Venezuelans arrive at the Vineyard!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2022

Tucker Carlson reacts: When Venezuelans arrived at the Vineyard, it set Tucker Carlson off. 

By 8:03 on Thursday night, the disordered star was offering this as part of his opening monologue:

CARLSON (9/15/22): Barack Obama is a part-time resident of Martha's Vineyard. Obama is also, of course, as you know, the country's greatest proponent of diversity. 

For years, Obama earnestly told us that immigrants were better than Americans. They were holy. They make our country strong.  

OBAMA (videotape): America is—and always has been—a nation of immigrants. Throughout our history, immigrants have come to our shores in wave after wave from every corner of the globe. Every one of us, unless we're Native American, has an ancestor who was born somewhere else. That's what makes America special. That's what makes a strong. The basic idea of welcoming immigrants to our shores is central to our way of life. It is in our DNA.

CARLSON: So that was basically the whole presidency right there for eight years. Obama hectoring us about diversity, but he didn't just talk about it. He spent his two years in office making certain that places like Des Moines, Iowa and Portland, Maine became much less white than they previously had been because, as he so often told us, whiteness is bad. It's a disease. 

For transcript and tape, click here.

Almost surely, Carlson is the most disordered of all current "cable news" hosts. 

That doesn't mean that he's always wrong, because he actually isn't. But consider the level of disrespect this avatar of the misleader class has for the misled.

Question:

Has Barack Obama ever "told us that whiteness is a disease?"

According to Carlson, Obama has often told us that. But he offered no examples of any such statement on this Vineyard-themed night.

He did pretend to give an example in support of this earlier claim: 

For years, Obama earnestly told us that immigrants were better than Americans. They were holy. 

So the disordered boy-child said. Our question would be this:

Did Obama ever tell us that? Did he say that even once?

According to Carlson, President Obama told us that "for years." In support of that remarkable claim, he offered a bit of boilerplate from a speech by Obama—boilerplate about the United States being "a nation of immigrants."

In fairness, the boilerplate by Obama that day was extremely hackneyed. In some ways, we would regard it as basically wrong. 

That said, has any modern American pol ever failed to offer such thoughts? 

That boilerplate is often criticized, from the left, for allegedly conflating the experience of enslaved Africans with the experience of true "immigrant" groups. That said, this was completely conventional political speech—but Carlson was now telling his viewers that Obama had told us, in that statement, that immigrants are better than we Americans are. 

Indeed, Carlson claimed that Obama had told us that "for years." So it goes when this badly damaged, abandoned child lectures his viewers at Fox.

Carlson isn't always wrong, though we'd have to say he tries. Even when he starts from a reasonable premise, he instantly toys with basic logic and facts, creating a type of "no-go zone" for people who want to stay sane.

His viewers don't seem to notice the fact that he's manufacturing a culture of analytical depravity. That constitutes a basic anthropological fact—a fact about the powers of discernment native to our persistently war-inclined, tribal species.

Carlson went on at length Thursday night. We often wonder what he thinks about what it is that he's doing.

How does a person end up like this? We can't tell you that. That said, we tend to think that Carlson's true essence only comes to the fore when he discusses the "filth" created by immigrant groups, as he did on Thursday night as part of this disordered passage:

CARLSON: Earlier today, CNN anchor John Berman interviewed noted filmmaker Ken Burns. Burns is famous but sad, exactly the kind of middle-aged prestige hound who spends an awful lot of time looming around Martha's Vineyard looking for other famous people. 

Burns has a new film out that blames the United States, of all countries on Earth, for the Holocaust. Now that the World War II generation has passed, Ken Burns can do that. There's no chance angry veterans will show up at his house and beat him with their canes for besmirching the memory of their closest friends who died in their early twenties fighting the Nazis. So Ken Burns can say whatever he wants, and we will believe him. 

So this morning, Burns played the role of Holocaust expert on CNN, and you know what Ken Burns has discovered? Ken Burns has discovered that Ron DeSantis sending illegal aliens to Martha's Vineyard is pretty much exactly what Hitler did, pretty much exactly. Watch this.  

[VIDEOTAPE EXCHANGE]

Do you hear that, ladies and gentlemen? It's literally—literally—just like the Holocaust. Edgartown is Dachau. Oak Bluffs is Treblinka. The horrors! 

