You just can’t make this stuff up
My point is that any discussion of Obama’s “skinniness” and its impact on the typical American voter can’t avoid being interpreted as a coded discussion of race. [...]
[Amy] Chozick insists that she didn’t intend her playful feature about Obama’s physique as potential electoral liability to carry any racial subtext. “I can’t even respond to that,” she told me. “That’s ridiculous.” [...]
But I firmly disagree that a racial reading of Chozick’s story is “ridiculous,” and I would counter that any failure on Chozick’s part to recognize such is just a wee bit clueless. [...]
When white people are invited to think about Obama’s physical appearance, the principal attribute they’re likely to dwell on is his dark skin. Consequently, any reference to Obama’s other physical attributes can’t help coming off as a coy walk around the barn.
See, this is simple. Timothy Noah is a liar. He slickly dismisses Chozick, not for being a racist per se, but for writing something that is so obviously coded to play coyly to the inherent racism in all whites.
I would advise Amy to call Timmy a liar. Long, hard, outloud where everyone will hear it.
And if he still persists, work on your right cross.
Comment by SarahW on 8/4 @ 11:33 pm #
“When white people are invited to think about Obama’s physical appearance, the principal attribute they’re likely to dwell on is his dark skin”
I guess I don’t speak for all white people but I speak for this one and what I say is WTF?
He is trying as hard as he can to get people to pay attention to Obama’s skin color because they aren’t >/i>paying attention to it, is my theory.
Comment by SarahW on 8/4 @ 11:33 pm #
Reversed a tag bracket there, sorry.
Comment by SteveG on 8/4 @ 11:44 pm #
I believe the right cross is the proper punctuation point for calling liar on this one. But it should be the spanish punctuation…. boom.liar.boom
Comment by dicentra on 8/4 @ 11:57 pm #
Spanish punctuation?
You mean ¿stuff like this? ¡or this!
Yeah, ¡ ! ¡ ! ¡ looks pretty good to me.
Comment by stirner on 8/4 @ 11:58 pm #
Well, that works both ways:
“Tired rhetoric”
“Old politics of the past”
He’s speaking in code! Ageist!
Comment by Topsecretk9 on 8/5 @ 12:10 am #
SarahW
exactly.
But have journalist seen booty or know what it is? Just curious.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/5 @ 12:19 am #
I just don’t see how that passes for smart. Noah should work in tv.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/5 @ 12:24 am #
Also, for real, when I get an invitation to think about Baracky’s physical appearance, I mostly think about that creepy mole thing on his face, not his skin color. I think maybe it’s the source of his power.
Comment by The Lost Dog on 8/5 @ 12:24 am #
This election is absolutely ridiculous, and O! supporters are leading the way into Hell.
Not only have I come to see “The Lightbringer” as an empty suit, but it is becoming apparent that he is an absolute, clueless, brainless asshole who can felate a teleprompter much better than he can use his own brain.
Jeebus! All the people who laughed at Bush because he spoke like a moron in public, have put their panties in their ears when this idiot talks without a teleprompter. He is as bad or worse than Bush ever was when he first became President. O! is completely inane and empty headed when he talks off the cuff.
Holy shit! If this moron’s supporters win this election, we are totally fucked! I don’t think there can be any question anymore that O!’s supporters are dumber than a sack of hammers.
They are insulting the intelligence of anyone with a smattering of historical knowledge, and an IQ of over 80.
“HEY! I’M BLACK! HEY, I’M BLACK! BLACKS CAN’T BE ASSHOLES!”
But don’t you dare notice that unless you are lopsided with white guilt!
This is getting pretty scary. It looks like we have a good chance of having a socialist mouth breather as our next president, and a “Blink” Congress to kiss his butt, who, between themselves, will collectively throw this whole country into the frying pan…
As much as O! and his minions try to deny it, he is whacking us over the head with “race” every chance he gets.
Post racial, my butt!
I had to go to DMV this morning, and I just can’t wait for government health care!
Comment by alppuccino on 8/5 @ 12:32 am #
I just don’t see how that passes for smart.
