Tea Partiers are Like the Founders—Racists! Meltdown with Keith Olbermann Part 33

by David Forsmark  •  Feb 17, 2010 at 9:48 am
Cross-posted from NewsRealBlog.com

http://www.davidforsmark.com/2010/02/tea-partiers-are-like-the-founders-racists

Attention Tea Partiers! Keith Olbermann has finally admited that you have chosen appropriately in identifying with the Founders. You DO have something in common with the people who established our nation.

You are all racists.

OLBERMANN: And I know phrases like "Tea Klux Klan" are incendiary and I know I use them in part because I'm angry that at so late a date we still have to bat back that racial uneasiness which envelops us all.

Then this astounding statement, which is as historically illiterate as it is hateful:

OLBERMANN: Not very many of the founding fathers were evolved enough to believe that black people were actually people. The Founding Fathers thought they were and fought hard to make sure they would always remain slaves.

The next time Keith Olbermann calls you racist or any other hateful ephithet, take comfort in the fact that you are in the best possible company. In fact, if Keith Olbermann is not directing hate-filled rants of invective your way, that will be the time to second guess yourselves.

Keith gave a clue from the get-go where he was headed with his Special Comment last night. (Click the NewsRealBlog link above for the outrageous video)

OLBERMANN: Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on this Presidents' Day celebrating George Washington, and the Founding Fathers he represents and Abraham Lincoln, and the Emancipation he represents.

Right. George Washington represented the Founding Fathers, while Lincoln represented emancipation. Get it? One guy ONLY represented the other white guys. It gets worse, however, much worse.

OLBERMANN: Not all of our heritage is honorable. Not all the decisions of the founding fathers were noble. Not very many of the founding fathers were evolved enough to believe that black people were actually people. The Founding Fathers thought they were and fought hard to make sure they would always remain slaves.

This is beneath contempt, and undeserving of a response. But since it's my job…

Slavery may have been dehumanizing, but almost no one believed slaves were not people. Otherwise it would not have been slavery, anymore than teaming up horses is slavery. But there were NO founders that did not believe slaves were people. The 3/5ths Compromise was about counting PEOPLE, you insufferable bag of mashed up hatred.

The issue of slavery was the most contentious of the Constitutional Convention; and if your above slander were even close to correct, there would have been NO states without slavery.

If you were in the ballpark with the truth, why did George Washington free all of his slaves upon his death—and provide them with pensions in his will? Why did Thomas Jefferson write, "It is written in the book of fate that these people will be free." Benjamin Franklin, never a proponent of slavery, became an active abolitionist before his death, joining the Quakers in a petition for swift abolition.

These are just the Big Three. Other examples would be too numerous for this post– but you know this. Entire books have been written on it. You're counting on your (largely white) guilt-ridden and ill-informed audience not to have a clue.

Of course, Olbermann is infamous for his use of George Washington comparisons. But dead white men aren't the only guilty ones…

OLBERMANN: And I think, having now been one for 51 years, I am permitted to say I believe prejudice and discrimination still sit, defeated, dormant, or virulent, somewhere in the soul of each white man in this country.

No. You are not permitted. (and you're only 51? Really?) Then Jeremiah Wright gets to talk for all black men, right? Especially one who sat as his feet for 20 years? Keith, having been a man for nearly 49 years, I think I am permitted to say that most of us don't consider you to be one.

OLBERMANN: I think the progress we have made in the last 60 years in this country has been measurable and good. But I think discrimination has been tamed, not eradicated.

We haven't eradicated murder or rape either, but that doesn't mean it lurks somewhere in the soul of each of us

OLBERMANN: These thoughts still linger in our lives, still actively passed to some of us by people who are not like my father, who never questioned their own upbringing or parents or school or world. That older, brutal, prejudiced-with-impugnity world which reappears every day like Brigadoon with virulence as in Don Imus's infamous remarks; sometimes with the utter arrogant tone-deafness of John Mayer's Playboy interview; sometimes with a kind of poorly informed benign phrase like Harry Reid's comment about "dialect;" sometimes with the lunkheadedness of surprise that nobody is screaming "Emm-effer, I want more iced tea" at a Harlem restaurant.

Hmmm, Keith, that last one is pretty specific. Speak for yourself—oh wow, I think you just did.

OLBERMANN: Thus it has become fashionable —sometimes psychologically necessary — that when some of us express it we have to put it in code, or dress it up, or provide a rationalization to ourselves for it that this has nothing to do with race or prejudice, the man's a Socialist and he's bent on destroying the country and he was only elected by people who can't speak English.
The whole of the "anger at government" movement is predicated on this. Times are tough, the future is confusing, the threat from those who would dismantle our way of life is real (as if we weren't to some extent doing it for them). And the president is black. But you can't come out and say that's why you are scared.

And since we can't come out and say it, we have Keith with his 51 years (are you sure that's all you are?) of experience to read our minds. What would we do without him? Yes, no one would have called Bill Clinton a socialist if he had taken over 2 of the Big 3 automakers. No one was throwing that word around over Hillarycare—were they? Or are you going to argue that Bill Clinton was the first black president?

OLBERMANN: Say that, and in all but the lifeless fringes of our society, you are an outcast. And so this is where the euphemisms come in. Your taxes haven't gone up, the budget deficit is from the last administration's adventurer's war, Grandma is much more likely to be death-paneled by your insurance company, and a Socialist president would be one who tried to buy as many voters as possible with tax cuts.

Say what? I think we've covered Keith's ability to decide that everything BUT racist rhetoric is racist rhetoric, as long as it is part of opposition to Obama. But what the HECK does that last sentence even mean? Did you pick that up on the lifeless fringes of society?

I suppose in a Mad Hatter world where calling someone who takes over entire industries a socialist must be a cover for latent racism; the real socialist would be someone who does NOT transfer wealth or assets to the government?

OLBERMANN: And I know phrases like "Tea Klux Klan" are incendiary and I know I use them in part because I'm angry that at so late a date we still have to bat back that racial uneasiness which envelops us all.

"Us all," who, paleface? Everybody does it is the oldest dodge in the psychological book, bud. Talk about your white guilt. But this seems to go beyond that a little.

OLBERMANN: And I know, if I could listen only to Lincoln on this of all days about the better angels of our nature, I'd know that what we're seeing at the Tea Parties is, at its base people who are afraid. Terribly, painfully, cripplingly, blindingly, afraid.

But let me ask all of you who attend these things: How many black faces do you see at these events? How many Hispanics? Asians?Gays? Where are these people? Surely there must be blacks who think they're being bled by taxation. Surely there must be Hispanics who think the government should've let the auto industry fail. Surely there must be people of all colors and creeds who believe in cultural literacy tests and speaking English.

Ask yourself: Where are the black faces? Who am I marching with? What are we afraid of? And if it really is only a president's policy and not his skin. Ask yourself one final question: Why are you surrounded by the largest crowd you'll ever again see in your life that consists of nothing but people who look exactly like you?

Oh, I don't know, maybe it's just the lineup of MSNBC hosts and their relatives who came out for this march?

No wonder you are asking "Where are all the black faces?" Keith. So, what was your answer? Surely there must be blacks who think that we are not being bled enough by taxation. Surely there must be Hispanics who think we should take over the health care industry like we did the auto industry. Surely there must be people of all colors and creeds who think we should give foreign terrorists the same rights as American shoplifters.

No wonder you feel guilty.

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