{"id":3954,"date":"2010-05-18T21:33:20","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T04:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=3954"},"modified":"2011-09-13T12:27:30","modified_gmt":"2011-09-13T19:27:30","slug":"whats-that-smell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=3954","title":{"rendered":"What’s that Smell?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today on Facebook I posted a link to this photo and accompanying story<\/a> about a racist NASCAR fan, generating this heated comment from a friend, an understandably beleaguered non-racist NASCAR supporter:<\/p>\n

\n

Probably the most misinformed bit of drivel written about NASCAR to date. Funny how the “journalist” leaps to unsubstantiated conclusions but would scream bloody murder if a similarly inaccurate statement was made about a passtime he favored.<\/span><\/p>\n

If someone were to print words to the affect that all football\/NBA fans are rapists because of the actions of Kobe Bryant, Lawrence Taylor and Ben Rothlisburger he’d be run out of town on a rail, but feel free to apply outdated stereotypes to a sport with ratings on par with the NFL.<\/span><\/p>\n

NASCAR is no longer a southern sport, and if the “journalist” had taken the time to look into NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program, he’d have arrived at that conclusion all on his own.<\/span><\/p>\n

The “Toothless racist wearing a wifebeater with a big old mullet running down his back” is becoming harder and harder to find at race tracks these days, and I’ve personally witnessed fans being asked to leave (Bristol, TN this March) for wearing a shirt like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Yeah, but . . . did anyone ask the retard in the photo to leave?\u00a0 Maybe he was escorted out of the Talladega stands after that photo was taken, but I strongly suspect not.\u00a0 This embarrassing demographic . . . poor, uneducated, redneck, racist . . . is a significant part of stock car racing’s fan base, and everyone knows it.<\/p>\n

I’m not into NASCAR, but I am into motorcycling, and this jerk’s inbred cousins have pretty much taken over the Honda Goldwing forum I used to frequent, posting racist messages that have nothing to do with motorcycling.\u00a0 It started as soon as Obama was elected, accelerated with the passage of health care reform, and is in full bloom now with Arizona’s new “show us your papers” law.\u00a0 The forum’s moderators, who used to immediately kill political posts, now stand by and let it happen.<\/p>\n

I’m no longer part of the forum.\u00a0 It’s not cowardice.\u00a0 I just don’t want to be in the same place . . . whether it be an online forum, a house, a bar, a restaurant, or a stadium . . . with people like that.\u00a0 They smell.<\/p>\n

\n

Once racists are out of their teens, like the (I’m guessing) 30-something pinhead in the photo, they’re gone.\u00a0 They’ll never be anything but<\/em> racist, irredeemably so.\u00a0 There’s no use trying to challenge their assumptions or change their beliefs; you run into a brick wall of epistemic closure<\/a>. I’m not saying anything new or profound here, or indeed anything useful.\u00a0 There are a hell of a lot of racists around.\u00a0 They aren’t going anywhere; they’ll never change.<\/p>\n

But they’re becoming empowered again.\u00a0 Over the past 60 or so years, leadership at all levels of society . . . church, school, military, business, politics, media . . . kept a tight lid on public expressions of racism, and people, regardless of their innermost feelings, generally behaved. No one would have dreamed, for example, of wearing a “No Niggers In NASCAR” t-shirt out in public.<\/p>\n

So why, I’m asking, would anyone think it’s okay to wear a t-shirt like that today?\u00a0 Something is slipping.\u00a0 It’s not business, it’s not education, it’s not the military.\u00a0 I think it’s the media.\u00a0 And our politicians.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, Don Imus was censured and temporarily banned from the airwaves after calling members of a womens’ basketball team “nappy-headed hoes.”\u00a0 If Rush Limbaugh were to say “nigger” in a radio broadcast tomorrow, what do you think would happen?\u00a0 You know what I think?\u00a0 Every media outlet in America, from Fox News to the New York Times, would quote him.\u00a0 Keith Olbermann would get an entire hour-long show out of it.\u00a0 Republican congressmen and senators would find excuses not to denounce him.\u00a0 Tea Party reactionaries would win elections by paying Rush to appear with them at voter rallies.\u00a0 And Rush himself?\u00a0 Not only would he not be censured, he’d be more popular than ever.<\/p>\n

Something’s going bad in America, and it’s beginning to smell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today on Facebook I posted a link to this photo and accompanying story about a racist NASCAR fan, generating this heated comment from a friend, an understandably beleaguered non-racist NASCAR supporter: Probably the most misinformed bit of drivel written about NASCAR to date. Funny how the “journalist” leaps to unsubstantiated conclusions but would scream bloody […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,250,10,16,5,2],"tags":[71,69,70],"class_list":["post-3954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-media","category-motorcycling","category-personal","tag-nascar","tag-racism","tag-white-supremacy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954","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=3954"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7515,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954\/revisions\/7515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}