A Blue View

Harry Reid Remark Cartoons

10-Year-Old Refuses To Say 'Pledge of Allegiance' Until Gays Have Full Equality

A November CNN interview:

Obama's Visit & China's Racism

An interesting article from the Wash Post:

As a mixed-race girl growing up in this most cosmopolitan of mainland Chinese cities, 20-year-old Lou Jing said she never experienced much discrimination -- curiosity and questions, but never hostility.

So nothing prepared Lou, whose father is a black American, for the furor that erupted in late August when she beat out thousands of other young women on "Go! Oriental Angel," a televised talent show. Angry Internet posters called her a "black chimpanzee" and worse. One called for all blacks in China to be deported.

As the country gets ready to welcome the first African American U.S. president, whose first official visit here starts Sunday, the Chinese are confronting their attitudes toward race, including some deeply held prejudices about black people. Many appeared stunned that Americans had elected a black man, and President Obama's visit has underscored Chinese ambivalence about the growing numbers of blacks living here.

"It's sad," Lou said, her eyes welling up as she recalled her experience. "If I had a face that was half-Chinese and half-white, I wouldn't have gotten that criticism. . . . Before the contest, I didn't realize these kinds of attitudes existed."

As China has expanded its economic ties with Africa -- trade between them reached $107 billion last year -- the number of Africans living here has exploded. Tens of thousands have flocked to the south, where they are putting down roots, establishing communities, marrying Chinese women and having children.

In the process, they are making tiny pockets of urban China more racially diverse -- and forcing the Chinese to deal with issues of racial discrimination. In the southern city of Guangzhou, where residents refer to one downtown neighborhood as Chocolate City, local newspapers have been filled in recent months with stories detailing discrimination and alleging police harassment against the African community ...

In the 1960s, China began befriending African countries, supporting liberation movements in Africa and bringing African students to China in a show of Third World solidarity. Lately, China has further deepened its ties to the continent, with Premier Wen Jiabao pledging $10 billion in new low-cost loans at a China-Africa summit in Egypt last week.

Satirical Skinheads From Maine

How do you think these two guys voted on Tuesday?

Dana Carvey Show - Skinheads From Maine
by PigLips

Interracial Couple Denied Marriage By Justice Of The Peace In Louisiana

Two things to consider:

• The AP, quoting Keith Bardwell (justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish): "I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way. I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."
• Rewatch the video and  substitute same-sex for inter-racial

What A Rush Post-NFL Game Interview Would Look Like (cartoon)

 

Urban Violence Cartoons

Obama Begins "the most ambitious new policy for the nation's cities since the Great Society programs of the 1960s"

From the Wash Post:

President Obama is putting a new emphasis on revitalizing U.S. cities with a coordinated effort that involves stimulus funding and getting multiple agencies to work together to improve schools, housing and neighborhoods.

The approach is winning applause from local officials and urban thinkers, who credit the administration for quietly beginning the most ambitious new policy for the nation's cities since the Great Society programs of the 1960s. But the plan involves fundamental changes in the way federal agencies dole out assistance to urban areas, making its success uncertain ...

Peniel E. Joseph, a historian at Tufts University, said it appears that Obama is trying to reverse a trend in which urban issues slipped down the national agenda. The president's stimulus plan included at least $20 billion for urban programs, outside of education.

"The stimulus certainly put billions into urban areas, but we are still going to have to see over the course of his administration what this adds up to," Joseph said.

Obama has lamented the historic failures of federal efforts to rejuvenate urban areas, noting in July at a White House urban policy roundtable that "federal policy has actually encouraged sprawl and congestion and pollution, rather than quality public transportation and smart, sustainable development."

In the same way that federal highway spending encouraged sprawl, the Obama administration says more concentrated development can lead to more job opportunities for residents and environmentally and economically viable neighborhoods.

To coordinate his initiatives, Obama in March named Adolfo Carrion Jr., a former Bronx borough president, to direct his new White House Office of Urban Affairs."This is not your father's White House," Carrion said in an interview. "This is a new way of looking at the new city-metro reality." ...

