Enough with the racist bullshit coming from the left. ENOUGH.
Here comes Michael Moore with his “I’m so disappointed coulda-shoulda-woulda armchair quarterbacking” bullshit, with a skosh of racism:
So, the black part of Obama is the gangster part, and there’s some internal struggle going on and the white side is winning?
I’m sick of this shit. I’m the daughter of a mixed-race couple, and I cannot even express how much this infuriates me.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this, but for now I have only one question: What the fuck?
It’s not a joke. AND IT’S NOT FUCKING FUNNY.
You owe black people and President Obama an apology, Mr. Moore.
[cross-posted at Balloon Juice]
RELATED POSTS:
- What Michael Moore Said in Response and What He Should Have Said.
- With Friends Like Michael Moore, Who Needs Enemies?
Honest to god, I keep wondering what the hell drugs these guys are taking. It’s blatantly obvious they’re living in some fantasy about who PBO was, and what he ran on. Their problem is that he’s doing what he said he was going to do, not what they thought he would do as their stereotype. I’ve said in the past that there’s a real streak of racism running through the Left’s attacks on PBO, and there’s nothing like seeing Moore just demonstrate the point.
I fell that there is too conscious to subconscious racism plying a role in left wing attacks, but I usually try to avoid it because they usually neuter the accusation just like the right does with “it’s racist to criticize a black president” assumption that people make. I expected the racism to come from the right, but not the left. I didn’t think it until the media got ridiculous about the date which he was going to give his jobs speech (which since he wanted to compare and contrast the two different visions, it was smart of him to move it so the times didn’t conflict) and I ended up seeing this comment on Huffpo saying “‘Yes, massa. Whateva you say.’ Pathetic.” And that just really annoyed me, in addition to the accusation of him being weak or spineless, or the references to Jimmy Carter. They don’t even realize they are adopting the right wing talking points. And Weak? Hello? Are we NOT talking about the guy who killed somali pirates as well as OBL? Also, when it comes to issues like gay rights, we get too concerned about whether he will say the words “I support gay marriage” rather than what has been done so far, which is so far the most out of any president in US history. Also, I wonder why Clinton didn’t have to make up so much If he doesn’t come to our understanding of the world, he’s not a leader. Never mind the fact that you’ve never agreed with any president on everything, even if you supported them. Never mind the fact that every president has made mistakes, and there are presidents whom have made much worse mistakes than obama has. It’s like it’s become more of a cult to oppose authority for no apparent reason other than to oppose authority. I also think we were so caught up with the sound-byte of Hope and change that we didn’t pay much attention to his policy positions. He opposed the war in Iraq but supported the war in Afghanistan, and he’s so far following through with what he promised on foreign policy. Also comparing Libya with Iraq is completely missing why the Iraq war was wrong: it violated international law and we just went in ground troops and all imposing our ideas in addition to lying about the reason for going. Libya was under a UN mandate and supported by both NATO and the Arab League (so no imperialism there, and diplomacy as well was used) and it was based on Gaddafi “actually” planning a massacre in Benghazi (so no lying), so there was need for help. The misinformation and the generalization in addition to taking things out of context that create a level of intellectual dishonesty is the thing that frustrates me about some of the left’s criticisms. It’s not THAT they are criticizing. It’s the intellectual dishonesty. It’s the fact that it is based on misinformation pummeled through the media and not reevaluating why these decisions were made sometimes and THEN giving the objective. Plus, it’s this absolutism. Politics IS the lesser of two evils. Otherwise you get the worst.
I never thought I could be more disgusted by “progressives” than I would be conservatives or the tea party. These same people refuse to vote for Gore and gave us Bush for eight years.
What I tweeted that twit-
@MMFlint you’re really going to comment on the President’s blackness? Just because you’re a liberal, doesn’t make that not racist.
first off, i want to say i am SO happy to read this blog on a daily basis.
second, TO HELL WITH MICHAEL MOORE and the rest of these jokers of the
‘professional’ Left. it sickens me to see the elitism and the racism
ooze out of them all because President Obama is not the ‘Magic Negro’
they thought they were electing. that stuff works for Will Smith and in
‘Night of The Living Dead’ but it’s not real life. the sad thing is, he
IS now just an armchair quarterback now still running off of ‘Sicko’. and
he’s just like his mentor Ralph Nader. i’m getting tired of him, Jon Stewart and others in that vein.
thanks chris. welcome to the Angry Black Madness.
