Boy, Oh, Boy

[babylonsister]

Boy, Oh, Boy

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 12, 2009


The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.

The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.

But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/opinion/13dowd.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

[AngryAmish]

1. What insight! M. Dowd discovers that Rethugs are RACISTS!!!

No wonder she gets paid so much.

[ProSense]

2. Exactly n/t

[babylonsister]

3. Ha! Yep, but I like the fact that it's in the NYT. nt

[ProSense]

5. It is good. n/t

[Mass]

4. Wilson is a racist? That is what surprises her?

May be she should have read about him before.

This is what this columnist in the Boston Herald did, and what she found
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6537854


Wilson is a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans, who favor secession and defend slavery as benign. Wilson served as an aide to the late segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond, a champion of white supremacy who conducted the longest filibuster in Senate history against the 1957 civil-rights bill. When Thurmond’s biracial daughter came forward after Thurmond’s death, Wilson called her “a smear” on Thurmond and said she should’ve kept her identity quiet. It was later revealed that Thurmond, who impregnated the girl’s mother when she was a 16-year-old family maid, had a secret relationship with that daughter and supported her for decades.

[my2sense]

6. Finally a voice in the M$M is taking serious note of what is occurring n/t

[livetohike]

7. Chris Matthews brought it up on Hardball right before he got sick

and missed all of last week. We'll see if he returns to that subject on Monday.

[georgian style]

8. Dowd is clever. By adding "boy," she can make the case that "you lie boy" was racist

Dowd is one of the most clever columnists in the nation.

[FrenchieCat]

9. She is not clever, she simply knows who supports Joe Wilson,

and what he is.