In Kansas City, stimulus funding has galvanized a project called the Green Impact Zone, led by  Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), a former mayor of the city. About $200 million in mostly federal money will be invested in the project, which aims to transform an economically depressed 150-square-block area east of Troost Avenue. About half of its residents live in deep poverty, with numerous vacant houses, high crime levels and unemployment rates approaching 50 percent.

Obama's Fiery Speech At Congressional Black Caucus Dinner

Part I:

Part II:

The State Of Conservative Media Cartoons

The Fox News target audience:

Rush Limbaugh Fomenting A Race War:

Talk radio:

Obama On Letterman

A bit of their conversation, this on race & the town hall meetings:

Top Ten Reasons President Obama Agreed To Appear On The Late Show:

Read Michael Shearer's Top Ten Funny Parts from this show.

Michael Steele Injects Race Into Obama's NY Gov Request

More Wing-Nut & GOP Cartoons

President Obama: The Biggest Motivator Isn't Race But Size & Role Of Governement

I wholeheartedly agree with the President's view below that while some of his opponents are motivated by race, the bigger issue for most is the role of government. I also believe, and suspect the President agrees though he didn't say, that the GOP is nonetheless trying to capitalize on the racist fear--no matter how large or small--that's out there.

From the NY Times:

President Obama said Friday that he did not believe his race was the cause of fierce criticism aimed at his administration in the contentious national debate over health care, but rather that the cause was a sense of suspicion and distrust many Americans have in their government.

“Are there people out there who don’t like me because of race? I’m sure there are,” Mr. Obama told CNN. “That’s not the overriding issue here.”

In five separate television interviews at the White House, Mr. Obama said he did not agree with former President Jimmy Carter’s assertion that racism was fueling the opposition to his administration. He described himself as just the latest in a line of presidents whose motives had been questioned because they were trying to enact major change.

Mr. Obama will appear on five Sunday talk shows — an unprecedented step for a president — to promote his health care plan. The television networks broadcast brief parts of their interviews on Friday evening, all of which focused on a question the White House has sought to avoid all week: Has race played a role in the debate?

Mr. Obama, the nation’s first black president, said “race is such a volatile issue in this society” that he conceded it had become difficult for people to tell whether it was simply a backdrop of the current political discussion or “a predominant factor.”

“Now there are some who are, setting aside the issue of race, actually I think are more passionate about the idea of whether government can do anything right,” he told ABC News. “And I think that that’s probably the biggest driver of some of the vitriol.” ...

He conceded that many people were skeptical of the health care legislation making its way through Congress ... But even as the White House sought to push it aside, the issue of race persisted through the week, with some critics saying it was the reason a Republican lawmaker was disrespectful to the president last week, calling him a liar as Mr. Obama addressed a joint session of Congress. The television interviews on Friday were the first time Mr. Obama had weighed in.

“Look, I said during the campaign there’s some people who still think through a prism of race when it comes to evaluating me and my candidacy. Absolutely,” Mr. Obama told NBC News. “Sometimes they vote for me for that reason; sometimes they vote against me for that reason.”

But he said that the matter was really “an argument that’s gone on for the history of this republic. And that is, what’s the right role of government?”

The president said the contentious health care debate, which came on the heels of extraordinary government involvement in bailing out banks and automobile companies, had led to a broader discussion about the role of government in society.

“I think that what’s driving passions right now is that health care has become a proxy for a broader set of issues about how much government should be involved in our economy,” Mr. Obama told CBS News. “Even though we’re having a passionate disagreement here, we can be civil to each other, and we can try to express ourselves acknowledging that we’re all patriots, we’re all Americans and not assume the absolute worst in people’s motives.”

The president used the media blitz to add his own commentary about the news media.

He said he blamed cable television and blogs, which he said “focus on the most extreme element on both sides,” for much of the inflamed rhetoric.

“The easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame,” Mr. Obama said, “is to be rude to someone.”

