THE SECRET LIFE OF WHITE-WING CONSERVATIVES
This entry was posted on 7/16/2010 3:00 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
If I didn't already know about the Secret Life of the White-Wing Conservatives, I would believe the recent self-righteous outrage coming out of the Tea Party in response to the NAACP challenge that they call out the racists in their midst.
Oh! My gosh! They've been so upset! WE'RE NOT RACIST! WE ARE GOD-FEARING PATRIOTS MERELY WORKING FOR LOWER TAXES AND SMALLER GOVERNMENT. YOU'RE THE RACIST!!!
The thing is, I'm sure that many of these people actually believe that. It explains the self-righteous outrage. Not ME! I'M no racist!
They think that is true because, once upon a time years ago, they had a black maid they were really fond of. Or, when they were in the military, they served alongside people of color and got along just fine.
They don't, however, have any black or Hispanic friends right NOW, just, you know, FRIENDS. People to hang out with, invite over to their homes, send e-mail jokes and inspirational prayer-chains and patriotic flag-waving links to.
There may be black people who attend their Mega-Church--the one with the ampitheater that seats thousands--but they don't really know them all that well. Still, they DO go to church with black people! And there are Hispanics there, too, like the mayor, Ms. Rodriguez. She seems very nice. Her kids go to the same school as their kids, but that's about it. Or they work with a black guy...what's his name? The one over in Marketing...
Or, they've got a cousin with a black boyfriend, and he came to the last family reunion. They didn't speak to him though. Not deliberate! Just busy with other people there, and the couple left early, is all. Besides, he seemed kind of shy. Sat off by himself. Would have been weird to just walk up to him and start talking, right?
Yeah, right.
See, I was going to write the kind of blogpost I normally write, chock-full of links--Oh Lord there are so many links--to prove my points: one, two, three. You could read for yourself the racist blogposts and see for yourself the videos of the rallies and peruse Sarah Palin's ghost-written Facebook screed scolding the NAACP for "divisive politics"--which is REALLY rich.
But I've changed my mind. I'm just going to speak from the heart here, because I've done all those things before, and on this topic.
It's not the loud, public attention-getters that gives them away--it's their Secret Life.
I'm talking about the viral e-mails.
Unlike most progressives and liberals that I know, I live in an extremely conservative area, and just about everybody I know, including many members of my own family, are very conservative.
There's nothing wrong with that. Conservatism has a long and distinguished history in our nation's tapestry, but unfortunately, its good name got hijacked by venal win-at-all-costs politicians and their paid hacks back during the Clinton years: Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, and others on the far right, aided and abetted by Whores of Babylon like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, and others who perverted the conservative doctrine and twisted it into something ugly and unrecognizable, running off any and all liberal or moderate conservative voices in congress and the Senate as Republican in Name Only and forcing the survivors to go against their own principles if they wanted to stay in the Party--while, at the same time, recruiting and funding some of the most unsuitable candidates for office imaginable, just because they were suitably crazy. Their standard-bearer, George W. Bush, sold his soul to the devil of getting and keeping power, and proceeded to ransack the government and leave it a shambles, while provoking some of the most bitter, partisan hatreds we've seen in nearly a century.
Motivated by Clinton-hatred, egged on by warmongering faux-patriotic fever, good people who should have known better found themselves slipping down the slope--abandoning their own common-sense views and gradually embracing more and more extremist rhetoric as "truth," because by this time, they'd been brainwashed into believing the "liberal media" wasn't TELLING the truth and only the Cult of the Crazy could be trusted for this precious inside information.
Fox News came along with its 24/7 megaphone, and before you could say, "HOODWINK" or "BAMBOOZLE" the so-called mainstream media was defending them as a legitimate journalistic organization in spite of the fact that its own commentators were either blatantly running for office on the GOP ticket--and using the Fox platform to raise funds--or raising funds for their own Political Action Committees on Fox--or serving openly as lobbyists and advisors for GOP candidates and raising funds--something NO LEGITIMATE NEWS ORGANIZATION HAS EVER DONE.
(This doesn't even touch blatant conflict-of-interest situations in which on-air personalities hype fear and paranoia about the U.S. dollar and push people to invest in gold while, at the same time, advertising for gold investment companies, thus making themselves filthy rich off the terror they, themselves, have fanned, as Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly both routinely do.)
