City of Frederick does not understand why hanging dummies from a tree might remind some of lynchings
To say that racism, or at the very least, racial insensitivity, can be found here in western Maryland is perhaps a whopper of an understatement. Every once in a while something happens that reminds one and all of this sad and depressing fact. The city of Frederick hung three dummies from a tree at a city park as part of a Halloween program. From a distance, they looked like actual people hanging from the tree.
To some, the dummies hanging from the trees reminded them of when black men were hung from trees by white southern supremest groups. The practice was commonly referred to as a lynching.
Though I don’t necessarily believe that whoever thought up this display was trying to recreate a lynching, I don’t understand what it has to do with Halloween.
Guy Djoken, president of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter, requested that the dummies be removed from the park. Republican Mayor Jeff Holtzinger refused saying that Djoken was only trying to drum up publicity for himself.
A quick check of the Frederick News Post comment section shows that Holtzinger is not alone. Some of the comments:
- “Gives the “race hustlers” something to do.”
- “My goodness, lets get Jessie and Al on the phone. Let’s make sure we have all the race baiters in court for this one. Get a life.”
- Guy Djoken is just like Obama, they are born in another country, come to the US, and try and run things, but are failures.
- “Hey…they just had a story on the news about BLACK BEAR season opening in Maryland. I guess the NAACP idot will have something to cry and complain about tomorrow. Why can’t they just go back where they came from if they are always offended about something. What a bunch of crap”.
Why can’t we all agree that hanging dummies from a tree is not the best use of city resources? To me, this just seems like a no-brainier.
Life is full of hard questions. This is not one of them.
Rush Limbaugh will not be an NFL owner
Right wing conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from the group of investors that want to purchase the St. Louis Rams. Evidently this is some kind of victory for civil rights activists because some of them balked at the idea of someone like Rush Limbaugh, who’s made several racially insensitive comments over the years on his popular radio show, owning a football team.
The difference with Limbaugh and every other rich white guy in his late 50’s is that Limbaugh says what he says in public.
Even though I’m a tree hugging liberal, I’ve always admired Rush Limbaugh. Not because I agree with his politics, because I don’t, but because he’s very good at what he does. If you are a fan of talk radio, you cannot help but notice that he is the best at what he does. There are many other right wing radio talk show hosts on the air, but none are as good at what they do as Limbaugh.
Does Limbaugh say some outrageous stuff that borders on racism? Perhaps, but that’s his job. He’s a conservative talk radio host that talks for a living. He has a massive audience and he knows what they want to hear. Is he a racist? Maybe, but why would a racist want to own a team that plays in a league where most of the players are black? If Limbaugh is a racist, maybe the thing he needs to do is to interact with more black people, something he would easily be able to do if he was a part owner of an NFL team.
That New York Post cartoon
Wednesday the New York Post ran a cartoon that featured the chimpanzee apparently dead on the ground with two police officers standing over his lifeless body. One comments to the other, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill”.
This cartoon caused somewhat of an uproar in some circles. Some people evidently believed that the dead chimp was supposed to be President Barack Obama. Read the full article »
DC United player target of racial slur
DC United goalkeeper Louis Crayton was talking with fans after a 0-0 draw with the Houston Dynamo when a Dynamo fan approached him and called him “a monkey”. He then told him to go back to the jungle.
Crayton responded to the fan telling him he could not talk to him that way and that he was a human being “just like him”. I think perhaps Crayton was giving the fan way too much credit.
Security personal immediately moved in and removed the racist fan from the stadium and immediately banned him from all future games indefinitely.
Where did the fan think he was, a McCain-Palin rally? [Washington Post]
Racist Missouri Obama billboard angers some
Outside West Plains, Missouri on U.S. 63 sits a sign so absurd and racist that it’s almost funny. At least it doesn’t follow John McCain and Sarah Palin’s latest talking points claiming that Barack Obama has terrorists for friends.
The billboard attempts to capitalize on Obama’s middle name, Hussein. It’s not like he picked that name for himself in 1992. The name was given to him by his parents when he was born. I can’t see the logic in attacking someone over their middle name. If I did, I might have something to say about John McCain’s middle name, Sidney.