It’s the new kind of smart. Not the old “Hey, gravel is hard and it’s good for making roads” smart, but the new “We need to find a good crop to grow that would make good roads. Is there a plant that’s like gravel? There isn’t? Well why do we need roads anyway? Pass the rice please” smart.
Comment by psycho... on 8/5 @ 12:39 am #
We’ve all seen that shirtless, stumbling-out-of-the-surf, Creature from the Off-White Lagoon picture. The guy is not “skinny.” He’s got swaying dugs, for fuck’s sake.
I’m the same height and weight he is, smoke way the hell more (because I don’t lie about it), practically live on Guinness and Popeye’s, and I don’t have those slushy moobs. (Of course, that may be because I can actually ride a bike and play basketball.)
So if I — for example; could be anybody…anybody — really wanted to make the case that people talking about his being “skinny” are speaking in “code,” and I wasn’t just saying it — in a kind of itself-racially-encoded class-solidarity code, say — I might start out strong by pointing out that those people are lying.
Unless for some mysterious reason I’m afraid to call dude out on his titties. Like he scares me, mysteriously. Puts me off my words. (“Dugs,” particularly.) Because he’s — if only in a certain, very strained sense — kinda “skinny.”
Comment by alppuccino on 8/5 @ 12:40 am #
History Class Feb 8, 2083
Barack Obama School for all Colors and Weights
“Okay class, sit down. Open your history books to page 211. Today we are going to dig deep into one of our country’s greatest moments. It was when the majority of our Congress had the courage to go on vacation.”
Comment by Topsecretk9 on 8/5 @ 12:51 am #
I’m just saying if there is any culture suspect of a , color me unsurprised. Why DON’t white journo’s know that the African American community likes alot of meat on the bones, to say the least.
Comment by Topsecretk9 on 8/5 @ 12:53 am #
skinny – was missing in my last post, after “suspect of a”
Comment by Bender Bending Rodriguez on 8/5 @ 1:34 am #
What if we ignore O!s skinniness and stick to noticing the length of his “Mac Daddy” legs? We’ve got the brothas’ clearance on that one.
Comment by Sean M. on 8/5 @ 1:39 am #
I would completely agree with you, but for the fact that you’re gratuitously insulting the intelligence of innocent bags full of hammers.
Comment by maggie katzen on 8/5 @ 1:43 am #
pillowcase full of doorknobs?
Comment by Sean M. on 8/5 @ 2:59 am #
That’s a bit of a gray area, maggie. As is a bar of soap wrapped in a towel.
Comment by Jeff Y. on 8/5 @ 3:02 am #
This “code word” shit that was recently pulled on Darleen, it pissed me off.
Here’s a picture of
a man smoking a cigar.
Sure, you can say this guy’s a homo because a cigar is a “code image” for dick. But look closely at the photo. it’s Fidel Castro. Aha! It’s not a guy smoking a cock. It’s just a fucking dick smoking a cigar.
The point is: we all need to re-read Jeff’s posts on intentionalism, and we need to read Alan Sokal’s Fashionable Nonsense. And we need to call people out as liars.
The proggs are pissing in the language pool. The lifeguard is displeased.
Comment by formless minion on 8/5 @ 3:07 am #
In the relatively short history of journalism-in-pajamas, this may well be the dumbest post on the most idiotic subject I have ever seen.
WTF happened to Republicans? You’re turning into a lobotomized primordial soup of creepy Reagan nostalgia.
Have fun pretending McCain wasn’t your worst nightmare come true.
Comment by Jeff Y. on 8/5 @ 3:23 am #
Formless Minion (#20), you despicable crypto-racist!
I notice you wrote your post in black letters on a white background. Why do you have the black letters doing all the work while the white page is just sitting there doing nothing. Typical racist stereotype.
“Lobotomized?” Code for “blacks are dumber than whites.”
“Primordial?” You think blacks are less evolved than the white man, I see.
“Soup?” You’re so racist you have to make fun of soul food! Is nothing sacred to you Lefty race-mongers.