This is genocide and it may be, but of course everything is relative. Martha's Vineyard may be a modern-day death camp, but compared to where illegal aliens usually go, it doesn't look that bad. 

Let's compare, just for fun. On your screen, you will see images recently shot in America's border towns, which are now completely overrun under Joe Biden's immigration policy. You'll notice, if you look carefully, chaos, violence and filth.  

For the record, Ken Burns actually didn't say that "Ron DeSantis sending illegal aliens to Martha's Vineyard is pretty much exactly what Hitler did." 

Also, Burns didn't say that this action by DeSantis was "literally—literally—just like the Holocaust." If you want to assess what Burns did say, you can check the transcript or watch the videotape

Imaginably, a person could disagree with what Burns actually said. For ourselves, it's only when Carlson makes his standard reference to "filth" that we feel we've heard him speak with full authenticity, giving voice to his personal Rosebud.

Carlson is a disordered being, but he's also influential. His vast disorder helps explain the fact that our country, such as it was, has basically ceased to exist.

Barack Obama has never said that whiteness is a disease. Beyond that, we're going to guess that Ken Burns' new film doesn't "blame the United States, of all countries on Earth, for the Holocaust." 

(We'll also guess that Carlson hasn't seen the new film, which starts airing tomorrow night.)

Carlson could have offered some valid points about current immigration policy and procedure. He could have offered a fair account of what Obama and Burns have said, some sort of sane reaction.

He chose a different route. That said, when our own blue tribe discussed these same Vineyard events, we did what we seem fated to do:

Instantly, our tribunes began comparing DeSantis' conduct to Deep South racism of the mid-1960s. It's what our tribunes always do. We seem to have reached the point where our tribe knows no other move.

Carlson's as lost as it gets. As a general matter, the mainstream press corps ignores this basic fact.

In the end, we end up with the Others and Us. Again and again, the Others exhibit a wide array of crazy beliefs. They then get called racist by Us.

Along the way, the American nation has basically ceased to exist. The misleaders aggressively mislead the misled. Elsewhere, the name-calling starts.

We'll close this morning with a point we've been making for roughly twenty years. When major journalists behave the way Carlson did Thursday night, it should be front-page news in our major newspapers.

In our view, our own tribe's "cable news" hosts are bad enough. Carlson seems to be grossly disordered. 

He seems to be a damaged child. We recommend pity for damaged people, though such people should first be stopped from doing additional harm.

Such as it ever was, our nation has basically ceased to exist. We see this when we watch their stars, but also when we watch ours.  

Now for the rest of the story: Later in the monologue, Carlson offered this:

CARLSON: Barack and Michelle Obama are every bit as bigoted as any board member in any restricted country club in the Deep South, assuming those still exist. 

"Those people? They're not dating my daughter. I can tell you that!" 

So in other words, we learned this week that Barack Obama really is a racist and not in the way you've always assumed. Obama may hate white people—he certainly seems to. But he also demands to live around them and only them.

[...]

He is a racist, as we've established, and so apparently are his fellow liberals. They are outraged by the idea of illegal aliens near their island vacation homes.

"I pity the poor immigrant," Bob Dylan once said of this pitiful star. In the meantime, Putin may be losing his world, but we the people are also losing ours.


69 comments:


  1. "Almost surely, Carlson is the most disordered of all current "cable news" hosts."

    Whoa, perfect. Thank you, dear Bob.

    After years of observing your stream of consciousness, we have concluded that "disordered" translates from your tribal dialect as "brilliant". A great compliment indeed.

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    1. No Mao, "disordered" is TDH's euphemistic (and strange) way of saying that Carlson is a nut.

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    2. the absurd, amoral fruitcake Mao checks in quick, always reminding us that Bob's contention the MAGA Right contains a lot of decent, if mislead, people
      is a pretty dubious notion. Could this drooling slob
      of a kind of human being do anything in his life
      that mitigates his obvious uselessness? Doubtful.

      Delete
    3. Yeah, and like we said, it translates from dear Bob's weird dialect to English as "brilliant".

      Delete
    4. You make a lot of sense, Mao, albeit from a Goebelsian form of logic.

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    5. Why, thank you, dear dembot.

      Coming from a dedicated liberal-hitlerian like yourself, this has gotta be the highest form of compliment.

