How to be a media dip$#it
You may have seen the latest breathless reporting about how some guy named Romney said something to the effect that the UK and the US understand each other because of our shared Anglo-Saxon heritage. It set off a media frenzy (what doesn’t these days, actually?) as all of the false outrage built up over the last few days in the wake of the Aurora murders exploded.
First of all, we do share an Anglo-Saxon heritage with England. So what’s the big whoop? But, apparently, like everything else, it’s racist to say that outloud. Says the Obama camp;
The Obama campaign swiftly responded, calling the anonymous attacks “stunningly offensive” and even the reporter who sat down with the Romney advisers warned the “remarks may prompt accusations of racial insensitivity.”
And what’s more, according to Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post, the quote was made up by the UK’s Telegraph and the tip had been sent to them by Team Obama in the first place;
But that doesn’t matter. The pack journalists begin tweeting it out. The cable news people begin to chatter about it. The Romney team puts out a statement: “It’s not true. If anyone said that, they weren’t reflecting the views of Governor Romney or anyone inside the campaign.”
Some mainstream reporters confess to the Romney campaign that their editors tell them they have to write on it. (Have to? What if it’s not true?) Well, if one of them writes on it, others will follow.
And how did the Telegraph quote magically get to so many reporters? The Obama team sent it to them. Nothing wrong with that, if the press would be honest about the origin of the story.
So, I’m guessing that the Romney crowd, which denies that the phrase was ever uttered by Romney, nor one of his aides, is feeling the heat from Chicago.
Look at me writing about the campaign in the middle of the work day.
Category: 2012 election, Barack Obama/Joe Biden
Funny, every history and political science course I ever took mentions the joint heritage with the UK, Anglo-Saxon roots of the American people and of the Constitution. Apparently they were all wrong.
It has become acceptable to be proud of your heritage, religion, and sexual orientation as long as you are not a white Christian heterosexual. But then, if you are a straight white Christian, your are the root of all evil and responsible for everything possible that is wrong or distasteful to anyone. Or so I am told.
This is why the media is useless. Another manufactured scandal meant to distract from the real problems brought on by the moron in the White House.
By the way, this fits right into Obama’s hatred of the Brits for their imperialism in Kenya, the only country he is committed to.
So because I’m white (the PC term is “Caucasian”) I don’t have a history? I can’t be proud of my ancestors, most of whom came from Europe? I’m just nobody and nothing except a Tax Payer, right? Just STFU and pay into all those nice programs for others but don’t claim any heritage or pride or membership in anything because it’s “insensitive”??
As much as I hate flying, if I could go to another PLANET right now, I would. Just to get away from the aforementioned, unadulterated bullshit.
Brian Ross reports “there is a Willard Romney of San Diego, CA and Wolfeboro, NH who is believed to be a member of the Republican Party”. He continued “we’re not certain if this Romney is the same person as the Republican presidential candidate”.;)
@1 Spot on,
Whether the left likes it or not White Christian Men born as Englishmen founded this country by risking life and wealth to engage in war and losing meant their families life and wealth as well…a little less than 90 years later another White Christian Male would decide it was wrong of this great nation to continue slavery….and the deaths of lots of White Christian Males on both sides would determine whether there was a union of one or two nations after that war.
White men may have caused a lot of harm in man’s history, but they are not unique in that characteristic…
We will know we are taking a great step towards eliminating racial issues when we have two check boxes only on the census, American or Legal Resident Alien….
In regard to being proud of people’s ethnic heritage, if where you were from was so effing great you would still be there…you are here because this nation is better than where you came from unless you or your ancestors are the type of 4ssholes that like moving from a good place to a worse place…so if your ancestors came here, it was unlikely they did so because their homeland provided a much better future than an unknown existence in America…so stop telling me how great your heritage is and understand the reason your ancestral homeland sucks is because it is NOT LIKE America and if you make America like your ancestral homeland America will suck just like where you came from as well…
Blacks were forced here to be sure, their ancestral homelands are not a preferable option today either…we can debate the causes of that but the reality today is what it is…
Opportunity is still more accessible here than just about anywhere else…we have many problems and we have much work to do, but we need to stop finding ways to divide ourselves and start figuring out how we get along with each other and fix our debt, educational issues, and long term manufacturing prospects…and stop allowing ourselves to be sidetracked by hysteria from the left and the right that the sky is falling every time someone says something we don’t like…I don’t have to like you to respect your contribution to the nation anymore than you have to like me, now let’s put on our big boy pants and start fixing this sh1t…or we could just keep whining about the other side and hoping we will magically figure out how to solve these issues without engaging anyone but those who think exactly like we do…
@4: Well played! Well played I say.
My great-grandfather, his three brothers and their uncle were all in the 15th Illinois in the Civil War, and I’m damned proud of them, too. And yeah, I CAN prove they did that, too.