:)
You can take the working class boy out of Flint, MI, but you cannot take Flint, MI out of the working class boy. Something like that.
We are all paradoxical. You’d think that racist and liberal would not go hand in hand, but remember Maude? She is the flip side to her cousin’s working class cousin.
I am a Jewish woman. I assumed that all feminists would be my ally. Imagine my surprise when I attended a NOW convention and found out that feminism and antisemitism could exist in the same woman. So much for thinking that we were all sisters.
Harsh truth is that we are not all sisters. We are not all brothers. When I attended University of Iowa back in the mid to late 70s, I had people tell me I was their first Jew. Or second Jew. Or that I was behaving like a “good Christian” as if only Christians could be ethical and have integrity.
Michael Stivic, Archie’s liberal son in-law points out the bigotry in others but not his own racism or sexism. At least Archie Bunker has an excuse. He is working class. All can be union members just so they know who is boss.
Michael Moore grew up around much the same people I did. I grew up on Chicago’s southeast side near the steel mills. The kids parents voted for Wallace in ’68. I am a product of white flight. Difference is that I didn’t bear resentment towards blacks. My best friend did. I have no doubt that Michael Moore still holds certain views even if he wouldn’t want to admit to them. He should know better, but that doesn’t mean he really does. It’s unfortunate because there are times when I really admire what he has to say.
it’s true. I don’t hate Michael Moore or anything now, but I do see where all of this was coming from, and it is important to point it out. The Avenue Q song already pointed out that we are all a little bit racist.
Thank you for saying that. I couldn’t have said this better. And thank you for bringing George Wallace into the equation. Not many people realise that Wallace, both times he campaigned for President, was drawing bigger crowds in the NORTH than either Nixon or Reagan. Scary. Also, not many people remember the riots which occurred in Boston, when Louise Day Hicks (“You Know What I Stand For”) was protesting desegregation of schools after the Civil Rights Act was passed.
Both Moore and Maher grew up in neighbourhoods which were blancheflower white. Maher even admits that he never really saw or knew a person of colour until after he’d finished at Cornell and moved to NYC. Both men are products of their background and their upbringing, and what they’re showing in their remarks is absolute ignorance.
I also don’t buy the working-class shit coming from Moore. This is a man who travels exclusively by private jet, and who refuses to hire union labour when he’s producing a film, because he doesn’t want to pay union overtime wages or provide healthcare insurance. Maher presents himself regularly as a “Progressive” yet he supports the death penalty and will not hire union members amongst his writing or technical staff. I would hope someone on his show tomorrow night brings up Troy Davis. This man is not liberal or Progressive. Anyone who pals around with the likes of Huffington, Ann Coulter, P J O’Rourke and Darrell Issa should be viewed with the utmost suspicion.
I also have no respect for anyone who refers to the President of the United States as a “pussy.” Moore is on Maher’s show later this autumn. How long before one of the two uses the n-word.
BRAVA DEBBIE – TYVM!
ABL: I just stopped by to say that I like your writing and think you make good points. I didn’t read the comments over at BJ after I saw your Update. (I’ve been visiting a few other blogs since you posted the Moore piece. And at this point, I won’t bother reading the comments.) Have a good evening, rest and relax.
Some of the BJ comments were driving me nuts, so I came over here. Here’s something I did not want to say there, because I think it would be misunderstood: A lot of lefties DID, I think, “vote for the black guy,” and even now cannot understand that their own stereotyping got in the way of their understanding, and still does.
I once served Huey Newton, the Black Panther, in a restaurant in Santa Cruz, in the late 70s. He was acting like something of an asshole, of a relatively mild, self-centered type. Basically, he was holding court. Seven or eight white folks were worshipping him. And suddenly I felt sorry for him: their reactions were not his fault. Some white folks tried to kill him, some tried to glorify him. I had once been pretty close to doing that myself. (Those jackets and berets sure looked cool, and they did do some good work.) I had a moment of thinking Newton had become a jerk, but then I realized he was only acting like one, and he was caught up in something way bigger than himself. As I recall, he tipped OK.
I figure you folks can parse that story … possibly better than I can.
