Mark Karlin is the founder and editor of BuzzFlash.com and his recent column is copied below. The important thing to get from this piece is that we are witnessing the bigot’s backlash to having elected a black man president and that Obama must stop trying to placate these bigots because he cannot. Further, that his model is, and should be, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who won impressive advances equal human rights for African Americans (and all of the various other human rights movements to follow) by standing for his beliefs and enlisting the active support of “we, the People.” So, there are two questions. Will Obama stop trying to placate the rightwing bigots who are stirred up by corporate financed rightwing hate media and call for a mass populist movement? The second question is, will you respond?
His healthcare speech suggests that he will not. In his healthcare address to Congress last week, he said that single payer healthcare (which removes the for-profit health insurance companies from their all powerful position) would not be considered and he said that he supports forcing all Americans to buy insurance. A token few, maybe 5% by his estimate, could use the public option.
Note that then a day or so later House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate leader Harry Reid said that they were no longer tied to a public option at all. It was no longer a deal breaker. Teddy Partridge as well as David Sirota then revealed that on the same day, United Healthcare’s, one of the largest health insurance companies in America, chief lobbyist announced that it would hold a fund raising event for her – $2400 plate for individuals, $5000 plate for PACs. I am sure there is no connection between the two events.
I am attaching a pdf of the salaries of executives of the major American health insurance companies. Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to pay for these bloated CEOs? Let’s keep calling our representatives and senator to support Rep. Anthony Weiner’s in his attempt to replace all the language of HR3200 with the Conyers bill (HR676) for Single Payer Healthcare, improved Medicare for All. Also, while calling, support Rep. Kucinich’s proposal to allow states the right to implement their own single payer plan. Remember that is how Canada got single payer, one province enacted it and then the rest of the nation followed.
David e. Delk, Alliance for Democracy – Portland Chapter 503 232 5495 www.afd-pdx.org
Published on
BuzzFlash.org (
http://blog.buzzflash.com)No More Code Words: Racism is Public AgainBy
mark karlinCreated
09/13/2009 – 8:01am
Whatever you think of Maureen Dowd’s snarkiness, she cuts to the chase in her
September 13th column [1] about the racism behind the summer of bizarre rolling protests against Barack Obama: white racists will not accept a “black boy” as their boss, particularly one who is smarter than they are.
Anyone who has regularly read BuzzFlash over nearly 10 years knows that this is a regular theme of ours: the South and whites who need blacks as scapegoats have never conceded the Civil War. Heck, they haven’t even accepted the Civil Rights laws of the ’60s.
It’s important to remember that a little more than 50 years ago, segregation was still the reality of Southern life, and that our military was only desegregated in the Korean War.
As we’ve said on BuzzFlash many a time, much20of the right wing juggernaut of four decades was driven by a backlash to the Civil Rights movement (and the ensuing women’s rights and gay rights movements).
There is no greater and unjust privilege in the world than claiming power and authority merely because one is born a certain skin color. For whites who have seen their incomes decline and jobs lost because of global corporations shifting jobs to below-poverty wage nations, the Siren song of right wing hate radio — financed by the very corporations fleecing the economically stretched white person of limited education and means — is alluring.
If the corporations can scapegoat blacks and immigrants as the cause of the plight of whites on the economic brink, then they are off the hook, as they are. Their tactic of inciting racism to a boiling point through their ubiquitous media outlets and talk shows and obsessive news coverage of the diverting spectacle they keep creating has been successful.
The great irony is that President Obama keeps conceding ground to the very same corporations, as he has in the so-called “healthcare reform” bill. If his character has learned how to be a “non-threatening” black, it doesn’t matter. Big money is going to use racist pawns to come after him anyway.
Barack Obama’s clear emotional core is closest to the words and mission of Dr. Martin Luther King. But King knew that words weren’t enough. We don’t have Civil Rights Laws because of political parties, we have them because King led a movement of civil disobedience in which people were arrested, lynched, murdered and assassinated, as was King.
Sheltered as he grew up, accomodating to the endless list of demands of corporate America, biracial by background, Obama wrote in his memoir that he chose to be of the black community, although among racists he had no choice. He would always be a “boy” to them, and one too smart for undereducated whites who only have hate as justification for feeling “chosen” and superior to non-whites.
The Civil Rights Movement succeeded in becoming Civil Rights Laws because blacks and whites of good will and dreamers of equality put themselves physically on the line to move the nation into action. It wasn’t a victory of Democrats (who were still transitioning from being segregationists in the South at the time) or Republicans (remember which party Lincoln belonged too).
It was a victory of mass mobilization, protest and outrage — and people who got off their butts and faced down the likes of George Wallace and Bull Connor.
Appeasement will not work with the corporatists and their racist pawns. It’s a test of Obama’s ability to grow — which he has been able to do in the past — to see if he can start packing a punch as well as he can inspire us with eloquent and passionate rhetoric.
Martin Luther King triumphed because he fought for his ideals; he didn’t compromise t hem away in lobbyist meetings in the White House. He didn’t flinch and fire people everytime the racists complained about something. He stuck to pursuing his dream, and he made it a reality.
It was feet on the ground, not words in the air that realized the goal of legal racial equality more than a hundred years after the Civil War ended.
But the perfect storm resulted when corporatist Republicans harnassed the hard-wired racism of Southern and Appalachian — and some of the urban working class who resented busing and the like — (add Wasilla, Alaska now) whites into frenzied hate and resentment — and now with an African-American president they have given us a string of rag-tag but heated protests that basically are nothing more than bitter resentment at having a duly elected black president.
Meanwhile, the corporations are succeeding at drowning our Obama’s message and forcing concessions from him.
President Obama, we need to hit the streets as part of a movement and give you the support you need.
In turn, you need to start matching your fighting words with your fight.
Stop worrying about whether everyone likes you; these people never will. And the corporatists you are playing footsy with are pulling their strings and are not friends to you or the American people.
Racism is pernicious, as you know.
You can’t ignore it as
Frank Rich points out today [2]; you need to knock it out of the ring. We’ll have your back, but you have to lead with more than words.
Unless otherwise noted, all original content and headlines are © BuzzFlash. Contact BuzzFlash for reprint rights. Source URL: http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/9406
Links:
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/opinion/13dowd.html?bl&ex=1252987200&en=294d3085ac11979c&ei=5087
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/opinion/13rich.html
[3] http://technorati.com/tag/EditorBlog
[4] http://technorati.com/tag/Racism
[5] http://technorati.com/tag/Obama
< /div>
Filed under: Health Care, Racism
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