Is "thug" the modern day n-word?

It seems the cops have been killing a lot of people lately. Every time that happens, I've noticed if the victim is black, it's only a matter of time until someone call him a "thug." It seems to be a word that conotes "violent black man whose life is of no value."

Maybe this has been obvious to everyone else, but I've only just noticed it and now that I have, I can't stop seeing it. I thought maybe it was just my imagination, so I did some quick Google comparisons and the idea that this word is applied disproportionately to black men seems to hold true. These numbers are from doing Google News searches. I tried the same just using regular Google web searches; the numbers there were larger, but the trend remains.

Take these three high-profile cases, for example:

• "michael brown" "thug" -- 8140 hits
• "eric garner" "thug" -- 5960 hits
• "trayvon martin" "thug" -- 4100 hits
• "Tamir Rice" "thug" -- 694 hits (12 years old with a toy gun, shot within 2 seconds)
• "John Crawford" "thug" -- 223 hits (man buying a BB gun, shot by police in Walmart)

Now compare it to these:

• "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev" "thug" -- 342 hits
• "anders breivik" "thug" -- 93 hits
• "scott peterson" "thug" -- 42 hits
• "Elliot Rodger" "thug" -- 75 hits
• "Jerad Miller" "thug" -- 9 hits (one of the two Bundy Ranch protesters that killed two cops)

So even when white men commit mass murder they are not thugs (accused, in the case of Tsarnaev). When black men are killed as a result of police violence, they are thugs. 

This is Karl Rove on Hannity talking about Common, a hip-hop artist, invited to perform at the White House in 2011:

President Obama last week said he wanted to recapture that special moment we had after 9/11. And here week later, we have an example of how this White House can recapture that moment by inviting a thug to the White House... And whose lyrics are sexually explicit and misogynist. This guy is a thug... If he believed last week that he wanted to reestablish the great tone in the country after 9/11, why would he invite a thug to the White House who said, he wanted to kill President Bush for having taken the country to war in Iraq.

I'm not saying Common's lyrics about Bush II weren't controversial or even appropriate. But Ted Nugent has threatened to kill the President multiple times and he is a regular guest on Hannity. Why isn't he a thug?

I'm not even going to mention Nugent's reference to "Ferguson thugs." I think we all know who he means.

The right wing wants a religious war

My mother apparently gets a lot of emails sent to her from Texas redneck relatives/coworkers/acquaintances. Occasionally, she forwards them on to me, in what I assume is so far a futile attempt to make my head explode. (Kidding, Mom.) The latest one is an email purportedly by Jeff Foxworthy listing his opinions of Muslims. It's quite offensive, and quite racist. Highlights:

• You have more wives than teeth.
  You may be a Muslim [Or a Mormon.]
• You wipe your butt with your bare hand, but consider bacon unclean.
  You may be a Muslim
• You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide.
  You may be a Muslim

... etc.

Not long after I got this, Snopes labeled it false. But here's what I find interesting:

This collection of one-liners is an updating of a earlier version of a list which is several years old (dating back at least as far as October 2007), was originally about the Taliban specifically (rather than Muslims in general), and was not in its original incarnation attributed to Jeff Foxworthy (or anyone else)..."

I've found the list in all sorts of places. It's on a community site for US Marines, a gun enthusiast forum, another gun enthusiast forum, and some weird discussion forum for some weird Christian combat-training company.

What I find so interesting is that the list was originally about the Taliban, but some clever conservative reworked it to apply to all Muslims and it started circulating. Google returns about ten times as many hits for the "You may be a Muslim" version than the "You may be a Taliban version". Making fun of the Taliban is certainly understandable; they basically are our enemy in at least one of the wars we're currently fighting. But the right wing has expanded the definition to include anyone any racial or religious characteristic with them.

