The dreaded “N” word is pretty much banned from public discourse in the USA. You can say s*** and f*** the rest of George Carlin’s 7 dirty words with impunity in many social settings (even if you’re the Vice President—it’s no BFD), but not that other one. I think the reason for the distinction is that the usual dirty words are only obscene by convention, while the “N” word is an expression of hatred for a person or a class. The distinction is one of intent.
I went over to Birther Report yesterday for some misguided reason, and I found commenters laying into the President with all sorts of hateful comments, accusing him of hateful things, and denigrating him in every way imaginable (and ways I couldn’t imagine). This is hate speech and it serves the same purpose, exists in the same context, and is operationally the same as calling the President a “nigger” only without the obvious racist association. Hate speech is hate speech, and the particular words used really don’t matter—it’s the same thing.
That one word sums up the whole site……hate.
a significant minority of Americans have been swept up into a hate movement. (I am including non-birthers with ODS). I wonder how they can recover, or if they ever can.
Every time I see a Birther proclaim rather self rightiously that Obama is “only half black” I assume in the back of their mind they are thinking that that is an acceptable substitute for “Nigger”
Many other words have been used as substitutes when it’s about Obama – “Muslim”, “gay”, “Communist” (anybody with half a brain would not claim the NWO is Communist or uses Communism to destroy countries), “Kenyan”, “Mulatto”, “bastard” (which is why they were so keen on the marriage question, as if being born out of wedlock would somehow justify the use of that word) etc.
A winner is you! Birther Report was willed into existence by one man’s extreme ODS.
As usual, the question is: stupid or evil?
If you honestly believe that Obama isn’t eligible to be president you’d have to be pretty darn stupid, you couldn’t be trusted to use a fork without hurting yourself and you certainly wouldn’t be able to read or comment on blogs.
That leaves “evil.”
Until recently, I was able to view both this site and the “Obama Release Your Records” site at work. However the net filter started blocking the ORYR site due to the hate comments from that “Falcon” idiot tripping the net nanny software alarms. I wish you would be careful with what words you put in here, because you might easily get this site locked out also. Then I won’t know what to do with my time at work.
These are both interesting sites (in completely different ways) but it won’t matter if nobody can see them.
How about two words: Irrational hate.
When the posts get particularly virulent at Birther Report it strikes me that if it’s real (and not a bunch of kids playing on their computers) those folks are living terribly miserable lives. It it weren’t so disgusting it would be sad.
I recently saw a post on birtherreport.com challenging someone to find even a single racist post on the page. Unfortunately, I was eating cereal at the time and had to buy a new laptop as a result.
Another recurring theme is the claim that Obama and Michelle got into Ivy League schools because of racial quotas, because how could black people get into Columbia and Princeton on merit? We all recall that Trump raised the same question about how Obama got into Harvard Law. This mindset also feeds into the “foreign student” myth, because in birther minds foreign students were given special consideration, and of course they believe that Obama needed special consideration.
I believe that a lot of what passes for conspiracy theory is based on racism. I agree with your assessment, but think about the 9/11 “truthers”. The basic belief behind that is that the people who did it were too stupid and unsophisticated to pull it off and the only people who are smart enough are either the US government or Israel.
something i just posted before seeing this thread:
a common trope among the radical right claims that minorities enjoy underserved advantages or privileges at the expense of their betters. minorities themselves find such claims understandably offensive. yet there it is in the (amalgamated) flesh, that melting pot horror, the ultimate distillation of wingnut fears come to life, usurper barack hussein obama. birfoonery was an inevitable reaction.
via freeper gulch:
“nathanbedford”‘s psychograph of obama is difficult enough to take seriously on its own, but coming from a longtime freeper adopting both the name and avatar of a civil war era klansman …
just another shiftless ni**er …
I read this fairly frequently.
And my thought always is:
Is it racism or sheer ignorance?
I suspect racism- after all the previous President from Illinois had even a greater
“lack of verifiable historical, educational and vocational records,”- but no one said the only reason Lincoln got elected was because he was white.
Racism is the fulcrum on which all the claims, conspiracies and just utter nonsense are leveraged.
That said the foundation on which racism is built and survives is ignorance.
I see a playground teeter totter sitting atop a cesspool of racist excrement with various birthers on each end seeing who can go the fastest and highest while splashing the crap all over the place.
SF Jeff: And certainly not on his good looks.
Your additional word is redundant.
Since in their eyes, anyone pointing out the racism in such posts are themselves the ones that are guilty of racism, they are, in their minds, in a win-win situation when they make such challenges.
I think so much of Birtherism comes down to the glaringly obvious- that if you line up photo’s of all 40 odd Presidents we have had, the one and only President that these folks have ever questioned the bonavides of is glaringly obvious.
If this was about membership to a country club, and one of the members challenged the membership of the first black member and demanded that he produce documentation that no other member ever had to produce, no one would hesitate to call that obviously racist.
But how are Birthers any different from that country club member that wants to deny the eligibility of the first black member?
I disagree. There are lots of things and people worthy of hatred.
Racism would be one of them.
They aren’t.
The word in this article’s title appears in 11 articles and 48 comments on the site. So I presume that the particular word isn’t triggering your particular filters. That said, I assume it triggers somebody’s filters.
There are a few exceptions: folks who say that BHO “shouldn’t have been eligible” based on sincerely-believed interpretations of the founders’ intentions, and that that means Rubio, Jindal, Cruz and others aren’t eligible either. They don’t use the word “usurper.” They just disagree with the way such definitions evolved in the Supreme Court and Congress, and would like to see them changed back to what they once were, in their view.
