RUSH CALLS FOR RETURN TO SEGREGATED BUSES

You've got to hand it to Rush Limbaugh. Just when you think that bloated Nazi gasbag can't get any more despicable, he somehow tops himself. On his radio program Tuesday, Rush was busy fanning the flames of hatred, as usual, devoting the entire show to a white teenager getting beaten up by a black teenager on a schoolbus. Rush cited the incident as an example that President Obama is spreading racism against white people in America.

Even though local law enforcement said the fight was probably not racially motivated, Limbaugh said: “I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.”

(A full transcript of Tuesday's show can be found at mediamatters.org.)


Unabated, Rush continued the diatribe Wednesday: “In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” Limbaugh also said. “I wonder if Obama’s going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.”

"Obama's America?" What would Rush Limbaugh's America look like? Or, should I say, what DID it look like?

Segregated, separate and unequal. Buses, like everything else, were divided by race. Thankfully, Americans rejected Rush Limbaugh's America, but not without a struggle. It took a tired, middle-aged lady from Alabama named Rosa Parks to challenge segregated buses back in 1955. Her courage sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and moved a nation toward equality and civil rights.

An unlikely hero: Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama, 1955

December 1st, 1955. At 6 pm, Rosa Parks boarded the bus and paid her fare. She sat in the "colored" section of the bus. Bus driver James F. Blake noted that the front of the bus was filled with white passengers and there were two or three white men standing, so he moved the "colored" section sign behind Parks and demanded that four black people give up their seats in the middle section so that the white passengers could sit.

Parks refused to give up her seat. When Parks refused to move, Blake called the police, and an Alabama police officer arrested her. She asked the officer, "Why do you push us around?" The officer said, "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest." Parks later said, "I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind."

- a clip from Mighty Times, the Legacy of Rosa Parks, a documentary produced by Teaching Tolerance and Tell the Truth Pictures.

FOX HOST ON RACIAL PURITY

Brian Kilmeade is an ignorant assclown. Kilmeade, the host of Fox and Friends, laments the loss of racial purity in the American people because people aren't marrying their own ethnic group. Is he running for some Nazi journalism award? Clearly, Kilmeade hasn't read a book on race or ethnicity since the turn of the last century when ethnic stereotypes and racial quotas had the thinnest veneer of academic approval. Of course, that view was swept aside by modern science, but apparently nobody told Kilmeade.

Don't confuse him with the facts. He's got his job at Fox. What happened?

The conversation concerned recent scientific data that suggests people in long term marriages tend to experience less Alzheimer's Disease then those in short term marriages. An interesting notion that could provoke an intelligent repsonse. Not from Kilmeade. Never at a loss for ignorance, he leaps into nostalgia for the pure (master?) race.



"We keep marrying other species and other ethnics," he says. "The problem is the Swedes have pure genes. They marry other Swedes, that's the rule. Finns marry other Finns; they have a pure society. In America we marry everybody. We will marry Italians and Irish."

Reminds me of the latest Nixon tapes to be released, wherein the ex-president says abortion is generally wrong, but it's okay if it concerns a mixed race couple.

HITLER'S CHILDREN

This Walt Disney cartoon was made during World War II as part of the war effort, and shows the indoctrination of German youth into Nazi racism and antisemitism. Interesting propaganda film, it also deals in stereotypes. At one time Disney said this would never be re-released. Here's a chance to watch a rare cartoon.

RANTING ABOUT RACE

With Barack Obama as the nominee, racism will undoubtedly be a factor in the upcoming Presidential election. Some people just won't vote for him because he's black, and it's a shame.

The elephant in the room isn't race, exactly, but the fact that racism is a sign of ignorance. Simply put, racists are stupid. No one wants to risk "alienating" these voters, but everyone knows racism is prevalent among less-educated, less knowledgeable people. All the politically correct commentators trip all over themselves to avoid saying "stupid," citing sociological factors, economic determinants, political differences, religious upbringing, psychology, xenophobia, but let's be honest. Racists are stupid. Everyone knows it. It's like believing the world is flat; racism is an outdated position that's not backed up by the facts. There aren't two sides to the issue. Instead of red and blue states, we should have smart and dumb states, then people might be embarrassed and try to grow up.

I know I sound elitist, but our country is in dire need of intelligent leadership -- especially after such a long stretch of stupidity. By now, even the slow learners are beginning to see that ignorance doesn't work. It's time to get over primitive fear-mongering based on race -- and gender, and class, as well. It's time to give up such antiquated superstitions. It's time to get smart.

SUBMITTED FOR YOUR APPROVAL

We love the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling was one of the bright lights of early television. Now, after half a century, a once-banned episode is finally surfacing; a show based on the murder of Emmett Till, a very real fourteen year old black boy visiting Mississippi from Chicago who allegedly whistled at a white girl and was then brutally lynched. The show was banned from television. God forbid you alienate pro-lynching advertisers!
Of course, at the time of the murder, the "liberal" (when did that become such a dirty word) Serling had written many scripts dealing with social justice issues. That was part of the fabric and weave of the Twilight Zone. But this was simply too controversial, and the network was flooded with protest letters from the white supremacist group, The White Citizen's Council. Executives caved to the racists in a cowardly manner. They gutted the script, insisted on changing it drastically, and wouldn't even allow the word "lynching." They wouldn't let the central figure be "a negro," and changed him to Mexican. Finally, after the evisceration, the episode was banned altogether. All those advertisers selling sheets and other fashion accessories were satisfied. The "conservatives" (when will that become a dirty word?) throughout America, and especially the South, were triumphant. They could avoid unpleasant reality once again, while continuing to bemoan the bias of the so-called "Liberal Media."

Read more about the story here in the Washington Post.

Here is a clip from a PBS documentary about Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone that refers to the incident.