Conservatives pundits and politicians in this country are now openly calling for racial profiling. Rep. Pete Hoekstra of the House Select Committee on Intelligence says that profiling "make sense." Sean Hannity and disgraced former-NPR bigot Juan Williams have also both called for racial profiling. In their minds, Muslim, Middle Eastern, and terrorist are all synonymous.

I'm told that one of the things to George W. Bush's credit is that he made it clear that the wars he started were not wars against religion, but against extremists. "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam."

No longer are conservatives happy with that statement. It seems that once, we were at war against people that attacked us. But anger and bigotry need an enemy, and now that those wars are winding down (or at least no longer visible in the 24-hour news cycle), they are turning against anyone that shares even superficial characteristics with Middle Eastern terrorists.

A racial double standard at the News-Gazette

OK, I don't mean to pick on the N-G and I don't want this blog to turn into a Gazoo bash-fest, but this has been rolling around in my head for a couple of weeks and wanted to get it down.

Remember way back when, like two months ago, before Sharia Law came to Oklahoma, when the Islamic community center in Manhattan was dominating the news cycle? The News-Gazette had this editorial about that time. The editorial, called "Right, not rights, is the real issue" tries to draw a false equivalence between that Florida pastors "Burn the Koran Day" and the building of the center. The editor admit that the Muslims living in New York have every right to build their community center but that, somehow, they are morally wrong to do so. It closes with:

The message sent to Muslims by burning the Quran is unmistakable to most, just as the message being sent by Muslims in building the mosque near the 9/11 ruins is equally unmistakable. One is a threat, as Jones freely conceded, while the other is a victory lap, as Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf disingenuously denies.

According to the News-Gazette, Muslims going about their lives in their hometown and building what is basically a church, is a "victory lap" celebrating the attacks 9/11.

But just a few weeks ago, the News-Gazette published this editorial about the recent racially-based (but possibly not, see below) attacks against white men in the Champaign-Urbana area. The editorial argues that cries for black community leaders to speak out against the attacks are unfair, saying:

[Leaders in the black community] didn't commit the attacks. They didn't encourage the attacks. They don't know the individuals who are committing the attacks. They are as disturbed by this senseless violence as everyone else...

Is the white president of the local chamber of commerce responsible when a white man robs a bank? If not, why would a black minister be called to account for the malicious criminality of a black assailant?

But that's the one of the dangers posed by this string of assaults. They tear at the community fiber and encourage tribal instincts. They make people forget we're all in this together, that as residents of this community we have far more that brings us together than sets us apart.

So let's get this straight: when attacks such as these are committed by black men, they are the responsibility solely of the perpetrators involved. When attacks are committed by Muslims, the worldwide Muslim community should be held collectively accountable, even nearly a decade later.

Am I the only one that sees a bit of a contradiction here?

(Like I said, this has been rolling around in my head for a couple of weeks now. I was inspired to get off my lazy ass and write this partly by Monday's article, Polar bear deconstruction by Joel Gillespie at Smile Politely.)

How does this crap stay on the air?

Last week I had the pleasure of driving cross-country, which meant a lot of listening to the radio. I came across one radio show, which turned out to be The Glenn Beck Program. As most right-wing news broadcasters do, Beck has a radio show where he spouts off crap with no one to challenge him, usually telling us how smart he is in the process. It's the same with Limbaugh, Hannity, and O'Reilly.

But I was amazed at what he was saying. He was talking about Obama's economic plan, and allowing 401(k) withdrawals:

...he wants to make penalty-free withdrawals from retirement accounts up to $10,000. We should not be doing anything that encourages people to take money out of their 401(k). If you're in an emergency, I get it. If you are going to lose your house, I get it. If your spouse has died and buried them, you have to do it, I get it. But not to pay off your credit card bills. Why would you do that? Quite frankly it's not to help people. It's to enslave people. Because the more you can deplete your 401(k) to pay off things that are not dire emergencies like death or losing your home, you deplete your savings.