And the billboard is not even factually accurate. I wish Barack Obama did favor gay marriage. Unfortunately, he does not. Instead, he favors civil unions. As far as taxes go, he is only raising taxes on the top 5% of taxpayers. He wants to give the rest of us a tax cut.
I’m not even sure that it is Obama wearing that turban. It looks more like Baba Booey from the Howard Stern show. [Link]
Racist Dennis the Menace cartoon circa 1970
Wow. It’s hard to believe this particular Dennis the Menace strip ran after the Civil Rights movement, but it did. It makes me wonder what else Hank Ketcham had going on in his head. [The Vault of Buncheness]
To think some people believe Hagerstown has a problem with racism
Yes, this says what you think it says. Click here to see a larger image. I don’t know what is more disturbing, that something like this could be found in Hagerstown’s own Rocky Ridge Collectibles or that the seller wants $45 for it.
And that was not the only piece of racist crap sitting on the shelf. No, it was only the most agregous. There were other similarly framed works of racism for sale along with this one.
Sorry for the crummy quality of the photo. I took it with my camera phone. I had to temporarily move a stack of cowboy hats to get a clear picture. Who would have guessed that the same vendor that was selling this framed piece of historical hate would also be selling cowboy hats?
It’s 2008. It would be nice if we could finally get past this type of stuff.
Who knew astrophysics could be so racist?
From the Dallas City Hall Blog on the Dallas Morning News website:
County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.
Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections “has become a black hole” because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.
Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud “Excuse me!” He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a “white hole.”
That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.
Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term. A black hole, according to Webster’s, is perhaps “the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape.”
Other county officials quickly interceded to break it up and get the meeting back on track. TV news cameras were rolling, after all.
I’d love to see the video of this. What I find to be hysterically funny about this is that even though commissioner Mayfield wasn’t being the least bit racially degrading when he used the term black hole, commissioner Price (seen here letting his hair down) was being racially insulting when he responded to the imaginary slur with the term “white hole”.
At least he was trying to be which makes it extremely funny.
If I wasn’t such a cheapskate, I would send commissioner John Wiley Price and Judge Thomas Jones copies of Stephen Hawking’s landmark book, A Brief History in Time. I was looking around Borders yesterday and happened to find an updated, re-written version of the book entitled A Briefer History of Time. I was published in 2005 by Hawking and American physicist Leonard Mlodinow.
Jesse Helms is finally dead
Finally there is justice in the world. Jesse Helms, that racist old coot from North Carolina is finally not breathing the same air as the rest of us.
His hometown newspaper, The News & Observer, published a joke of an obituary that failed to truly capture the level of absolute racism this man practiced. They described him as “cantankerous” and wrote that “Helms could be the picture of the courtly Southern gentleman“. As if there is anything cantankerous or gentlemanly about hating folks because of the color of their skin.
Not that they failed to mention the Helms’ racism. They wrote:
Although Helms denied he was a racist, his work in the Senate often seemed at odds with the interests of blacks.
Well now, isn’t that putting it rather nicely. Helms was one of two senators for the state of North Carolina, Helms represented many black people. So when his work in the Senate was “at odds with the interests of blacks”, it was at odds with a good many of his own electorate. The very people he should have been representing.
That’s not democracy.
Imus certainly stepped in it this time
Don Imus is once again in hot water over something he said on his radio show. Last time is was about the hair style of the Rutgers ladies basketball team. This time it was concerning former Tennessee Titans defensive back Pacman Adam Jones.
Maybe the I-Man shouldn’t talk about sports?
He and the rest of the people on his show were discussing Jones and how he has been arrested multiple times for multiple offenses. This is what Imus said:
Imus: “What color is he?”
Warner Wolf: “African-American”
Imus: “There you go. Now we know.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I think any time you begin your statement by asking what color someone is, it cannot be good.
I thought much of the Imus outrage the last go around was overblown. I thought what he said about the lady basketball players was stupid, but I did not think it was as bad as most people pretended it was. With that said, I think this statement is worse then what he said about the lady basketball players. A lot worse.
Don Imus is just a big old racist idiot. He needs to just go away.
Metra Reid’s kids are smarter then your kids
Washington County’s newest public school, Rockland Woods Elementary School, will be open to all kids that live in the county. It doesn’t matter where they live. If they live in the county, they can attend the school.
