Tin Ear Watch
You know, as a general rule, I’m willing to give people the benefit of the doubt on tin ear kind of stuff. Some will immediately scream “racism” or “sexism” or whatever, whereas my first reaction is usually “they’re just being dumb”. Particularly in the media, I tend to find examples of supposed hate-mongering to be more just journalists being lazy. Perhaps that’s a failing of mine—our co-blogger Jack, for instance, called me on it a lot—but I like to think I just prefer to have more faith in humanity.
Regarding Obama: I’ve seen a lot of stuff against him that has struck me as vaguely racist, but for the most part I let the knuckleballs pass. But it’s getting hard to ignore.
I let the whole Obama and Michelle bumping fists being interpreted in a Fox News teaser as “A terrorist fist jab?” go, because they were just trying to be cute and failing miserably. But immediately on the heels of that, this is just crass, sad, and genuinely outrageous. You need only watch the first 20 seconds of the clip. Note the chyron on the bottom third of the screen.
This marks the first time I’ve linked Hot Air, but hat tip, and tip of the hat, to them. N.B.: Michelle Malkin is the founder/operator of Hot Air, and also happens to be the featured guest in the clip.
Was it always this bad and I just didn’t notice or are the Republicans becoming desperate and going off the deep end?
Or is it just a FOX thing?
Comment by daveg — 6/12/2008 @ 2:41 am
I’m pretty sure that it’s FOX.
Comment by Liz — 6/12/2008 @ 8:08 am
Yeah. That’s racist. And I am usually hyper-vigilant about false claims of racism in this context.
And I’d concur that it’s a Fox thing, by no means universal among Republicans, but Fox speaks rather effectively to a considerable portion of the Republican electorate.
Comment by Rojas — 6/12/2008 @ 12:27 pm
Obama’s “Baby Mama”?
That’s more blatant than I would have believed.
Comment by Talarohk — 6/12/2008 @ 1:26 pm
Incidentally, if you noticed, I was giving Michelle Malkin some oblique props in that hat tip.
Remind me not to do that.
Comment by Brad — 6/12/2008 @ 4:09 pm
Well, at least your (formerly?) beloved Capt. Ed has come out and said that the release of Obama’s birth certificate to the internet is credible enough to put to bed the rumors about his ineligibility to be President. Wow, ya think?
What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Comment by tessellated — 6/12/2008 @ 4:49 pm
The same thing that’s wrong with this person.
When you find yourself believing that everybody you disagree with politically must be evil, you find all sorts of ways to explain away the evidence that they’re not. Even if that evidence is as basic as him being an American, or a Christian.
It’s twisted rationalization based on immaturity as much as anything.
Incidentally, Capt. Ed (who I haven’t read since he left CQ) may have gone to the dark side, but give Jim Geraghty some credit. Between this and the Whitey think, he’s been appropriately resistant to those that want him to get on board the “Obama is a Communist Foreigner” bus.
Comment by Brad — 6/12/2008 @ 5:04 pm
Or you could accuse them of harboring a secret desire, carefully concealed from the American public, of using Iraq into a jumping-off point for an invasion of Iran.
You wouldn’t even need a hypothetical videotape of the man’s wife to do so; you could just assert it.
Comment by Rojas — 6/12/2008 @ 5:22 pm