The right-wing complains about so-called liberal media bias all the time. At most, you'll find someone like Olbermann accusing Bush of being incompetent. I can't think of a single case, and I challenge someone to find me an example, of a supposedly liberally-biased news person accusing a Republican of actual malice in his policies.

And not just malice, but lily-white Beck saying that Obama, an African-American, wants to "enslave" America? That's just beyond tasteless. It's like accusing Joe Lieberman of wanting to start another Holocaust.

This week it was announced that Beck's show will be leaving CNN Headline News and moving to ... wait for it ... FOX News. Color me surprised.

By their headlines, shall ye know them

IlliniPundit over at, um, IlliniPundit has on several occasions, claimed that Democrats are being overly-sensitive when it comes to race in this election. (Example.)

That's the advantage of privilege, isn't it? Whether is white privilege, heterosexual privilege, or male privilege, one of the benefits is that you don't even have to realize it's there. A corollary to that is that you don't have to wonder about those borderline cases. Until I'd read a few feminist blogs, I'd never actually noticed that paper towel commercials always show a smiling woman mopping up some mess or another, either made by a child or while some hapless male looks on in bewilderment. I'd never even thought about how our society often makes jokes that imply that rape is a complement.

So maybe it's easy for the (I assume) white IlliniPundit to pooh-pooh the racism that may be inherent in political ads this season. But think about this: Ann Coulter's August 20th column was titled "Constitutional Scholar Obama Questions Legality Of Slavery Ban."

Really. One of the most visible and most syndicated conservative writers in our country just wrote a column suggesting that a black Presidential candidate might approve of slavery.

No, race won't be a factor in this election. Not at all.

Something to look forward to for the next six months

I'm glad Obama got the nomination. I think he stands a pretty good chance at winning. But for the next six months (and possibly longer after that) don't expect to hear him referred to by a lot of Republicans as anything other than Barack Hussein Obama. They are going to push it relentlessly. You won't hear them refer to John Sidney McCain, however. The reasons are obvious. Racism and xenophobia. It's happening locally and at the national level.

I disagree with him on a number of issues, but Glock21 has a great post about the phenomenon.

... his name is pretty irrelevant beyond "branding" that has become such an important part of American politics. People who try to exploit that are essentially kowtowing to the worst of our society in order to win an election, and that's pretty disgusting no matter how much one wants to claim two wrongs make a right. If you don't want to be associated with the racist and prejudiced nimrods that flock to such childish reasoning when they go the ballot booth... stop using their arguments.

And so it begins

Remember how I said the whole Barak-Obama-is-a-Muslim thing was going to start spreading? Well, it has.

• Bill Cunningham, who broadcasts a syndicated radio program on over 300 stations and is a regular guest on FOX's Hannity and Colmes, referred to Obama as "Barack Mohammed Hussein Obama."
• Ross Mackenzie said in a nationally syndicated column on Townhall.com that Obama was educated in a "madrassa school."
• Nationally syndicated radio show host and professional douchebag Michael Savage referred to Obama as "Senator Barack Madrassas Obama."

Those are just examples from the past couple of days. These aren't just fringe kooks ranting in a mimeographed newsletter handed out on streetcorners. These are all syndicated commentators with nationwide audiences. They are all putting out the idea that Obama is a Muslim and/or that he was indoctrinated into the violent aspect of Islam. It's not just that they're just making stuff up, they're trying to create in people's minds a reflex association between Barak Obama and radical, violent Muslims.

This is the right-wing media machine doing what it does best. I expect we can look forward to seeing more of this as the race heats up. Lots more.

UPDATE: Illinois Reason deconstructs an even more extreme scare-mongering "Obama is a Muslim!" email.

Why don't they just call him the Manchurian Muslim?

It was about a year ago that I wrote this post saying why I didn't think Obama could win the Presidency. This, of course, was before his win in Iowa, which probably makes him the one to beat for the Democratic candidacy.