This is not good news to some.
From Hagerstown’s one and only crap newspaper, The Herald-Mail:
Metra Reid, who lives with her husband and two children in the Westfields housing development, said during Tuesday’s public meeting that open enrollment at the school will be a disservice to her children. When her family moved to the development three years ago, she said they were promised that the school would offer a high quality of education.”It’s not fair to penalize those of us who live in the development by just sending in whoever,” Reid said. “We had such high expectations for the school.”
She said children from families in other parts of the county do not value education as much as families in her neighborhood.
“When you buy a home in a neighborhood, you want people like yourselves,” Reid said. “It’s not fair to just let anyone just ship in whoever. Think about it before you let everyone and anybody go to that school.”
Reid said her daughter attends a private preschool in Hagerstown and will attend Rockland Woods in its second year. Her son would enroll in the school’s third year, she said.
Reid said her daughter is able to count into the hundreds and is learning to write. She said students from other areas of Washington County would not be at the same level when they enter kindergarten.
“It’s not fair to put her in the classroom with 20 other children who won’t know their alphabet,” she said.
I’ve got to say that her daughter sounds like a big dork. She’s not even five and she’s counting into the hundreds? Who makes their kid count that high? I’m not saying it’s comparable to water boarding or making them listen to Jimmy Buffet music, but can’t she think of some other way to torture her kids?
Better yet, can’t she come up with some other way of feeling good about herself without living vicariously through her children? Just because she forces her kids to learn how to count or learn their alphabet before they should doesn’t make them any smarter.
Kids should be allowed to be kids. The alphabet and counting to a thousand will wait.
The fun never ends with the Herald-Mail Forum
I blogged a little yesterday about my troubles with the Herald-Mail message board. Mostly I told people to go to Steve Likes to Curse and read Steve Shives’ excellent breakdown on what went down.
I emailed the Herald-Mail website administrator explaining what happened. I’ve yet to get a response. My suspension was removed yesterday. I only knew this because I read about it in the comment section of Steve Likes to Curse. If they were going to remove my 2-day suspension, they ought to at least tell me. What good is announcing it on a message board I was led to believe I was suspended from?
When I went back to the message board, I found the following post from the moderator:
After careful consideration of all the factors involved, and rereading the initial post and the subsequent replies. I have reconsidered my original judgement [sic].
Bentcorner used the term “Negro” and not the other “N-word”, for the record.
After researching the term “Negro”, it does not appear to have the same connotation that the other “N-word” has. While his post may or may not have had anything to do with the nature of the thread is not being considered. It did not take the post off-topic (anymore than what anyone else has ever done).
Bentcorner has my sincerest apologies for my hasty decision and is hereby reinstated.
The moderator had to research the word Negro to learn that it didn’t have the same connotation as the N-word? This is the same person that thought removing all the letters except the letter “N” was a good way of making the word not racially offensive. There’s only one word in the English language that has the same connotation as the N-word.
It’s the N-word.
As soon as I found out that my suspension had been lifted, I began deleting all my posts from the Herald-Mail message forum. The reason? I don’t appreciate how the moderator is able to edit posts. He drastically altered my comment. He made it appear I wrote something all together different then what I really wrote. Who’s to say it won’t happen again?
If he truly thought my comment was racially offensive, he should have just deleted it. He didn’t do that.
I’m once again suspended from the Herald-Mail forum. This time it’s for a year. I can’t log back on again until March 25, 2009. The reason? I don’t know. Once again, I wasn’t informed of the reason. It can’t be for anything I’ve posted because I haven’t posted anything since my initial suspension. I’ve only been deleting my posts.
There is no rule against that.
Click here to see a screen capture showing that I was suspended for a year.
Turns out being labeled a racist is not as fun as you might think
I was suspended from my local newspaper’s message forum yesterday for posting a comment they deeded to be “racially offensive“.
I’d like to explain what actually happened, but I’m still too pissed off to put it all into words. Luckily for me, fellow Hagerstown blogger Steve Shives of Steve Likes To Curse already blogged about it. He does a much better job then I ever could describing what actually happened.
I’m not even going to try. Go read Steve’s blog post and let me know if you have any questions.
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