      Delete
  2. Calling Carlson a "damaged child" seems to excuse the venality of his rants. Carlson is an adult. He is not mentally ill and he grew up in privilege, not abuse, so equating him with children who are truly damaged in childhood is ridiculous. His mother left and his father remarried. That happens to numerous children who are not necessarily damaged by the experience, according to developmental psychological studies (see Sandra Scarr for example). Excusing Carlson for his swing to the far right, in all of its ugliness, is wrong because it makes it seem like his racism and bigotry is justified by his childhood experiences, when it is not. Carlson is not a passive recipient of bigoted impulses. He has chosen, embraced the darkness and he has done nothing to fight against it, using it as a pathway to wealth and power, just as many other Republicans have done.

    Shame on Somerby for excusing Carlson this way.

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    1. Now the left is arguing children abandoned by mothers are not damaged. Figures.

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    2. No, psychologists have studied this and found that divorce is not necessarily damaging to children. Nor are two-parent homes necessarily good for them. It depends on the quality of parenting, not who does the parenting. Somerby hated his mother, so perhaps he is projecting his own damage onto Carlson and Trump (who did have two parents)?

      This is about science, not politics. You can look the studies up yourself, Sandra Scarr (later president of the American Psychological Association) did some of that work, but it has been replicated. "Left" refers to politics, not science.

      Is a child "abandoned" when a parent dies or becomes sick? Is a child abandoned when a father drives a mother from the home? Recall that children have only recently been considered to be better off with their mothers. Prior to that, they were always awarded to the fathers, who raised them using nannies (as did the mothers in well-to-do families). The child-centric two-parent home is a fiction of the 1950s and sitcoms, not a demographic reality. Before the mid-50s, families were extended families with grand-parents, aunts and uncles living in the same home, not two-parent enclaves. You might try reading some social history.

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    3. 11:22: I frankly don’t see the connection between the contention that Carlson is a “damaged child” and his stardom and embrace of vile propaganda. Most damaged children don’t become leaders in hate. He is a wealthy spoiled brat married to vast wealth. He doesn’t deserve to have his malignancy blamed on something that millions of children experience.

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    4. The idea that children are damaged when their mothers work is part of the white supremacist agenda, which includes excluding women from all areas of public enterprise and confining them to home and children. Women became able to participate outside the home when effective contraception became widely available. The financial independence of employment and the changes in divorce laws made it possible for women to escape captivity in abusive marriages. The alt-right wishes to reverse this and return women to solely the duties of motherhood and family, under a husband's domination, to raise more white kids that can compete with the "replacements" coming from immigration.

      Calling Carlson a "damaged child" is part of this agenda. It implies that his mother did him wrong by leaving, and that he has been warped by that experience. Wink wink, nod nod. The right doesn't consider Carlson damaged, and most likely neither does Somerby. But they do blame whatever is not right in their own lives on women's independence. The extreme versions of this entitlement are the incels who kill people (targeting women) because women don't find them attractive.

      The most reliable predictor of who will become a mass shooter is a history of domestic violence, and hatred of women.

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    5. Anon 12:42, you are mind-bogglingly whacko. Calling Carlson damaged child is part of the "white supremacist agenda??? I happen to think TDH is a bit nutty himself, with his characterization of Trump or Carlson as "disordered" or as "damaged children" and deserving of "pity." But it should be observed that calling them these names are his euphemisms for mentally ill which is hardly a compliment; generally, it is a grave insult when directed at someone who isn't "mentally ill" or is in denial about it.

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    6. AC/MA -- haven't you noticed the troll who keeps coming here and telling us that the problem in society is the lack of two-parent homes in the black community?

      If you are really interested in how this ties together, try reading David Niewert's books on white supremacism. The one with good background on their core beliefs is "Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump" (2017). White supremacists are huge anti-abortion activists because controlling women is essential to their mission to repopulate America with the white race. Just as eugenicism tied into Hitler's beliefs, racial thinking and domination of white people by mud races is important to white supremacist dogma.

      Believing deviant things doesn't make someone mentally ill. I've explained this many times. Somerby is maligning those who are truly mentally ill every time he labels Trump or Carlson using such terms. Trump and Carlson are bad people but they are not "damaged". They believe things that used to be marginal in our society, but have become more mainstream with social media and validation by authority figures. This is a disinformation problem, not a matter of mental health. You need to read more.

