Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Jimmy plays the race card

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American," Carter said. They don't call him the "dumbest president" for nothing.

This ought to generate some interesting commentary:

Update: Yup, lots of fine commentary. To highlight some of it:

NRO editorial - "Georgia Pharisee":

Jimmy Carter now has done to his ex-presidency what he did to his presidency, which is to say that he has, through his incessant moral preening, converted mere incompetence into something more unseemly. ...

... The facile accusations of racism are both banal and cynical. And they are right on cue: Wolf-cries of "racism!" are a way to smother debate, which is something that Democrats, who are losing the health-care debate, must find appealing right about now.

...This showy self-righteousness is of a piece with Mr. Carter’s other forays into political controversy ...

...The inescapable conclusion is that Mr. Carter has defective judgment. We already knew that: We’ve known it since he clenched his fist and proclaimed energy conservation the "moral equivalent of war" while clad in a sweater....[Read on...]

Mark Steyn.

Victor Davis Hanson.

Kathy Shaidle.

7 comments:

Roy Eappen said...

Jimmy Carter is a pretty pathetic.

Bert said...

I'd say Carter is as dumb as a fencepost, but that would be insulting..... to the fencepost.

Ted Betts said...

Right.

Because Glen Beck calling Obama a racist and saying he is introducing his stimulus program and healthcare because he wants reparations from white people and that he hates whites and white culture wasn't raising race as an issue first.

Because Teabagger in Chief Mark Williams calling Obama an "Indonesian Muslim" and "racist in chief" wasn't race bating.

Because the hundreds and hundreds of signs at Republican, er, teabagger protests with Obama in white face has nothing to do with race.

etc.

Certainly all protest is not automatically racist just because Obama is part black. Carter may or may not be an idiot. But on this he is right. When the leaders of these protests are so explicitly race-bating, and the followers massively follow-suit, the answer is perfectly clear.

Obama is doing nothing now that he did not campaign for and got elected for. These protesters are not just race bating or attacking him because of his race, but are thoroughly anti-democratic.

Xanthippa said...

Carter probably truly thinks this is racism against Obama: he lacks the capacity to understand the issues - so he reduces them to 'the visible'...

When Carter was President, I was a small child growing up on the other side of the Iron Curtain. I could not read yet, but I saw the political cartoons (all anti-American, of course: this was a Socialist paradise I was living in!) of Carter and got different family members to explain them to me.

What I was surprised to find out was that even though the 'official line' was anti-America, anti-capitalism, and all that - it was NOT anti-Carter!

He was not feared, like Reagan and Thatcher later were. Nor was he particularly disliked by the Socialist leaders: he was simply laughed at. Not taken seriously. He was just a joke - a convenient fool! Not even while he was in power - by his 'main enemy'....

Does that not say a lot about Mr. Carter?

Anonymous said...

Ted Betts said:

"Because Teabagger in Chief Mark Williams calling Obama an "Indonesian Muslim" and "racist in chief" wasn't race bating.

Because the hundreds and hundreds of signs at Republican, er, teabagger protests with Obama in white face has nothing to do with race."




"Teabagger", of course, is a offensive sexual term used by liberals to describe the freedom protesters who are against the record government spending.

And Ted really expects to be taken seriously?

Ted Betts said...

They call themselves teabaggers. And do so with pride. So how on earth can it be offensive.

Anyway, it was not my intension of of name calling him, but just shorthand commenting.

Call him "Tea Partyier in Chief" if you want.

The point still stands: he is a disgusting race-bating hateful man.

JR said...

Ted, You’re defending Carter’s stupidly paranoid charges of racism by saying “they started it”? Come on! That’s pretty lame even for a devoted, uncritical Obama fan. It’s as bad as Carter claiming to know it’s “racism” because he’s “from the south”.

Anyway, if you want to play that game one could say that Obama himself “started it” when he jumped to the defence of his race baiting pal Prof Gates when arrested by that Cambridge cop. And long before that there’s Obama’s 20 year association with his overtly racist spiritual adviser, Jeremiah Wright (where was Carter’s righteous indignation then?)

GWB endured eight years of vicious, scurrilous attacks from political opponents whose line then was “dissent is the highest form of patriotism”. So now when Tea Party protesters get vociferous about Obamacare it’s “dissent is the highest form of racism”[credits].

Smearing your opponents as “racists” to muzzle them instead of debating your healthcare plan’s alleged merits is a hateful, desperate strategy. It should be obvious that an accusation of racism is one of the most poisonous to debate possible. And it can only be a setback for race relations. But Carter is either too stupid to realize it or, worse, doesn’t give a damn. The former seems more plausible.

I don’t know what Glenn Beck said about Obama but I suspect you’re playing fast and loose with your paraphrasing. Maybe you could supply some evidence that includes the full context.