From Media Matters via Avedon:
Blumenthal notes that, “Rush [Limbaugh] polls seven points lower than Rev. Jeremiah ‘God Damn America’ Wright and eight points below former Weather Underground domestic terrorist William Ayers.”
bigotry
More Morbid Fear Of Melanie Phillips
Here’s Tony Benn, (nee Viscount Stansgate), the last doughty remnant of the Christian socialists, giving a BBC newsdroid merry hell on the subject of moral cowardice and giving in to Israeli bullying:
He’s right, they’re scared – though I must admit if I had that shrieking Zionist harpy Phillips in my ear every five minutes I’d be scared too. I’d also change my phone number.
Facteiousness aside very little has been made – as yet – of the current BBC Director General, Mark Thompson relationship with the Israeli government or of his 2005 visit to Israel at governmental expense.
This cosying-up to a foreign leadership (and such a politically rabid one as that) is something a BBC DG has never done before, presumably on the grounds that it would compromise BBC impartiality and neutrality.
Of course the cosy tete a tetes he had with Ariel Sharon and sundry other Israeli political notables, those couldn’t possibly affect his impartiality or appear to impute an appearance of impropriety at all, no sir.
Comment of The Weekend
Has to be the story about the assholery of John McCain by Mary-Kay Gamel that’s doing the internet rounds. [Though I don’t have to remind regular blog readers this, because it is doing the rounds, take it with a big pinch of salt.]:
On the question of McCain’s often abusive personality and inability to control either his sense of entitlement or his temper, a friend sent me the below-cited e-mail text from a professor in California. Unlike the anonymously sourced rubbish circulated by the Republicans to attack Obama, this eyewitness account of a vacation from hell with John McCain has the ring of credibility to it. Here it is.
MY HOLIDAY WITH JOHN McCAIN
It was just before John McCain’s last run at the presidential nomination in 2000 that my husband and I vacationed in Turtle Island in Fiji with John McCain, Cindy, and their children, including Bridget (their adopted Bangladeshi child).
It was not our intention, but it was our misfortune to be in close quarters with John McCain for almost a week, since Turtle Island has a small number of bungalows and their focus on communal meals force all vacationers who are there at the same time to get to know each other intimately.
McCain arrived at our first group meal and started reading quotes from a pile of William Faulkner boo ks with a forest of Post-Its sticking out of them. As an English Literature major myself, my first thought was “if he likes this so much, why hasn’t he memorized any of this yet?” I soon realized that McCain actually thought we had come on vacation to be a volunteer audience for his “readings” which then became a regular part of each meal. Out of politeness, none of the vacationers initially protested at this intrusion into their blissful holiday, but people’s buttons definitely got pushed as the readings continued day after day.
Unfortunately this was not his only contribution to our mealtime entertainment. He waxed on during one meal about how Indo-Chine women had the best figures and that our American corn-fed women just couldn’t meet up to this standard. He also made it a point that all of us should stop Cindy from having dessert as her weight was too high and made a few comments to Amy, the 25 year old wife of the honeymooning couple from Nebraska that she should eat less as she needed to lose weight.
Colour Me Shocked – Yet Hardly Surprised
If what’s being reported is true, Sarah Palin is apparently a vicious racist as well as the class cow. But then, did I really ever think she’d be anything else?
From the LA Progressive [Via The Poor Man] comes this heartwarming story of everyday gubernatorial bigotry:
“So Sambo beat the bitch!”
This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.
“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.
Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”
Well, there it is, racism in the raw out and on the table. Wherever do the campaigns go from here?
UPDATE:
An Alaskan anti-Palinist casts doubt on the allegations.
Read both and make your own mind up.
Comment of The Day
On Riazat Butt’s Guardian post on responding to vocal bigots:
CritKing
Aug 27 08, 12:25pm (about 20 hours ago)
fight fire with fire I say…
the other day I was out on my race bike training in Amsterdam (CK is a top bike racer) and a group of moroccan teenagars called me a poofter, probably something to do with tight lycra.
As CK is also quite a ladies man I stopped, and asked the ringleader how many women he had been to bed with, also adding, “besides your sisters and cousins”.
That shut him up.