Heh. Regardless of the parsing that others might do for this comment, my favorite part is “..he tipped well.”
There’s a lot of black and white stuff going on the US, but it’s nice to remember that when it comes down to it, the most important color is usually green. It would be nice if the talking heads on TV would analyze the policies in that respect once in a while. I know I want to know what the effects are going to be of these new legislations going thru congress. But I guess if you are being ferried around in a private jet, you’re not too worried about the bottom line. And it’s easier to say “Blackity black black black” rather than “Greedity greed greed greed.”
Actually I said he tipped OK. Which is better. He didn’t try to prove he was A Big Man by overtipping, nor was he a cheapskate who ignored the workers.
The treatment this article received over at Balloon Juice is total bullshit. But please don’t let it stop you from cross-posting over there, even if it means you have to ignore the comments section for the sake of your own sanity, and let the racist assholes stew in their own filth. Their reactions are so vile because they know that they’ve said equally racist things without a second thought, and they don’t like having their noses rubbed in it.
They don’t like you because you’re the only front pager over there who calls that shit out.
I saw your comments at the bottom of your post at BJ and won’t read them now. It would just be too much stupid for one evening, and I’ve had a ton of it already. I love your writing too, wanted you to know that.
So much fucking racism. Everywhere. I feel dirty because of it, as if I had waded through mud and then had more poured over me.
I’m here because I don’t know where else to vent right now. I just got into it with the guy next door, a white man in his 60s who does not own anything except a pickup, and who thinks Ron Paul is the bomb and that Obama is not a person. He told me and the neighbors that Obama isn’t a person. He said he stopped being a person when he called that Cambridge cop stupid, the one who arrested Professor Henry Gates. I said, “for being a black person in a white neighborhood?” and this neighbor said “Yeah, that’s right.”
I pointed out that Obama said the behavior of the police department was stupid but he wouldn’t listen.
Yelling ensued, mostly from him, after he realized what I had said. The neighbor was so angry that he was shaking and yelling. I walked away to get the mail, thinking he’d calm down, and the rest of the neighbors tried to help him.
God help all of you who work with an idiot like this. I’m retired so I don’t run into this so much as some of my friends do. It must be terrible. This old fart is my age and I liked him until tonight. Not sure we’ll be speaking to each other ever again.
I’m shaking right now myself.
I am so sorry. I hope you can find a way of coexisting with your neighbor. He sounds like he’s hurting pretty badly, which is easy for me to say because I’m not confronting him. Meanwhile, have a hug.
Thanks. I may bake them something, a pie or a cake, to say thank you for taking care of our place while we were out of town. I was going to do that this morning and didn’t because other stuff came up. When I say “them” I mean him and the lady who lets him live with her. She was his boss and she’s retired now, sold the cottage he was renting from her, so she had him move in with her. The irony of some guy like this thinking Ron Paul is the one is just too much. I should laugh, I suppose.
I just don’t know how people who work with one or two of these guys can handle it.
I’m sorry Jeanne. I know exactly how you feel. I was shaking in anger about an hour ago, which is why I walked away from the computer and told folks on BJ that I wouldn’t be returning to that thread.
Some folks can’t be reached and continuing to try results in us being pissed off, and them being as stupid as they were when you started.
What’s the point? The same idiots at BJ say the same dumb shit and it’s been going on for months. I don’t bother with them.
Thanks for commenting. All rants welcome here. :)
Thank you.
This was finally so much that it drove me to do something I haven’t done in a long time: it drove me back to my blog. I usually do that when political nonsense gets to be too much, and maybe I’ve reached that point now.
I really need to get involved in the local politics now. I’m new to the area and have been too busy working on the house and garden, met up with some Seattle BJers last month, but I need to start right where I live on the Eastside first.
I think we need to remember that they/us are keyboard warriors. I mean you can type pretty much say anything (at least what is allowed on a particular web site). People receive no repercussions from a computer for being a jerk. We are anonymous. We can pretend to be whomever – the nicest person in the world, but in truth a worshiper of the John Birch Society. Who knows. However, when people such as Maher, Stewart (yeah he said chit and showed a video that jumped the shark) make racist comments in the public airways then we have a right to call them out.
