Joe Wilson the Hero
Joe Wilson is a Hero! Blame it on Racism and renewed strength
Rep. Wilson's outburst "You lie!" became the topic of debate last week and, as I said last week, was admittedly inappropriate decorum. He did apologize and we should move on...right?
Well, actions speak more than words. What our press has NOT reported well is how the bill has since been changed in response to Wilson's claim.
See the bill didn't have language to exclude illegal immigrants. The President's claims otherwise were indeed false, knowlingly or not. Now, the language in the proposed bill requires stringent citizenship language. With 12-15 million illegal immigrants, that's a huge savings to tax payers.
Wilson shouting at the Presidnet was indeed "wrong place, wrong time", the end result was a modification that potentially saves us billions.
I don't agree with the means, but we should be grateful for the ends.Blame it on Racism
Not everyone wants to answer the hard questions. Not everyone wants to face the problems and the outrage over those unanswered questions.
When the fire gets too hot, either the media or President Obama seem to want to bring his "race" into the debate. Conservatives, like Glenn Beck, have made this matter worse by asserting insane comments like "Obama hates white people" or is "racist" himself.
The President's ignorant comments to support his friend Professor Gates did reveal a prejudice nature and a trigger happy component from the President to stereotype according to race. This hardly means a "half-white" man hates white people.
But Obama's track record is getting muddled with instances of leaning on the race card to get through troubled time. When the critics begin asking difficult questions racism is the immediate response.
Rep. Joe Wilson rudely shouted at the President and columnist Maureen Dowd translated his outburst into "You Lie, Boy" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/opinion/13dowd.html?bl&ex=1252987200&en=294d3085ac11979c&ei=5087%0A)
Boy?
I thought the immediate racism was going to be the exclusion of the illegal immigrants and the insensitive nature of Wilson and other Republicans.
Nope.
Now the media cycle has embraced the "racism" headline to explain the opposition. We are only seeing the fringe minority and painting the masses at protests and Townhalls as being racist. I'm sure there is a small contingent that may be approaching the debate hindered by their prejudice, but there's an equal or greater support for the President, who support him unilaterally because he's a minorty. If the country was so obsessed with race, would he be the President?
President Carter joined the fray:
"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American. I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that shares the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans."
Those racist Southerners -- always behind the curve on tolerance.
Look, many of us are trying to ask viable questions about many issues and I find it destructive to resort to the crutch of racism. I don't care about the color of the President's skin, but care deeply about the thickness of it.
NBC's Matt Lauer suggested. "We talk about political divides, ideological differences that sometimes turn ugly. … Why can't we say this is what this is about right now? Why does race have to be made part of it?"
Renewed strength
As a Christian, I'm still surprised how quickly our prayers can be answered and how our strength can be restored.
Nolan and I discussed the potential firestorm of bringing politics to the forefront of the PCR and it has surely lived up to that projection.
What neither of us predicted was the vile personal attacks and profane typecasts that are, frankly, painful. Particularly when they are false and rooted in complete lies.
Last night I was approached almost immediately at church by a regular reader of my column, they said:
(I'll paraphrase)
"I saw what's going on the message board. I'm sorry man, but you're not quitting. You're not quitting because you're right. You've been right about Sotomoyer, ACORN, the spending, the debt, both parties and all of the frustration. You'll figure it out, but you're not going to quit."
Needless to say, they had more confidence in me that I did. I had been reassured earlier in the day and supported to venture into other means of writing the column (which I've done.)
I don't really watch a lot of TV or listen to a lot of radio, I simply don't have time. In fact, I don't really care about the opinions of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or even Michael Moore - but I care about the stories that may be covering.
I wanted "State of the Nation" to dig into many questions and news stories that aren't being told. The network news has become a hollow collection of models who majored in mass comm sitting in front of a telepromter. Journalists are no where to be found. For example, Charles Gibson wasn't "even aware" of the breaking ACORN corruption story, when a regular Joe like me wrote about it a week ago and beyond.
I write in an open letter style with what's on my mind. The message board always seemed like an open forum to bounce this stuff around further debating the questions, loopholes and reasons to believe one thing or another. I find that the questions remain unanswered, so it is frustrating.
Unfortunately, the messenger gets attacked NOT the message (or the questions) and that's simply unfair. Most of the attacks involved events that predate my knowing Nolan or anyone on the PCR, so the claims were either incomplete or totally false.
In the end, the attacks led to anger. I don't force anything on anyone. I try to be direct, concise etc...but it comes across as preaching and condescending sometimes. The same folks that would tell us to turn the channel if we're "offended" by something on TV or the radio, now can't resisit posting on "news" topics about how they don't care and call any of us that do "idiots" or worse.
Life goes on and I will endure. Thanks to that person that approached me last night (Wednesday) for inspiring me to press on and thanks to Nolan for unwavering support. Unlike popular belief, I don't lose sleep over any of this but I do enjoy it immensely.
Quote of the Week
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.-- Frederic Bastiat
"State of the Nation" is ©2009 by Brandon Jones. All graphics this page, except where otherwise noted, are creations of Nolan B. Canova. All contents of Nolan's Pop Culture Review are ©2009 by Nolan B. Canova.
