[Grovenet] Stoking Racial Antagonism

[Ed Davie]

Would you actually believe anything Rush Limbaugh 
said?
Ed
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Steven
  To: Forest Grove local interests list
  Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2008 3:44 PM
  Subject: [Grovenet] Stoking Racial Antagonism


  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178554189155003.html

  I understand the rough and tumble of politics. 
But Barack Obama -- the
  supposedly postpartisan, postracial candidate of 
hope and change -- has gone
  where few modern candidates have gone before.

  Mr. Obama's campaign is now trafficking in 
prejudice of its own making. And
  in doing so, it is playing with political 
dynamite. What kind of potential
  president would let his campaign knowingly 
extract two incomplete,
  out-of-context lines from two radio parodies and 
build a framework of hate
  around them in order to exploit racial tensions? 
The segregationists of the
  1950s and 1960s were famous for such vile 
fear-mongering.

  Here's the relevant part of the Spanish-language 
television commercial Mr.
  Obama is running in Hispanic communities:

  "They want us to forget the insults we've put up 
with . . . the intolerance
  . . . they made us feel marginalized in this 
country we love so much."

  Then the commercial flashes two quotes from me: 
". . . stupid and unskilled
  Mexicans" and "You shut your mouth or you get 
out!"

  And then a voice says, "John McCain and his 
Republican friends have two
  faces. One that says lies just to get our vote . 
. . and another, even
  worse, that continues the policies of George 
Bush that put special interests
  ahead of working families. John McCain . . . 
more of the same old Republican
  tricks."

  Much of the media that is uninterested in Mr. 
Obama's connections to
  unrepentant 1970s Weather Underground terrorist 
William Ayers and Rev.
  Jeremiah Wright have so far gone along with the 
attempt to tie me to Mr.
  McCain. But Mr. McCain and I have not agreed on 
how to address illegal
  immigration. While I am heartened by his 
willingness to start by securing
  the borders, it is no secret that we have 
fundamental differences on illegal
  immigration.

  And more to the point, these sound bites are a 
deception, and Mr. Obama
  knows it. The first sound bite was extracted 
from a 1993 humorous monologue
  poking fun at the arguments against the North 
American Free Trade Agreement.
  Here's the context:

  "If you are unskilled and uneducated, your job 
is going south. Skilled
  workers, educated people are going to do fine 
'cause those are the kinds of
  jobs Nafta is going to create. If we are going 
to start rewarding no skills
  and stupid people, I'm serious, let the 
unskilled jobs that take absolutely
  no knowledge whatsoever to do -- let stupid and 
unskilled Mexicans do that
  work."

  My point, which is obvious, was that the people 
who were criticizing Nafta
  were demeaning workers, particularly low-skilled 
workers. I was criticizing
  the mind-set of the protectionists who opposed 
the treaty. There was no
  racial connotation to it and no one thought 
there was at the time. I was
  demeaning the arguments of the opponents.

  As for the second sound bite, I was mocking the 
Mexican government's double
  standard -- i.e., urging open borders in this 
country while imposing
  draconian immigration requirements within its 
own borders. Thus, I took the
  restrictions Mexico imposes on immigrants and 
appropriated them as my own
  suggestions for a new immigration law.

  Here's the context for that sound bite: "And 
another thing: You don't have
  the right to protest. You're allowed no 
demonstrations, no foreign flag
  waving, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing 
our president or his
  policies. You're a foreigner: shut your mouth or 
get out! And if you come
  here illegally, you're going to jail."

  At the time, I made abundantly clear that this 
was a parody on the Mexican
  government's hypocrisy and nobody took it 
otherwise.

  The malignant aspect of this is that Mr. Obama 
and his advisers know exactly
  what they are doing. They had to listen to both 
monologues or read the
  transcripts. They then had to pick the 
particular excerpts they used in
  order to create a commercial of distortions. 
Their hoped-for result is to
  inflame racial tensions. In doing this, Mr. 
Obama and his advisers have
  demonstrated a pernicious contempt for American 
society.

  We've made much racial progress in this country. 
Any candidate who employs
  the tactics of the old segregationists is 
unworthy of the presidency.

  Mr. Limbaugh is a nationally syndicated radio 
talk-show host.

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