And That’s All There Was To It
This “outreach” thing with the Republican Party doesn’t seem to have a handle on it because nobody is picking it up.
Reince Priebus issued a statement thanking Rosa Parks for her role in “ending segregation.”
And the Republican National Committee picked up that ball and headed lickity split to the wrong end zone.
Guys, it ain’t over. And, most of all, you ain’t helpin’. At all. None at all.
Thanks to Deb for the heads up.
Umm…that tweet says “ending racism,” which I find deliciously ironic coming from the party of the old white dudes…
1Does that gratitude extend to the elderly, minorities and young voters who want to exercise their right to vote without having to jump through impossible and expensive hoops? Oh, well there are those darned Repug voter ID laws and gerrymandering aimed squarely at them.
2How about thanking the minority working families trying to dig their way out of the Repug Recession? Well, no, cutting food stamps and aid to the poor just had to be done.
Well surely they are grateful to the hard working immigrants who want to become citizens of this country. Oops, no path to citizenship for them.
In other words, the Repug’s gratuitous and self serving message to Mrs. Parks isn’t true and isn’t worth the paper upon which it is writ!
True story.
3One day, our g’son, who finds the fact that I walk around breathing embarrassing, although he is getting better, and I, had this conversation:
Do you know who Rosa Parks was?
Yep.
Do you think she embarrassed her grandchildren?
Yep.
Sure all it took to end racism was one bus ride. Now shut up, Blahs.
/sarcasm
4Before speaking to Americans of diverse background, Priebus needs to eat a little Jim Crow law, admit that “separate but equal” isn’t, and for God’s sake admit that the sainted Ronald Reagan lied. There was no “welfare queen.” Old Ron made that one up; he invented a myth; he lied. Pick your poison about Reagan, but get over the myth already.
5They are pissing off Mrs. Parks, again.
6Just remember: although some Republicans are beginning to sound repentant, they are still Republicans. Don’t vote for them.
7Rosa Parks was certainly one of the people who started the civil rights ball rolling. But like Sisyphus in Greek mythology, she had to roll it uphill without stopping to rest. Unlike Sisyphus, she and those who followed in her footsteps have a group of Republicans cheering them on, claiming they’re helping to keep that ball moving, as they push back down from the uphill side.
8As the comment went on Facebook: I didn’t get that memo.
9My comment was: Someone should let the current racists know that this has happened.
Guess they didn’t get the memo either!!
Let’s not forget that the Repugs of today were called Southern Democrats in Rosa Parks’s time. Bigots and racists are like roaches and Norway rats – all fleeing from the light and happy to curl up in any nest that will welcome them. That nest can be a turd-filled hole behind a wall or a party willing to forsake whatever ethics, principles and morals it had historically. Call me a classic moderate Republican … an Eisenhower Republican if you will, but not the perverted excuse for a political party that Republicans have deteriorated into today.
10The SCOTUS opinion in the Shelby County case (the decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act) is based on this worldview. The GOP want to pretend that racial discrimination is over so that can discriminate with voter suppression laws
11In every ‘talking-heads-program’ I watched this morning – from Kornaki to Face the Nation – the republi-can’t ‘guest’ reminded the viewing audience that “Republicans passed all the civil rights legislation.”; the only host to reply was Kornaki who added that the Republicans who did that are Democrats today.
12Right, that’s why the white and wealthy residents of Baton Rouge want to make their own city (St. George) that excludes the poorer, darker parts. They want to keep the nifty, high end mall and retail areas, roads and infrastructure paid by ALL of Baton Rouge’s population for themselves to siphon off the tax revenue.
13Racism is alive and doing very well in Louisiana, always has and it always will, sadly.
Reince, pussy cat, please don’t be bashful about admitting that there were Republicans who, when you made this announcement, asked, “Rosa who????”
So much for your “white”washing of the end of racism in this country.
There!
14Since today’s republicans have no one who has made huge accomplishments to mankind in the U.S. or anywhere else, they’ve begun trying to re-write history by appropriating famous individuals and claiming them as their own, but those of us who know history know they’re in full BS mode. Today, MLK is a conservative and so is JFK. Now, they want to claim they revere Rosa Parks. If they really admired the contributions these individuals made, they’d be working to fulfill their goals and dreams of an America that benefits every American, but they don’t. Talk is cheap, and until they can show by their actions that they believe the same things MLK, JFK, and Rosa Parks believed, they’re pissing in the wind and hoping the piss doesn’t hit them in the face. Sending Rand Paul to Detroit to open up a minority outreach program shows that they’re in denial because RP, imo, does NOT believe in racial, economic, or social equality.
15Scrabble played GOP style. Who are these people?
Reince Priebus is really Reinhold Reince Priebus.
Willard Mitt Romney, yeah we remember the 47%.
Opus Dope, pRick Santorum, who said: I Didn’t Say ‘Black People,’ I Said ‘Blah People’
All things to make us say: HUH?
As they reach out with their cold white hands to embrace equality for all, who would believe them? Charlie Brown, maybe. Stop right there, Dan Quayle, Charlie is a cartoon character, so don’t go all Murphy Brown on us, again. Have some taters, it’s easier to spell.
