Condi wowing Euro Press

POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Saturday, February 12, 2005 16:09
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SOUPCATCHER

Sunday, February 6, 2005 11:53 PM

For many years the Democratic party was a party that had a large number of racists in positions of power. Many of these people shifted allegiance to the Republican party because they didn't like the direction the Democrats were heading. Robert Byrd is definitely an exemplar of the old Democratic party while David Duke would be an example of one aspect of the new Republican party. Are there racists in both parties? Absolutely. I personally believe that we will always have racists present in this society. People have just learned that they need to be more quiet about their bigotry. But are there differences in the levels of racism of each party? I think so. (Or, in other words, think of things in terms of probabilities).

Just a few questions for you: Would a supporter of civil rights be more likely to consider themselves Democrat or Republican? Would a supporter of women's rights be more likely to consider themselves Democrat or Republican? Would a supporter of equal rights for homosexuals be more likely to consider themselves Democrat or Republican? Which party would you more expect to find a racist in, the Democrats or the Republcans? Which party would you more expect to find a misogynist in, the Democrats or the Republicans? Which party would you more expect to find a homophobe in, the Democrats or the Republicans? If you answer Republican to the first three and Democrat to the last three of these questions then I'll just disagree with you, acknowledge that we see the world differently, and move on.

I see one party that capitalized on the bigotry of some of its members in the most recent election. I see another party that has gone away from championing minority group rights to the extent that they did in the sixties and seventies. There is discussion among members of the African American community about concerns that the Democratic party takes their votes for granted. It's a worthwhile discussion to have. But if you honestly believe that Republicans have taken up the mantle of the Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Rights Movement, and the Gay Rights Movement, then I think you are sorely mistaken.

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"What sort of raw meat do you people feed your cruiser captains, Hamish?" - Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Monday, February 7, 2005 4:28 AM

If I had my way the European press would really have a lot to gape at with respect to Rice.

But yes, Europe is about as lily white as it comes, from what I’ve seen of it. In fact, in all my visits to Europe, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black person. Closest I’ve ever seen were Indian. Europe’s idea of “diversity” among ethnicities is completely different then how people in the US would understand it. In Europe two people can look, dress and speak exactly the same (from the point of view of Americans), yet be considered ethnic opposites of one another to the point of holding real animosity towards each other.

In Europe, bigotry is colorblind. (At least some parts.)

CORRECTION: After thinking about it a while, I actually met several Nigerians in Rome and Naples. Though all of them were foreigners who rarely even spoke the language and were generally poorly regarded. In fact, one poor Nigerian boy got lost in the metro in Naples and spoke so little Italian that we had to help him find his way to the train station.

STARPILOTGRAINGER

Monday, February 7, 2005 2:39 PM

Now if only she'd use her power and influence to promote Serenity.

Star Pilot Grainger
"Remember, the enemy's gate is down."
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FINN MAC CUMHAL

Monday, February 7, 2005 5:20 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
If you answer Republican to the first three and Democrat to the last three of these questions then I'll just disagree with you, acknowledge that we see the world differently, and move on.

I think your examples are largely misleading and more a result of fabricated simplistic characterizations of the media then any real degree of description. How a group is perceived is not as much a function of how they operate, but often more of how they are depicted by others. With 90% of the journalists in this country being Liberals, it is quite easy to see how a depiction favorable to Democrats can emerge, and how Republicans can be misrepresented. Calling someone a racist or a bigot is an immature tactic that is generally used more by the Left then the Right in this country. So I might ask who is more likely to scream racism at the drop of a hat, Republican or Democrat. You’re whole point seems tantamount to pointing a finger at a group of people and screaming racism. The truth is the issue of racism exists largely among Democrats as a tool to attack Republican and deflect past transgressions. But Republicans are no more racist then Democrats and the issue itself cannot be dealt with honestly because of the obscuration from the degree of polarization and name calling. In fact with support for things like Affirmative Action it might seem that race is a bigger issue among Democrats, but that’s not a story the media will likely trumpet, even though it is policies held by Liberal Democrats that today prevent qualified young people from getting into schools based solely on the color of their skin.

Strom Thurmond is an example of a Segregationist Democrat who switched sides, unlike Byrd. You’ll find that, in general Thurmond was ridiculed for being a racist far more then Byrd. How is that possible? Byrd was a member of the KKK. Thurmond wasn’t. That alone is enough to stain Byrd as a much bigger racist. Thurmond was one of the first senators to hire African-American staffers and sent his daughter to an integrated school. Many ridiculed Thurmond for these “calculated” moves, but it wasn’t calculated when Byrd did them. What I see is an example of a segregationist who changed sides and may have taken on a more ‘Republican’ philosophy, and a media composed mostly of non-Republicans seeing in Thurmond a means of attacking Republicans, are certainly not likely to depicted it in that way.