Racism And Denial

 

Rush Limbaugh Is Fomenting A Race War

From the Daily Dish:

Limbaugh will enjoy the scorn. But he's a disgusting opportunist and racist. And his acceptability - indeed total dominance - on the right is one reason decent people will steer clear of the GOP for the foreseeable future. There is no nuance or doubt here. This is a man who wants a race war. Until the GOP throws him out, they deserve oblivion. He's a racist through and through, and if no one on the right stands up to this, they are complicit:

A cartoonist reacts:

More Wing-Nut, Obama Hating Cartoons

   

"Tea Party" Leader Shows His True Stripes On CNN

This guy does a great job discrediting himself and his "movement" as he spews hate out of both sides of his mouth at once. And David Gergen's face while he speaks is priceless ...

Jimmy Carter Believes "race is at the core of much of the opposition to President Obama"

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The Wash Post's report:

Former president Jimmy Carter told NBC's Brian Williams in an interview Tuesday that he believes race is at the core of much of the opposition to President Obama.

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American," Carter said. "I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that shared the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans"

Continued Carter, who is famously from Georgia: "And that racism inclination still exists. And I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply." ...

The 39th president also predicted that Obama will be able to "triumph over the racist attitude that is the basis for the negative environment that we see so vividly demonstrated in public affairs in recent days."

Obama Hating Cartoons

 

As The Right's Attacks Continue, White House Debates The Way To Respond

From the Wash Post:

Facing a near-daily barrage of attacks from conservative opponents, White House officials are engaged in an internal debate over how hard to hit back, even as they have grown increasingly aggressive in countering allegations they deem to be absurd.

After brushing aside criticism during the presidential campaign that they tried to keep candidate Barack Obama too far above the fray -- and with memories of the abundance of media coverage during the Clinton years -- administration officials are accelerating their efforts to anticipate and respond to the most sharp-edged charges.

The White House officials are eager to avoid the perception that the president is directly engaging critics who appear to speak only for a vocal minority, and part of their strategy involves pushing material to liberal and progressive media outlets to steer the coverage in their direction, senior advisers said.

When critics lashed out at President Obama for scheduling a speech to public school students this month, accusing him of wanting to indoctrinate children to his politics, his advisers quickly scrubbed his planned comments for potentially problematic wording. They then reached out to progressive Web sites such as the Huffington Post, liberal bloggers and Democratic pundits to make their case to a friendly audience.

The controversy escalated, but by the time it was over, White House advisers thought they had emerged with the upper hand. The speech, they said, was the most-viewed live video on any government Web site in history, and they were pleased with the media coverage of the event. 

In private, Obama has developed what his advisers say is becoming a familiar response to new allegations, rolling his eyes in disbelief and asking how his staff plans to counter them. Several senior advisers said in interviews that they are more focused on getting legislation passed than trying to manage the "right-wing noise machine," convinced that voters will react most positively to measurable improvements in their lives.

But at a tactical level, administration officials are taking seriously the potential for damage and are attempting to respond forcefully. 

House To Reprimand Wilson Leading WaPo To Ask, "Is racism a factor in the way the president is being judged? "

From the Wash Post:

House Democrats plan to formally reprimand Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) on Tuesday for his outburst last week in which he accused President Obama of lying about proposed health-care legislation.

The vote on punishment will resolve the issue in the House, but behind the incident some see a broader question: Is racism a factor in the way the president is being judged?

With two simple words -- "You lie!" -- shouted during Obama's speech to Congress, Wilson helped escalate an issue that has been on a slow burn for weeks, especially among African Americans. Many watched the rancor at last month's town hall meetings with suspicion that the intense anger among some participants -- including signs calling for Obama's death and a movement questioning his citizenship -- was fueled by the fact that a black man sits in the Oval Office.

Led by their most senior black lawmakers, House Democrats decided Monday evening to hold the vote. The decision risks escalating the partisan warfare that has erupted since Wilson's outburst.

A vote would reverse the initial sentiment voiced by the president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that it was time to "move on" to the debate on health-care. But the White House and Pelosi yielded to senior black Democrats, led by House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), and other members of the leadership team, who argued that Wilson's remark was a breach of conduct that must not be tolerated.