A few days ago, my mother forwarded to me the following email she had from her cousin, who she described as "as far right as you are left." I don't know if the email coming so soon after the Iowa caucus is coincidence or if it reflects a new urgency in the Republican smear machine.

Obama mentioned his church during his appearance with Oprah. It's the Trinity Church of Christ. I found this interesting. Obama's church: Please read and go to this church's website and read what is written there. It is very alarming... If you look at the first page of their website, you will learn that this congregation has a non-negotiable commitment to Africa. No where is AMERICA even mentioned. Notice too, what color you will need to be if you should want to join Obama's church... B-L-A-C-K!!!

Doesn't look like his choice of religion has improved much over his (former?) Muslim upbringing.

Are you aware that Obama's middle name is Mohammed? Strip away his nice looks, the big smile and smooth talk and what do you get? Certainly a racist, as plainly defined by the stated position of his church! And possibly a covert worshiper of the Muslim faith, even today. This guy desires to rule over America while his loyalty is totally vested in a Black Africa!

I've bolded the lies and distortions in the email. Obama is a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ, which describes itself as being committed to a 10-point vision. The point that this email makes reference to is #4, that it is a "congregation with a non-negotiable commitment to Africa." Nowhere does the church require you to be black to be a member. It seems clear from the rest of the website and the church pastor's Wikipedia entry that this is a church committed to valuing the African heritage of its congregants, rather than claiming racial superiority. Americans celebrating their background is hardly racist, as anyone that's marched in the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade can tell you.

It's very clear that this email is pandering to the predjudices of its readers, in that it makes the insiduation that Obama is a Muslim no fewer than three times. It brings up a "Muslim upbringing", claims his middle name is "Mohammed," and claims he might just be a covert Muslim. All three of these things is a lie. Hell, his middle name is Hussein, not Mohammed, so the idiot writing this couldn't be bothered to even get his smears right.

Obama lived in Indonesia for a few years when he was very young. Yes, that's a predominantly Muslim nation, but that hardly counts as a Muslim upbringing. Whenever it's referenced by the right-wing, his education is always implied as being somehow "Muslim-focused," and his school is often referred to as a "madrassa." Oddly, they never refer to it as an "Asian education."

This piece is circulating all over the internet. A quick search shows it posted in the comments sections of many blogs. The mouthbreathers over at Free Republic posted it, as well as over at White Nationalist News.

Whoever wrote this is obviously trying to pander to blatant racists but also the unconcious racist feelings of many Americans. The thing that I find most frustrating is that the whole "Muslim upbringing" nonsense was debunked over a year ago. And yet here it is again.

If Obama does win the Democratic candidacy, I think things are going to get very ugly.

Why Obama will not win

Obama has recently started to explore a run for the Presidency in 2008. I've always said that he seems like a smart guy and it's good to have him the Senate, but there is not a chance in hell he could ever win the Presidency. Here's an excellent example of why:

This morning, Fox News featured a segment highlighting a right-wing report that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) attended an Islamic "madrassa" school as a 6-year-old child.

Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy pointed out that madrassas are "financed by Saudis" and "teach this Wahhabism which pretty much hates us," then declared, "The big question is: was that on the curriculum back then?" Later, a caller to the show questioned whether Obama’s schooling means that "maybe he doesn’t consider terrorists the enemy." Fox anchor Brian Kilmeade responded, "Well, we’ll see about that."

The Fox hosts failed to correct the false claim that Obama is Muslim. One caller, referring to Obama, said, "I think a Muslim would be fine in the presidency, better than Hillary. At least you know what the Muslims are up to." Anchor Gretchen Carlson responded, "We want to be clear, too, that this isn’t all Muslims, of course, we would only be concerned about the kind that want to blow us up."

Well, that's nice of Carlson. I'm sure she's not "concerned" about all black men, either, just the ones that want to break into her house.

Raise your hand if you're surprised this aired on FOX News.