A question then...

If "everything is context", then do you agree, Mr. Tubbs, that Don Imus' remarks in April 2007 were taken out of context as being a racial slur - http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/211954/is_don_imus_an_innocent_victim.html ?

by Tom Murphy (3 articles, 3 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 1545 comments) on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 11:03:48 AM
 

Or how about.....

David Duke?

by Matthew Griffin (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 35 comments) on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 11:38:08 AM
 

Logic. Logic. Logic. Not non sequitur.

Matthew: You write — Or how about.....David Duke? 

     In my unedited, rambling, supercilious, pedantic diatribe of a response to Tom, I somehow managed to overlook one criticism of his response to my editorial concerning ‘Context.” I forgot about non sequitur.  

     Thus, I invite you to slog your way through my acknowledged poorly composed reply for what pertains to yours also.

     As to David Duke, he was, without the first hint of any legitimate genetic premise, a racial supremacist who defended and advanced the most heinous criminal acts against others who did not appear to reconcile with his own external physical features.  David Duke never had nor has the first complaint against the aggregation of those he railed against.  

     I truly wish everyone acquainted themselves with at least the principles of logic, before presuming that just because they say something it must be a logical expression. Whether Right or Left, or somewhere between the extremes of the continuum, is irrelevant to the requirement to think and advance arguments according to those simple principles. And it doesn’t require a college education. All it takes is the desire to invest the time and effort to inquire a tad into them.  

Ed   

by Ed Tubbs (136 articles, 1 quicklinks, 22 diaries, 48 comments) on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 3:25:51 PM
 

My point was not Context...

Ed, the reason I mention David Duke is not to cite another example of someone being taken out of context.  I assume (although I may be wrong) that Tom was taking the same approach.

I wouldn't argue that Imus was taken out of context.  He made an extremely stupid and insensitive comment which may have been overblown.  (And unforgiveably - not even funny).  I'd make the same point about Duke.  Never taken out of context.

Which brings us to Wright.  I am not prepared to give him a pass because he was taken out of context.  Baloney.  I've listened to him at length, beyond the snippets on television.  He's just a plain, old, ordinary Anti-American Racist (and a bit of a Kook).

Obama demonstrates very poor judgement in sitting in his church, donating huge sums of money, and claiming him as his mentor and spiritual advisor.

I think Dick Morris has it right when he suggests that Obama latched on to Wright for political expediency.  And it worked.  But it could only take him so far before it hurt him.  Like in a National Election.

So now we can accuse Obama of having poor judgement at the very least, and at most, because of his reaction to the furor, we can suggest that he is also a racist.  When you hear Obama describe his Grandmother as a "Typical White Woman", please step back, be objective (Honestly) and imagine a White guy describing a "Typical Black Woman".  In any context.

Imagine Trent Lott said it.  Or Rush Limbaugh.  What would the reaction be from Black Democrats?

Thanks for your response and I like forward to your thoughts. 

by Matthew Griffin (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 35 comments) on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 5:23:43 PM
 

I can't walk on water, nor can anyone else.

Matthew:

You write —  “I am not prepared to give him a pass because he was taken out of context.  Baloney.  I've listened to him at length, beyond the snippets on television.  He's just a plain, old, ordinary Anti-American Racist (and a bit of a Kook).Obama demonstrates very poor judgement in sitting in his church, donating huge sums of money, and claiming him as his mentor and spiritual advisor.I think Dick Morris has it right when he suggests that Obama latched on to Wright for political expediency.”

     As an atheist, I neither go to church nor have much patience with those who do, which is to say I’ve never been to Pastor Wright’s church. I’ve never listened to any of his sermons. I don’t know him at all, and barely know of him. Regardless, per Scripture, I’m not prepared to judge him; ie that he’s a racist, plain or old or ordinary or otherwise.

     Maybe he is. However, it’s every bit as likely he is not, that he is working off a history that justifies whatever opinions he opines. As much as I’ve never been to his church, neither have I ever been black, forced to walk in his shoes.

