Sunday, August 03, 2008

Uppity, take 2

God Bless David Gergen! Really--he was on This Week and said (check the video or transcript for exact wording), "When McCain's camp calls Obama "The Messiah" and "The One", he's really calling him "upitty." I'm from the South, and we understand what that means. That's code."
from talkingpointsmemo.com

PS: CIP's take

PPS: Dog whistle - refers to the whistle that emits high frequency sound beyond the range of normal human ears but perfectly audible to dogs.

PPPS: Lee Atwater - campaigned for Bush senior and Reagan, the following is from answers.com

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964… and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster…
Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps…?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.' [4][5][6]

1 comment:

cynthia said...

Obama, IMO, looks a bit like Abe Lincoln. I'm sure McCain favors a POTUS from the past, I just can't think of one right now...

My point is that the lines, which divide the races, are very blurred, indeed! Oh sure, Obama may "look" more "black" than McCain. But because there's a great deal of overlap between the races, and especially because all people, with no exceptions, can be traced back to Africa, it's just plain silly to be dividing people according to race.

Thus, it makes zero sense for us to be voting according to race. What makes sense is for us to vote according to our economic status and our political views -- namely how we view government's role in society.

And as long as the wall separating church and state remains intact, no one has any business voting according to their religion!