{"id":10711,"date":"2012-08-30T17:27:27","date_gmt":"2012-08-31T00:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=10711"},"modified":"2012-08-30T17:32:31","modified_gmt":"2012-08-31T00:32:31","slug":"playing-with-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=10711","title":{"rendered":"Playing with Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I update my Facebook profile picture with ones I’ve manipulated at Photofunia.com<\/a>. \u00a0Like this:<\/p>\n

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People enjoy these photos and often comment on them. \u00a0This one, which I put up on Tuesday, the first day of the Republican convention in Tampa, drew several remarks, including one from a black friend who said: “Is Obama friends with Grizzly Adams?” \u00a0Now I’m as careful as the next bleeding heart Subaru-driving PC liberal when it comes to racial comments, but I couldn’t resist calling him on that crack: “Geez, ________, that was just plain racist! ;-)” \u00a0I was playing on the “All ________ people look the same to me” meme. \u00a0Putting words into my friend’s mouth, I could just hear him saying something like “All white people look like Mr. Whipple to me … unless they have beards, and then they look like Grizzly Adams.”<\/p>\n

But yeah, these days I tread especially lightly when it comes to race, because the Republicans are trying to\u00a0release the kraken<\/a> and no one knows what the consequences are going to be. \u00a0They’ve been looking for something, anything, to hang on President Obama, and since they can’t really say he’s been a bad president in any significant way, they’re attacking him on racial grounds. \u00a0He’s not really one of us. \u00a0He wants to take our money and give it to blah peo<\/a>ple<\/a>. \u00a0A certain percentage of American voters are infantile about race. \u00a0Calling out Obama on racial grounds\u00a0won’t make any difference to them … they hated Obama anyway and were always going to vote against him. \u00a0Like the young man who posted this, a member of my Limbaugh-lovin’ Cape Girardeau clan:<\/p>\n

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Will these “scary black man wants to take your money and give it to welfare queens and strapping young bucks who don’t want to work” lies work on undecided voters? \u00a0I don’t know. \u00a0Obviously Republicans are betting they will.<\/p>\n

But there’s another pot of people being brought to a boil by all this: the bubbas, the mouth-breathers, the committed racists. \u00a0Like this guy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Ah, yes, the “negrohood.” \u00a0These are the bottom-feeders the Republicans are stirring up with their racial attacks on Obama. \u00a0How close are we to the day Rush Limbaugh says “nigger” on the radio and officially frees the kraken? \u00a0Closer than ever. \u00a0And no one is doing anything to de-escalate the hate. Normally I’d say we just have to get out the sensible vote and win the battle on election day, but the battle may be upon us well before then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I update my Facebook profile picture with ones I’ve manipulated at Photofunia.com. \u00a0Like this: People enjoy these photos and often comment on them. \u00a0This one, which I put up on Tuesday, the first day of the Republican convention in Tampa, drew several remarks, including one from a black friend who said: “Is Obama friends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,10,8],"tags":[69],"class_list":["post-10711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-politics","tag-racism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10711"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10731,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10711\/revisions\/10731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}