It’s the real disappointing thing about Balloon Juice; there are a few, dedicated ABL-haters over there who will try to turn every single post about race into an enormous crap-fest.
it’s my fault because i’m thin-skinned, and sensitive, and, when you think about it — racist for calling out racist shit among liberals. so divisive.
WHARGARBLE.
Say, where does that WHARGARBL thing come from, anyway?
From Googling around, it seems to be derived from “Shortened form of saying Water, Garbage, Cable Bill” which then mutated into a boring waste of time &/or (with the final “e’) when a hosefull of water runs into you (or a dog’s) mouth and you sound like an idiot &/or “something that is said in frustration, for fun, or to fuck with random strangers.”
Sounds like the Dictionary version of Telephone to me …
Racists can’t handle being called on it. They wouldn’t be so in the first place if they weren’t insecure little shits.
Too bad about Michael Moore being so stupid.
Wow I’m surprised. No wonder what all of this was and all of theses unrealistic expectations. Not saying some criticisms isn’t legit or that even the unrealistic expectations are all stemmed from his ethnicity. People also forget that he is just as much a White guy as he is a black guy too and was raised by his “white” grandparents. The guy is biracial, not black or white.
Just came over to say I wish you hadn’t bailed BJ. It’s going to take a lot to convince most people that what they are saying is racist even if they are trying not to be, but someone has to do it. I’ve read some of your other stuff here, just hadn’t commented.
(When I registered here, it asked me for the last letter in TESTES. I had to laugh out loud.)
The threads at BJ never go anywhere and I can’t be bothered to sit there while a bunch of silly white people flail around with their asses hanging out.
I just can’t do it. I honestly spent two full days defending my position that it’s unacceptable to refer to Democrats as “house niggers.” Also, given John’s no-moderation policy, I rarely know if I’m engaging a person or some wackadoodle troll. I just can’t be bothered. I read the comments, and all the points I would have made have been made.
Besides, it’s my way of luring unsuspecting folks like you over here! :)
I had to quit reading the comments at Balloon Juice after some @$$hole used “Barry”.
Seriously, Moore’s spew just proves Ishmael Reed’s point–that some on the Left do have a problem with a Black man in the White House. And who the f**k is Michael Moore to decide how “Black” the President should be? I remember Nader’s line of nonsense about how then candidate Obama wasn’t Black enough….my God, do these jerks realize that not only are they sounding like a bunch of racist idiots, but that they are all too willing to regurgitate the most bilious remarks about President Obama that are coming from the Right?
They’re “five”..they can’t say a grownup word like Barack.
I remember Ralph Nader referring to the President as “Uncle Tom.” I also remember Maher saying that “I’m not saying all Republicans are racist, but if you’re racist, you’re probably Republican.”
I’ve seen so many so-called “Progressives” actually say to me that racism just does not exist on the Left. Listen, I came of age in the 1970s, when Affirmative Action was at its height. I’m a white Southern woman, and I can tell you this: Affirmative Action was only meant to give minorities and women a bigger taste of the pie, an extra rung or two of the ladder; but make no mistake, the white guy would always, ALWAYS be on top.
Like I said about Maher and Moore, they come from cultural traditions who normally distrusted and disliked people of colour. Both come from immigrant traditions where their ancestors had left their respective old countries, because THEY were the lowest of the low, and when they got to the new country, they found they were still the lowest, until people of colour came into the free workforce. If it’s any kind of “thing,” it’s an attitude handed down from generation to generation. I live in the UK, and I see cultural hatreds amongst Europeans which date back to the Middle Ages.
Moore bills himself as a comedian. Too many people – Moore and Maher being the tip of the iceberg – hide behind the comedian mantle. Even Coulter describes her writing as “satire,” and the so-called “historian”, Rick Perlstein, who hates Obama because he’s “arrogant,” (that’s NORTHERN for “uppity”) has started to try to do stand-up – as a defensive shield against his racism, I suppose.
These pundits-cum-bad comedians have their sheets showing, and they should be called out about it. They need to be, because they influence the thought processes and opinions of dumbasses on both sides of the political equation.
Very, very well said. I came of age in the early 70′s. If anyone believes that racism ONLY exist on the right, then they are living in la la land. I stopped going to so-called “progressive” blogs because I didn’t see any difference than the bagger blogs in terms of name calling – just at opposite ends of the spectrum. On the bagger blogs President Obama is a “nigger”. On the left blogs he’s a “house nigger”. Take your pick. I knew he would face racism, but frankly I didn’t know it was going to be so “in your face”. And people wonder why many black folks have a love-hate relation with this country.
