The Commentariat -- July 19, 2013
Another day with no postings, although it's possible I'll be able to do something very late today. Sorry about that. -- Not-So-Constant Weader ...
... I will leave you with this "reason to smile":
Karen Bates of NPR: "In late July 1973, Joseph Crachiola was wandering the streets of Mount Clemens, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, with his camera. As a staff photographer for the Macomb Daily, he was expected to keep an eye out for good feature images — 'those little slices of life that can stand on their own.' The slice of life he caught that day was a picture of five young friends in a rain-washed alley in downtown Mount Clemens. And what distinguishes it are its subjects: three black children, two white ones, giggling in each others' arms." Crachiola posted the photo on his Facebook page Sunday, after the Zimmerman verdict. It has gone viral.
News Lede
New York Times: "After a long-running investigation into insider trading at the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, an inquiry that has produced several guilty pleas and a record $616 million civil penalty, the government on Friday brought a case for the first time against the fund’s billionaire owner, Steven A. Cohen."
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Reader Comments (6)
Marie,
Just a note to express continuing thanks for what you do daily. I hope your day is pleasant and uneventful.
Jack
It appears Obama is flirting with the idea of replacing the head of Homeland Security with the King of racial profiling and secret data collection. Great timing there guys!
Racial Profiling Comes to the White House
http://www.theatlantic.com/ta-nehisi-coates/
Great picture. I wonder what the Zimmerman supporting profilers would make of this? They'd probably want to warn the white kids that their pockets were being picked by gangsters-in-training.
But it also reminds us that people don't start out as racist pigs. They need exposure to that old time bigotry to turn out like George Zimmerman or Newt Gingrich (or Richard Cohen).
The other day Safari posted a wonderful video of kids reacting to a Cheerios spot which depicted a bi-racial family acting like a normal family. The kids were completely unperturbed, blasé even. Wingnuts and the usual suspects not so much. Biracial families are not normal in the racist corners of right-wing world. They are an abomination second only to same sex couples raising children, presumably, to worship Satan and push the "gay agenda".
For those, like Gingrich, and all the commentators both from the mainstream to the scorched earth of the extreme right blogosphere and talk radio, who are demanding that everyone shut up already about race, that there is no racism anymore, we have only to ask why George Zimmerman assumed the mere presence of a black kid was a danger that needed to be put down with murderous violence? Why does a famous celebrity chef dream of a wedding featuring black slaves dressed in finery to serve de white folks (like they used to)? Why a young white woman on the reality show Big Brother has attained enormous notoriety for her regular racist and homophobic outbursts? Why states that had previously needed oversight for their regular schemes to disenfranchise black voters rushed to cement those schemes--and worse ones--the second the racist supporters on the Supreme Court told them it was okay to discriminate again? And why certain elements of the right erupted with such fury over the depiction of a biracial family in a cereal commercial?
Now tell me again how racism is a figment of the past that we've "taken care of"?
All of those bigots however started out, presumably, like the kids in that picture. Just happy to be together. It takes only a certain type of ideology to turn them into monsters.
And run for seats in congress.
Kids who just don't get racism. What's wrong with them!?
...but on the other hand...
Here's Rush Limbaugh doing his best to not divide people along racial lines.
Right...
Limbaugh, in the wake of George Zimmerman's murder of an unarmed black kid thinks it's okay to say the N word because, according to him, it's not racist as long as he puts an "a" on the end of it. Special bonus, Rush speaks to his many Asian and Asian/American fans in a voice he's sure they'll understand.
Because this is how the right rolls
Those kids are the same color, poor, and they know it.
@ Traynor
Actually they don't know it, They are kids having fun. They have not yet been imprinted with their parents silly notions about skin color, wealth, social status, personal power.