Hank Aaron calls out Republicans, gets new round of hate mail

kuwisdelu said:

"Aaron's words would be more compelling if he were assassinated" is not a compelling rebuttal.

It's a disgusting one.

I assume I'm misinterpreting you, but I'm not sure what to make of it.

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From my very first post in this thread (emphasis added):

robjvargas said:

Freedom of speech, as others have pointed out in the past, is not freedom from consequence. And I'm not speaking of the violence, or the threats of it.

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robjvargas said:

From my very first post in this thread (emphasis added):

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You weren't responding to your own post, though.

If Republicans are so offended at being accused of racism maybe they should do something about the systematic racism within their party and platform rather than call Hank Aaron names.

I still don't see how Hank Aaron "deserves to be rebuked" for anything.

robjvargas said:

I see the hyperbole continues unabated.

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I got your "hyperbole" right here.

1974:
"Dear Nigger Henry,
You are (not) going to break this record established by the great Babe Ruth if I can help it. ... Whites are far more superior than jungle bunnies. . My gun is watching your every black move."

"Dear Henry Aaron,
How about some sickle cell anemia, Hank?"

2014
"Hank Aaron is a scumbag piece of shit nigger. My old man instilled in my mind from a young age, the only good nigger is a dead nigger."

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robjvargas said:

The worst they could throw at him? Ask Medgar Evers how much that's true. Or the 16th Street Baptist Church.

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I can't. Medgar Evers is dead. Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson and Denise McNair are too. White racists murdered them.

"Hyperbole" is the polite thing to call your grotesque false equivalency of invoking murdered martyrs of the Civil Rights Era for the purpose of trivializing the hate mail and death threats Aaron was on the receiving end.

The mind reels with all the rude things I could call this tastelessly insensitive comment but adherence to RYFW prevents me from sharing them here.

robjvargas said:

Trying to equate idiotic statements on the Internet with that, now that's mouth-foaming.

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Ever try using a towel?

kuwisdelu said:

If Republicans are so offended at being accused of racism maybe they should do something about the systematic racism within their party and platform rather than call Hank Aaron names.

I still don't see how Hank Aaron "deserves to be rebuked" for anything.

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Damn I hate it when somebody says exactly the thing I meant to say, only waaaaay better.

There's a reason (many, actually) why today's Republicans get accused of racism in a continuing and consistent basis.

caw

kuwisdelu said:

If Republicans are so offended at being accused of racism maybe they should do something about the systematic racism within their party and platform rather than call Hank Aaron names.

I still don't see how Hank Aaron "deserves to be rebuked" for anything.

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As opposed to the plantation mentality of Democrats every time an african american decides they aren't "their" party?

Give me a break. Neither major party is a paragon of racial equality. Both are guilty of policies and attitudes that hamper racial justice.

And both parties have plenty among their members who are seriously seeking new answers. But, as long is it's okay to paint all Republicans as de facto Klan members, none of those answers will ever come out.

*breathes with a snarky sigh into the telephone*

Plantation. . . ? Explain that one to me, please?

As far as I can tell, it's the latest argument from the right that when the left shuns people like EW Jackson and Allan West, it's because rather than those individuals being pyschotic shysters selling a narrative to willing ears, the left wants to keep racial minorities a dependent underclass. Or something.

I tend to try to stay out of these discussions as my feeling is that I have very little in the way of personal experience to offer. I did come across a great article this morning which elaborates on a point someone (Xelebes?) brought up upthread, in which white people have a tendency to talk past non-white voices in this area. Jonathan Chait’s look at race during the Obama era is missing one thing: black Americans.

It's a well-balanced article, IMO:

n any case, Chait marshals an impressive amount of evidence to make two points: First, that “racial conservatism” and ideological conservatism have become one and the same, and that this is true for “racial liberalism” and ideological liberalism as well. What’s more, Chait argues that the worst suspicions of both sides are true: Conservatives have leveraged racial resentment in service of other political goals, and liberals have wielded the word racist as a weapon against their foes, regardless of the offense.

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Worth a read. (IMO)

robjvargas said:

As opposed to the plantation mentality of Democrats every time an african american decides they aren't "their" party?

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What in the hell is up with Republicans and their obsession for making these utterly inept and inane comparisons between slavery and anything else? Is this some new fetish with you guys or what?

Sarah "Pay Me!" Palin: “Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China,” she said at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s fall fundraiser at the State Fairgrounds Saturday night. “When that money comes due—and this isn’t racist, but it’ll be like slavery when that note is due. We are going to beholden to the foreign master.”

Rand "This Really Is My Hair" Paul: "With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to healthcare, you have to realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me," Paul said recently in a Senate subcommittee hearing.

"It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses."

One-and-Done Loser Congressman Allen West: "He [Obama] does not want you to have the self-esteem of getting up and earning, and having that title of American. He'd rather you be his slave."

Sean Hannity bestie Dr. Ben Carson: "You know Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery," Carson, who is African American, said Friday in remarks at the Values Voter Summit in Washington. "And it is in a way, it is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care. It was about control."