“Creepy?” Yeah. You’d prolly cross the street if a black guy was walking down the sidewalk. You would, you racist.
Racist!
Comment by Salt Lick on 8/5 @ 4:33 am #
I am presently reading a journal kept by Arthur Ashe in the 70’s and he says this:
“I don’t have any fat on me. Even my thumbs are exceptionally long and thin. Also, like most blacks, I have very small, thin joints. You know, you’ll seldom find a black person with fat ankles.” “Portrait in Motion,” p. 45
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 8/5 @ 4:51 am #
Also, I’m pretty sure that the word “minion” is racist.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 8/5 @ 5:21 am #
Who would he be a minion of anyway?
Comment by Alec Leamas on 8/5 @ 5:23 am #
Hmmm . . . and I was going to have him photochopped betwen Dwayne Wayne and ReRun . . .
Is that teh Racist!?!?!?!?
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 8/5 @ 5:42 am #
This whackjob is a “senior editor”?
Comment by JD on 8/5 @ 6:08 am #
Consider yourselves denounced. Denounced and condemned. Racists.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/5 @ 6:26 am #
- The Left is rapidly approaching “racist card meltdown”. With Black voting for O!Buckwheat at 93-97%, they have to project. Thats some seriously racial shit they have to cover up.
- Oh, and Munster minion, with McCain up +1 on Mr Race card yesterday, you’re scared. We got it.
- And speaking of nightmares, with your South Chicago empty suit FOR gun ownership, FOR FISA, FOR drilling, FOR staying the course in Iraq with a withdrawal based on conditions on the ground, I think we know who isn’t getting much sleep these days.
- But wait, the best is yet to come. Insiders say Bo Jangles is sending love notes to Pelosi, telling her to get her dried up prune botoxed bony ass back to Washington and get an energy bill passed before the whole bottom drops out of his campaign.
- Bon Appitite’ moonies.
Comment by JD on 8/5 @ 6:36 am #
Alright, I missed that link to Noah at Slate the first time through. I thought this was a parody while reading it, but not all that incredibly far fetched, given the minimal standards required for the Left to squawk racism and prove their moral superiority. It should be painful to live life in the manner in which Senor Noah does.
Comment by Salt Lick on 8/5 @ 6:36 am #
Oh, and Munster minion, with McCain up +1 on Mr Race card yesterday, you’re scared.
And geewillakers, BBH, it’s only August. McCain hasn’t even had time to say, “Obama was against the Surge before he was for it,” or, “My friends, let me read you what Senator Obama wrote in 2005 about how he wouldn’t be qualified to be president by 2008,” or the clip of Reverend Wright saying, “He’s a politician, doing what he has to do.” Crap, what’s going to be left for the 527s?
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/5 @ 6:39 am #
- BTW, if Mr. “Did I mention I’m Black” goes into the Convention down in the polls to McOldDude, its going to be more than interesting. Does anyone have Hillery’s cell number?
- We’re going to need a wharehouse stocked with Redenbockers best,
Comment by Education Guy on 8/5 @ 6:45 am #
It’s just another example of someone on the left attempting to remove all possible attempt at criticism, or even simple observation from anyone who is not approved to do so.
Comment by BJTexs on 8/5 @ 6:52 am #
These race pimpers should do us a public service and publish a list of things that we upon which we can comment that do not involve coded references to teh racialism.
What? What was that? Nothing. Hmmmm
When Andrea Mitchel looks at McCain’s ad making fun of Obama’s celebrity status and actually uses the phrase “the C-Word” you know we’ve devolved into an intentionalism free for all.
Good God no wonder why Jeff G. doesn’t want to have any part of dealing with this election. Everything he’s ever studied and concluded is being trampled by Identity Politicsalooza.
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/5 @ 6:58 am #
OK, folks, take a breath and back off a bit. History is repeating.
This is how the Reconstruction ended. This is why there’s a Ku Klux Klan.
There were two Klans, you know. The second one, the one we remember, grew up in the early 1900s as one of the nastier parts of the general socialist/eugenicist movement. The first one was founded at the end of the Civil War, and was intended as a Resistance movement.