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    7. It isn’t me being dumb. It is the white supremacists who believe this stuff.

      Delete
  3. "Instantly, our tribunes began comparing DeSantis' conduct to Deep South racism of the mid-1960s. It's what our tribunes always do. We seem to have reached the point where our tribe knows no other move."

    Where does Somerby think this maneuver came from? Trump thinks he thought up this stunt himself, since he suggested it before Abbott and DeSantis starting doing it themselves. But Trump didn't originate the idea. He pulled it out of his own white supremacist roots, nurtured by his father, a white supremacist immigrant from Germany. This goes back to the White Citizens Councils of the Jim Crow era. Even Abraham Lincoln had a back-to-Africa plan, but acknowledged it wouldn't be practical to send all African Americans back to Africa and thus the plan remained symbolic.

    Somerby wants to blame liberals for recalling acts that originated on the right, with racists and bigots, as if this were a liberal stunt and not something perpetrated by today's right wing. But earth-to-Somerby -- we didn't tell them to do this. They revived the tradition on their own.

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  4. Carlson is one of the kindest people I've ever met and his schtick is 90% truth and the remainder comedy.

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    1. Carlson knowingly misleads his gullible viewers and whips up hatred, division, and racist animus. And he does this for money. So what if he was nice to you when you met him?

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    2. Both Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow have won court cases that ruled what they say should not be taken literally as news or fact - that what they say is hyperbole, exaggeration and opinion, not facts. And that their viewers expect and enjoy it from them! Both sides.

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    3. There’s a demand to teach children that inveterate white privilege is the scrounge of western civilization and that white people are directly responsible for the relentless subjugation of people of color.

      Inculcating that iplaying field into our culture is disordered. It’s pernicious and politically motivated. and it does not reflect the values of the early civil rights movement.

      Tucker Carlson has been called everything in the book for addressing the proponents of this stuff in a manner that is as stark and frank as their own.

      Goodness knows Carlson’s shelf- life has been longer than anyone would have imagined, but his tv expiration is coming. His “disordered” voice will be relegated to Substack and we can settle for tsking the r-bombs.





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    4. So, we should forget about the lynching of that Chinese guy in Denver and pretend there was no riot?

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    5. Anonymouse3:07pm, look at the definition.

      “Seek to obtain (something, typically food or money) at the expense or through the generosity of others or by stealth.
      "he had managed to scrounge a free meal"’

      I inadvertently used a word that’s exactly how you characterize things.

      I’m that good.

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    6. Yes, the main problem with Cecelia's theory is that white people really have mistreated brown people in our society, from day 1. Are they all supposed to sit down and shut up about it so that she can teach kids a fantasy about America? Tucker is embarrassing her by saying the quiet part out loud, but minorities know what white Americans can be like and they aren't fooled. It is a huge shock to many white kids when they find out about our country's racial history in college (or from a brown or black friend) or by watching a movie. Then they feel like their parents are complicit in that bad stuff. Is that better for them? I don't think so. Pretending that Tucker is an outlier isn't kind to our kids, nor does it result in fair treatment of other people's kids, the ones with dark skin tones. But Cecelia apparently doesn't care about them or their history -- only her own kids matter, apparently, the white ones.

      I really don't understand how Somerby can go along with such a program either, having taught those beautiful, deserving black kids for 10-12 years (depending on which authority you consult).

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    7. Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. I think ignorance feeds into racial bigotry by providing a motive to kick down (out of shame over not knowing things other people know). It also leads to swallowing disinformation about minorities and our history. An ignorant person might believe that Obama is a racial bigot himself (for going to Martha's Vineyard, a place they probably cannot find on a map) and believing that only white liberals live there. Ignorant white people believe it when white supremacists say that the Holocaust was made up. They won't be watching Ken Burns' show because it doesn't have Kim Kardashian in it. That's why the right wing disparages education -- their followers don't have it, so they need to console them by saying that expertise is worthless, the way Somerby does. Perhaps that's why Cecelia likes him -- he makes her feel better about her self and the many words she cannot spell (despite having a spell-checker).