ECOSTAR

Monday, February 7, 2005 8:30 PM

How a group is perceived is not as much a function of how they operate, but often more of how they are depicted by others. With 90% of the journalists in this country being Liberals, it is quite easy to see how a depiction favorable to Democrats can emerge, and how Republicans can be misrepresented.

While I won't engage in the "who is the biggest racist" debate evidenced here, I will contest your assertion about the liberal media. I have been and continue to be astonished by the currently inaccurate, albiet successfully achieved characterization of the media.

You claim that 90% of the journalists are liberals, a claim you do not support, but which I will not dispute. You then follow that it is not surprising that Republicans are misrepresented because of this bias.

My astonishment is over how monumentally naive claims about the "liberal media" tend to be and yet how successful such claims are in painting the media as liberally biased. Why is this problematic?

First, citing journalists' ideological proclivities as evidence of media bias is like citing union membership as evidence of a liberal bias in corporate America. By conservatives accounts, the media is the only corporately controlled business that is run by the employees and not by the owners.

I can see it now, a journalist decides to do a story on President Bush, the Editorial Board and the owner of Fox or CBS rolls over and says "whatever you say liberal journalist. I am at your beck and call. Though I own this business, you know better than I what is newsworthy and appropriate to report." Liberal journalist have no control over reporting, owners desire to obtain market share and sell newspapers does.

Journalists must submit their reports to an editorial board, who vet the content. If it isn't in line with the beliefs of the owner or the corporate strategy of its CEO and Board of Directors it doesn't happen. Journalists tdon't report off the cuff. They read a teleprompter for a reason, they're say what they're told or they lose their job. Don't believe me just ask the two Fox reporters who were fired over an unfavorable report on Mansanto.

Cite me the ideological make-up of the owners and CEOs of the major media organizations and I might agree. Happily, I know Rupert Murdock and the like are not liberals.

Second, whenever the press cites expert opinion, it is rarely, if ever, liberal research institutes and think tanks. Most often Conservative think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, American Enterpirse or the CATO Institute, or Centrist institutions, such as Brookings the Wilson Center, etc. are cited as evidence of journalistic claims (at least those related to politics). How often is the Institute on Policy Studies or the Center for American Progress cited. Infrequently.

Now I could make the claim that it is really a Conservative media laying the previous claims as evidencce, but I won't do so. Why? Because I am aware of a larger journalistic enterprise that goes beyond the corporately controlled media. As such I make the claim that the major media outlets are centrist, not liberal.

Perceptions about the liberal media are driven more by a 20-25 year Republican campaign to paint them as such in an effort to move the mainstream media away from the center and toward the right. Largely, recent evidence suggests that it has been a very successful campaign. The media has moved more to the right and those that try to maintain their centrist position bend over backwards to placate the right in an effort to deflect criticism of the so-called "liberal media."

OLDENGLANDDRY

Monday, February 7, 2005 11:09 PM

I'm sorry but I think she's Satan, or at least a representative of Old Nick. Just look at her; The wierd "too close together to be normal " eyes, the protruding brow, the Vampiric teeth, the hair cuifered in just such a way as to hide the horns. Come on, am I the only one that can see it?

SOUPCATCHER

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 12:58 AM

I’ve got to stop painting with the broad brush. I should’ve learned by now that I’m rarely able to get across the points I want when I resort to broad sweeping generalizations. So let me try another approach. I won’t spend any time on the whole media issue since I think ecostar addressed it quite well in their post.

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal
I think your examples are largely misleading and more a result of fabricated simplistic characterizations of the media then any real degree of description.
…

Another possibility is that my views on racism were shaped more through personal experience. Before I get into that in detail I feel that there may be conflicting definitions at work here. There are people who have a very narrow definition of racism. Many of my colleagues only consider someone a racist if they use hate speech or engage in a hate crime. For them, the only racists are those who are beating up people or spray painting racial epithets on school walls. I don’t subscribe to that viewpoint. I consider a racist to be someone who allows their pre-conceived notions concerning a group to affect how they interact with an individual who is part of that group. (For the purposes of this discussion, when I say group I mean a category that a person is born into, such as Caucasian, or African American, etc.).