     As to Dick Morris . . . would anyone please informatively inform me how the hell he, or anyone else, would know anything relative to the reason Senator Obama visited Wright’s church, why he remained there, why he regarded the fellow as a source of inspiration. In the absence of written or oral explanations from the actor, to suggest one knows, or even suspects the genesis, why anyone does anything, is prima facie evidence of a highly dangerous arrogance way, way out of control. Used to really piss me of when my wife, now ex-, tried to pull that crap, and she lived with me . . . for 18 years! Unless I tell you why I did something, or believe something, you just don’t have the first gnawing hint of a guess, and have no moral right to propound an explanation that is as likely 180 degrees wrong as it is anything else.

     Poor judgment? Damned near every Republican leader — The Bushes [Pappy, Jeb, & George W], Ronald Reagan, Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich, the list is lonnnnng  — sought out Rev Francis Schaeffer, perhaps the arch-icon of really vitriolic Hate-America speak (Google search the guy!), and Senator McCain, it turns out sought the support of Rev. Hagge, the neocon pseudo Nazi wannabe who excoriated the US, claiming Katrina and HIV-AIDS were God’s wrath for our libertine culture. Not to mention, though I’m doing it now, how McCain couldn’t get close enough to the wacko Reverend Falwell. So, the question remains: if Senator Obama engaged poor judgment, what the hell do you call what all the GOP (gonna have to wash my mouth after even uttering the party) leadership has done, and gotten Scot free on?

     Bottom line here (I also detest clichés): Barack Obama is a human being, just like Clinton and McCain and Imus and everyone else who’ve ever spoken. Things don’t always come out exactly right. But you know, the so, so self-righteous Right will employ every duplicitous trick and bald-faced lie and distortion and bob-and-weave distraction to gain, then hold onto power. The Right is evil incarnate, and it just doesn’t care. So I suppose this is just something Senator Obama is going to have to deal with.

by Ed Tubbs (136 articles, 1 quicklinks, 22 diaries, 48 comments) on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 7:07:49 PM
 

So wait a second....

You don't want to judge, per scripture, that someone may or may not be a racist, but you don't have a problem calling an entire Political Group (the Right) made up of 10 of Millions of People you have never met, "Evil Incarnate"?

I'm sorry Ed, but I think I lost you there for a second.  Our conversation suddenly veered to political rant.  Who brought the Republicans in to this anyway?  This issue is still in Barak's court as far as I'm concerned. 

by Matthew Griffin (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 35 comments) on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 7:17:37 PM
 

If it walks like a duck, pulls the lever on behalf of one..

Matthew:

I’m not, but I’ll say it anyway: sorry for the rant. But here’s why I get so worked up over stuff like this.

For years into more than a decade, liberals, which I very proudly consider myself as one, sat back while the “conservatives” hurtled hate-filled stones our way. I watched as Newt, then Tom, then Mitch came repeatedly and respectively to the floor of the House and the well of the Senate to lecture liberals on family values and patriotism. Entire weeks were devoted to applauding efforts to amend the constitution to ostracize, then disenfranchise an entire subset of American citizens because of a genetic predisposition. Among the loudest was “Wide Stance” Larry. Yet every GOP senator rose to stoke the embers. Those scurrilous efforts were matched by the one to save the flag. Next in line, except for Beat the tom-tom Tom Tancredo, who was years in front of the teeming klan, was the push to damn 12 million who were here illegally and “get ‘em the hell out,” regardless no one in America would be prepared to cough up the funds necessary. In the halls of government and across the fascist airwaves, hate was rampant. It didn’t matter that none of them had the first fidelity to them. They were political ploys to play to a debased base.

No lie nor no twist of a definition was beyond their reach as weaponry. Previously I sat and listened while associate after associate after associate parroted the vitriol they’d gleaned from such stalwart and courageous folk such as Rush and Bill and Sean and Laura and Michael and Michelle and Ann and Glenn et al, not a one of whom rose from the ranks of the downtrodden or was so brave to put themselves in harm’s way. And voter after voter after voter voted the cowardly hypocrites into office, again and again. Hence the appellation, “Evil incarnate.” What one does, does indeed speak louder than anything he or she might say.

by Ed Tubbs (136 articles, 1 quicklinks, 22 diaries, 48 comments) on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 7:48:22 PM
 

Get out your Funk & Wagnall's, Tom

Tom:

If "everything is context", then do you agree, Mr. Tubbs, that Don Imus' remarks in April 2007 were taken out of context as being a racial slur – 

     To dispatch first things, first: by your photograph, it seems you were, or are, in the United States Army. (The photo is tiny, so give me a break on the details.) Me too, long ago: RA 16 805 398, combat wounded, except that there was no actual combat, in that it was thrown up debris from a remotely-detonated anti-tank mine that blew PFC Hendrix to powdered gristle along Korea’s DMZ. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time is all.  