      The only way you can keep minorities from being a reproach is to clean up your act and start treating ALL people better. Cecelia could start by being nice to mh, but she won't. So she walks around knowing she is not a good, decent person, and then needs to hear more about her superiority from Tucker, so she won't feel like she's the bad person she knows she really wants to be. So she watches MTG kick activists and snickers and that makes her feel better about herself momentarily, until she recalls that good people don't go around kicking other people.

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    8. "There’s a demand to teach children that inveterate white privilege is the scrounge of western civilization and that white people are directly responsible for the relentless subjugation of people of color."

      Actually, part of the demand is to teach that racism is systemic too, which means that differential treatment is built into our institutions. That would make white people indirectly responsible too. So there would be the deliberate racists who oppress people they dislike, resent or envy, and then there would be the inadvertent racists who enforce discriminative housing, banking, schooling and health care procedures that keep black people disadvantaged in our society. That would be the black professor who was low-balled on his house appraisal because he was black, for example. Kids need to know about both kinds of racism. Have you never wondered why there are so many black football players and relatively few in golf and baseball?

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    9. Cecelia cant really address the post, with all it's quotes of Carlson on Obama. So we get a lot of nonsense from the faraway outposts of the right in
      Sons of Klan Land.

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    10. Cecilia, I agree that the 'libs' have gone off the rails lately with all the wokeness, white supremacy etc. But, I'm curious. Are you all right with Carlson claiming that Obama (who is as much white as black) "earnestly told us for years that immigrants were better than Americans" (sic - a lot of Americans are immigrants); and that Obama "so often told us that whiteness is bad, it's a disgrace." It seems to me those kind of lies are vile - or was he just "joking."

      Delete

    11. @AC/MA 4:23 PM,
      what, you don't recognize your own tribe's standard talking points?

      Delete
    12. ...and isn't Demigod Barry your tribe's Dear Leader?

      If he didn't happen to utter these exact words himself, they were certainly endlessly delivered by his flunkeys.

      Cable news talk shows are not exactly famous for being overly pedantic. And without a doubt Carlson's is the best one out there.

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    13. Mao, as I have said before, I don't have a "tribe" and don't consider Obama to be a "demigod." My question was directed at Cecilia, who seems to be at a loss for words here. Also, I don't watch cable talk shows at all, based on my take that they are all unwatchable, so can't opine on whether Carlson is tops in that department. Apparently you agree that he lied in this instance, and seem ok with that.

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    14. AC/MA, I’m not at a loss for words, I’m occasionally social.

      Yeah, I agree. In the context of the crap that’s daily spewed here (including the lecturing anonymouse 4:10pm who doesn’t seem to know what “inveterate” means) and the slightly dressed up version in the media, President Obama looks like pillar of equanimity. Yeah. Tucker went a bit overboard there.

      However, it occurs to me, and should to everyone, that you might be less sensitive about some fairly recent history, because you weren’t the person being pilloried when Obama bemoaned the people who cling to guns, religion, and racism.

      It’s not you who is on the receiving end of being labeled anti-intellectual, xenophobic, and antagonistic toward people of color, which is how O. described Sara Palin.

      Any allusions to an impersonal mechanized institutional racism don’t really include you either. In your case, you are a place marker for advancement, unless you stop voting the way you do.

      You aren’t a police officer or a none-too-bright neighborhood watch volunteer who has to shoulder the legal consequences of being the post-tragedy poster boy for a world-wide presidential exposition on historical racial ills.

      Tucker’s airing of Michelle Obama’s figurative use of “white flight” WAS dead-on in light of the rapid and ruthlessly efficient dispensing of 50 people off an island (that featured signage averring its love of immigrants) to a military base miles away. The outrage was loud. The wringing of hands intense. The casting of MV as a idyllic summer camping spot was ludicrous.

      This is one touchstone of many for everyone who isn’t you or yours.

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    15. Anyone who isn't a bigot, or isn't perfectly fine with bigotry, left the Republican Party more than two decades ago.

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    16. ...you weren’t the person being pilloried when Obama bemoaned the people who cling to guns, religion, and racism.

      As usual Cecelia, you have things exactly ass backwards. Pilloried? Let's look at the full quote and see if you can understand what Obama was saying, shall we?

      You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. [Obama]

      And par for the course, the "liberal" media completely decontextualized what Obama was trying to say, framed what he said in the most inflammatory way possible, and here you are being bitter about it 15 years later.

