A fellow could run out the best part of a day dissecting the dispatches of Lee-Anne Goodman, the one-woman Washington bureau of Canada's monopolistic newswire agency, but it doesn't pay, and one has to concentrate one's efforts on enterprises that do. So the May 29 dispatch -- headlined "U.S. racists direct hateful messages at Obama" or "Latest attack on Obama: personal ad calls for his assassination" -- will have to suffice.
Ah, the ol' "kill him" Palin rally. It's been about seven months since I last saw that story, when it was exposed as a hoax. America is a serious nation, and it was only 28 years ago that a would-be assassin put a bullet into a president of the United States, so when someone publicly advocates assassinating a national leader in America, that's not some partisan talking point, it's grounds for a Secret Service investigation. And when the American press reported in October '08 that someone at a Sarah Palin rally had called for Barack Obama to be killed, the local field office of the Secret Service launched such an investigation.
The Canadian Press Washington bureau repeated a seven month old hoax as fact in the News sections of newspapers across Canada, in aid of the implication that McCain/Palin supporters and Obama opponents are inveterate, possibly murderous racists ("racist incidents at John McCain and Sarah Palin rallies ... including one event in which someone called out, 'Kill him' ... the situation doesn't seem to have progressed much since those rallies"). It's as I wrote before: This is the error of a person exposed only to information that comes with a Democratic National Committee seal at the top. The Canadian Press Washington bureau would be familiar with the charge against conservatives, but not the later acquittal.
Those protests were held from one end of the country to the other and were remarkable if for no reason other than that conservatives are not the protesting kind. But when the Canadian Press Washington bureau here finds space for the tea parties, it's to report that they were only "ostensibly" about big government, but were in fact "populated" by racists. The Janine Garofalo line has been adopted by Canada's national newswire service. This is the extreme-left view that those regular American folks weren't legitimately protesting policies meant to "remake the nation" into something unrecognizable from what it's always been. No, this extreme-left view has it that those regular folks are nothing more or less than racists, so consumed by racial hatred that they turned out across the country for what may be America's first-ever national mass demonstration by conservatives. And the tea parties are referred to as the "teabagging protests", which is not the proper name but a pornographic leftist taunt.
As near as I can tell, the CP Washington bureau is claiming that beyond-the-pale attacks on Obama like the ones reported in the piece are something closer to commonplace than exceptional ("such sentiments haven’t been exclusive to the odd face in the crowd"), and that these attacks are considerably worse than anything Bush ever got from the other side, beyond the old "dumb Bush" jokes ("a far cry from the insults about George W. Bush’s intelligence").
So de rigeur was it to call Bush "Hitler", that after sometime in 2003 I took no notice of it. A Google search for "Bush Hitler" yields 1,130,000 matches, with helpful "image results". Indeed, Google returns 61,800 matches for "Bushitler", the neologism coined to more conveniently meld Bush with Hitler.
Bush was routinely characterized as a chimpanzee, as on the website "George W. Bush or Chimpanzee?", which offers Bush-or-Chimp T-shirts. Google returns 1,660,000 matches for "Bush chimp", including those handy "image results".
Bush is of course not black, but his two former secretaries of state are, and it was not unknown for leftists to trot out a race joke or insult against them:
And there was Bush assassination talk even before Bush became president. A few of the more notorious examples:
I am nonplussed that anyone even casually acquainted with the previous eight years in American current events could overlook all the "Bush Hitler" and "Bush chimp" and "kill Bush" vitriol, claim instead that the Bush-haters restricted themselves to remarks about Bush's intelligence, and imagine that Obama has it much worse.
Again, the Canadian Press Washington bureau has reported on America for Canada's newspapers with exactly one side of the story; propping up the powerful, and persecuting the powerless, unapproved minority; presenting the beloved Left as blameless, while the detested conservative opposition is delegitimized and demonized. Fine. But I do wish the CP would run a disclaimer with those dispatches. Like "Opinion".
(Much more on this subject here.)
Lee-Anne Goodman: "Keystone Progress exposed racist incidents at John McCain and Sarah Palin rallies in Pennsylvania last year, including one event in which someone called out, 'Kill him,' in reference to Obama. The situation doesn't seem to have progressed much since those rallies."
Ah, the ol' "kill him" Palin rally. It's been about seven months since I last saw that story, when it was exposed as a hoax. America is a serious nation, and it was only 28 years ago that a would-be assassin put a bullet into a president of the United States, so when someone publicly advocates assassinating a national leader in America, that's not some partisan talking point, it's grounds for a Secret Service investigation. And when the American press reported in October '08 that someone at a Sarah Palin rally had called for Barack Obama to be killed, the local field office of the Secret Service launched such an investigation.
From the yeoman report in the Northeastern Pennsylvania Times-Leader: "The agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton said allegations that someone yelled 'kill him' when presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s name was mentioned during Tuesday’s Sarah Palin rally are unfounded. ...
Agent Bill Slavoski said he was in the audience, along with an undisclosed
number of additional secret service agents and other law enforcement officers,
and not one heard the comment. 'I was baffled,' he said after reading the report
in Wednesday’s Times-Tribune.
He said the agency conducted an investigation Wednesday, after seeing the
story, and could not find one person to corroborate the allegation other than
Singleton [the local reporter who started the story]. ...
'We have yet to find someone to back up the story,' Slavoski said. 'We had
people all over and we have yet to find anyone who said they heard it.'"
