Yesterday, Mack used this delicious phrase–”uppity elitist”–when describing Obama and I wish I’d thought of it, because it seems to me to capture exactly how the Right is trying to portray him.
In the past couple of days, we’ve had two Republican big-wigs at the state level reminding us that Obama is getting a little too above his station. Good Ole Geoff Davis from Kentucky calls Obama “boy” and our own Good Ole Bill Hobbs today is all “The Natural Order of Things” and “Obama needs to remember who is the boss.” See, in case you didn’t notice, he’s uppity. He doesn’t know his place.
I can’t wait to see what happens if he becomes president. More than likely we’ll see Hobbs and them breaking out into some spontaneous remake of Blazing Saddles, with Hobbs as the little old lady trying to warn everyone that the new sheriff is a…
Well, if you haven’t seen the movie, you should, so that you can marvel about the ways in which we have regressed to where what once was biting satire is now almost a documentary,
Maybe it’s some kind of double insult–it’s bad enough that some Democrat running for president might think he’s better than these guys (insult enough) but that it’s some black guy who should know better than to even begin to think he’s better than those guys… holy sweet Jesus are they pissed.
At least, that’s what it looks like from the cheap seats here.
Not that Davis isn’t a class act all around. Be sure to get to the end of the article where he’s all like “Oh Clinton’s practically unhinged because she can’t keep her husband at home.”
Filed under: America how can I write a holy litany in your silly moo, Politics and Other Nonsense
I don’t believe that Hobbs’s post was intended to be racist. Though a PR man ought to know better than to write something that can that easily be construed as racist. I believe what he should have written was “Obama needs to remember that the constituency is boss.”
Good heavens man, read your own work. He needs an editor somethin’ fierce.
[...] in Uncategorized Bill Hobbs, communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party, who by all accounts had his own share of hard knocks, offers an albeit sincere helping hand to a fellow blogger whom he [...]
I’m rather appalled, but on reflection unsurprised that Democrats see racial connotations in that headline. Democrats see race in everything, even when it isn’t there, and they love to play the race card.
The item linked to an article about how the President is the servant of the people, not their boss. In fact, the words of my post, “remember who is boss,” linked to an article in whihc the author – not me – wrote this: “Candidacies for public office are extended job interviews, and Rule Number One of a job interview is Don’t Offend the Boss.”
If you trace back to the founding of the United States of America, you will see that the founding fathers believed that government existed with the consent of the governed, and that government of the people, by the people and FOR the people (in other words, working for the people not the other way around), was the natural state of things that flowed from man’s God-given rights.
In short, the people, not the president, are the boss.
The piece I linked to makes the case that Obama’s view of the relationship between the people and their president is upside down.
Of course, your average liberal can’t debate ideas and concepts, so they just resort to finding some nitpicky reason to call everyone a racist who disagrees with them or doesn’t support their favored candidate.
In this case, those of you who read my post and saw a racial anger are the true racists – you see Barack Obama only as a black man, not as a man of ideas. You fixate on his race – and you consider him to be black even though he is equally white. I made no mention of his race, but focused solely on his upside-down view of the relationship between people and president. You are overly fixated on race, as racists are.
Of course, your average liberal can’t debate ideas and concepts,
Was this necessary?
Who you calling average, whitebread?
I guess I’m just a nitpicky liberal, but I am fascinated at the concept of Lincoln as one of the founding fathers. And by the idea that the majority of the founding fathers wanted gov’t to be responsive to “the people.” In fact, that idea was hard-won, and the battle has to be refought fairly constantly. I would argue that, right now, the Democratic Party is a little closer to expanding the idea of gov’t responsibility to all the people than the Republican Party. Not a whole lot closer, mind you. But enough to be noticeable.
Of course, your average liberal can’t debate ideas and concepts, so they just resort to finding some nitpicky reason to call everyone a racist who disagrees with them or doesn’t support their favored candidate.
I know Hobbs’ post wasn’t racist, just stupid; but the moral outrage he exerts for being insinuated as a ‘racist,’ when he goes around calling Obama a bigot for calling people ‘bitter,’ and an anti-Semite for knowing pro-Palestinian people…is what invites these sorts of “attacks”.
Glass houses William Howard, glass houses.
Bill Hobbs is calling me a racist?! Bill Hobbs, who’s been trying to forward the “Obama has the same name as a crazed dictator and might be Muslim when he isn’t being a Marxist crypto-Christian” meme all season long is calling me a racist?
Oh, that’s rich.
But here’s the thing, Hobbs. So what? I am a racist. I run around steeping in white privilege all the time and not doing much about it. I benefit all the time from being white and I tend not to let it bug me because it makes my life easier. Whoop dee doo.
So, I don’t have to “see racism where there isn’t any” because as a racist, I know what you’re up to, brother. Did you mean that post to be specifically racist? You know what, I’m fine with believing that you didn’t. But I damn well do think that you are so used to crafting your message to play on white people’s baser urges (and let’s face it, white people are you Republicans prime constituency) that, at this point, it just comes naturally to you.
Plus, please, I call bullshit on this notion of “the President is the servant of the people.” Really? The people want to get the fuck out of Iraq. I don’t see the current Republican president doing anything about that. I don’t hear the Republican candidate throwing up his hands and saying “Well, the American people want to get out, so pull those troops out.” Most Americans are pissed off that your party decided the Constitution was just a damn piece of paper and that y’all could spy on whoever you want whenever you want, laws be damned, but I don’t see anyone apologizing or going to jail.
So, tell me, Hobbs. Is it just the Democratic presidents who have to understand that they are the servant of the people? Or is this just some ahistorical nonsense you’re bringing up now because that’s how you guys roll, just making up history to suit you as you need it?
, I call bullshit on this notion of “the President is the servant of the people.”
The notion is sound. The actuality is the flaw, and the thing against which libertarians rail mightily.
Here’s the problem with that, though. The President is not directly elected by the people. And as much as I would like to live in a nation of the people, by the people, for the people, that’s not the set-up we have. We live in a representative republic where the elected officials are, by design, supposed to overrule the people when the people are being “stupid.” There’s, then, a flaw in the design. Not just the actuality.
Ha, and upon looking around the blogosphere I think we can mark today as the day that Ole Bill learned to copy and paste.
Yeah, I was about to say that comment looked familiar . . .
For the record, it wasn’t a little old lady who was trying to warn the good people of Rock Ridge that the sheriff is a ni-(clang).
It was Gabby Johnson. Let us thank him for that example of authentic frontier gibberish.
If this is Blazing Saddles, then Obama must be the Waco Kid describing Pennsylvanians.
“You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.”
when one lacks substantive argument or refutation of one’s opponents’ salient points, it is often necessary to resort to personal attacks, yes. of course, had it been me i’d've been more elegant and circumspect about it, but what do i know? i’m just a stupid liberal.
I work in government, and I can’t tell you how many calls I get from people saying, “we’re not ready for THAT” (Obama.) It sickens me to hear people say it. It seems to me Hobbs is playing to the sort of GOP constituency that is not “ready for that.” By using ambiguous phrasing he can deny he’s racist all he wants, but still leaves enough room for interpretation for bigots to feel he’s on their side. If Bill Hobbs truly is no bigot, he should make it unequivocally clear that Barack is not a Muslim, instead of insinuating falsehoods that appeal to prejudice in people. Of course, he’ll do this when pigs fly.