Lincoln wanted a proto-Marshall plan for the South, to introduce an industrial economy that would replace slave labor and bring blacks into the general society. But Lincoln was dead (coincidence, hmmm?) and the impatient Abolitionists gave unscrupulous profiteers their head. Blacks, many of them incompetent because they were just out of slavery and had no idea what was going on, were appointed as Governors and other officials, any protest that suggested they were incompetent was shouted down, and under cover of that smug self-righteousness the opportunists were encouraged to pillage, treating the defeated South not as mistaken brothers to be urged back into the family, but as a conquered country to be stripped of everything but a few absolutely permanent features of the landscape.
The original Klan was founded to combat that. In retrospect it was doomed from the beginning, because almost all its members were racist Southerners who couldn’t keep their eye on the ball. A couple of my ancestors went down to Vidor to be in on the organization of the Texas branch, and came back dismissing it in contempt: “All them crackers want to do is beat up on the n–s.” By the late 1800s it had been mostly wiped out, and the later one used its name and some of the less admirable notions of its founders to do something entirely different.
But the combination of pressure from the original Klan and the fact that the Reconstructionists hadn’t quite been able to totally disenfranchise Southerners added up to the defeat of Reconstruction. Republicans became, indelibly, the Party of imperialist profit and damn the human factors; Democrats gained a political base that wasn’t broken up for three-quarters of a century; and it was only the opening of the West that allowed the violence to spread out, dissipate in the new territories instead of concentrating in clumps, and eventually subside. In all that mess the black people were forgotten, ignored. They never got the education they needed to fully participate, partly out of the pervasive racism characteristic of the period in North as well as South, but also because whites were too busy fighting one another to bother.
There won’t be another Civil War. We already had that; it was fought in courtrooms, TV, and newspaper columns, and came out the same way the first one did, except with less blood. Now comes the Reconstruction phase, and just like the first time, impatient idealists are letting the unscrupulous get the bit in their teeth. It’s messier than the first time, and there isn’t the easy, clear black-white distinction to work with, but they’re coming at it the same old way. Choose your side. It’s all that’s left for a while.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by JD on 8/5 @ 7:00 am #
“the C-Wordâ€Â
What is the c-word?
BJ – I have long requested that our moral betters publish a full and comprehensive list of all overtly racist, and code-word type racist phrases so we would know what to avoid.
Apparently, they cannot do so. I guess it wouldn’t matter. They would just add to it as they saw fit.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/5 @ 7:03 am #
- I, for one, am encouraged BJT. I’m thinking that the “identity politico” monster the Left unleashed, in order to find some way to shake up the status quo, is going to dine on all their asshats at the Convention.
- Think Roman Colosseum, circa 2008, where the FemRodents, along with a few hundred other fringe-lunitic groups, thousands of grubby Che-chic’ skanks, and their overweight pot bellied hippy boyfriends in flab revealing cutoffs and Berkenstocks, all come home to roost at once. The smell alone will be memorable.
- Yowza!
Pingback by One benefit of this campaign on 8/5 @ 7:08 am #
[...] People are crying wolf “racist!” so often it’s going to be a completely discredited term by November. The latest? A reporter did a fluff piece on how skinny Obama is. Naturally that’s being interpreted as you know what. [...]
Comment by BJTexs on 8/5 @ 7:37 am #
JD: she was referring to the word “Celebrity.” No, no, I’m dead serious. Yes, I know, it’s mind numbingly ridiculous.
BBH: I was thinking just that as I wrote that comment. I suppose I’m just completely tired of the whole Racism/Sexism mantra for all things that don’t tack “true.” Throw in the fact that no one talks about “Ageism” when McCain gets called a crazy, stubborn old coot and I’ve had my fill of The First Church of the Progressive Misery Pimpage.™
However I do acknowledge from both a political advantage and the tittering entertainment value that screeching harpies and wild eyed community activists goin’ at each other might do some good to alleviate the Identity Politicsalooza. May be enough of the “branders” (crap, racial code word) will become exhausted with their own victimization that we can move on to actual common sense analysis of important issues and policy pronouncements.