Clyburn has said behind closed doors that many black voters saw Wilson's actions as part of the heated rhetoric from conservative activists whose protests, including one on the Capitol grounds Saturday, have included depictions of Obama as Adolf Hitler and the comic-book villain the Joker, according to those attending the meetings. It was one thing to have such remarks at town hall meetings during the summer recess but completely different during a presidential address to a joint session of Congress, Clyburn and other black Democrats argued, and Democrats needed to stand up for the nation's first black president.

Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), who received hate mail from constituents during Congress's August break, said Wilson had just returned from the rowdy town hall forums at which the most heated accusations were leveled at Obama.

"I think he was caught up in a moment. The issue is: Would he have done that if the president were white?" Scott said, adding that few Republicans opposed the "level of rhetoric" against Obama in August. "We've got to realize racism is playing a role here. I'm hopeful that this will be a wake-up call for us to get it off the table."

Democrats emphasized that it was not just members of the Congressional Black Caucus seeking to reprimand Wilson, and that a broad cross section of Democrats supported the measure, including Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.). Hoyer had argued publicly that Wilson had to make a formal apology from the well of the House chamber or face some sanction.

But Wilson has refused to offer any apology beyond the private phone call he made Wednesday night to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. In a show of defiance Monday, the lawmaker was the first Republican to speak when the chamber opened for a round of brief speeches. Rather than apologizing, Wilson hailed the "patriots" who attended his August town hall forums and opposed a "government takeover" of the health-care system.

Their Rallying Cry, I Want MY Country Back, Says It All

A very astute observation from a Daily Dish reader:

It's really much less complicated, and the answer is tucked neatly in the phrase, "I want my country back."  What that means is, the country that recognizes me  and people like me as the cultural core of the nation, deserving of disproportionate influence and income.  Race is the dominant theme -- but running through the same current are appeals to religion and cultural values, including education, or lack of it.  While it might seem radical, even crazy, that a certain segment of the population strongly devalues education and educated people, it's part of the American experience.  That's why many hyper well-educated elected officials, including presidents, try to pretend that they are "just folks." 

Welcome To South Carolina

 

Wilson's Unspoken Word: You lie, boy!

From Maureen Dowd:

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.

The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.

But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

“A lot of these outbursts have to do with delegitimizing him as a president,” said Congressman Jim Clyburn, a senior member of the South Carolina delegation. Clyburn, the man who called out Bill Clinton on his racially tinged attacks on Obama in the primary, pushed Pelosi to pursue a formal resolution chastising Wilson.

“In South Carolina politics, I learned that the olive branch works very seldom,” he said. “You have to come at these things from a position of strength. My father used to say, ‘Son, always remember that silence gives consent.’ ”

Barry Obama of the post-’60s Hawaiian ’hood did not live through the major racial struggles in American history. Maybe he had a problem relating to his white basketball coach or catching a cab in New York, but he never got beaten up for being black.

Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension. Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

Cartoons That Get At The Dark Heart Of Obama Opposition

Obama and the Kill Kare Klan:

Obamacare:

 

The Evolution Of The Southern "Gentleman"

The Muslim, Illegitimate, Lying President Who Can't Be Trusted Talking To Kids

Very good discussion about what's really motivating the irrational Obama haters:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Sept 11 Then & Now

 

Justice Dept. To Beef Up Enforcement Of Civil Rights

From the NY Times:

Seven months after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is reshaping the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by pushing it back into some of the most important areas of American political life, including voting rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices and redistricting after the 2010 census.

As part of this shift, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly. President George W. Bush’s appointees had discouraged such tactics, preferring to focus on individual cases in which there is evidence of intentional discrimination.

To bolster a unit that has been battered by heavy turnover and a scandal over politically tinged hiring under the Bush administration, the Obama White House has also proposed a hiring spree that would swell the ranks of several hundred civil rights lawyers with more than 50 additional lawyers, a significant increase for a relatively small but powerful division of the government.

The division is “getting back to doing what it has traditionally done,” Mr. Holder said in an interview. “But it’s really only a start. I think the wounds that were inflicted on this division were deep, and it will take some time for them to fully heal.”

Few agencies are more engaged in the nation’s social and cultural debates than the Civil Rights Division, which was founded in 1957 to enforce anti-discrimination laws.

