{"id":5272,"date":"2009-08-19T07:29:28","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T12:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5272"},"modified":"2009-08-19T08:01:34","modified_gmt":"2009-08-19T13:01:34","slug":"code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5272","title":{"rendered":"Code"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day, I wrote a piece about regional DFL activists and media figures trafficking in what I perceive (correctly, I think) to be Administration talking points.<\/a><\/p>\n

Pat Kessler – WCCO’s long-time Capitol correspondent and one of Minnesota’s foremost political journalists – notes that he’s been sending the following clarification to emailers asking about the appearance on KFAN that started the brouhaha:<\/p>\n

You need to know I did not call health care opponents racists.<\/p>\n

What I said Saturday was that some of the tension around the debate over President Obama’s policies is ‘about race’- some; not all or even most, but some.<\/p>\n

I also referred to ‘code words’ and phrases, and I could have been clearer.\u00a0 I did not mean that everyone who uses such language intends it to frighten or disparage black people.\u00a0 However, it is a matter of historical fact that certain rhetoric has had that impact in the past, and that some black people might — and do– interpret it that way today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, fair enough, as far as it goes.<\/p>\n

But – and I’m not aiming this at Kessler, specifically – there’s another set of code words and phrases at play here.\u00a0 There’s a solid case to be made that the biggest divide Obama brings out in America is class, not race.<\/p>\n

Class is all over the place these days.\u00a0 From Obama’s two-tiered healthcare plan and the privately-educated elites’ assault on vouchers and school choice <\/a>to Elizabeth Gates’ snarks about Sgt. Crowley’s eye liner<\/a>, the Obama Administration is all about class divides; the nation’s self-appointed brain trust has gotten the hoi-polloi <\/em>to anoint one of them (of a conveniently PR-worthy race) as president, and now they’re getting their due, exorcising their white liberal guilt at the wheel of the biggest spending machine in history.<\/p>\n

And the campaign against dissent is dredging up – and creating – all kinds of code words to keep the peasants down and in their place.\u00a0 Dissent from Obamacare, from Porkulus and the Eternal Deficit is compared with a regime that murdered tens of millions and made toothbrush mustaches forever out<\/em>; gigglingly linked with a mild but lurid sex act generally associated with homosexual relations; lumped with a hare-brained “birther” conspiracy that every significant dissenter has repudiated; put on watch lists and impugned with the slander that it is sympathetic with likes of Timothy McVeigh and Gordon Kahl, even with the idea of killing the President.<\/p>\n

In short – dissent is called the province of the ignorant, depraved and, let’s face it, “racist” masses that the government needs to protect the rest of America from.<\/p>\n

America has a racist past, it’s true.\u00a0 Unlike every other significant nation on earth, America has spent the past 150 years wrestling with that past, in its own imperfect way.<\/p>\n

Maybe all that prejudice and hate need to go somewhere; <\/em>the people who dare to dissent while middle-class and unconnected with clout are the unlucky, and absolutely permissible, targets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, I wrote a piece about regional DFL activists and media figures trafficking in what I perceive (correctly, I think) to be Administration talking points. Pat Kessler – WCCO’s long-time Capitol correspondent and one of Minnesota’s foremost political journalists – notes that he’s been sending the following clarification to emailers asking about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}