I am half brown and half white. My mother’s parents were born in the south. My father’s parents were born in California but their families originally came from Mexico. There’s nothing quite like an interracial marriage to expose all sorts of racist beliefs. I could relate hundreds of anecdotes from interactions with the extended family but I’ll just focus on a few. My grandmother told me once, “Your father’s one of those good Mexicans.” When I later told my mom about this she just shook her head and said, “Well, she’s come a long way.” When my mom was growing up she was taught that Brazil nuts were called “ni**er toes”. It was only in elementary school when a black friend of hers looked at her aghast that she realized this might not be what most people called them. My grandfather only had two words for African-Americans: “boys”, for when the Razorbacks were doing well, and “ni**ers”, for all other occasions. My grandparents were ardent Democrats. Nowadays, those members of my family who continue to hold the same viewpoint are all Republicans. Just an observation based on small sample size.

Some of my high school classmates were pretty dark. It was amazing how often people stopped at a red light would lock their car doors when we would walk past them on the sidewalk. One of my friends was lousy at sports. He eventually just gave up telling people he didn’t play basketball when they asked and went with the flow – it was what they expected from an African-American man. I grew up in a neighborhood where many of my friends were first generation Americans born to immigrant parents – most of them emigrating from Asia. They would laugh about how surprised people were that they didn’t speak with an accent.

All of these anecdotes, to me, are examples of racism. I personally think that it’s impossible to grow up in this society and not be exposed to some form of racism. Most of this is benign, it simply showcases a person’s ignorance. That type of racism can be laughed off. The more dangerous kind of racism is when an individual allows their bias to affect their decision making (whether it’s through deciding who to hire, who to sell a home to, who is guilty, etc.). There was a HUD study done a while ago that gave some head-shaking examples of this kind of racism.

I came out with an ambiguous hue. Most people just assume that I’m white. If someone lets out a little bigotry in my presence I, at most, will just tell them that I’m half mad at them. Every so often, however, someone will think I don’t look quite right. During the first Gulf War I had a couple of idiots yell at me for being a stupid Iraqi. Things could’ve gotten dicey but they kept dr

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 2:21 AM

I also won’t go in to the issue of Liberal bias in the media as it is well documented. We all hold our particular views and we make judgments about the world based on those views, journalists are no different. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.

Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
Another possibility is that my views on racism were shaped more through personal experience. Before I get into that in detail I feel that there may be conflicting definitions at work here. There are people who have a very narrow definition of racism. Many of my colleagues only consider someone a racist if they use hate speech or engage in a hate crime. For them, the only racists are those who are beating up people or spray painting racial epithets on school walls. I don’t subscribe to that viewpoint. I consider a racist to be someone who allows their pre-conceived notions concerning a group to affect how they interact with an individual who is part of that group. (For the purposes of this discussion, when I say group I mean a category that a person is born into, such as Caucasian, or African American, etc.).

I agree with your definition of racism, although I’m not sure that this is something that is more prominent among Republicans then Democrats. What I do see is a media that prosecutes Trent Lott for comments favorable of Thurmond at Thurmond’s 100-year birthday party in 2002, but not Chris Dodd’s favorable comments of Byrd in 2004. I'm not even sure that either of these senators’s comments constitutes racism at all, but clearly the media was seeing something that I wasn't. Maybe they have a different definition of what constitutes racism, or maybe they saw an opportunity to bash Republicans; I don’t know, but their reasoning doesn’t matter. The reality is that they saw the situation from a Liberal point of view, and that is, I believe, the genesis of this depiction of Republicans as racist.

Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
I came out with an ambiguous hue. Most people just assume that I’m white. If someone lets out a little bigotry in my presence I, at most, will just tell them that I’m half mad at them. Every so often, however, someone will think I don’t look quite right. During the first Gulf War I had a couple of idiots yell at me for being a stupid Iraqi. Things could’ve gotten dicey but they kept driving and I didn’t get beat up.

Incidentally, I’m glad things didn’t get dicey.

One of the differences between a racist and a non-racist is that the non-racist rarely get noticed, aside from not being racist.

REEQUEEN

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 5:04 AM

Oldenglanddry

Quote:

I'm sorry but I think she's Satan, or at least a representative of Old Nick. Just look at her; The wierd "too close together to be normal " eyes, the protruding brow, the Vampiric teeth, the hair cuifered in just such a way as to hide the horns. Come on, am I the only one that can see it?

I personally see her as a traitor to humanity. But that's just me.

"He has a gorm horizon. All gorm that falls past it is lost forever." UserFriendly http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050114

AURAPTOR

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 5:15 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by StarPilotGrainger:
Now if only she'd use her power and influence to promote Serenity.

I'll drink to that!

Oh, btw... Condi predicted the outcome of the Super Bowl right on the money - Pats by 3pts.

Brains, beauty, talent and a love for football..... wow, I do believe I'm IN LOVE!

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

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