The Canadian Press Washington bureau repeated a seven month old hoax as fact in the News sections of newspapers across Canada, in aid of the implication that McCain/Palin supporters and Obama opponents are inveterate, possibly murderous racists ("racist incidents at John McCain and Sarah Palin rallies ... including one event in which someone called out, 'Kill him' ... the situation doesn't seem to have progressed much since those rallies"). It's as I wrote before: This is the error of a person exposed only to information that comes with a Democratic National Committee seal at the top. The Canadian Press Washington bureau would be familiar with the charge against conservatives, but not the later acquittal.
More Lee-Anne Goodman: "The so-called 'teabagging' protests held across the U.S. last month, ostensibly to protest big government spending, were populated by several attendees waving signs with racist slogans, including a child in Denver who carried one that read: 'Obama-nomics: Monkey See, Monkey Do.'Those would be the "tea parties", as in the "Boston Tea Party" in protest of King George III's taxation.
Another sign in Chicago featured a photo of Adolf Hitler with Obama’s head super-imposed over the infamous dictator’s, and read: 'Barack Hussein Obama: The New Face of Hitler.' Another urged him to go 'back to Kenya.'
Such sentiments haven’t been exclusive to the odd face in the crowd, and are a far cry from the insults about George W. Bush’s intelligence that were routinely directed at the former president by his opponents."
Those protests were held from one end of the country to the other and were remarkable if for no reason other than that conservatives are not the protesting kind. But when the Canadian Press Washington bureau here finds space for the tea parties, it's to report that they were only "ostensibly" about big government, but were in fact "populated" by racists. The Janine Garofalo line has been adopted by Canada's national newswire service. This is the extreme-left view that those regular American folks weren't legitimately protesting policies meant to "remake the nation" into something unrecognizable from what it's always been. No, this extreme-left view has it that those regular folks are nothing more or less than racists, so consumed by racial hatred that they turned out across the country for what may be America's first-ever national mass demonstration by conservatives. And the tea parties are referred to as the "teabagging protests", which is not the proper name but a pornographic leftist taunt.
As near as I can tell, the CP Washington bureau is claiming that beyond-the-pale attacks on Obama like the ones reported in the piece are something closer to commonplace than exceptional ("such sentiments haven’t been exclusive to the odd face in the crowd"), and that these attacks are considerably worse than anything Bush ever got from the other side, beyond the old "dumb Bush" jokes ("a far cry from the insults about George W. Bush’s intelligence").
So de rigeur was it to call Bush "Hitler", that after sometime in 2003 I took no notice of it. A Google search for "Bush Hitler" yields 1,130,000 matches, with helpful "image results". Indeed, Google returns 61,800 matches for "Bushitler", the neologism coined to more conveniently meld Bush with Hitler.
Bush was routinely characterized as a chimpanzee, as on the website "George W. Bush or Chimpanzee?", which offers Bush-or-Chimp T-shirts. Google returns 1,660,000 matches for "Bush chimp", including those handy "image results".
Bush is of course not black, but his two former secretaries of state are, and it was not unknown for leftists to trot out a race joke or insult against them:
- Before Colin Powell turned Obama-supporter, it was considered "authentic" in some quarters of the Left to call him an "Uncle Tom". As in the Daily Kos headline circa Bush's re-election campaign: "Uncle Tom Powell Stumps for Massah Bush".
- So respectable was it to call Condoleezza Rice a "skeeza", that even Barack Obama's pastor, the "Reverend" Wright, got into the act, as well as New Jersey's "Poet Laureate". (And yes, who knew New Jersey had a poet laureate?)
- A white leftist radio host in Wisconsin built on the "Uncle Tom" for Powell with an "Aunt Jemima" for Rice.
- Liberal editorial cartoonist Jeff Danziger portrayed Rice as the black maid from Gone With the Wind, saying "I knows all about aluminum tubes! I don't know nuthin' about aluminum tubes."
And there was Bush assassination talk even before Bush became president. A few of the more notorious examples:
- CBS's The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn ran a photo of Bush with the words "Snipers Wanted" months before the 2000 election.
- Cafe Press sold T-shirts reading "For God's Sake...KILL BUSH - Save the United States and the Rest of the World".
- Columbia College in Chicago exhibited an art print meant to look like a sheet of U.S. stamps reading "Patriot Act" and depicting Bush with a gun to his head.
- The film Death of a President imagined a world in which President Bush had been shot and killed by an assassin.
- The premier publishing house Alfred Knopf published a novel by Nicholson Baker titled Checkpoint, about a plot to kill Bush out of rage over the Iraq War.
- Al Franken, the Democrat comic-turned-presumptive junior senator from Minnesota, joked about executing President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
I am nonplussed that anyone even casually acquainted with the previous eight years in American current events could overlook all the "Bush Hitler" and "Bush chimp" and "kill Bush" vitriol, claim instead that the Bush-haters restricted themselves to remarks about Bush's intelligence, and imagine that Obama has it much worse.
Again, the Canadian Press Washington bureau has reported on America for Canada's newspapers with exactly one side of the story; propping up the powerful, and persecuting the powerless, unapproved minority; presenting the beloved Left as blameless, while the detested conservative opposition is delegitimized and demonized. Fine. But I do wish the CP would run a disclaimer with those dispatches. Like "Opinion".
(Much more on this subject here.)