The division has been at the center of a number of controversies over the decades, serving as a proxy for disputes between liberals and conservatives in matters like school busing and affirmative action. When the Nixon administration took office, it sought to delay school desegregation plans reached under former President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Reagan administration dropped the division’s policy of opposing tax-exempt status for racially discriminatory private schools. And former President Bill Clinton withdrew his first nominee to lead the division, Lani Guinier, after her writings about racial quotas were criticized.

But such dust-ups were minor when compared with sweeping changes at the division under the Bush administration, longtime career civil rights lawyers say.

Nazi Logo's Everywhere

From Scott Lamb:

Everyone's searching for Barack Obama's health care logo online right now after Rush Limbaugh mentioned how a right-wing blog thinks it looks like something from Nazi Germany. Wings over a circle! It's vaguely reminiscent of other famous logos, too.

The health care logo on Whitehouse.gov

Obama's health care logo close up

Some Nazi logo

Another Nazi logo

Marine Corps logo

Department of Defense logo

Bacardi Rum logo

Rachel Maddow: 'IntimiNation' Takes Dangerous Turn

Town Hall Mobs, Birthers & The Silent Majority

From Paul Krugman:

I haven’t seen any evidence that the people disrupting those town halls are Florida-style rent-a-mobs. For the most part, the protesters appear to be genuinely angry. The question is, what are they angry about?

There was a telling incident at a town hall held by Representative Gene Green, D-Tex. An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands [watch the video].

Now, people who don’t know that Medicare is a government program probably aren’t reacting to what President Obama is actually proposing. They may believe some of the disinformation opponents of health care reform are spreading, like the claim that the Obama plan will lead to euthanasia for the elderly. (That particular claim is coming straight from House Republican leaders.) But they’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they’ve heard about what he’s doing, than to who he is.

That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the “birther” movement, which denies Mr. Obama’s citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don’t know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it’s a substantial fraction.

And cynical political operators are exploiting that anxiety to further the economic interests of their backers.

Does this sound familiar? It should: it’s a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites.

Many people hoped that last year’s election would mark the end of the “angry white voter” era in America. Indeed, voters who can be swayed by appeals to cultural and racial fear are a declining share of the electorate.

But right now Mr. Obama’s backers seem to lack all conviction, perhaps because the prosaic reality of his administration isn’t living up to their dreams of transformation. Meanwhile, the angry right is filled with a passionate intensity.

And if Mr. Obama can’t recapture some of the passion of 2008, can’t inspire his supporters to stand up and be heard, health care reform may well fail.

More Birther Cartoons

On The Media: "Crazy Sells"

On The Media discussing Glen Obama's-a-racist Beck:

Obama's America

Rachel Maddow Calls Out GOP On Their Overt Racism

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

New Poll: Less Than Half Of Republicans, And Southerners Of All Parties, Believe Obama Was Born In U.S.

From the Huff Post:

Less than half of Republicans believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America, a new public opinion poll finds.

Only 42 percent of Republican respondents in a Research 2000 survey, conducted for the liberal website Daily Kos, said they thought Obama was a natural born citizen; 28 percent said they did not believe Obama was born in the United States; 30 percent said they were not sure.

The responses, which were gathered after several prominent conservative media personalities fed suspicion that Obama was unconstitutionally holding office, show the extent to which the conspiracy has taken hold in the GOP.

That only a plurality of Republicans were willing to acknowledge the president was born in America is nothing short of astounding, considering the preponderance of evidence that confirms his Hawaiian birth.

The conspiracy has a regional flavor. Overall, even including Democrats and independents, only 47 percent of respondents in the South said they believed Obama was born in America, with 23 percent saying he was not and 30 percent saying they were unsure. In the Northeast and Midwest, the percentage of respondents who believe Obama was born in the U.S. was over 90 percent.

Ninety-three percent of Democrats say the president was born in the United States, as do 83 percent of independents.

A Teachable Moment?

It just might be. From the Wash Post:

As Gates and Crowley met with Obama, Ogletree met with Alan McDonald, the lawyer for the police unions in Massachusetts, and other law enforcement representatives from Cambridge to talk about how both camps can work together.