The explosion of the Internet and social-networking sites like Facebook provided an even more narrow forum for both sides of the debate, really, but studies have shown that liberals DO read a variety of news sources, but conservatives nearly always stick only to friendly sites that reinforce and validate the opinions they have already formed. (I could provide a link to those studies but not today.)
Even when Glenn Beck himself cheerfully points out, as he did on the popular daytime program, "The View," that he is an ENTERTAINER and NOT a JOURNALIST, and even when he admitted--with no remorse--that HE NEVER FACT-CHECKS THE THINGS HE SAYS ON HIS PROGRAM--many right-wingers continue to cling to his program as "proof" of the convoluted theories he, himself, has been proposing.
And then along came a black president.
Barack Obama really did not want to run as the "first black president." He wanted to be the president of--as he so eloquently pointed out at the Democratic convention speech of 2004, "not the Red States of America, not the Blue States of America--but the UNITED States of America!"
Nobody in the mainstream media or the right wing took him seriously for a very long time, until he started winning; and then, it looked as if he might actually WIN this thing and become President of the United States.
I'm not going to go into the public things we all already know about--the massive overkill on Jeremiah Wright and so forth.
It's the viral e-mails I want to talk about--the ones they send to EACH OTHER that don't make the evening news.
The first real, longtime, dear friend whom I loved that I cut out of my life because of these viral e-mails had been sending me one nasty hateful myth-driven viral e-mail after another that I tried to ignore, most of the time.
Then he sent me the caricature.
Barack Obama, drawn hideously out of proportion...with the big lips made so sadly famous in other racist caricatures from the Jim Crow days.
He sent me that e-mail knowing full well that I was a precinct chairman for the Obama for America campaign. He knew I was a Democrat. He knew I was a strong Obama supporter, working very hard for his nomination.
And yet, somehow, he seemed to think it was okay to send me that cartoon.
WHY?
What would have made an old friend--a cop I'd known for 20 years or more, who had helped me research at least one of my books, who I had long adored and with whom I had laughed so many times I can't count them--send me such a thing, knowing how I felt about the man?
I knew that, like many old-school cops, now retired, he had been prejudiced on the job--I'll be honest about that. Many of his generation had been, and they had been terribly sexist, too. I can't count the stupid sexist jokes he'd sent me through the years that I really didn't find all that funny but tolerated because I thought he was a good guy, overall.
But this cartoon, it was really, really MEAN.
And it revealed something so ugly, so hidden beneath the surface, about my friend that I knew I could no longer BE friends with him.
I told him the caricature was racist and bigoted and not to send me anything like that again. When he sent me an angry diatribe in response, I deleted it without reply, removed him from my address book, and cut him out of my life for good. I cannot be "friends" with someone whose soul has such a rottenness in it.
And you want to know the real irony? This same guy was ALWAYS sending me the most syrupy, saccharine Jesus pictures and prayers and sentimental Sunday School stories.
He truly did not see the irony in it. That a man calling himself a Christian could have such hate in his soul.
There have been more.
Just a few weeks ago, there was the "joke." Only, I didn't realize what it was. The subject heading said, "It Had to Happen Eventually."
Open the e-mail. Inside: A photo-shopped photograph of Joe Biden. In cornrows.
HA HA HA HA!!! Right??? Really funny.
I deleted it without comment.
But some of them, they don't dare send to ME, but they send to people who send them to me. Like the one from a couple of weeks ago with the subject heading: "The First Tar-Balls Wash Up on Gulf Shores."
Open the e-mail. A photo of Barack Obama, body-surfing.
HA HA HA HA!!! Right??? Really funny.
Only it's not.
You know why?
Because I DO have friends of color, and the thing is, when you actually have people in your life who you love who are people of color, you don't find these kinds of things funny AT ALL because you know that they are HURTFUL.
THEY HURT PEOPLE. THEY HURT PEOPLE I CARE ABOUT.
It's more than just jokes, though. When you point out that a joke is racist, the one who sent it seems truly baffled.
Why, they just thought it was funny, that's all. Harmless. You liberals get so upset about the silliest things.
But it's not just the jokes.
They send me other viral e-mails. These e-mails accuse the president of the most horrific things. And RIDICULOUS things--like the one where the president and first lady were supposedly on the White House lawn at a state ceremony, and yet when the flag passed by, they BOTH PUT THEIR LEFT HANDS OVER THEIR CHESTS!!!
