Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Salon's Joan Walsh: White Racism Still Running Amok in the GOP

In a provocative column for Salon, Joan Walsh argues that white racism is both real and active in the political discourse of the Republican right.  She particularly notes the similarities between then Fox News host Glenn Beck's 2009 claim that President Obama hates white people and that of Maine's Governor Paul LaPage, a GOP pol who recently claimed that Obama hates whites, despite being multiracial.

Walsh doesn't find this right-wing racism to be strictly confined to the likes of Glenn Beck and Paul LaPage.  She instead sees "Obama Derangement Syndrome" as a more pervasive phenomenon manifesting itself in recent episodes like the Obama-mocking rodeo clown, a Florida sign calling for the "Kenyan" to be sent back, or the Donald Trump jeremiads about the President's birth certificate.

Salon's Joan Walsh: Race and a GOP Redux?

"Now comes LePage recycling Beck’s silly claim that the president “hates white people.”  The white grievance industry is still on overdrive (even if Sean Hannity has fallen on hard times, losing his Cumulus radio deal.) I’m still waiting for national Republican leaders to repudiate this new surge in racial attacks on the president."

---Joan Walsh, Salon 

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