Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:47 pm
We heard this through eight years of the Obama presidency, that when racist comments or cartoons are directed at President Obama, they are really a joke and the problem is not the racism of the speaker but the failure of the recipient to have a sense of humor.
Trump, of course, as part of his plan to be “great” for black Americans, has selected Jeff Sessions – a racist among racists – as his pick for attorney general.
Though Sessions was deemed too racist to be a federal judge in the 1980s, watch Steve Doocy of Fox & Friends excuse that racism of Jeff Sessions as a “20-year-old joke”:
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STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): One other topic we wanted both of you to weigh in on, and that is Al Sharpton is promising a season of civil disobedience in response to Jeff Sessions’ nomination for the attorney general. Brian, do you think that’s a good idea?
BRIAN BENJAMIN: I think, in the case of Jeff Sessions, there are a lot of concerns. If you look at the —
DOOCY: Like what?
BENJAMIN: Well, let’s look at what he said in the —
DOOCY: That 20-year-old joke?
BENJAMIN: That’s not a joke. Him saying that the Ku Klux Klan is OK is not a joke. That’s a serious issue.
DOOCY: Well, when you look at the context —
BENJAMIN: Well, what context? He needs to come and explain that. The bottom line is that Jeff Sessions is not some easy attorney general pick. I mean, a Republican [Senate] Judiciary Committee in the ’80s turned him down for a federal judgeship. So clearly, he is someone who does not have a squeaky clean record when it comes to being someone who is for civil rights for all Americans. Accepting the Ku Klux Klan is not the kind of attorney general I’m looking for.
Amazingly, this does not work against Republicans offended that Trump is being called out for very real factual problems. Immune to reality and our world of facts, Republicans claim because “we are the party of Lincoln” they aren’t racist – no matter how racist they sound.
These aren’t jokes. They are incidents of racism. Jeff Sessions was a racist and all the evidence points to him still being a racist.
Doocy says it’s all about context. If we look at the context, the GOP may once have been the party of Lincoln but it is no longer and has not been for a long time. All those people became Republicans, and Doocy is making excuses for them now based on a past that no longer applies.
Today, the party of Lincoln would be the Democratic Party.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
