“I’ve had enough of Hussein.”
Are the good sheeple of West Virginia the most racist, uneducated, and misinformed voters in America? Or will Kentucky top them next week? I’m willing to bet that the lovely white ladies who were interviewed by the news networks, and then showcased on The Daily Show last night got their learnin’ from the fair and balanced Fox News. I’m also willing to bet that each lovely lady has already ordered a Barack Obama t-shirt.
Watch and cringe. (The interviews start at 1:49.)
Now, let’s examine each quote one by one…
“I guess because he is another race. I’m sorta scared of the other race ’cause we have so much conflict with ‘em.”
Exactly what sort of conflict are the good sheeple of West Virginia having with other races other than white folk? Are there even any non-whites in West Virginia? Where do they hide? I bet in caves. Hell, I would too.
“He’s Muslim, and that has a lot to do with it.”
This woman obviously watches Fox News. I can’t think of any other place where she could have been fed that dribble. She probably also believes we found WMDs in Iraq. Fox News incorrectly reported that too, just like they have repeatedly reported that Obama is a Muslim.
“I don’t like the Hussein thing. I’ve had enough of Hussein.”
This woman is my favorite. You can see the seriousness in her eyes. She has had enough of Hussein! In her defense, she dated Saddam Hussein in college. I’m kidding! Saddam Hussein never went to college. But she was part of the resistance during the war when Iraq invaded West Virginia. So it’s understandable that she’s had enough of Hussein.
I wonder where she buys her muumuus…
Do you think the majority of West Virginians know that a plurality of the country is mocking them and having a good laugh at their expense? Do you think they even care?
May 15th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
We don’t need to mock them we need to change their point of view.
May 15th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
The confict thing is so transparent. She doesn’t like black people, hey at least she knows she should hide it.
May 16th, 2008 at 1:59 am
It’s amazing how ignorant the vast majority of Americans are. With the myriad sources of factual news — television, print, and the Internet — most people unfortunately still get their “news” from what “someone said.” Nasty rumors from bigoted, narrow-minded, and uneducated people — many times, unfortunately, from stupid “preachers” — are very difficult to dispel. To get elected, Republican politicians have to appeal to the ignorance and fears of the unenlightened and uneducated. (I will never forget Richard Nixon’s and Ronald Reagan’s “Southern Strategy.”) Republicans love to call progressive, or liberal, (i.e., educated and enlightened) Democrats “elitists” in order win votes and power from, what Spiro Agnew called, “the silent majority” — or as the news media calls them, “working-class whites.” (Here in the South, I’ve already heard some people call Barack Obama an “uppity nigger.”) Its difficult — almost impossible — to get rid of bigotry, I’m sad to say. Education is the only antidote, and Democrats are going to have to spend a hell of a lot of money for media and public relations in order to counter the Republican onslaught of misinformation and lies.
May 16th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
It’s very sad how many people I considered enlightened — usually older Hillary supporters — are using the “uppity nigger” epithet as reason for not voting for Obama. People saying crap like “just wait until he’s President, how uppity they will be!”
Really. It’s nuts.
I don’t even like Obama personally but I’ll take him over McCain and Hillary and their cronyism.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
My friend brought up a good point when i was telling him about this crap. He said that it doesn’t even matter because these people were going to vote for the Republican party do matter who the nominee for the democrats was, they just voted in this race because they had the option to. There will always be idiots like this, but their numbers will drop drastically if he is elected. It has happened to other countries already. Once people are force to deal with the reality that Obama is the president (hopefully) people will realize “Hey, this isn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe i overreacted.” Only then will people realize there’s no difference if the president is white, black, asian or any of the previously mentioned as a woman. I just hope 51% of America is open enough to electing Barack, or at least realize that McCain is a flip-flopper who sings the tune of whatever people want to hear.
May 17th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
This post illustrates why liberals are disliked because of their elitism. Mocking people because of their lack of education is the sort of thing that has put Republicans in the White House time after time. No wonder the people of West Virginia, who used to vote reliably for Democrats are not doing so now.
