The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama.
Apparently it's not over.
Based on his lack of a week long bile spout, we can assume that Mallard agrees with the following statements:
I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped [9-11] happen. (Jerry Falwell)
All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that. (Pastor John Hagee)
8 comments:
No, you've got it all wrong: right-wingers are *expected* to be bigoted nutjobs. It's dog bites man: not news; why bother talking about it.
Note: This is not meant to imply that Jeremiah Wright is anywhere near as much of a fucking jackass as Falwell Hagee et al. As I noted in a previous thread, I'm a charter member of the Wright Fan Club.
There's a problem with quoting Falwell and Hagee; you're expecting Mallard to hold himself to the same standards as he holds Obama.
It looks like he talks for one frame and then just stares at you silently, grinning. Creepy.
To think that this hateful stuff is in a lot of newspapers sitting on the comics page between Blondie and the Family Circus. It makes me sick.
So this is basically a Sharpton strip with Wright substituted. I didn't follow the story in detail, but was one of Wright's hooks claiming "racism" every other breath? Or is that the standard Tinsley operating procedure for criticizing African-Americans?
And I've said it before and I'll say it again: if people like me were bought and sold as property for a hundred years in this country and were prevented from eating at certain lunch counters or drinking from certain water fountains for another hundred years, I might be a little sensitive about anything that I perceived as directed against me on the basis of my race. Wright has looked more like an asshole than the righteously angry preacher lately, but that doesn't make him an attention whore throwing empty accusations of racism at a society squeaky-clean of any kind of residual racism or bigotry.
Having lurked nervously around a variety of different discussions on racism of late, two things I've certainly learned are that (a)white people in Western society often simply do not notice either the privilege they are steeped in or the racist treatment doled out to people of other races, and (b)that it's not really the business of white people (especially not those ones who aren't paying attention) to determine what is and is not racism. Sure, they can contribute to the discussion, but one gives listening priority to the people with most experience of the subject. Bruce would not be one of those people. But he's just got to be heard! And damn himself in the process, as mocking discussions on racism looks a lot like the behaviour of the hideously over-privileged, even to whitey-white me.
Tinsley's task in this strip is to make racists feel more comfortable with their racism, by forming false memories of absurd claims of racism.
Remember, the brain believes what it sees. When you see the strip, you see Wright make some absurd claims about racism. The fact that what you saw is merely a cartoon does not, at some level, register with the brain.
It's like with "Gore invented the internet". It was repeated over and over until people formed memories of him having said it.
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