      From a recent driftglass post answering David fucking Brooks' latest pile of stale bullshit:
      ********
      It was called the Obama Administration.

      Eight years of compromise and olive branches offered to the GOP, which Mr. David Brooks constantly complained was never enough.

      Eight years of GOP obstruction, sabotage and slander, which Mr. David Brooks incessantly blamed on Both Sides.

      Then they elected the King of the Birthers, which Mr. David Brooks boldly predicted was impossible.
      **********

      Apologize, Cec.

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    17. Cecilia, that he went a "bit overboard" is quite an understatement. Whatever dems do, there's no excusing it. And while I have no plans to watch Carlson's show (see comment above) - I'll take TDH's word that he is disordered, and Carlson's dishonest comment is hardly atypical. As pointed out by the other commenter here, Obama's words were distorted by the right wing spin machine. Though unfortunately, the "liberals" have in so many ways gone nuts too. Not that politics hasn't always been a mad scramble for power, hopefully without physical violence.

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    18. Ok, AC/MC. Perhaps you and mm can pass your thoughts onto this lady:

      “Obama was caught in an uncharacteristic moment of loose language. Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, the presidential hopeful said: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

      “The comments were seized on by his rival for the Democratic party candidacy, Hillary Clinton, who saw in them the hope of reviving her flagging campaign by turning voters in the important Pennsylvania primary on April 22 against what she classed as Obama's revealed "elitism".
      "I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small-town America," she said on Saturday. "His remarks are elitist and out of touch." Clinton campaigners in North Carolina handed out stickers saying: "I'm not bitter."

      https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/14/barackobama.uselections2008


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  5. "Trump thinks he thought up this stunt himself"
    What stunt? Moving illegal immigrants to the areas that have declared they would accept the burden and away from areas that have declared they prefer not to?

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    1. The Venezuelans lured onto that plane were escaping communism and asking for asylum. Others were fleeing violence and oppression. According to law, they have a right to have their cases heard.

      DeSantis just spent a ton of Florida taxpayer money to fly these people out of…checks notes…Texas and they may now miss their court hearings.

      The immigrants met with no howls of outrage from Martha’s Vineyard residents. Instead, they were welcomed.

      The immigrants were tricked into getting on those planes.

      The Venezuelan community in Florida is outraged.

      Let’s just say it isn’t working out as Abbott and DeSantis had hoped.

      And Somerby doesn’t explain why bigotry isn’t a part of these stunts. (It is actually).

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    2. Communism? Meh. Bolivarianism, dear mh.

      We suspect they are mostly pencil-pushing parasites, escaping Bolivarian anti-imperialism.

      And if they did indeed apply for asylum, they're supposed to wait for the decision in Mexico, like everyone else. Otherwise, they're a bunch of criminals, illegal border-crossers.

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    3. "Instead, they were welcomed."

      Oh dear. Do you ever stop and listen to yourself, dear mh?

      They got kicked out within 24 hours, with the help of the national guard.

      ...your cult's talking points are utterly idiotic. Your bosses assume that their followers are completely brain-dead. Which they are, of course.

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    4. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/26/texas-migrants-asylum-mpp-remain-in-mexico-ends/

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    5. In that case, they should be kept in refugee camps, built and administered by the feds.

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    6. That isn't the law here, no matter what it is like in your country.

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    7. Meh. It's a matter of administrative procedures, dear dembot.

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    8. ...and incidentally, that's exactly what they did in MA: moved them from Martha's Vineyard to a military base.

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    9. not in Mexico, where do you think people go when there are natural disasters making homes uninhabitable? it is the nearest govt housing

      These people are not illegal. They have a legitimate right to remain in the US pending their asylum hearings.

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    10. They may have a legitimate right to remain in the US, but throwing them on the street is, at a minimum, gross mismanagement.

      Like we said: they should be kept in refugee camps.

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    11. This is a matter of American values.

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    12. Not Martha's Vineyard values, apparently, dear dembot. Nor Massachusetts'.

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    13. Both places are helping those people, taken there under false pretenses (promised jobs and housing by right-wing operatives). MA has a Republican governor, by the way.

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    14. Yeah, dear dembot, helping by shipping them to an encampment inside a military base.

      Which, according to your hopeless bullshit, is contrary to "American values".

