By G.A. Afolabi
As I mentioned in a previous article, we are watching the slow death of the Republican party. In medical parlance, right now the GOP is in the last stages of death. Republicans have officially lost it. There views are so out of this world, you might as well ask Optimus Prime for political advice.
Barack Obama's election, has infuriated conservative, white males who believed that they were going to be in power forever. Actually, they not only believed this, they also demanded it. Consider their virulent objection to the concept of affirmative action, even though the legacy system, which lowers the bar for children of wealthy alumni, has been benefited slackers like George W. Bush and John McCain for years.
However this fictional disfranchisement is driving them literally insane. Contrary to the beliefs of propagandists like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, white men are not in the minority, nor are they suffering from overt discrimination. There are currently six non-whites in the U.S. Senate, the other 97 are Caucasian..Justice Clarence Thomas is one of only two non whites to serve on the Supreme Court in its 200-year history, and according to a report by the Glass Ceiling Commission, 97 percent of Fortune 1000 CEOs are white men.
Recent pronouncements by right-wing commentators seem to indicate that many of them are losing touch with reality. Although, after living through eight years of the Bush administration, which cut taxes to the rich and started two wars and yet were surprised by a deficit, I wonder if conservatives ever had a firm grasp on reality. Here are some of the recent innaccurate comments made by media conservatives:
- Talk show host Michael Savage recently said that "white, heterosexual Christian men are the epitome of what is right with America." (Even though he is Jewish!). Mr. Wiener might want to note that most of the men who bankrupted the American economy were white and the geniuses behind the decline of the American auto industry were all white too.
- Many conservative media figures have accused the Obama administration of being "socialist" for pumping government money into troubled corporations such as GM. They would do well to remember that President George W. Bush directed billions of dollars to bail out the troubled banking industry. (The motor companies also first requested their bailout under Bush's administration.)
- And as for Rush Limbaugh, well every other word that comes out of his mouth is either incorrect or a lie. A quick review of the Media Matters web site will provide you with plenty of evidence of this. He recently blamed Obama's economic policies for South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's sex scandal, even though Sanford's affair with his mistress has been going on for more than a year, and Obama has been president for less than six months!
I recently heard Randi Rhodes on Air America say something very sanguine. She said that don't believe anything she says, check it out first. It's very simple to do a Google search and research issues before you come up with an opinion. They teach these things in Journalism school, but most of the talking heads on ,FOX "News" wouldn't know this because they are not journalists. Glenn Beck admits this. When cornered by the hosts of "The View," Beck admitted that he was not a journalist, but a commentator, and never checks out facts before he repeats them to millions of listeners.
I guess the people at FOX think their audience are so dumb, they will believe anything they tell them, and that's scary. Because when Beck and his cohorts are yelling into the television that the Obama's goons are coming to take your guns and put your kids into government reeducation camps, some poorly educated, unemployed worker might not only believe it, but act on it.
The right was up in arms when the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning about increasing right-wing extremism, but in the last six months we have seen the assassination of Dr. George Tiller, a doctor who proved abortion services, the deaths of two police officers, who were attacked a by a gun enthusiast, who believed they were coming to disarm him, and the death of a security guard gunned down by a neo-Nazi who believed that Obama was the vanguard of a Black-Jewish conspiracy against white men.
So to right-wing commentators, give a thought to what you say before you publish or broadcast it. Words don't hurt people, but words put in the minds deranged, gun enthusiasts do.
