11.16.2007

The xenophobic genie

With the Religious Right all over the place in supporting GOP hopefuls, have you noticed the issues of “God, gays and guns” have been swept under the campaign carpet?

There’s a new “hot-button” issue to exploit:

Rachel Maddow, Air America talk show host on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” (LINK), 14 November 2007, on the issue of illegal immigrants:

MADDOW: I will just say that five years ago there was not heat on this issue, not because this issue was any different, but because there was no strategy to uncork this xenophobic bottle and let this genie out and let it drive Republican politics. You can uncork this bottle whenever you want, and Americans will run with it every time.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like it, BJ!

Anonymous said...

David Broder wrote in THE WASHINGTON POST this week that coming to grips with two issues will determine the electoral results before us. The first is the issue of an active, participating, former President in the White House. Do we pretend he's a flower on the wall? Do we accept his considerable value to his spouse, as President? Or do we just reject the entire idea as too bizarre? The other is immigration.
Frodo believes that this second issue has to be analyzed by divorcing the US of A from the paradigm. There is movement, around the world, from poorer to richer, for opportunity. It brings differing religions and ethnicity into direct contact, in somebody's backyard. What is happening in Tucson is also happening in Venice, and in Munich, and in London.
Broder, like Frodo, believes that the issue extends beyond simple politics. The xenophobia we see as political, is more truly primeval, and we are being forced, by sheer numbers, to confront it.
Now, on the lighter side, anybody wanna buy a Barry Bonds Baseball Card?

B.J. said...

Man is by nature migratory. Prehistoric man moved to find sources of food and water. When Neanderthal and Cro Magnon met in Europe, they fought. These instincts are apparently as deep within our nature as our belief in a higher power. Funny, how those instincts continue to clash today.

In the last year I have read books which were heralded for chronicling the various decades of the 20th Century and have found that things have pretty much been the same in this country for a hundred years, and possibly since its birth. We are bombarded by 24/7 information which convinces us things are worse than they’ve ever been. The book I’m listening to now, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “No Ordinary Time,” reports the xenophobia prevalent here (against Jews) in our lead-up to WWII.

As to Bill being first spouse, there have been other WH connections, John and John Quincy, Teddy and Eleanor and Franklin, and the Bushes, father and son. Let’s not go with the premise that things were all bad when Clinton was in the WH. In hindsight, things then look pretty good.

Not to beat a cliché to death, but I wouldn’t touch your Bonds card with a 10-foot pole! I’m still bitter about what Ben Johnson did to Carl Lewis.