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    15. I'm getting the impression calling Republican voters "economically anxious" might be code for "same old bigots they've always been".

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  6. "In fairness, the boilerplate by Obama that day was extremely hackneyed. In some ways, we would regard it as basically wrong. "

    Somerby disputes the FACT that everyone here except indigenous people (hence the word indigenous) came from somewhere else. He doesn't tell us why he thinks this is "basically wrong". He just makes an unsupported criticism of Obama's "boilerplate" (which means Obama was just saying what all others have said) and moves on.

    White supremacists want to reserve America for the white Northern Europeans who they think came first and founded the nation. There is a lot of ignorance in such a belief -- for one thing, the Spaniards, Portuguese and French were here before the British, and they too settled large areas of America. For another, Chinese workers did arguably as much to build railways, mining towns and cities in the West, as pioneers did. They were shut out in the early 1900s, after making a huge contribution to our nation's expansion. So, if Somerby thinks he can argue that Northern Europe (Scandinavia, Britain, Germany) and its white people have a unique claim on American heritage, he is wrong, historically and morally. And that is before we talk about the way in which black slaves did the heavy lifting in the American economy, right from 1619.

    But Somerby doesn't argue his most controversial statements. He asserts them, assumes we will agree, and moves on. Today he gives Tucker Carlson's words pride of place. He might better summarize Carlson and instead point out the harm done by his attitudes, but instead he gives Carlson a second platform, describing him as an damaged child, heightening the sence of grievance that Carlson projects, giving substance to Carlson's endlessly whiny voice by pretending he has a right to be aggrieved, when his is the privilege in our country.

    Don't be fooled. Nothing about Somerby's essay today is any different than when he attacks the left more directly. Somerby wants us to know why DeSantis shipped those immigrants to MA (which has a Republican governor). And he always returns to blaming the left for whatever horrible thing the right does.

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  7. ""I pity the poor immigrant," Bob Dylan once said of this pitiful star. In the meantime, Putin may be losing his world, but we the people are also losing ours."

    Talk about a confused jumble. 1. Bob Dylan wasn't writing about Carlson. 2. Putin attacked Ukraine, not vice versa. 3. I have no pity for Putin and neither should you. 4. We are not losing our world. We are fighting over whether our democracy will continue to function according to our nation's ideals, express in our constitution.

    If Somerby feels lost in our modern world, I am sure there are mental health practitioners he could consult, even in Baltimore. Projecting this onto the rest of us, then seeking solace among right wing grifters, is not the best use of Somerby's golden years. And I hope he hasn't been sending any of his pension to grifters like Trump. David Brooks describes an 82-year old German immigrant who justifies his latest editorial. Somerby seems to be that of that ilk, bewildered by politics and by social change, clinging to bigotry because his frontal lobe is no longer up to the job of parsing the complexities of current events. Tucker Carlson isn't the answer, but given the Fox News demographic, it would be interesting to know the average age of Trump's MAGA Extremists, excluding the whitish militia members waving guns and trying to revive the KKK.

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    1. Imagine believing a reasonable person is lost in our modern world, instead of recognizing our modern world lost, in the view of all reasonable people.

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    2. Imagine living in the most prosperous and fortunate nation on earth, free of most problems found elsewhere, and thinking our portion of the world is lost.

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  8. White America was not particularly welcoming to immigrants at any point in our history. Here is Denver's history (from the program notes for The Chinese Woman, a current play at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts):

    "The first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived after 1849 to take advantage of the gold rush in San Francisco, hoping to strike it rich in “Gold Mountain,” as they called the country. But they faced racism and found laws were enacted to prevent from owning gold mines. They could only work for white mine owners, and even then, they were often chased out by gangs. Up and down California, a spate of racial riots destroyed Chinese immigrant encampments. Many Chinese chose other jobs: domestic servants, running restaurants and shops for the established Chinatowns that had taken root, or becoming a laborer on the Transcontinental Railroad.

    Up to 12,000 Chinese worked on the Transcontinental Railroad, and about 1,200 died because they were given the dangerous work of blasting tunnels through mountains. A hundred railroad workers — mostly Chinese — died in an avalanche in the Sierra Nevada mountains. When the “Golden Spike” ceremony was held to commemorate the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869, the Chinese laborers were told to stay away and are not in any of the photographs that captured the event. That is one reason that Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month is held in May every year.