The incident not only forced the issue of race and law enforcement into the national spotlight, but it also prompted police departments around the country to take a closer look at their training protocols.

"I will go over our racial profiling orders just to make sure we're doing everything according to the rules and regulations," said Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington. "It doesn't mean that anything's wrong with our rules, but this is a good time to go back and make sure officers are . . . affording people their civil rights."

John Foust, director of academic training for the D.C. police, said the Cambridge incident made the agency reassess its curriculum.

"It made us take a second look to make sure we have the important topics covered," Foust said.

The D.C. police department requires recruits to take courses in diversity and racial profiling, as well as hate and bias crimes.

Maj. Huey Thornton of the Montgomery, Ala., police said the Gates-Crowley incident is being discussed among officers and in staff meetings.

"I don't think any department would like to find themselves in a situation like that," Thornton said. "It shows the scope of what you're subject to get involved in while responding to calls for service. And whatever training you've received, it's what you should always rely on. That's the teachable moment."

Obama’s Mistake Was Falling For A Culture War Diversion

Biting, and wise, commentary from Thomas Frank:

The essential point about Gates-gate, or the tempest over last week’s arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., is this: Most liberal commentary on the subject has taken race as its theme. Conservative commentators, by contrast, have furiously hit the class button.

Liberals, by and large, immediately plugged the event into their unfair-racial-profiling template, and proceeded to call for blacks and whites to “listen to each other’s narratives” and other such anodyne niceties even after it started to seem that police racism was probably not what caused the incident.

Conservatives, meanwhile, were following their own “narrative,” the one in which racism is often exaggerated and the real victim is the unassuming common man scorned by the deference-demanding “liberal elite.” Commentators on the right zeroed in on the fact that Mr. Gates is an “Ivy League big shot,” a “limousine liberal,” and a star professor at Harvard, an institution they regard with special loathing. They pointed out that Mr. Gates allegedly addressed the cop with that deathless snob phrase, “you don’t know who you’re messing with”; they reminded us that Cambridge, Mass., is home to a particularly obnoxious combination of left-wing orthodoxy and upper-class entitlement; and they boiled over Mr. Gates’s demand that the officer “beg my forgiveness.”

“Don’t you just love a rich guy who summers on the Vineyard asking a working-class cop to ‘beg’? How perfectly Cambridge,” wrote the right-wing radio talker Michael Graham in the Boston Herald.

Conservatives won this round in the culture wars, not merely because most of the facts broke their way, but because their grievance is one that a certain species of liberal never seems to grasp. Whether the issue is abortion, evolution or recycling, these liberal patricians are forever astonished to discover that the professions and institutions and attitudes that they revere are seen by others as arrogance and affectation.

The “elitism” narrative routinely blind-sides them, takes them by surprise again and again. There they are, feeling good about their solidarity with the coffee-growers of Guatemala, and then they find themselves on the receiving end of criticism from, say, the plumbers of Ohio.

The Gates incident was a trap that could not have been better crafted to ensnare President Barack Obama, who is himself a loyal son of academia’s most prestigious reaches, and to whom it was immediately obvious, even without benefit of the facts, that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in the situation.

Mr. Obama’s way of backing out of his gaffe was just as telling: He invited Mr. Gates and the policeman who arrested him to the White House for a beer, the beverage so often a gauge of a politician’s blue-collar bona fides. One symbolic gesture, hopefully, can exorcise another.

Class is always an ironic issue in American politics, and the irony this time is particularly poignant. We are in the midst of a great national debate about how to make health care affordable; almost nothing is more important to working-class Americans. “For the health of the nation, both physically and economically, we need a system with a public option,” Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, wrote recently in the Huffington Post. “And we need it now.”

But whether working families get it now depends to a large degree on Mr. Obama’s personal popularity. And now comes Gates-gate, this latest burst of fake populism from the right. Waving the banner of the long-suffering working class, the tax-cutting friends of the top 2% have managed to dent the president’s credibility, to momentarily halt his forward movement on the health-care issue.

Umbrage at a Harvard professor’s class snobbery, in other words, might derail this generation’s greatest hope for actually mitigating the class divide.

