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“Full-Blooded Americans”
Monday, May 19th, 2008Kathleen Parker takes the early lead in the “most offensive right-wing column about Obama” competition.
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And there was also the follow up “Obama and Edwards are both gay” column - http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2008/05/16/democrats_offer_thrills_n_chills
I hope someone asks her when she will be melting down the Statue of Liberty since it obviously encourages new blood to come into the country.
Quasi-racist anyone?
> Quasi-racist anyone?
No, don’t worry. She quoted Condoleeza Rice favorably so she must not be racist.
So the kids of white immigrants are more American than the kids of black immigrants is what I got from that article.
The more articles from the Baltimore Sun I see, the more I understand why David Simon hates that paper so much.
First try to consider the message and not who the messenger is.
Although the article mentions race, I believe the point was that most people will judge a candidate based on whether they believe he holds true to the values they find American.
She believes that Obama doesn’t get it and Clinton does, because of cultural heritage and not race.
She got a little sloppy using terms that are too easily confused with race. Was that intentional? I can’t say, but I don’t particularly see this article as being racist.
Devin,
So she calls Edwards and Obama a couple of effeminate pansies compared to Clinton. Since when is that gay? I think Edwards deserved the trashing.
They can spot a poser a mile off
Would that were true. The GOP might not have wandered off its platform.
Wow. That column is so aggressively stupid it’s difficult to know where to start. I feel dumber for having read it.
“It isn’t necessarily racist or nativist to worry about what these new demographics mean to the larger American story.”
Racist, no, but opposition to immigration rooted in the concern that new arrivals don’t reflect “American values” is pretty much the textbook definition of American nativism.
Let us see… Judging people based on what country their father came from. Um, I will just say it- HOW THE HELL IS THAT NOT RACIST?! My grandfather was born in Germany, and even though he served in the navy during World War 2, he is not considered a ‘real’ American? My mother must not be a ‘real’ American either, because her grandfather was not killing Filipinos in the name of our country like McCain’s. And I guess I do not have the ‘heritage’ Mr. McCain and this idiot do because my blood is not ‘pure American’ blood. Good to know racist scum still stalk the halls of the Republican’s big tent.
If the stupidity is anywhere in this article, it’s with that the West Virginia voter who was foolish enough to be quoted by name right up front. He’s clearly not paying any attention to what the issues are that are at stake with this election, or if he is, he can’t figure out the differences between the probably outcomes of each candidate’s election…..and, yea, I know, those of you who want to believe Republicans are racist will attribute Mr Fry to “Operation Chaos”.
I don’t know about her other columns, and I get the sense that she and I would disagree about many things, but I think you have to be looking for racism to find it anywhere beyond the initial quote.
Being from another country sort of inherently means another culture. The question of cultural direction could be taken to be the only question a country ever engages in. Wars that are not fought purely to steal resources or to commit genocide are, in a large sense, meant to spread your culture. Culture is a HUGE term. It can encompass your actual religion, tendencies to be religious, what violence is considered appropriate, who and what government is, etc…
So, although Obama’s Kenyan father is probably black (I’ve never seen a picture, don’t know don’t care) I can understand someone questioning what cultural foundation he passed on. On illegal immigration, it’s kind of important to note that the “nation of immigrants” is part of OUR culture, not the immigrants. There’s a critical point for immigration, legal or illegal, where the culture of the host country shifts towards the culture of the country of origin. It’s a damned important question whether we, as a country, want to become the culture of that country in part or whole. If that’s racist then someone’s going to need to redefine the term for me. I currently take racism as an unfounded aggression towards an individual or group based solely on its visible characteristics. Culture isn’t a visible characteristic, it’s a wide ranging definition of motivations and likely actions…something I usually DO consider when looking for a leader.
I think you have to be looking for racism to find it anywhere beyond the initial quote
It behooves all of us to always be on the lookout for racism.
There’s a critical point for immigration, legal or illegal, where the culture of the host country shifts towards the culture of the country of origin.
That has never happened in America, and has never come close to happening, even when immigration levels were three times what they were today.
Barack Obama is a natural born American citizen, period. He was born in the United States, like John McCain spent part of his childhood abroad, but spent his middle school years onward in the US. And incidentally, much like the average Scotch-Irish West Virginian, Obama’s American-born maternal bloodline goes back centuries.
My dad’s grandparents, on both sides, were European immigrants. Every one of their sons fought for the United States in WWII and/or Korea. By the standards of Kathleen Parker’s discussion of blood equity and statement that “there’s a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice,” my grandfather and my great uncles aren’t full-blooded Americans. Pardon my French, but what the fuck has 24-year old Josh Fry ever done that makes him more of a full-blooded American than Barack Obama ? Josh Fry’s statement is garden-variety xenophobia and bigotry, sadly common in some corners of our society. The bigger perpetrator here is Ms. Parker, who gives this unremarkable ignorance a veneer of thoughtfulness and respectability.