"Explain this!" they demand, certain that it proves that the Obamas HATE THIS COUNTRY SO MUCH THAT THEY WOULD DELIBERATELY DISRESPECT IT BEFORE THE FLAG (and, apparently, also in front of the official White House photographer on the grounds of the White House at an official ceremony.)
Snopes.com: The photo has been "flipped." Check out the Marine in the background--all his ribbons are on the wrong side of his chest--this is proof that this picture has been photo-shopped, says Snopes. (Check it out yourself. I could provide the link, but not today.)
Again and again they send me things. Again and again I check them out. I can't tell you how many times the explanation is that a CONSERVATIVE BLOGGER WROTE THE PIECE AS SATIRE AND SOMEHOW IT GOT PICKED UP INTO THE BODY OF AN E-MAIL AND SENT ON ITS ROUNDS.
The fact that they believe--LITERALLY--something that The Onion might publish as a joke or Jon Stewart put on The Daily Show if it were about, say, George W. Bush or John Boehner, is not what I'm talking about, here.
What I'm talking about is that they BELIEVE IT AT ALL.
There is a segment of the population that is perfectly willing to believe the most horrible things about this president--and yes, they believed horrible things about the Clintons, too, I'll give you that--but there is a difference here and it's in the jokes.
It's in the caricatures. The Obama-as-witch-doctor. The Obama-as-Curious-George. The Obama-as-Gorilla. The Obama-With-the-Full-Lips.
When I try to refute the e-mail--especially when it maintains that Obama hates the troops, hates the military, wants veterans to pay for their own medical care or some other nonsense, I get one of two reactions: Either they seize on some side issue that is basically unrelated to the subject at hand and start hammering me on that (one man, when we were arguing about health care reform, suddenly demanded that I explain "Obama's policy toward Palestinians!!!") Or, they don't reply at all, which means that I have simply proven them wrong and they refuse to admit it.
I have a couple of conservative friends who will tell me the truth, and when I ask them, "Why do right-wingers, and Tea Partiers especially, hate Obama so much?"
I point out that, yes, we hated George W. Bush with a passion, especially when he lied this country into a war that cost 4,000 lives. But WE NEVER SENT AROUND JOKES COMPARING LAURA BUSH TO A GORILLA. We NEVER WENT ON TALK RADIO AND MADE FUN OF HIS CHILDREN. In eight years, there was one conspiracy theory--the 9/11 plot--NOT A NEW ONE EVERY WEEK.
In other words, we didn't have to make stuff up and we didn't send around these horrible viral e-mails to each other. I was there. I hated Bush because my family went to fight in a war I opposed.
But in all that time, no liberal friend EVER sent me the kinds of things I've been sent about Barack Obama.
And my conservative friends, the ones who will admit the truth, say, "As much as I hate to admit this, and I really really hate to admit this, the truth is, it's race. It has GOT to be race. This is why I no longer listen to talk radio," they'll say, "or why I no longer visit so-and-so's website."
They can't take it anymore, these members of the Republican Party who find this latest development alarming.
You see, not all conservatives are racist.
And, I expect, not all Tea Partiers are racist either. We all know they've got a few token blacks in their movement.
BUT.
IF YOU ARE NOT A RACIST, AND YOU KNOW GOOD AND DAMN WELL THAT RACISM EXISTS IN YOUR MOVEMENT, THEN WHY DON'T YOU STEP UP AND CALL IT OUT???
Instead, they rear up on their hind legs and claim that it's the BLACKS that are racist, not THEM. They claim that the only people bringing those ugly signs WERE SENT THERE BY LIBERALS TO EMBARRASS THEM. They claim that, to call them racist IS TO IMPUGN FREEDOM-LOVING PATRIOTS EVERYWHERE.
This is what they say publicly.
Privately?
They send around another Obama-tar-ball joke, only, they're careful not to send it to the liberals, because, hey, it's not "politically correct."
Is that what they're calling it, these days?
Me, I call it racism.
Because, the bottom line for all of you out there who have sent me those jokes: WOULD YOU SEND THEM TO A BLACK FRIEND or MEMBER OF THE FAMILY (by marriage, obviously)?
If not, why not? Do you fear that person might be OFFENDED by that funny joke?
Oh? And why is THAT?
Of course, this might be a difficult exercise if you don't actually HAVE any black or Hispanic friends--not acquaintances, mind you, but people you really, genuinely, care about. People whose feelings you would never want to hurt.
And, if you don't have friends like that who happen to be black or brown or even gay...why is THAT?
Go ahead. Think about it a while. I can wait.