Hiding Behind Language

The Obama Presser

Glenn Beck Calls Obama A Racist

Beer Diplomacy

Shut Lou Dobbs Up

There's a petition you can sign at www.dobbsconspiracy.com. Here's their description:

Recently, CNN's Lou Dobbs has repeatedly used his prominent platform as a prime-time host on CNN, as well as his daily nationally syndicated radio show, to legitimize paranoid conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama's birth certificate. Despite the fact that these fringe ideas have been thoroughly debunked, he continues to mainstream extreme right-wing rhetoric by asserting that Obama needs to "produce a birth certificate" and giving birther conspiracies airtime on his shows.

In response to Dobbs' relentless trafficking in these fringe conspiracy theories, CNN President Jon Klein initially declared the story "dead," saying anyone who "is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef." But less than 24 hours later, Klein caved in to Dobbs, reversing himself completely.  He even went so far as to reportedly call Dobb's coverage of the birther movement "legitimate."

Klein's caving to Dobbs raises a serious, troubling question: Who is really calling the shots at CNN? We need your help today to publicly pressure CNN credibly address its Dobbs problem. 

Contrary to Klein's description of Dobbs' birth certificate coverage as "legitimate," CNN's own hosts have debunked and ridiculed the story as "ludicrous," "nutty," and "conspiratorial."

Nevertheless, Dobbs has repeatedly claimed on both his television and radio shows that President Obama has failed to adequately address the claims of birther conspiracy theorists. He has said that Obama needs to "produce a birth certificate" and that the birth certificate the president posted online more than a year ago has "some issues." Rather than correct the record in response to criticism of his coverage of birther theories, Dobbs has lashed out at "lily-livered lefties" who criticized him because he "had the temerity to inquire as to where the birth certificate was." He even claims a "national left-wing media conspiracy" is attacking him over the birther issue.

We need to present CNN with an overwhelming public response to Dobbs' relentless promotion of these conspiracy theories tinged with racism.

So, please sign the following petition today and demand that CNN address its Lou Dobbs problem in a credible manner.

911 Caller Said "They might live there" And Didn't Say They Were Black

From the Boston Globe:

The 911 call, alerting police to a possible break-in in a well-to-do Cambridge neighborhood, was routine and dutiful, almost apologetic in tone. A woman said that two gentlemen were seen pushing a door in to enter a house, but added that it might simply be residents having a hard time with their keys after returning home from a trip. She mentioned race only when pressed by the bored-sounding dispatcher, then halfheartedly replied that one of the men “looked kind of Hispanic.’’ ...

The nearly three-minute 911 call, made by Lucia Whalen, a 40-year-old woman who works near Gates’s home, only briefly mentioned race and did not describe the two suspects as black. That diverged from the police report written by Crowley, which stated that Whalen told Crowley she observed “what appeared to be two black males with backpacks’’ on the porch of Gates’s home.

Officer Frank Pasquarello, a Police Department spokesman, said officers often receive what seems like conflicting information from witnesses once they arrive on the scene.

Whalen and her attorney did not return calls seeking comment yesterday. But in a radio interview yesterday on WTKK-FM radio, Whalen’s lawyer, Wendy Murphy, said Whalen did not provide additional details at the scene.

“Never once in any of her statements, conversations, and so forth did she ever use the word black,’’ Murphy said. “But more importantly, when Sergeant Crowley got there, she didn’t have a conversation with him at all.’’ ...

In her call, Whalen calmly tells a dispatcher she had seen two suitcases on the porch and wasn’t sure if the men were breaking in.

“I don’t know what’s happening. . . . I don’t know if they live there and they just had a hard time with their key, but I did notice they had to use their shoulders to try to barge in,’’ Whalen said.

Gates declined comment, but Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law professor who is Gates’s lawyer, said on his behalf that the professor was pleased the call revealed no racial bias.

“I’m glad that [the recordings] reinforce that the person who made the 911 call was very conscientious and only reported what she saw,’’ Ogletree said. “Somehow the transmission from the caller to the police department has led to a very different set of impressions. Professor Gates is very pleased that more of this information is coming forward.’’