The Baltimore Sun: carrying the worst of H. L. Mencken into the twenty-first century.
Yikes.
I find it telling how many vague phrases this moron uses” “American story” “national narrative” “yesterday’s Americans” “Who gets America?” They all seem to be strange codewords, otherwise they are so vague as to make almost everything she says meaningless.
Of course the crippling vagueness doesn’t prevent this article from providing cover to people who just “don’t quite feel comfortable” about Obama’s kenyan dad. But really how many of those people know his dad was foreign born and not, say, descended from slaves? I would think a great many of them don’t. I think it’s tough to argue that any unease that can be euphamised with phrases like “not full-blooded” is more likely not rooted in Obama’s appearance (race) and instead rooted in a knowledge that he is first genertaion American on one side of his family as opposed to 2nd or 3rd. Would those same concerns evaporate if he was 3rd generation American on the black side of his family?
Sam is logically correct in the distinction he draws between race and culture, but it seems quite clear that this article seeks to conflate the two concepts just to turn race into culture, and then separate them at the end to say that concerns over culture are justified.
I’m going to try to avoid Godwining this discussion by phrasing this as carefully as I can: does “blood equity” strike anyone else as awfully reminiscent of “blood value”?
B, I don’t know if I would go that far, but it’s a pretty shocking term nonetheless. It’s a strange notion indeed that one American citizen is more American than another merely because the first guy’s great-great-great-great grandfather fought at Bull Run. I certainly don’t claim my grandfathers’ WWII heroism as my own, so why should the blood sacrifices of even more distant ancestors justify modern xenophobia? While acknowledging that the forces of multiculturalism can go to far that that early 21st century immigration isn’t exactly the same as prior waves, the rhetoric is much the same. The Irish, the Italians, the Greeks, the Mexicans, the Kenyans. Same as it ever was.
I read the article and could not understand what point it was trying to make.
Someone please tell me more about this once-upon-a-time America.
I am not familiar with it.
Full-blooded apparently means inbred?
Once upon a Time in America,
Inbred white hillbillies ruled the World! Well not really, but back in the good ole days white folks were important. If you were ugly, stupid, illiterate, lazy, and had no skills whatsoever, you could still “be somebody”- as long as you were white. You could be the biggest loser in the world but everyone knew you were “superior” to “n!ggers.” As an illiterate hillbilly you benefited from the Olde Time Affirmative Action Plan- you could get one of them good “‘American jobs” working in some factory that refused to hire blacks and furriners.
Over the years, laws and public sentiment ( at least outside of West Virginney) changed. Much of society became more accepting of other cultures. Technology changed. Some of them book learnin’ folk even learned how to use them computers and new machinery and such. They learned ritin and rithmatic and all that fancy stuff. It became harder to make a livin with an 8th grade education. People started hiring blacks and even Mexicans! They even let them darkies go to school! I also heard sumpin about them hirin Indians “overseas” but I thought Indians were livin in teepees on the reserves. Then they had some affirmative action stuff. I reckon it didnt hurt me too much seein as how I aint really qualified for anything anyway, but I think i’ll blame that for all my problems.
My great Grand daddy was born an American and so was I. My wife and I have the same grandaddy- can you believe that? So I know she aint no half-breed or anything. My grandaddy aint never gone to college and neither have i. We aint those uppity book learnin E leet ists. We are real Americans and we should have American jobs. We need a real white president who will make promises she cant keep about giving back our jobs and taking them away from all these Muslims. She is promising the return of at least 10,000 union blacksmithing jobs to our state- least thats what my buddy said. How can you vote for some black Muslim gay prostitute who went to a fancy college?
Now back in the good ole days we wouldnt have all this trouble over the years. That boy woulda known his place or been strung up somewhere. I woulda had a job in the factory or maybe even in the police. Maybe I coulda even been president. My daddy always told me I could be anything I want, but I’s just a simple man who wants to live here in this little town and not be bothered by all them uppity negroes who want to turn me into a Muslim and take away my rabbit guns.
If you are a real American, then you know what I mean.
The Chicago Tribune picks up Parker’s columns. I skip over them every chance I get. It’s an utter waste of good time. All I had to do was read the comments here and no I didn’t miss a thing.
Dammit, Radley, you Tranzi, did you delete my comment?
Apologies if I’m posting this to the wrong thread. Obama is Un-American.
Obama is quite very absolutely Un-American by any measurement one might choose to use.
(Hillary and McCain are sadly very American, in a bad way.)
That is, in a WCTU and Pwogwessive kind of way.