That’s not evil, and certainly is not necessarily completely stupid.
It’s like the old saw about psychosis vs. neurosis: the psychotic doesn’t know what reality is. The neurotic knows, but really doesn’t like it.
It may not be evil or stupid. In 2008 or 2009. In 2014, it is evil and stupid.
Does such a thing even exist anymore? The other day I read somebody claim the Founders would’ve hung liberals from the nearest tree.
For right-wingers, the Founders are just a blanket they can project their own desires on. It’s the secular version of “I’m just doing God’s will”.
Those are crazy people.
I know a guy professionally, a highly-regarded locksmith, who is writing a book on his theories about the intention behind Natural Born Citizen eligibility. I’ve known him for years, and he’s neither evil nor stupid. For instance, he’s read Minor v Happersett, and doesn’t think the decision defined NBC, which, of course, it didn’t. His opinions are more in line with the dissent opinion in WKA.
That said, I would guess that, in terms of the eligibility “question,” he is maybe 1 in 1000, maybe 1 in 100,000. Perhaps he is the exception that proves the rule? I dunno. I try to be fair.
For every legal question, there are minority opinions (in German law, for example about the question whether an article with a price tag in the supermarket is an invitatio ad offerendum, i.e. an invitation to make an offer, or already an offer; the latter opinion is the minority one). So I guess you will find the occasional person (even lawyers) who will question the validity of the majority opinion on “what’s an NBC” without being crazy or politically motivated. So these people do exist. However I don’t think they will bolster their argument with the claim that the minority opinion was “suppressed” via some kind of cover-up and that those proffering the majority opinion are part of a conspiracy.
In fact, the claim that they’re being “silenced” by a “conspiracy” of “liars” is a litmus test that every crank and crackpot fails and every legitimate doubter passes.
I doubt many things about official statements because I know people lie and politicians lie especially often, but that doesn’t mean I’m going full-tilt conspiracy nut.
For example if it turns out somebody lied about a terrorist attack, I would assume it was because they wanted to cover up their incompetence (e.g. that they ignored warnings), not because they staged the event.
(I remember a guy from university who told me he was writing a book that would revolutionize physics as we know it and be the Grand Theory of Everything that science has been looking for. While I believe he was slightly off his rocker, he did not accuse other physicists of conspiring to suppress his theories.)
If dr. conspiracy weren’t such a stupid bitch he would realize his use of the term “birther” serves the same strategic function as those who use the term “nigger” as a general purpose term of disparagement. but dr. conspiracy isn’t smart. he’s a stupid bitch.
But, but, but, some of my best friends are birthers.
LOL! Still the master the short retort, Doc! 😉
Whew! Setting a new gold standard for epithets per inch!
‘Nice’ try, but wrong, wrong, wrong, and you got’em backwards. “Birther” has a very specific meaning. Now, “bitch” on the other hand, once upon a time had a specific meaning, in terms of species and gender, but over time became, as you say, a “general purpose term of disparagement.” First, it was generalized across species, and, in recent decades, been watered down by use to reference any gender as well (As you have demonstrated here, poorly), to the point that it’s practically a pronoun.
If anyone has instances of “birther” being used as a pronoun, particularly in a non-political context, I’d be saddened to see it.
I haven’t yet found anything to indicate that this person is a birther, but the particular attitude towards race is, uh, interesting. And not entirely irrelevant.
http://theinjusticefile.blogspot.com/p/no-guilt-evolution-of-integration-civil.html
“In an effort to eliminate race/color as a group description (i.e. White/Black), I will most often use the accepted group designation for the Black race that was in use within our time frame here (1865 to 1968), which was ‘Negro’. For white people I will most often refer to them as the ‘Americans’ , or DMG (Dominant Male Group) members. Again, the purpose here is to eliminate race/color in describing U.S. history.”
Here’s wishing you a long life, Ginger. Because you are going to be knocked silly watching how the terms “nigger” and “birther” are understood and used in the future.
The “disparagement” value of the former is nearly defunct, and it is even used by the term’s targets as a backhand ironic compliment.* The latter, sadly for you, will soon and always afterward be understood universally as an insult… alongside such terms as flat-earther, knuckle-dragger, mouth-breather, sovereign citizen, cargo-cultist, and the like. Everyone will realize that BHO was at least a decent President and was perfectly eligible for the office… and those who cried “usurper!” “reverse racist” “Communist!” “persecutor of Christians!” etc. etc. will be seen through the sharp lens of hindsight as the pathetic hate-filled morons and/or jerks they were.
Better get used to it.
I predict if you live a long life “Birther” will become such an odious moniker that you will deny ever having been one.
*this has wide appeal. Marines embraced “jarhead,” Irish embraced “bog-trotter,” etc.
Dr. Conspiracy knows how to use capital letters. What’s your problem?
I think the meaning of the word “birther” is already starting to morph to mean someone who–through a combination of intellectual dullness and bigotry–ignores obvious facts and reality-based things in favor of ridiculous, absurd, implausible, and insulting conclusions not supported by facts or reason.
Hard to avoid given the evidence at hand.
The unconscious irony is thick with this post
So then why do many in the birther community refer to themselves as birthers? Why does the “birtherreport” exist?
Birthers are ridiculed because of their nonsensical theories and beliefs. The epithet “nigger” refers to a person’s skin color. Comparing the two is false equivalence.
I’m not sure I’m comfortable bumping this post, but I think it is the most obvious outside of the open thread.
I thought this article on Politicus had some interesting insights.
King Ended the Reign of Terror So Now It’s Time For the Truth About White Privilege