Double Standard?
Last week, during president Obama’s speech before Congress regarding his push to nationalize health care, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted out “you lie!” when Obama was attempting to make the point that no illegals would qualify for federal dollars in order to get medical treatment under the new plan. As a result, all hell broke loose with the Democrats crying foul.
1) He was accused of being disrespectful to the office of the president
“It was crude and disrespectful,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Illinois.
2) He was called an outright racist
“Maureen Dowd of the New York Times told it like it is in her op-ed column Sunday, when she said that the real meaning of South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s health care speech was not “you lie” but “you lie–boy.”
3) He was officially admonished today
“Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the House of Representatives disapproves of the behavior of the Representative from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson”
Wow! Taken at face value, you would think that this was a white on black crime, something we as a nation had hoped we had moved on from by electing our first African American as president. Guess not.
On a related note: Kanye West (African American) wrestled the microphone away from Taylor Swift (white female) at the MTV video music awards ceremony over the weekend to verbally protest her winning nomination in favor of his belief that they had made a mistake, and should have given the award to Beyonce.
http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/435995/taylor-swift-wins-best-female-video.jhtml
He has since apologized.
I am simply pointing out these two situations to ask this question:
Is it possible that, since, on the one hand we had a white person speaking out against a black person and, on the other hand, we had a black person speaking out against a white person, it was simply a case of one disagreeing with the other and, not as some would like to think, a race situation?
Big Hollywood has an excellent article addressing this discrepancy:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jescalante/2009/09/15/kanye-west-vs-joe-wilson/
After all, Joe Wilson did apologize to president Obama and it was accepted and Kanye West apologized to Taylor Swift and it was accepted. So, in the final analysis, I want to quote Rodney King:
“Can’t we all just get along?”
Apparently not. Here are a few quotes (go ahead, Google them) to prove the point that we are far from where Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned us to be:
CAMPBELL BROWN: (music) …vicious, racist imagery attacking our first African-American president.
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Gentleman Joe Wilson has done much to make the racist history of South Carolina jump back into our present consciousness.
CANDY CROWLEY: Critics think this is about resistance to a black man as president.
JAMES CARVILLE: People are upset with President Obama because of the color of his skin. Who cannot believe that?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Could there be a refusal to accept the legitimacy of Barack Obama as president because of his race?
WOLF BLITZER: A small but disturbing minority within the tea party movement is also blatantly anti-black.
JOHN RIDLEY: When you talk about racial image, this is not just standard debate.
ELAINE QUIJANO: A small but passionate minority is also voicing what some see as racist rhetoric.
JOHN AVLON: Hitler. Communism. Racism. All this ugliness is bubbling up.
ANDERSON COOPER: There is an undercurrent of racism in some of the criticism of the president.
JUAN WILLIAMS: An attack on somebody because you really don’t like the fact that they are president or because of their race.
ROSS DOUTHAT: Clearly Barack Obama’s race plays some role in the kind of anxieties that are roiling the political right.
CLARENCE PAGE: People are not just mad at Obama. They are mad at Jesse Jackson. They are mad at Reverend Wright. They are mad at Al Sharpton. They are mad at people who have nothing to do with Obama except they all happen to be black.
Georgia Democrat HANK JOHNSON: “We will probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again, riding through the countryside intimidating people”
Well! What a lot of grandstanding by the PC crowd! Oh, and don’t even get me started on the Serena Williams threats against the line judge, who appears to be Asian. Another black on white case for racism?
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