Carter is Absolutely Correct

Carter’s Charges of Racism Are ‘Spot On’
By Nicholas F. Benton
Thursday, 17 September 2009 13:25

Former President Jimmy Carter is absolutely correct in charging that blatant racism is at the core of the escalating tantrums by the enemies of President Barack Obama. Carter made the charge during a Carter Center event, and reiterated them in an interview with NBC's Brian Williams that will be aired soon.

New York Times Columnist Maureen Dowd came to a similar conclusion in her column last weekend.

While it is politic for the Obama administration to dismiss such concerns, there is little doubt that opponents of serious health care reform are not so subtly pulling the strings of racist Americans to generate a revolt-like atmosphere.

Carter responded specifically to Rep. Joe Wilson's intemperate outburst during Obama's address to the joint session of Congress last week. By interrupting the president with a hostile, finger-pointing shout of "You lie!," Wilson amplified a growing "tone of disrespect" for the president, Carter said, that many recognize as barely disguised racism.

Even more explicit was the admission by Mark Williams, key organizer of the anti-Obama Tea Party Express demonstrations, that he referred to Obama as "an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug" on his blog. Williams did not back away from the reference, saying to Anderson Cooper, James Carville and David Gergen on CNN this week, "That's how Obama is behaving."

One can simply not build a riotous mass movement based on the charge of "socialism," alone. Nobody even knows what the term really means, being a throw-back to pre-World War II times.

But racism is a far different matter. As an unfortunate testament to the state of our national culture, it can all too easily trigger violent and irrational outbursts and rage in far too many of our population.

CNN's potbellied little Lou Dobbs, who appears to suffer from a Napoleonic complex as evidenced by his loud and bellicose thunderings of umbrage against persons he perceives to be weaker than he is, such as illegal aliens, tapped the racist underbelly of America in the period leading up to the presidential election last year with a relentless drumbeat against Hispanic Americans, couched as a campaign against illegals.

Backwater jurisdictions such as Prince William County in Virginia responded in kind by permitting police to stop Hispanics to demand proof of their legal presence with no cause. The result was that Hispanics fled the county, undercutting its already-hurting economy and creating a labor shortage.

In like manner, Dobbs' efforts backfired, served only to drive the Hispanic vote into Obama's corner in the election, as all the analysts concluded.

But now, Dobbs, Glen Beck (who must have his Fox News cohorts Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity green with envy for his superior ability to gain notoriety for chew rugs and otherwise rabble rousing) have joined Rush Limbaugh and others to be the cutting edge clarions of the health industry's racially-driven shock troops.

On Anderson Cooper's show Former Presidential Advisor Gergen expressed genuine concern for the "danger" such efforts represent for the nation.

But not only Wilson, other Republican congressmen are also feeding the mood of frenzy, with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tn) now leading a bogus charge against the Obama's administration's so-called czars, saying they are making policy without accountability.

Such wild claims overlook the fact that the George W. Bush administration had no fewer than 47 such "czars" itself.

At the Tea Party demonstration in D.C. last weekend, as a fake photo grossly exaggerating the size of the crowd were posted on the Tea Party web site, two young men of the New Left Media, Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll, videotaped responses of demonstrators to their non-threatening questions. The result was a 9:31-minute masterpiece that is now on You Tube, showing more clearly than anything else the rank stupidity of these demonstrators, who showed up as tools thanks to Beck, et al, and the Freedom Works public relations firm retained by the health care industry to block reform.

With almost 200,000 views to date, I've posted the video on Twitter and Facebook, and it can be dialed up directly at "9.12 DC Tea Party - March Footage With Interviews."