I was watching Bill Maher yesterday, which I seldom have done; not only did I not have cable until recently, but I think he's a smarmy, little punk and his delivery is as pleasant as a kick in the nuts. In any case, he had Janeane Garofalo on and say what you will about her, I think she's incredibly brilliant and sexy and funny and thoughtful. I don't listen to her show; opting instead for Rachel Maddow or Amy Goodman when I want a smart, sexy, woman's political POV, but I have to say that I'm her newest fan. She said some incredibly poignant things concerning the GOP and how incredibly racist the party has become. The bigotry of the party leadership is no longer subdued or even the subject of debate and there is no greater evidence of the racism of the GOP than the violent reaction of it's rank and file membership to having a black man as president. I know I have been going on about this for sometime myself, but Jeneane said that, we need to stop beating around the bush and just call this shit what it is. So far we have had angry white folk showing up at "town hall" meetings, angry white folks showing up heavily armed at political rallies, angry white folk yelling "Liar" at the president and angry white folk suggesting that what is needed is a military coup against the president:Think about what would happen if it were armed, angry black or Latino protesters that were out their suggesting that a sitting white president was a terrorist and that for the sake of our country we needed a violent overthrow of the government?
The GOP leadership, perhaps learning from McCain's mistake during the campaign when he admonished a crazed woman during the campaign who called Obama an Arab terrorist, has refused to put the cuckoos back in their cages. The willful ignorance of the Republicans to snap the leash on the wackos, white separatists, hate mongers and religious zealots who have won them a number of victories over the years has finally come back to bite them in the ass; now, they are the party of hatred, violence and racism. This is a label that will haunt them for a long time to come, but one that the leadership appears to be very comfortable with. The unfortunate part of all of this is that the dems seem to continue pursuing bi-partisanship and middle of the road politics. This will certainly lead to more losses in the future for the dems and rightfully so, I think. After all, why would you want to find common ground with a bunch of racist, sexist, religious wackos that want to use violence as a means of achieving political goals. Sadly, this is what Obama and the "super majority" in both houses of congress appear to be doing. Maybe we will have to wait for another Timothy McVeigh to come along to convince Americans that terrorists come in all shades and that condemning their radical, violent ideas is far more important than accepting their campaign contributions and votes.
