by va
This is a little ripe for a blog topic, but I haven't seen anything so hilariously disingenuous as the right-wing hand-wringing the other day over the Prez's description of African-Americans as "a mongrel people" (a description which he appended, oh yeah, to white Americans also). The most intrepid and innovative hand-wringer was GayPatriot, who can barely contain himself over the fact that Obama used, and I quote, "Perhaps the most incendiary language in American history. " Bold, italics, and hysteria all his. Just how historically incendiary was it to say that black Americans and white Americans are mongrelly? So incendiary that the only precedent we have is (wait for it) Birth of a Nation. Mr. Patriot finds an essay on the film which describes it thusly:
It portrayed African-Americans in the post-Civil War South as depraved, lascivious beasts whose rampant lawlessness and alleged domination of the South — through military force and control of the state legislatures — threatened to destroy “Southern civilization” and “mongrelize the races”.
There's
that word, that Obama used! That must mean he's a...white supremacist?
Well no, not quite. GayP. sez "It is disgusting and putrid that a
President of the United States bring this kind of filth language into
the public discourse when our nation has moved so far past it" but,
oddly, he doesn't get around to saying that President Obama is
dedicated to nothing so much as keeping the white race pure. Go figure.
As
a matter of fact, I find this invocation of Birth of a Nation right
fucking hilarious. That is because a major concern of the film, i.e.
"control of the state legislatures" by black people, is attained, AS IT
HAPPENS, when a whole slew of black people come in from out of town and
commit VOTE FRAUD.
You know who takes it upon themselves, in
this story, to fight against VOTE FRAUD, perpetrated by black people,
and to maintain social order? THE KLAN. Today we know the people who
fulfill this social duty as "conservatives," and their foremost
crusader in this cause is of course Andrew Breitbart. By all means,
watch the film (1915) and tell me it doesn't express precisely
right-wing political controversies (ACORN, New Black Panthers, etc.) of late. Or don't, and merely observe that the state of our politics is absolutely bonkers.