Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for Detroit's
Metro Times.---I copied this from Smirking Chimp
by Jack Lessenberry | April 25, 2012 - 9:17am
"Want to know how unhappy I am with the constant
stream of lies and smears told by the Republicans? How angry at
their open threats to take away reproduction rights and the health-care
safety net Americans finally won? Not to mention their gleeful, open
intention to continue stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
Well, let's put it this way: If Mitt Romney becomes the president
in November, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.
And if you can't go home and get everybody in your lives to clean house
in this vile, evil, America-hating party ...
I don't know what you are made out of."
Outrageous words? Damn right. Had I written them a few weeks ago, my
guess is that my editors at the Metro Times never would have printed
them. Besides being badly written and grammatically incorrect, they are
pretty close to a threat to incite violence, possibly against the
president of the United States, which is against federal law.
But these aren't my words at all. They are a near-exact quote from
Ted Nugent, an aging minor rocker who is better known these days as a
gun nut. Nugent, who especially loves to kill defenseless animals, said
the outrageous words above in a video posted on YouTube. All I did was
substitute "Mitt Romney" for "Barack Obama," and "party" for
"administration." His outburst earned him a visit from the Secret
Service, at which Nugent rolled on his back like a frightened puppy,
whimpering, "I have never made any threats of violence against anyone.
God bless the good federal agents."
By the end of the week, the fading Motor City Madman had other things
to think about; he was off pleading guilty to transporting an illegally
killed bear in Alaska, and cutting a deal to stay out of jail.
The problem, however, is far deeper than Nugent. There are an
alarming number of nasty and crazy right-wing nuts out there, many of
whom clearly cannot tolerate that an African-American is the president
of the United States.
They spew a torrent of lies and hate onto the Internet and the
airwaves, when broadcasters let them on. They are spurred on by
unscrupulous showmen like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and their imitators,
and have been given aid and comfort by many Republican candidates, some
at the highest level. Far from denouncing and disavowing them, which is
what any decent Republican would have been expected to do a
half-century ago, they slyly encourage them.
Take Newt Gingrich, a brawling, grossly pathetic has-been who is
still running for the GOP presidential nomination, even though any
chance of his winning evaporated weeks ago.
Newt recently told ABC News that he finds it "very bizarre" that the
president is "desperately concerned to apologize to Muslim religious
fanatics." He added that the Obama administration was "going to war
against the Catholic Church and against every right-to-life Protestant
organization in the country."
Both those statements are not even subjective; they are demonstrably
untrue. Yet that is just the kind of rhetoric that could easily get some
troubled young fanatic fired up.
Yet nothing will happen to Gingrich. Before Rick Santorum pulled out
of the race, he took target practice at a shooting range where a woman
hollered, "Pretend it's Obama."
He later said he didn't hear her. However, when another woman in a
town hall meeting told Santorum that the president was "an avowed
Muslim," he did not correct her. Instead, he just said, "Believe me, I'm
doing anything I can to get him out of the government."
These incidents are just the tip of the iceberg. Besides writing this
column, I am the ombudsman for an Ohio newspaper, the Toledo Blade. In
that capacity, I receive torrents of right-wing attacks on the
president, many filled with hatred, thinly veiled racism and rage.
Recently I got bombarded from an "open letter" from one Lou Pritchett, a former
soap salesman who rose to become a Procter & Gamble vice president. It begins:
"Dear President Obama; You are the thirteenth President under whom I
have lived and, unlike any of the others, you truly scare me."
Really? The soap salesman wasn't bothered by John F. Kennedy taking
us to the brink of nuclear war? Not worried by the possibility that the
felonious Richard Nixon might try some kind of a coup when he was about
to be removed from office? Not worried about Lyndon Johnson bombing
Vietnam back to the Stone Age?
Having demonstrated that he is clueless, Pritchett goes on to list a
whole lot of reasons why he is scared of Obama, including that
"culturally you are not an American." That settles that.
Incidentally, it turns out that soap man wrote this letter back in
May of 2009, when President Obama had barely been in office four months.
There are many similar rants. One Joe Quinn, apparently of Toledo,
tells me in the course of a long letter that "the list of [Obama's]
atrocities against the American people is too long to list here."
However, he does disclose that if he is re-elected, "he will be much
freer to completely transform America into a socialist state."
Well, we can only hope, but my guess is the Republicans in Congress might raise some mild objections.
There are, in fact. legitimate conservative arguments that can be
made against the president's policies. The huge deficits are
frightening, and it is fair to challenge the assumptions of his health
care plan or his foreign policy in an intellectually legitimate way
But by not repudiating the racists, the crazies, and those filled
with hate, today's GOP is giving up any claim to legitimacy. Not to
mention taking a serious risk of having blood on their hands.
Consent Agreement update: Last week, as I was watching the
Detroit City Council refusing to agree on salaries for the new positions
the "consent agreement" is supposed to create, a ghastly Kennedy
assassination metaphor popped into my mind.
It was the scene from William Manchester's classic book The Death of a
President, when they rush the dying John F. Kennedy into the emergency
room at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Had he been anybody else, they would
have put a tag on his toes. Seeing that he was the president, however,
they hooked him up to machines and started blood transfusions. Alas, the
blood just flowed out of the immense hole in the side of his head just
as fast as it went in.
Which brings us to the city. Detroit was supposed to create two new
powerful positions, program manager and chief financial officer, within a
week and fill them within a month. But this now seems hopelessly behind
schedule. The first three members were named to the overseeing
financial advisory board last week.
They were strong names. But there are six more to come, two to be
named by the governor and two by Mayor Bing, who tends to move slowly,
and two by a City Council that seems to usually have great difficulty
deciding what day of the week it is.
I've been asking a number of high-ranking and high-placed politicians
and corporate executives whether they thought the consent agreement
would work — or whether Detroit eventually would be forced to face an
emergency manager, go through bankruptcy, or both. I asked them all to
tell me off the record.
But I can reveal the names of those who think the consent agreement is likely to succeed. Ready? OK. Here they are:
See you next week.
But in an unspoken kind of way, this will help Romney. This will help him with those on the right that criticize him most. Deep down and in their guts they'll appreciate this. Because these narrow-minded, Neanderthal fucks believe that everyone must live as they live, believe as they believe, and worship as they worship. And everyone must look and act a certain way.
And in their black hearts and even blacker souls, there will be a certain appreciation for this kind of behavior. It'll never be spoken in those terms of course. But this will give him bona fides in that despicable circle that he never could have bought with the unlimited largesse that will be at his disposal.
Beating up and humiliating those that are different is a badge of honor with these people. Their fear of everything and anything not of them demands it. It's perfectly fine. And now a lot of those people know that Romney is more like them than they ever imagined.