You are playing into the hands of the Bushes, the McCains, the Roves. Mocking poor working class West Virginians for their being ill informed pushes them even deeper into the right-wing camp. It is a self defeating attitude and should be discouraged. Don’t act this way unless you want to lose people like this again. Mockery rarely wins anyone to your side, even though you can make yourself feel superior.
Check out the facts about West Virginia in terms of average income. This was a working class state filled with strong union members in such industries as coal mining. The unions there, like the rest of the country, systematically have been weakened. Traditional mining jobs have been disappearing. The land has been raped with a change to a new form of mining that simply rips the tops of mountains and poisons the water table. The education and economic levels in Appalachia are among the lowest in our country.
This post makes people on the left look bad. This is the sort of thing that allows the right wing to accuse liberals of being elitist. I don’t need to be a Republican to point that out. Open you eyes. Realize that when the Republicans accuse the Democrats of being elitists it resonates for a reason. This post illustrates what that reason is. Mocking these people in West Virginia is not apt to win them over, is it? Nor is it apt to win anyone else over. It illustrates an attitude that hurts us and plays into the hands of the Bushes and the Roves. Not good, especially when Obama has been wounded politically with accusations of being elitist. Wake up.
Your use of this sort of mockery won’t win many West Virginians to vote for a Democrat this November. Mockery and insults may feel like humor, but they are not effective ways to win people to our side. Stop it if you want real change that includes the people you mock.
May 18th, 2008 at 11:33 am
While I am sure that their are racist white people that voted for Hillary just because she was white, the same can be said with some black people voting for BO. In North Carolina 90 % of the African-Americans in that state voted for BO. Now if those numbers did not have anything to do with race , than I can fly.
Also someone said that is does not matter because the republicans where going to get WV any way this it not true, many times WV have voted for the dems, but now with so many peole making fun of them more than likely the dems would lose that state.
Last thing , they just showed a few people , lord knows how many normal people they talked to but it is a comedy show , so are they going to show the normal people ?
May 19th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
The perspectives of the last two commenters (”Joey” and “out of the loop”) are rather unfortunate due to the fact that points-of-view such as theirs only perpetuate the ignorant, prejudice, racist notions like that of the West Virginia Democratic primary voters.
Joey’s perspective fuels the ridiculous notion that white people are allowed to maintain their prejudices because black people have theirs — absurd ideology. White people hold the majority of power and wealth in this country. The white race is also the source of the discriminatory, racist thread that runs through the history of this country since it’s inception. Therefore, they are responsible for righting the wrongs by changing the tides of our racist culture. Are white people of today responsible for the wrongs of their ancestors? Yes, by all means. As they have reaped the harvest of those wrongs, benefiting daily from the racial hierarchy of our culture. In addition, the overwhelming support of Barack Obama by black Americans is not a support of maintaining black Americans lofty and elite status in our nation’s culture — that reality doesn’t exist. Black Americans are voting in hopes that their concerns, their perspectives, their needs, and their ideas will be brought to the national table in a way it has yet to in history, because they have always been represented by someone who is far removed from their affairs — maybe even working in opposition to them. White Americans who will cross party lines and vote for a candidate whose platform and policies directly contradict their needs are voting to maintain the racial hierarchy of this nation. In essence they are saying they would rather be broke and poor (or moreso) than see racial equality in this nation. That’s sad. Damn, that’s pathetic.
May 19th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Well put, Charles.
September 28th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
It’s pretty racist, yeah, but it seems like no one thinks that saying “Obama shouldn’t be president because he’s Muslim” is prejudiced too. Of course he’s not Muslim, but if he was, it shouldn’t matter. Religion should be just as unimportant as race when it comes to being president (obviously unless the candidate makes decisions based on his/her religious beliefs.) I feel like Obama’s campaign has done a lot to refute the Muslim rumors, but nothing to state that being Muslim is not a bad thing, because being Muslim doesn’t make you a terrorist or an America-hater. I guess that would be a politically unwise thing to do, since being tolerant of Muslims and non-Christian religions in general seems to be pretty unpopular at the moment…