     Regardless, the experience, via dint of the experience in and of itself, gives no member of the ranks especial expertise one click beyond that highly limited, personal experience; not on Iraq, or on the Vietnam, or Korea. I issue that point  as I hear the offer, I didn’t and don’t want anyone’s gratitude for my service, and sure as hell despise the notion a pat on the back is worth so much more than a sharp stick in the eye from folks who never had the courage in the first place. Nonetheless, I would like all the swaggering pro-war enthusiasts to either enlist themselves, and if too old, to send their own kids, and in any event, to ask to have their taxes raised so that their grandkids won’t have to pay the toll.  

     On to your remark: First of all, 'context' is the entirety of the circumstance in which a statement or event occurs. Next, your comment composes an error in logic. As propounded, it seems to recommend that “nappy heads” might not be a racial slur, depending primarily on Mr. Imus’ underlying prejudices. The fact is, while Mr. Imus may or may not be a bigot himself, a circumstance I have neither accumulated evidence nor personal knowledge of, the remark is indeed an offensive racial slur that was rightly condemned.   

     But what that has to do with the Reverend Wright (I’m only guessing he’s called that, and not Minister, or Pastor.), or Senator Obama, I do not know. The rage “God damn America!” or, any of the others, I hold, can be very legitimately issued, if you’ve ever been an African-American whose been subjected to all of the history of slavery and Jim Crow and Yankee segregation and employment and housing discrimination.  

     In 2006, I was attending an insurance agents’ meeting in the Tampa Bay. I informed the members at my table that among my market areas were those east of US-41 in Palmetto, Bradenton, and Sarasota, the replies all hovered over, “Oh that’s ‘darkey-town, you don’t really go there do you?” Also among the 200 or so agents was not to be found even one black face. Furthermore, on far, far too many streets, in far, far too many yards and on the tailgates of far, far too many pickups are the ‘Stars-n-Bars.’   

     Yeah, give me some black DNA, and some taste of the diet black Americans have suffered their entire lives, and I can hear myself screaming alongside Jeremiah Wright the same or similar epithets. Burn L.A., or Newark, or Detroit . . . maybe that too.

     See, I don’t take crap from anyone; never have, never will. I even tried to the limits of common sense to mix things up with members of the American Legion in the Grand Sierra Resort, in Reno last year, for inviting the first coward to cut & run — George Bush — as their keynote speaker. As Bush was staying in the hotel, a Washoe County sheriff’s deputy and a member of the Secret Service called me over, and asked whether I was threatening the President of the United States. “Nope, that would be a violation of federal law, only these SOB’s (I didn’t abbreviate the epithet, however) for inviting the chickens**t a**h**e upstairs!”  

     My point: ignoring an ugly blemish is not at all a part of loving that which is host to the blemish. On the contrary, ignoring the ugly blemish is intentional myopic pursuit of that which is false. Facing up to the fact of the blemish, and doing all that is possible to rid the body of it, is the heart and soul of truly loving the host. And more than my life, I love this country.

     If there is a just god, the evidence absent first-premise I dismiss out of hand, but for the sake of contemplation only, if there is a just god, there has been plenty in our history to warrant God’s damnation.  

     That said, I have not, nor have you, nor has any white person the moral — the legal right, yes, the moral right, no — right to criticize the feelings of those we have no way of identifying with. That’s because we have no notion whatsoever what another has endured that has prompted the call. Behaviors that follow the feelings can be either legal or illegal, and are subject to criticism and constraint accordingly. But not the feelings.  

Ed   

by Ed Tubbs (136 articles, 1 quicklinks, 22 diaries, 48 comments) on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 2:52:01 PM