(ThyBlackMan.com) While reflecting on some of the more fanatical GOP verbiage this writer has heard of late, designed to debase and marginalize the accomplishments of President Barack Obama; specifically, the ignorance and stupidity of many uninformed detractors calling for his impeachment. The U. S. Congress has voted this week, along partisan lines, to sue the president for the most imprudent reasons we won’t discuss here. However, the following is a list of 10 equally asinine comments uttered by narrow minded people masquerading as abstemious politicians and political pundits. In March of this year, Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan gave us one of the most myopic remarks while appearing as a guest on Conservative radio host Bill Bennett’s show, “Morning in America.” Without thinking; Ryan said the following in regards to inner-city males:
“[…] we have got this tailspin of culture in our inner cities in particular of men not working. And just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work and so there’s a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.” The problem though is that he was quoting the racist views of one Charles Murray, who has not been a friend of African Americans, or minorities in general. Ryan’s statement reveals a thorough lack of understanding of underprivileged minorities. In Ryan’s world, their lack of employment isn’t a result of a system that’s rigged against them, but of their laziness. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2012, was still defending his recent comments about inner-city culture days later, when he appeared on Fox News and told host Bill O’Reilly, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”
Considering the political party to which Ryan belongs, his statements are not surprising. Quite the opposite–Ryan’s racist statements are just a drop in the bucket relative to the many vitriolic arrows that GOP stalwarts periodically shoot out against minorities and practically anyone who is different.
Rush Limbaugh
Limbaugh is a radio host who is famous for his paranoid and incendiary remarks. He is the poster-boy of the Republican Party’s insecurity over a quickly-changing American demographic that’ll soon leave their old-fashioned ideals in the dust. Like other talking heads, Limbaugh has it especially in for President Barack Obama, as this quote reveals:
“Obama is uppity, but not as a black. He is an elitist. He does think he’s smarter and better than everybody else. That’s what he was taught. He’s a Harvard man.” Regardless of what this means, Limbaugh should know that the word “uppity” when used to refer to an African-American man or
woman, has its deeply-rooted negative connotations. Regardless of what he “meant,” it’s well-known that the word “uppity” only has one subtext–Blacks who try to better themselves are somehow crossing Jim Crow boundaries.
Michelle Bachmann
Bachmann is certainly an enigma. Either that or she truly is as ignorant as she sounds. Rather than live up to her role of public servant, she spends her time denigrating women and minorities. After all, when Obama was elected, she insisted that it’s because we feel guilty over slavery: “I think there was a cachet about having an African-American president because of guilt.” Her small-time views only illustrate her very limited experience in interacting with human beings of other colors and cultures. It certainly didn’t cross her mind that President Obama was elected because he is an intelligent and capable man.
Rick Santorum
If one has forgotten why Santorum remains so unpopular among moderates and liberals, then perhaps the following statement that he made while talking with voters should refresh one’s memory:
“I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money, I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money.”
Oddly, only about 9% of Americans on welfare are Black and 37% are white. Santorum’s irrational remark implies that Blacks are lazy–an unintelligent and incorrect statement. Santorum doesn’t believe that people are on welfare because they are out of options and need to get back on their feet.
Bill Bennett
When it comes to racist and malicious statements, it seems that the next made by Bill Bennett should be at the top of any “brainless” list. When proposing how he would reduce crime, Bennett didn’t opt for an equal opportunity education nor did he talk about making our prison system more rehabilitative. Instead, he gave the following solution:
“You wanted to reduce crime…if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.”
Herman Cain
Cain’s lack of intellectualism isn’t a bad thing, but his pedestrian views are. Cain is well known for his hyperbolic statements in which he makes wide assumptions about people and cultural groups. Take, for instance, the following remark he made about Muslims:
“I have talked with Muslims that are peaceful Muslims. And I have had one very well known Muslim voice say to me directly that a majority of Muslims share extremist views.”
This is also the same man who called President Obama an “arrogant Kenyan.”
Bill O’Reilly
Ostensibly, O’Reilly is the most well-read and educated of the entire group of stalwarts. After all, he’s written several books and has his own show on Fox. O’Reilly doesn’t yell and his statements aren’t as bombastic, but they’re still impolite. O’Reilly just possesses the veneer of intelligence. He demonstrates his unparalleled ignorance in the following statement about Kwanzaa:
“There’s no Kwanzaa symbol. Maybe–is there a 50 Cent that we have to put up or something? Is there a Kwanzaa symbol? What is that? It’s a candelabra like Liberace had? Alright, we’ll put that up, too.”
By “50 Cent” he’s referring to the rapper.
Glenn Beck
The fact that Beck’s show no longer airs on Fox leaves one wondering whether his psychotic “conservatism” was too much to bear, even on that network. Beck’s statements were always filled with hatred and always lacked factual backing. For instance, when he insisted that President Obama’s father was a Kenyan radical. Or, perhaps Beck believes that anyone who is foreign must be a threat:
“He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?” Perhaps Beck never thought of the fact that President Obama chose to use his name…well, because it’s the name with which he was born.
Allen West
Allen West is a man who has an arsenal of racial complexes behind him. He accuses others of being racist, all the while spewing vile and racist comments, such as the following:
“I have been called Uncle Tom, a sell-out Oreo…we continually allow liberals to do whatever they want and attack conservatives, but all of a sudden when a conservative stands up and says enough then people all want to sit back, especially liberals, and play victim.”
West claimed that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz made those racist remarks about him (she never said those things). Regardless, he brings up an interesting justification: he’s entitled to hateful language because the liberals (according to him) do it all the time.
Ted Cruz
Texas senator Ted Cruz not only admitted to admiring the late Jesse Helms, but he also claimed the following: “We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate.”
The late senator Jesse Helms is famous for having tried to block Congress from adopting Martin Luther King Jr. day as an official holiday. Helms also sang the first lines of the song, “Dixie” in front of African-American senator, Carol Mosley-Braun with the objective of “making her cry.” This is the man Ted Cruz looks up to for masculine inspiration: someone who tries to make an intelligent, grown woman cry.
Newt Gingrich
One cannot forget former representative and Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich with his proposed moon colony. Unfortunately his remarks aren’t limited to space travel. The following is a statement he made in regards to bilingual education in the United States:
“We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.”
Clearly, Gingrich doesn’t feel that mastering two world languages is an important accomplishment. What’s intriguing is his assumption that Spanish is a poor and “ghetto” language. Would Novel prize winner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez feel the same way?
President Abraham Lincoln, while paraphrasing a quote from the bible; once said: “It is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.” It is my earnest prayer that all of the aforementioned GOP conservative stalwarts will think twice before speaking to circumvent further exacerbating their foot-in-mouth disease!
Staff Writer; Stanley G. Buford
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