struggled to grow tall out of difficult (but not impossible) conditions and who say, "you can grow tall too."
Michelle's story is the story of my mother, too. And I'll be damned if I will let her cut the woman.
daniel gets it. Tammy Bruce's rant was nothing more than one long incoherent "who does Michelle Obama think she is?" And it had the additional stink of racism.
She is clearly going for the Ann Coulter demographic but with the clear difference that she is openly gay
Two questions:
1) Who's Tammy Bruce?
2) Should I care what she has to say?
She was trying to be ghetto to the kids, so what? - Daddy Bush did the same thing when he put on a trucker cap and starting chewing grass to rid himself of his WASP background.
This is one of things I just don't understand about America; why deny your class?
Abe Lincoln's wife was called a Confederate sympathizing nutjob
Well, with her brother-in-law being a Confederate General, and having spent time involuntarily committed to a mental institution, she probably qualified.
The best response is to laugh. Anything so ludicrously inapplicable shouldn't be taken seriously. First Lady has beauty, brains, character, energy. If this is trash, may we all be the same!!!
Tammy Bruce is a fifth-rate media personality, if that, whose claim to fame is that she is a lesbian who previously led the L.A. chapter of NOW before some kind of lightning struck and turned her into a rightwing bore.
The only way a Z-lister like this gets noticed is if she says truly ridiculous things such as branding a warm, athletic, overachieving, Princeton graduate with such an ugly tag.
Tammy Bruce may be openly gay, but she's definitely not pro-gay rights. She's almost always a cheerleader for the right wing, but she's cherrypicked a few issues to disagree with them on(not unlike Bill Reilly, with his opposition to the death penalty.) This allows her to portray herself as an open-minded free-thinker who just tells it like it is, and isn't beholden to any party...even though 99% of the words out of her mouth could just as easily come from Limbaugh's.
She uses the fact that she's a lesbian as proof of how wonderfully independent she is, but when she talks about gay issues all she does is give fuel to the right. She allows hardcore conservatives to say, "Look, here's a lesbian, and even SHE agrees with us that her people don't deserve rights!"
I have to agree with Scorpupine. The term 'white trash' is, as John Waters noted, among the last socially acceptable racial slurs. It's classist (one seldom hears people of means called trash, unless its referring to their behavior, and even then only if they've risen to their positions from the lower social strata). It looks down upon those of low income, sneering at them as if they all live in filthy trailers raising pigs. It is unacceptable under any circumstances. That someone as vicious as Tammy Bruce would extend it to Michelle Obama, as if calling anyone trash is okay, only highlights the vacuity of this Anne Coulter wannabe. No human being is trash, and the public's enjoyment and apporoval of this term is a sign of how juvenile our society still is.
Tammy Bruce is a bottom-feeding slug for the wingnut Wurlitzer. She should be shunned for her vile and fanatical views.
Okay..I'm just confused.
On the one hand- I am of a mind not to give this person the audience she so obviously craves and I don't want to aid her.
Yet, I was seriously considering sharing this with all of my friends, so that we can rise up and protest her presence on the radio.
But then I thought about it- would my friends really do something about it or would we just shake our heads and just continue to spread the word- thereby given her more attention in the long run?
Sure we can talk about her like a dog on the internet, within our little social groups, but what are we doing about it? Is rising above the hatred really enough?
Some startling racism in the reactions on this comment thread. For example:
"when a white person starts to feel insecure, inferior, low class, they will predictably throw these little tantrums."
Stereotype much?
As people have noted here, it hardly seems worth paying attention to Tammy Bruce. But I do think it's odd that some of the recent Michelle-bashing comments don't seem able to really paint an articulate picture of why we're supposed to hate her.
In contrast, they called Bill Clinton white trash and that was a nasty dig, but you could get where it was coming from. Hillary was supposedly cold (and a lesbian and maybe a murderer) and that was driven by warped views of how a woman is supposed to act, but you could put yourself in their mindset and understand what they meant.
But the Obamas are trash? Based on what? Michelle's a user and patronizing and thinks conservatives are bitter and... I guess wasn't proud of her country and is a secret racist and I don't know how this is supposed to all come together and make sense.
It's like they hate her first and are trying to figure out why later.
Tonya,
You raise an interesting question: Should a creep like Tammy Bruce be ignored or confronted? It's a vexing choice.
In her case, I'd argue she should be ignored. Bruce is a nobody. . .a bench-warmer who fills in on a radio show and spouts her crap at websites trafficking in her kind of stupid. Stop 100 people on the street and you likely will not find one who has ever heard of her.
Somebody like Limbaugh, on the other hand, I think you do confront. He's the 800-pound gorilla --literally, it seems, as he continues to gain enormous amounts of weight-- and he is a real celebrity with a big following. When he is given a pass for racism, sexism, homophobia, immigrant bashing, etc., it's different. He actually reaches and moves people.
The sludge machine will only get worse. The conservatives are out of power and out of fashion but they are never out of money or megaphones. I shudder to think what the next presidential campaign will be like, particularly if the looniest elements of the GOP are driving the bus.
That woman is just a troll. She is trying to grab attention by spewing the most outrageous verbiage. If she had any talent, she wouldn't have to sink to that level.
Bordo..thanks for you comments.
However, I don't feel that this woman is nothing. I went to her website and she has logos from companies such as Google, Turbo Tax, Susan G Komen, the Humane Society helping to keep her blog on the internet. She is big enough so that these companies are willing to have their name associated with her.
I don't think that is okay, and I am going to make a complaint.
A friend told me that the most affective way to hurt those that hurt you is to hit them in their pocketbooks.She may not be a big as Limbaugh..but she has an audience. If I can do anything to keep people from thinking that it is okay to talk this way..I want to do it. No matter how small this person is.
I think this is the purpose that TNC serves in posting stuff like this. It spurs naturally apathetic people like me into action.
Don’t know who this Bruce person is either, but her definition of “trash” doesn’t make any sense to begin with. Kind of a senseless rambling. So apparently any yahoo that can get behind a mike on air somewhere can be quoted like they have some authority. Sad really.
I'm late to this thread but I feel compelled to agree with commenter SGWHITEINFL. I'm at least as angry as he is about the treatment that Michelle Obama is getting in some parts of the media.
When I read Ms. Bruce's comments, that was bad enough. But why is this news? Why is it getting attention?
You can't really stop people from speaking and writing useless trash in this country but we sure as hell do not need to disseminate every slanderous insult that gets hurled at the First Lady (or anyone else.)
SGWHITEINFL is totally right in that this needs to stop RIGHT NOW. It only gets worse and tolerance for this sort of thing just provides the haters with an opportunity to attack the president by publicly smearing his wife.
It is very, very wrong by any ethical standard (assuming that ethical standards still matter.)
This kind of attack will never stick to Michelle Obama. Michelle's life story, how she presents herself every day with class, elegance, and intellect all refute Tammy Bruce's attacks.
Plus Michelle's got biceps... Don't mess with her!