ABL, I just posted over at BJ to offer reinforcements. I couldn’t get through the comments. KEEP on KEEPING ON SISTER. I have not posted here before but I am breaking my lurker status tonight to CO-SIGN your comments on this matter. I have a little blog myself and wrote about this type of thing when Maher made his comments some time back.
http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2010/12/05/allow-me-to-digress-america-elected-barack-obama-not-suge-knight/
This implicit racism needs to stop and it needs to stop now.
This to me speaks volumes. Bill Maher thinks that President Obama needs to emulate a thug and a criminal?
So how about the next President who is a white man, should he emulate Eminem, Vanilla Ice, or the Beastie Boys?
Bill Maher is one politically tone deaf motherfucker who has obviously let all that weed destroy his braincells. Most Americans don’t pay these fuckers any attention, yet these ratfuckers believe their opinions are worth a dime dozen when they aren’t worth jack shit.
To the people responding on this blog….first of all, I am a white male and pro-Obama. Second of all,I look forward to the day when people are discussed in terms of their policies and skin color is irrelevant. I find the whole talk of “black “white” “yellow” etc.irrelevant and a bit nauseating. When will we be defined by who we are rather than what skin color we have? I am ashamed that some people still harbor racist views.But, I think people are missing the point on both Maher and Moore’s comments. I don’t think he was talking about color at all (although it sure “sounded” like it and in thinking so is certainly understandable). I feel 99% certain that both Maher and Moore were using metaphors. The “white guy”, in their minds, signified the status quo, the past, the policies espoused for so many years by the political majority, the ruling elite…intolerant, representative of their own selfish interests and with an agenda that benefitted themselves rather than most Americans…the guys that got us into this mess…and the political mentality often associated with the “white middle aged American politician”. When Moore and Maher use the term the “black guy”, it seems obvious to me that they aren’t responding to color, a person, or the “gansta”, the “homeboy” as some have put it….but to the new wave of optimism about politics that spread during the Obama campaign and represented in the hopes of ordinary citizens, African Americans, the ordinary Joe, the underdogs, the young, the diverse, and all those other groups who have been underrepresented and unheard in American politics for so many years, in short, anybody but the priveleged majority…a new kind of politics in which lobbyists weren’t controlling the political agenda, the little guy had a voice… politics would now be about transparency, a social conscience, integrity, equal representation, diversity, balance, etc.In this metaphor the “white guy” represents elitism and a lack of hope while the “black guy” represents a social conscience, fairness,and the people running the show. If you look through Moore’s and Maher’s track records they support this ideology and often speak in metaphorical terms…they were also big Obama supporters during the past election. The problem for these guys is that Obama (in their minds)kept “business as usual politics” operating in Washington (“the white guy”)instead of initiating the radical change (“the black guy”) that was promised in the election and championed by the hopeful. Again, this is a debatable point as well and many believe that Obama did the best he could given the opposition he faced in Congress.However,the point is that Maher and Moore used a poor metaphor…poor choice of words…I think a lot of people would agree that they did…that’s anopther argument….as to the charge of racism, I think if you look at their past actions and words the claim is inconsistent with all they have represented.
Thanks for your blog link, MK, and your work against violence.
ABL, I read the comments at BJ and a majority of the haters are PL. They kept on ranting about President Obama capitulating and calling him weak.
Fuck every single last one of them, they don’t know the shit they are espousing and are politically tone deaf. That they defend this bullshit racism and bigotry from Michael Moore and Bill Maher speaks VOLUMES. They are NO different from the Teapugs who defend racism from the right.
Also, Michael Moore is a self serving blowhard. What has he done recently to help those who are unemployed? He just seems to promote HIMSELF and not the less fortunate he supposedly cares about.
Frankly, that fat fuck can fuck off. He did nothing for John Kerry in 2004 with Fahrenheit 9/11 and is a do nothing schmuck who isn’t respected by most of America.
“that fat fuck”
What does being “fat” have to do with it?
I think it means he invented the intertubes by warming the planet.