    Once the railroad was completed, Chinese began looking for work by taking the railroad south from Wyoming into Colorado. They found work in Colorado’s mines, and some found their way to the neighborhood in front of Union Station. Throughout the 1870s, the Chinatown district was established and grew, with businesses and residences rooted along the streets and alleys between 15th and 17th streets, and Blake and Market.

    On October 31, 1880, a fight broke out between four white men and two Chinese in a pool hall, which spilled out into the streets. Within a few hours, years of pent-up racial hatred led to thousands of whites converging on Chinatown, destroying businesses and chasing out the Chinese. One man, Look Young, was beaten to death and hung from a lamp post at 19th and Arapahoe. Several white business owners including a madam took in the fleeing Chinese and protected them. Even though this was an anti-Chinese riot, it was used as a reason why Chinese should be banned from the United States. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which to this day is the only immigration ban to name a country of origin."

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  9. Even “native” or “indigenous” Americans have Asian and African ancestors. The entire population of the Western Hemisphere descends from immigrants.

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  10. "He is a racist, as we've established, and so apparently are his fellow liberals. They are outraged by the idea of illegal aliens near their island vacation homes."

    Carlson was referring to Obama's desire to visit Martha's Vineyard. But 35% of the population of Martha's Vineyard during the summers is nonwhite (black or brown) because the island has been a haven for black vacationers. In the winter, when the population shrinks, there are 700 black residents.

    https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22627047/marthas-vineyard-black-tourism-oak-bluffs-inkwell

    The assumption that a place inhabited by wealthy people must necessarily be all white is part of Carlson's disinformation on the topic of race. Note also that Hawaii is not particularly all-white either, nor is Chicago. Is Obama being called racist because he inhabited the White House?

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  11. Why rant about FOX? And Burns is doing his usual promo about his new documentary. He is always shallow.

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    1. Is that what you call a rant? Anyway, Bob is showing what is going on in mainstream, right wing broadcasting. It's interesting hat should bother you....

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    2. It bothers me that Somerby is excusing Carlson by calling him damaged instead of a callous opportunist and grifter who manipulates those who are dumb and racist, inflames hate and worsens our nation's troubles. Next Somerby will suggest Carlson believes what he says.

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    3. Did Billy Graham believe what he said?

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    4. Dummies like you bother me.

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    5. Statements stand or fall on their own merits, regardless of what the speaker believes, but I think there is a special place in hell for those spreading certain kinds of disinformation.

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  12. Well, it's a once in a blue moon day at the Howler.
    While TC may be the ratings king now, Bob should
    admit (he knows) that the Right Wing viewer is
    subjected to this level of hateful bullshit every day,
    from it's full cast of well paid characters.


    And many now find the station too weak tea, and
    they need to movie onto Newsmax or whatever.
    Jesse Waters freakishly ugly accusations (and
    false) accusations against President Biden in the
    case of the 10 year old seeking an abortion case
    is just one example of the distaste sort of thing
    Bob doesn't want to sully his hands with.

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  13. Somerby used to call Rachel Maddow disordered too. It is just a name he calls those he dislikes. But I don't see Somerby elaborating on the sins of Carlson and Trump, the way he does on those he targets on the left. He tends to say look at the stuff Carlson is saying, and then he blames the left for it.

    "We see this when we watch their stars, but also when we watch ours. "

    How can he watch ours and see any equivalence? That makes me suspect that Somerby is disordered too.

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  14. If Somerby expects us to agree that we are as bad as Carlson, he needs to show us exactly what he thinks is so bad on the left. He doesn't do that. He just shows something bad from Carlson and says we are the same. Not convincing.

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  15. A few months back, when the manufacturers of anti Covid monoclonal antibodies indicated that they were ineffective against Omicron, and advised against their use for this strain, which at the time comprised 98% of new cases in Florida, DeSantis took to his little soapbox to declare that the federal government was not supplying Florida with adequate amounts of this expensive and ineffective treatment. This was typical public theatre from this clown. Putting asylum seekers onto planes is likewise pure theatre and about as authentic as his bronze medal.

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  16. Republican voters love DeSantis because DeSantis wears his "economic anxiousness" on his sleeve.

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