The Chocolate Dog

Wow, there is a lot of hate mongering twits out there and they are not afraid to be documented on it even if their own documentation practices are a little questionable. Check this out;




In recent months, conservatives have been caught red-faced spreading smears about Barack Obama via emails and blogs and Web sites, their sources eventually unmasked as tainted or non-existent people. Now here's another example, but this one is a little different--the source is a Washington Post reporter named Dale Lindsborg.

Of course, there is no Dale Lindsborg at the Post (or seemingly anywhere) but when did that get in the way of a good smear?

Even a giveaway line in his alleged account where Obama endorses an old Coke commercial song as our new national anthem did not deter some from believing it and making it "viral."

For many weeks the "Lindsborg" account of an Obama appearance on "Meet the Press" on Sept. 7 has been rocketing around the world and back again via email and the Internet, sometimes showing up at reputable sites -- such as the Post itself -- in their Comments sections. Someone even brought it up on Wednesday in an online chat with Washington Post reporter Ann Kornblut at the paper's site. She said she knew of no Lindsborg but would check on it (hey, put Bob Woodward on the case).

The charge is the old familiar tale of Obama not believing in honoring the flag, and hating America, with the new twist that he said this on "Meet the Press" a month ago (somehow the world missed this) and that it has been confirmed by the aforementioned Dale Lindsborg.

It was debunked on the snopes.com site, which traced it back to a satiric entry at an obscure site that was taken seriously and spread widely.

The giveaway should have been Obama saying he wanted to junk our "bellicose" national anthem, the "Star-Spangled Banner," and replace it with the more peaceful "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" -- adding that if that was our anthem "then I might salute it."

He supposedly then added, "It's my intention, if elected, to disarm America to the level of acceptance to our Middle East Brethren." And: "My wife disrespects the Flag for many personal reasons. Together she and I have attended several flag burning ceremonies in the past, many years ago."

Reporter "Lindsborg" then winds up his account: "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it right. This could possibly be our next President. I, for one, am speechless."

Taylor Batten, editorial page editor at the Charlotte Observer, commented yesterday at one of his paper's blogs, "Come on, people. You're e-mailing this to all your friends, in a panic, in disbelief that this man is leading in the polls.

"Here's an idea: think for yourself! Spend, oh, 10 seconds on Google and see if there really is a"Dale Lindsborg" at the Washington Post. Spend 30 seconds seeing if Obama was even ON the Sept. 7 'Meet the Press.' Are you so predisposed to one candidate or the other that you can't think critically?"

It was Jesus Christ, if Matthew is to be believed, who said, "Love thine enemy." It is in that spirit that I write this belated valentine to Sarah Palin.

Sarah, I love you for having revealed unto the media the snarling heart of the beast that is the base (and the soul) of the Republican Party. Yes, you have the lipstick and the heels, not to mention the calves and bosoms, that send Republican men into swoons, but you have more; the pit-bull snarl that rouses your supporters to cry out, "Traitor!" against Obama, and "Kill him!"

George Bush kept those folks in their kennels, ran as a "compassionate conservative," and always masked his most heinous plans in double speak. Bush the Elder, Ronald Reagan, and even Richard Nixon never explicitly ran on hate and fear of "the other." They used words that were coded enough that it was possible to pretend that they were true.

But now the beast is loose.

The Republican Party likes to remember Abraham Lincoln. And so they should. It's a nice memory and brings credit to them. As does the accidental ascension of Teddy Roosevelt, environmentalist and basher of corporations. Back in the 1950s and '60s, their party included such figures as Dwight Eisenhower -- whose reputation grows ever better in retrospect -- Nelson Rockefeller, who built New York's state university system, and New York City mayor John Lindsey.

But there is another strand that runs through their history.

Back in the 1840s, there was a group called the Know Nothings. They were against immigrants and for real Americans. ("Real American" did not then, as it does not now, refer to Indians; it refers to descendants of English immigrants.) The movement was based on fear. Irish and German Catholics were going to take over. They would take orders from the Pope-in-Rome (one word). Their values were not "our values." They drank. Their nunneries were virtual brothels and when the nuns had babies they practiced infanticide.

The Know Nothings started with secret societies like the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, associated with William Poole, better known as Bill the Butcher, depicted by Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York. Their public political face was the American Republican Party, which became the Native American Party, and finally the American Party.

Their platform was:

Severe limits on immigration, especially from Catholic countries.
Restricting political office to "native-born" Americans.
Mandating a wait of 21 years before an immigrant could gain citizenship.
Restricting public school teaching to Protestants.
Mandating daily Bible readings in public schools (from the Protestant version of the Bible).
Restricting the sale of liquor.

For a brief time, the American Party was wildly popular. In 1854 party membership swelled from 50,000 to over a million in a matter of months. It elected mayors in Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Chicago, and won the state legislature and governorship of Massachusetts.

But there were other things going on: the Mexican War, slavery, secession, and the Civil War. The movement didn't last long and was soon absorbed by the Republican Party.

Fair is fair. Things morph and change. The Republican Party freed the slaves and tried to create an interracial democratic South during Reconstruction. The Democratic Party became the party of segregation in the South and the second home of the Klu Klux Klan. To be Republican is not to be necessarily narrow-minded and in dread fear of foreigners. To be Democratic is not necessarily to be liberal, progressive and open-minded.

But enough of being fair.

The Great Depression demonstrated that the principles of the Republican Party were bankrupt. Like most of the country. The Democrats became the progressive party, representing social justice and programs that would protect capitalism from its own worst tendencies, moving toward a vision of a perfectable world. The Republicans became -- in a very literal sense -- a reactionary party, reacting against whatever the Democrats were doing, engaged in a 60-year-long war against the New Deal.

Lyndon Johnson is the pivotal figure, both heroic and deeply tragic. The Democratic Party's dirty public secret was that its political hegemony rested on the Solid South, still refusing to vote Republican out of hatred of Lincoln. Johnson knew that if he pushed through the Civil Rights Act his party would lose the South for a generation. Or more. His heroism is that he did anyway. No, he did not end the race issue, but he broke the back of segregation.

The Republicans saw their opportunity. They pursued the Southern Strategy, wooing resentful whites with great success.

But two things happened.

Racism became less and less tenable. The generation that cherished it has grown old. That pillar of the Republican Party is crumbling.

And then along came Bush-Cheney. Like Herbert Hoover, in the process of leading the country to bankruptcy they demonstrated that the Republican Party's ideas were also bankrupt. They made government bigger, not smaller -- and more intrusive, too. They didn't oppose special interests, they were the special interests. They didn't oppose lobbyists, they forced lobbyists to join their party at fiscal gunpoint. They were militaristic on parade, but could not run a war. They could not protect the country nor punish the people who actually attacked us. Their policies demonstrated that free markets are a fiction, and real markets need more supervision than a grade-school playground.

Along came John McCain. He looked out, from sea to shining sea, from the mountains, to the prairies, in search of voters who would vote for him. All he could find were the new Know Nothings. People who, frightened of the way things are changing, want to change back to that white, Protestant place it was, oh, sometime back before 1840. America Firsters. Anti-immigrant. Anti-foreigner. Anti-elite. Anti-intelligence.

Not quite capable of running as a true Know Nothing himself, he chose someone who could: Sarah Palin. She does it well, and in so doing, shows us, clearly and simply, who they really are.

Posted by Saint Tuesday on Monday, November 3, 2008 at 3:23 AM | Permalink