I’m a WASP and proud of it, and I don’t give a crap what some whiny jackass in DC says about it.
Ah, but what a clever political ploy — crank up some piece of misinformation and release it to the press and blame it on the other guy, your legitimate opponent.
Am I the only one who thinks that politicians are brain-dead?
I’m going to put a sign on my front steps, as follows:
Salespeople, solicitors, and politicians not welcome. Do not knock on my door. Stay off my lawn or I’ll set the cats on you.
It’s days like these I want to break out my now almost certainly dust clogged VHS and plug in my copy of Martin Mull’s “The History of White People in America.”
Of coruse, nobody in the Obama administration has ever been called to account for an explanation of why his AG declined to prosecute the New Black Panthers because they’re “his people.”
EX-PH2, my great grand uncle on my dad’s side fought with the 7th Michigan Volunteer Cavalry, his sword is still floating around somewhere in the family. That side of the family all came from England. I guess the family is supposed to suppress that part of our history.
This kerfuffle sounds a lot like the media’s favorite fall back, “some say”. Except, in this case, it’s someone, unidentified, of course, in the Romney campaign.
Let’s not forget that half of Obama is Anglo-Saxon as well. Or maybe he forgets where Ireland is.
@6
Spot on, center mass….mine got here in 1622 because they couldn’t stand Britain….
@10 – UpNorth, you suppress your family history and you will answer to my cat Mikey, the Large and In Charge, with the Icy Stare of Doom.
May I suggest that we all tell those who have a problem with our white Christian heritage to f*** off? The whiners are free to leave.
WOW! True feelings/racial attitudes come out.
Yat–it’s not “true feelings/racial attitudes” that are at the crux here.
For most of my life, certainly all of my adult life, the fact is I’m supposed to be ashamed and embarassed by my heritage and that somehow what some dipshit redneck fucksticks did generations before my birth is somehow reflecting upon me.
Sorry, guilt trip not working. I’m not ashamed of who I am, or what I’ve done. The only people pushing this bullshit are the Sharpton/Jackson/MeCHa professional victim crowd.
#11, Don’t forget, he’s Cherokee too. Mix that with his Irish ancestry, and his real name is probably more along the lines of “Bear-Ock O’Bama” of the Black and Tan tribe. His spirit animal is the SEAL, and he loads his peace pipe with Newport tobacco, because that’s where his ancestors landed many moons ago. But they didn’t get there by themselves. No, big government helped them every step of the way.
As a very wise college professor pointed out one time in a Black History lecture – it was white Americans who ended slavery in this country. She suggested that it not ever be forgotten by anyone. And I have not.
Sparky, you know I hold you in very high esteem but “your own effin’ country” etc.? I’m from the familia “de Hernandez y Quintana” from Seville Spain. An honorable name in those parts, if these Anglo-Saxons that left their own homes to come here, we were here 200 years before that, were so great, why are they here?
Yat Yas 1833: OK, I’m lost here. What comment by NHSparky are you referencing? I’m not finding that remark.
Think that was actually VOV in #6, Hondo and Yat. And I don’t think it was meant as an inflammatory remark toward anyone here. But I have been know to guess wrong.
There were a bunch of reasons folks came here. Many, if not most in the earliest years, were misfits and renegades who couldn’t get along with folks in their country of origin. Lots of them moved to escape prison. Many more were sent here as their punishment.
Oh, well. It worked well for a very long time.
EX PH, anything but the cat… The Stare of Doom? My cats only have the stare of disdain.
Ex-PH2: you need to quit feeding Mikey that benzedrine with his 9 Lives. My cat can’t keep his eyes open long enough most days to give much besides the Yawn of Sleep.
@22 & @23, Mikey also shreds paper. The Stare of Doom is frequently followed by a loud squeak, and a demand for treats.
Yat…wasn’t me. My extended family is multi-racial and I’m quite well versed in southwest history, which goes to what I said earlier. The only “innocents” in this whole deal were the Native Americans who got treated pretty shitty (and still do from both within and outside their communities.) But make no mistake that a lot of the same shit that the whites did (not to excuse it) like slavery, conquest, etc., was practiced by Native American tribes. Blacks in Africa sold their own people into slavery, and so on.
Let he who is without sin, shit like that.
Most of my ancestors came here because they wanted hope and opportunity and they found it. Not coincidental that most of the Eastern Seaboard and Mid-Atlantic region was settled by Brits and other Northern European nations albeit well after the Spaniards had colonized most of the rest of North America and all of Central and South America.
But our greatest historical influences came from the British-influenced colonies and a good chunk of the next two centuries of expanding influence is based on that.
Again, it took folks of every ethnic group to form this nation…point well taken, but the whitewashing (no pun intended) of American History over the past 25 years or so is frankly embarassing.