Filling the Circus Tent with others could prove impossible, with all the nuts filling center ring.
16Some of their best friends are negroes….
Well, not that Barack fella, but some of them. The ones who are rich but not uppity.
17Like Clarence Thomas.
18Another true story. Once upon a time my older sister, no longer with us, said to me, “Well at least our parents had the good sense to join the Republican party.”
19I said yeah, but the Republican party they joined isn’t the same Republican party as today’s.
She allowed as how I was right.
Ah, Rhea, what can we say about Clarence Thomas that Anita Hill or my wife hasn’t?
Am saving my empathy for Gen Powell, who was fed to the UN with a full packet of GOP lies. A definite lesson to decent guys and gals to stay away from the GOP. Seriously gals & guys, what President/General Eisenhower told you about the oil/military complex was just a beginning. Maybe in modesty, he failed to mention he would be the last somewhat decent republican president.
20I heard that Ike was approached by both the Democrats and the GOP about running. Is that what you heard?
21and different subject, I really want to know and will be watching here. (This is like the party line phones.) Does anyone still have a party line phone or know anyone who still uses one? Working on story. It is contemporary but very rural west Texas. Has to be believable. I betcha it’s not that hard to build a phone line if you are tough and pig-headed enough. Seriously.
Marge Wood, interesting controversy as to whether the GOP swept up Ike or the Democratic Party got wise to his military ambitions in Indo-China, so dumped him. Great fodder to add to the weekend mix on the shows that hear from real people like you. Would start with Steve Kornecki, as he seems to get history.
Last I heard of ‘party line’ phones were from my grandparents. Before my time/birth by nearly 20 years, but because of my grandfather’s position in local government, they had the first in their rural town circa 1957.
Grandma still waxes poetic about telling the local gossip to hang up, before she used the phone. Definitely better times than the corporate NSA snagging all data without a burp/click.
22Someone on Twitter posted under the #RacismEnded hashtag that he would say racism ended when we make it as easy to vote as it is to donate to a campaign. I like that a lot.
23So, forty years from now will the GOP be thanking Dan Savage for ending discrimination against LGBT Americans?
24Kool –
My reading of NSC minutes from ’54 onward indicate Nixon had the hard-on for SE Asia. He was going to primary Ike in ’56 if he didn’t get the NSC brief. Ike under a small amount of duress caved in. Nixon had Poindexter, MacFarland and one or two others from reagan’s administration on the NSC as researchers. It was a nest of snakes.
25Marge Wood, my grandmother in semi-rural VA (outside Staunton) had a party-line phone when I was a kid. I don’t know when it was changed, but must have been after the mid-60s or I wouldn’t remember it. She was the only one I knew who had one. I think you tapped the connector pin (the ones that recede when you put the receiver down) a certain number of times to connect with an operator or with someone else on the party line. Could be wrong about that.
26Oh, we had a party line when we lived on a ranch: six families on one line. One of them was Granny H. who used to lie down in bed to listen and fall asleep and we’d have to scream “HANG UP THE PHONE, GRANNY!” a few times and finally she’d wake up and hang up the phone. I just wanted to know if anyone still used them. I called one of our old friends from that time period and she said she didn’t think anyone out there still uses them. I looked up how to build a party phone line and found lots of interesting stuff. Working on a story….’night. And thanks!
27Marge, we had a party line at this ranch until the mid 80s. Four families, then three, then we went for a private line so we could have dial up for the computer.
28I may be suffering from the effects of too much Thanksgiving feast, but I THINK I spoke with a Democratic Party Chair somewhere out around Sonora???… one of those little counties that is in “The Big Country” when I was groveling for volunteers to help us staff the booth at the Fair in September. I think she told me there were still party lines out there… or maybe it was somewhere out around Haskell, Rick Perry’s stomping grounds. Somewhere in the hinterlands between Abilene, Lubbock, and Midland… I am almost certain I was told that partylines exist. We were on them when I was a kid in both Bailey and Parmer counties…. yep.. I’m just a farmer’s daughter, who grew up thinking the world was flat, dry, and treeless. Imagine my shock….
29My grandparents in Stokes County, N.C. phone company had party lines until I moved in 1959, don’t know how long it lasted after that. Not every one had indoor plumbing.
30…and so it goes:
http://thehill.com/blogs/twitter-room/other-news/191719-rnc-backtracks-on-rosa-parks-tweet?utm_campaign=thehilltweets&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
31The Republican Party is doing more to end racism today than anyone else I can think of. Consider:
What do they hate more than anything else right now? The Affordable Care Act.
So what are they doing? Rejecting it any way they can.
Including? All the red states are eschewing Medicaid expansion.
And also? Scaring credulous people to not avail themselves of this new communist, socialist, marxist, fascist right to quality healthcare.
Which means? Red state tea party types will get expensive substandard healthcare, including the Republican Health Care Plan.
Which says? Don’t get sick, but if you do get sick, die quickly.
And therefore, by the Transitive Property of Oprah? Old white racists die off more quickly, thus decreasing racism.
Thank you, Republican Party!
32I’m sure I’ve written it before, and I didn’t think of it myself, but if you take away the vowels from Reince Priebus, what you are left with is RNC PR BS.
That pretty much sums it up.
33