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The White American NOBAMA dumb face
By Eric Verlo
NOT MY TRIBE - 11/07/2008 12:00AM MDT - 2 Comments
Did Obama’s election mark a milestone against racism in America? In fact it’s elevated a new flavor of bigotry that I can really get behind.
I glared into a lot of faces arriving for Sarah Palin’s last engagement in Colorado Springs. My disdain was unbridled, it’s true, as I expressed my personal shame that they were the folk giving our town its wretched national reputation. Sarah Palin needed an audience of dumb-asses, so they sent her to dumb-ass central, Jesus Springs.
But looking across those faces confirmed an observation that has been disturbing me for some time. There’s a familiar similarity in their facial features. My “White American” title not-withstanding, this telltale feature transcends race, age, gender, and beauty. The trait is more than the unblinking glare of the born-again. I might have dismissed it to a haircut, or malnutrition, or fetal-alcohol syndrome, but clearly it’s more pervasive. And it certainly grates against the American ethic that we are all created equal.
It may be nothing new, that intelligence, or significant lack of it, is a perceptibly physical trait. But the occasion of an Obama sea change has let loose my sense that I’ve license to make fun of it. I feel confident to report to you that, compared to average, the Sarah Palin supporters stood out like, well, stupid people.
They didn’t need campaign buttons, it was written on their faces.
Now I see it in photographs of the campaign rallies. Next to the Chicago crowd, the Tuesday Arizona audience looked like pellagra victims.
It’s a purely visual cue. Hearing their voices on video only confirms the book covers adroitly judged. This game might be well and good in the privacy of my own TV viewing, but what of my new impulse to have at these irritating sods? Will there be social therapy for this bigotry? What of my angry resentment that for so long these bastards held a poster child aloft as the American president, screwing all of us with his malevolent, immoral idiocy?
Tags: America, Colorado Springs, Sarah PalinPosted: November 7th, 2008 under Politics.
Comments: 2
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Comments
Comment from Tony Logan
(IP: 75.71.11.86)
Time: November 7, 2008, 9:52 am
I wouldn’t call your reaction bigotry exactly, but still your reaction at this event was disturbing to me. I did not see the Palin people exactly as you do, and though I don’t think that they are too bright, neither are the Obama-Biden people IMO. Some of the discussion on this blog most clearly illustrates that reality, as well as the time spent with the J$P DP voting, inaction wrecking crew.
So you think that these people are stupid beyond belief? Then why were you out there shouting SHAME ON YOU!!! to them? Is that what smart people do when confronted by stupid people, Eric? I would ask for you to wise up some and stop being a ‘bigot’ here.
In my commentaries, I tried to point out that the vote divides down regional lines as well as social. It also divides along whether one gets their bread and butter from the Military- Industrial-Policing complex ’socialist’ Welfare System or not? So instead of just screaming STUPID!!! out as these people, perhaps a more nuanced understanding of who they actually are might help you control your ‘bigotry’ here?
Comment from Loring Wirbel
(IP: 192.155.59.67)
Time: November 7, 2008, 1:31 pm
While I always want to give the reactionaries their due, when so many of them simply don’t respond to logical, linear thought processes, it’s hard to avoid being a bigot at times. Tony is right, let’s all challenge ourselves not to be - but it still would be nice to have someone be able to make an intelligent argument that relies on observable facts that we could agree to, rather than say, “The Bible tells me so” or “It’s the way my daddy taught me.”
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