The Birthers Are Peas In A Pod

CNN's Howard Kurtz Slams Dobbs' Birther Coverage As "Ludicrous"

“This case is more about class, deference and mutual respect,”

From the NY Times:

For most of his life, Professor Gates had gone out of his way to avoid confrontation with the police, even introducing himself at the station when he moved to Lexington, Mass., in the 1990s, in hopes that he, a black man driving a Mercedes, would not be pulled over constantly.

Professor Gates has dozens of honorary degrees and is such a fixture of Harvard Square that a beloved student hangout named a burger after him. Everyone at Harvard knows him — charismatic and distinctive with his impeccable suits and cane, the result of a longtime disability.

Sergeant Crowley was a trusted adviser of the Cambridge police commissioner, known for his even temperament and as a role model to younger officers. He is a new-generation officer who has not only been indoctrinated with racial sensitivity, but also teaches other officers how to avoid racial profiling.

A native son and by all accounts a by-the-book, 11-year veteran of the force, Sergeant Crowley is one of four brothers who work in law enforcement. Unassuming when off duty, friends say, he expects respect when in uniform.

The clash was one of two worlds within a city striking for its socioeconomic and racial diversity.

“In certain ways this case is more about class, deference and mutual respect,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington, a nonprofit group focused on improving police tactics ...

When Professor Gates first saw Sergeant Crowley at his door, he said in an interview, he expected him to say, “How can I help you, sir?” Instead the officer told him to step onto the porch.

Sergeant Crowley expected the professor to do what he had asked. Instead Professor Gates told him, “No, I will not.”...

The Birthers 15 Minutes Of Fame Are Almost Up

From the NY Times:

The conspiracy theorists who have claimed for more than a year that President Obama is not a United States citizen have found receptive ears among some mainstream media figures in recent weeks.

Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the country’s most popular talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, told his listeners on Tuesday that Mr. Obama “has yet to have to prove that he’s a citizen.” Lou Dobbs of CNN said that Mr. Obama should do more to dispel the claims. Larry King, also of CNN, asked guests about it. Chris Matthews debated it with guests on MSNBC, and “NBC Nightly News” even did a segment debunking the theory.

Cable news is often stretched for news in the summer, but the birth certificate case has been fueled by the combustible combination of luck, compelling video, media-savvy doubters — and an outlandish topic.

The theory that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya, his father’s homeland, first took root among some staunchly conservative elements. In response, the Obama campaign scanned the candidate’s “certification of live birth” from Hawaii’s department of health and published it on the Internet. Numerous third parties have examined and confirmed the birth certificate and concluded that it met the requirements for citizenship.

“This smear was thoroughly debunked during the election,” said Eric Burns, the president of Media Matters for America, a liberal media monitoring organization.

But advocates of the issue, who are sometimes termed birthers, called attention to themselves through frequent calls to talk radio shows, e-mail messages to news organizations and a videotaped question at a Congressional town hall. Since mid-July, Mr. Dobbs has discussed it repeatedly on his radio show and on TV, emphasizing that he believes Mr. Obama is a citizen, while wondering in particular why Mr. Obama has not provided a fuller copy of his birth certificate so that “all of this nonsense goes away.” Mr. Dobbs’s coverage has been criticized by Media Matters and other organizations.

In an e-mail message to Mr. Dobbs’s producers on Thursday, Jon Klein, the president of CNN’s domestic networks, wrote that “it seems this story is dead — because anyone who still is not convinced doesn’t really have a legitimate beef.”...

The claims about Mr. Obama’s citizenship have percolated on the Internet and on right-leaning radio talk shows for months. But from more mainstream outlets, “the coverage has been minuscule” until this month, said Philip J. Berg, a lawyer who has challenged Mr. Obama’s citizenship in a number of lawsuits, unsuccessfully to date ...

Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said the week’s recurrent cable news coverage was set off by two back-to-back events: the introduction of a bill that would require presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate (it has nine sponsors in the House and one in the Senate), and the video of a town hall held by a Republican representative that turned into a hearing on Mr. Obama’s citizenship.