Repeat Offender Michelle "Batshit-Crazy" Bachmann: Health Reform: In a 2009 speech in Colorado, Bachmann railed against healthcare reform. “What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass.” Claiming that many Americans already pay half their income to taxes, she said, “This is slavery…It’s nothing more than slavery.”

– National Debt: In January, Bachmann offered her now infamous take on American colonial history in which she declared that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” Bachmann then framed her speech as an argument against the “slavery” of the national debt. “It is a slavery, it is a slavery that is a bondage to debt and a bondage to decline,” she said. “It is a subservience of a sovereign people to a failed, self-selected elite.”

In 2011, Batshit Bachmann and Rick "Foamy" Santorum were the two GOP presidential contenders to sign a pledge against same-sex marriage which included a passage that stated Black families were better off under slavery.

"Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President."

Governor Goodhair Rick Perry: "I think we're going through those difficult economic times for a purpose, to bring us back to those Biblical principles of ... not spending all of our money, not asking for Pharaoh to give everything to everybody and to take care of folks, because at the end of the day, it's slavery. And we become slaves to government."

Extra Super Fun Fact: Perry's family hunting camp was known as "Niggerhead" ranch.

Nevada Assemblyman Jim Wheeler: A Nevada assemblyman said he would vote in favor of legislation allowing for slavery if it was something his constituents wanted him to do.

Jim Wheeler, a Republican from Gardnerville, was talking to a crowd of Storey County Republicans in August he when said “yeah I would” vote for slavery if that’s what his constituents wanted.

“If that’s what they wanted, I’d have to hold my nose, I’d have to bite my tongue and they’d probably have to hold a gun to my head, but yeah, if that’s what the citizens of the, if that’s what the constituency wants that elected me, that’s what they elected me for,” he said. “That’s what a republic is about. You elected a person for your district to do your wants and wishes, not the wants and wishes of a special interest, not his own wants and wishes, yours.”

Fair and Balanced equal time inclusion from Joe "I Say Whatever Crazy Think I Think" Biden: “Look at what they [Republicans] value, and look at their budget. And look what they’re proposing. [Romney] said in the first 100 days, he’s going to let the big banks write their own rules — unchain Wall Street,” Biden said a rally in Danville, Va. “They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”

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Chattel slavery was an absolute evil and as practiced in the United States it became a monstrous abomination. All these cheap politicians and cheaper talking heads are not only engaging in racially insensitive and tone-deaf metaphors with their banal slavery comparisons, they are exhibiting lazy thinking to the extent they think at all.

Republicans in particular should know better. One of their own, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, an accomplishment his fellow Grand Old Party comrades point to with chest-puffing pride whenever they come in from criticism for their racial views.

It's doubtful Abe would be down for the casual way Republicans throw the word "slavery" around today. After all, he is the guy who said, "Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

Me too, and it's a little early, but how about a remake of 12 Years A Slave starring Palin, Perry, Bachmann, Paul, Carson, West and Wheeler? As the slaves.

robjvargas said:

Give me a break. Neither major party is a paragon of racial equality. Both are guilty of policies and attitudes that hamper racial justice.

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That's glib, but it's also simplistic and wrong. You're right there are no paragons of racial equality in either major party, but there's only one party that had codified their opposition to racial equality in its systematic attack on voting rights, opposition to affirmative action and overt hostility to the nation's first African-American Chief Executives and that's your party, the Republican Party.

robjvargas said:

And both parties have plenty among their members who are seriously seeking new answers. But, as long is it's okay to paint all Republicans as de facto Klan members, none of those answers will ever come out.

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There's more of that "hyperbole," your favorite word, you enjoy tossing around as you play your victim card. Hank Aaron never painted Republicans as de facto Klan members. You have chosen to deliberately misinterpret his word to make it seem he did.

But please tell me more about these "plenty" of Dems and Repubs whom are "seriously seeking new answers." Does this plenty have names? What is it exactly they are doing to find these "new answers?"

In fact, what are the old questions they are trying to find new answers for? Is it the good old-fashioned reactionary racist invective an honest man like Hank Aaron provokes by simply speaking his truth?

robjvargas said:

As opposed to the plantation mentality of Democrats every time an african american decides they aren't "their" party?

Give me a break. Neither major party is a paragon of racial equality. Both are guilty of policies and attitudes that hamper racial justice.

And both parties have plenty among their members who are seriously seeking new answers. But, as long is it's okay to paint all Republicans as de facto Klan members, none of those answers will ever come out.

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However much you try, redirection and distraction isn't going to make Hank Aaron wrong.

But I love how it's become such a predictable knee-jerk reaction among conservatives.

nighttimer said:

But please tell me more about these "plenty" of Dems and Repubs whom are "seriously seeking new answers." Does this plenty have names? What is it exactly they are doing to find these "new answers?

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Democrats may often be flailing around and looking like they're not seeking any answers. The leaders of today's Republican Party, on the other hand, are united in their effort to seek old answers, and to quash any effort from within their ranks to break into the "new" territory.

caw