Then again I regularly see feckless purple unicorns flying over my condo farting ABBA songs, so i may not be a reliable source for !hope!
Comment by JD on 8/5 @ 7:43 am #
I thought you meant c*nt. Celebrity is a -word now? Good Allah.
Comment by BJTexs on 8/5 @ 7:49 am #
JD: Shockingly, I knew why you asked the question. :-)
Comment by odin on 8/5 @ 8:16 am #
Actually, Rick it’s more like
the ‘insurgents’elements of Gen. Bedford Forrest, used terror, to drive
the newly enfranchised out of the polls; forcing a close contest, where they forced the Republicans to give up the ‘expensive quagmire of occupation’ in order to assume the Presidency. The Bourbon Redeemers introduced ‘Kentucky fried Apartheid’ for nearly a century; with the cooperation of a indifferent Supreme Court. Now the souped up super strain of Dixon and Stephenson Klan in the 20s, were just the icing on the cake.
Comment by SarahW on 8/5 @ 8:30 am #
C-word was a cute reference to “celebrity”, especially ones that get photographed without knickers while seated in their private transport, and the subtext is this might be too near the long steely metro trains rumbling through tunnels near the Washington Monument, and some of those hot-dog stands near there.
So it’s supposed to make women of a certain age, say
“HEY! We fought against that sort of objectification, how dare you, McCain” when ordinarily there might be resentment of all the fair, youthful essence of celebrity on view.
Wow, I am really good at Password.
Comment by Ouroboros on 8/5 @ 8:43 am #
His skinniness makes his hands look that much larger… and you know what that means….
Comment by Jeff G. on 8/5 @ 8:45 am #
Iggy pop? A closet darkie.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/5 @ 8:46 am #
SarahW, when I say “Andrea Mitchell” do you think “makeup-spatula”?
Comment by Salt Lick on 8/5 @ 8:51 am #
Odin needs to bang him some Southern belles. Once he’s got those Daisy Dukes thrown aside on the grass, he’ll understand that “It’s not better or worse; it’s just different!”
Comment by SarahW on 8/5 @ 9:24 am #
Darn. My first thought was “canopic jars”
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/5 @ 9:32 am #
odin, we’re singin’ the same hymn. You’re just on a later verse.
The Klan’s initial target was the puppet officials, black and white, who lent the force of the State to people who were frankly thieves. It immediately devolved into a purely racist organization because its underlying ideology was both rotten and simplistic, and began targeting poor blacks, “poor white trash” who were just trying to get along, and generally the weak, because they never gathered enough force (or courage) to hit the people they said they were against.
Sound familiar? It should. M. Moore called them “Minute Men”.
All of which is interesting, but beside the present point, which is that what killed the Reconstruction was starry-eyed, impatient idealists who were happy to lend their moral force to opportunists. That pattern is being repeated. What concerns me is that similar conditions tend to elicit similar responses.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/5 @ 10:32 am #
“Darn. My first thought was “canopic jarsâ€Â
- Always tending to the commercialism, mine was “Cashcow”, which, when you think about it, isn’t really that far off.
- For anyone that thought “Cannibal”, you can immediately self Uber-denounceâ„¢, and retire to your room, or the peoples great meeting hall for a day of shunning.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/5 @ 10:39 am #
HuffingtonPost post by Alex Castellanos encountered at Insty:
“…Despite the McCain campaign’s effectiveness, however, the best campaign against Barack Obama is not being run by his opponent, but by Barack Obama. It is Obama’s campaign that presents their candidate as an ever-changing work-in-progress. It is his own campaign that occludes our ability to know this man, depicting him as authentic as a pair of designer jeans. …”
Barack “I’m not here from central casting†Obama will be the cause of his own destruction. More Obama!
Pingback by The Skinny on Obama [Dan Collins] on 8/6 @ 9:07 am #
[...] to Darleen’s post, yesterday, from Jake [...]
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