Actually, I admire Moore’s decision to affect a proletarian appearance, much more than if he had toned up at the gym and got fancy threads. And I have to agree we shouldn’t use that kind of abuse. (Tempting, though, and you know he can take it.)
BJ used to be one of my favorite blogs but I barely go there anymore. The comment section has gotten too vicious. The frontpagers kind of set it up with their baiting posts. It just turns into one long pissing contest. I dunno; it seems like its gotten worse over the past year.
I lost respect for Maher a while ago and I’ve completely lost any I ever had for Moore.
Both of them can just fuck off.
If Moore has ever, ever, ever acknowled that the Prez saved the auto industry, I must have missed it. And until he does that I’m not hearing anything else he has to say.
I was about to say the same thing, Nellcote. Obama did more for GM than Moore did with “Roger and Me.” Now, of course there’s a difference between being a documentary filmmaker/provocateur/blowhard and the POTUS. But MOORE is the one who doesn’t recognize that difference. He can do whatever-the-fuck he can get away with to make his films. (Including using non-union labor — and how weird is it that Moore’s agent is Ari Emanuel? — http://abcnews.go.com/Business/michael-moore-snubs-union-workers-making-capitalism-love/story?id=8715559)
If Moore and Maher had to get the approval of over 500 prima donnas as Obama does with Congress to do their movies or tv shows, I doubt they’d be nearly as good at getting shit done as President Obama is. Of course, for too many in EmoProg land, “whining incessantly” equals “activism” or “applying pressure from the left.” Fuck them. And I’m not going over to Cole’s joint. I’ve mostly been avoiding it because aside from Kay and a few others, there really isn’t much of value ever found in the comments, and I can find my primo snark here and at Rumproast.
FTW!
“I’m not racist.” MM is not only big around the girth and head, he also has a proportionately sized mouth. I’ve always thought he was a clown. Now I see he’s a racist as well – just like so many on the hard left.
the thing I found particularly disturbing about that BJ thread was it was not just the usual ABL haters spewing their shit.
There were people that I seriously respected, who are obviously intelligent, and probably well-meaning, UNABLE TO COMPREHEND why attributing a “positive” quality to Obama because of his race — i.e., that he should be a tough ass street fighter — is just as racist as attributing a negative quality.
It is truly mind boggling.
That is some mighty ridiculous non-sense. I guess, according to Michael Moore, if I went out and stole a car but then turned myself in to the police that would be my inner white guy winning out over my inner black guy.
The fact that something so mind numbingly stupid came out of that man’s mouth isn’t 100% surprising though. As much as I think that the subjects that he covers in his documentaries need to be discussed, I find that I can’t stand his use of sensationalism and his cherry picking of the most blatant examples of something while trying to pass them off as the normal.
Just ugh.
Oh, and if I can rant about one little thing, I am sick to death of having strangers stop me after seeing my Obama bumper sticker and asking “Are you still happy with your boy Barack?”
Putting aside the derogatory nature of that comment for a moment, the man is older, more educated, and in a completely different social circle than I. There is no way in seven hells that I could conceive of a situation where the President of the United States could possibly be referred to as my “boy” “dog” “homie” or anything other than leader of my nation. Even if I were to win one of the dinners with the President, I wouldn’t greet him as an equal, I wouldn’t talk to him as if he were some old college buddy. He is the President, and he will be respected as such.
I never credited Moore with having measured and well considered views. He puts out polemics. That is what he does for a living.
This behavior is within character.
I consider the source.
Bill Maher started this, huh?
The Professional Left and the Emprogs have their panties in a bunch because they really thought they would have the POWER to tell President Obama what to do, how to do it and when to do it. They thought President Obama would say “how high” when they said “jump”. They didn’t have a CLUE about President Obama. They THOUGHT he was weak. They like to call him WEAK. But I dare anyone of them to go on the South side of Chicago (even in 2011) and do what President Obama did when he was working as a community organizer. How stupid they are. They don’t know how much courage it took for President Obama to walk those tough streets. They don’t know how much courage it takes for him to be President in the USA where he receives death threats everyday of his life. The Professional Left, including Maher, Moore, Maddow, Schultz, O’Donnell and any of the rest of the paid saboteurs can take a long walk off a short pier.
white progressives and their proxy cornel west are upset because obama
doesn’t send his speeches to them for their ok and suggestions, which is how it was done in the old days.