Sure, the talk show radio callers are quite comfortable with niggers who know their place.

I also live in Knoxville and, while I don't listen to talk radio, I haven't been hearing or over-hearing particularly unpleasant conversations.  That said, there is indeed a kind of gnarly Appalachian hostility to anyone outside a narrow conservative mainstream that -- here agreeing with Michelle -- would have been flowing just as freely if John Kerry had won, or Hillary Clinton.  On campus, there are a lot of McCain-Palin students as well as Obama supporters.  Nevertheless, central precincts in the city were blue on election day, although the county went red.

As a part-time rabid partisan, in all of my own rantings I have never identified any form of need to invoke a person's race, gender, or even a disparaging quality stemming from their race or gender, as proof of their worthlessness. But that many people incorporate this into their argument, rather than as the conclusion indicates there is an underlying predisposition commonly referred to as bias or prejudice.

Basically, I have to agree with satyendra; while they may not consider themselves racist, they obviously still subscribe to many of the underlying prejudices

F 'em.  For 8 years the yahoos have had their run - and look where it's gotten us.  Progressives have had to put up with the worst administration in U.S. history - and all we heard was "liberals are so angry."    

I wonder how many of  these wingers are the same ones who forwarded cloying emails that said  the "election is in God's hands."  Well, God picked the colored.  Jumpin' Jesus!

Michelle, you sum it up perfectly.  They have problems with any Democrat.  Bill Clinton - too slick, drug dealer, killed political enemies .  Al Gore too stiff and invented the internet. Those earth tone suits.  John Kerry -  French  elitist wind surfingVietcong loving traitor.  John Edwards - trial lawyers and $400 haircuts.  A fag.  And let's not even touch upon their decades old vitriolic hatred of Hillary.  

Let 'em stew.  They're fun to watch.

This is a perceptive comment about racist (and sexist, and ...) discourse -- such discourse may reflect hostility whose origin is in politics or other factors that are not racial (sex-based ...) in nature, but that uses racist invective as a tool for inflicting pain on the target of that hostility.

I think the really bizarre web sites are Hillaryis44 or noquarterusa.net. These were rabid Hillary supporters whose hatred of Obama knows no bounds. The things these people, who call themselves progressives or liberals, write is borderline insane, and worse, is not even original. If you are going to be nutso, at least be creative.

I wish this were merely hyper-partisanship, but I'm afraid there's more to it. There are a lot of people in this country whose identity and self-esteem depend on their empowerment over racial and religious minorities, immigrants, feminists, gays and the secular and educated. They are the people who've claimed the right to describe themselves as "American" and "Christian" to the exclusion of others. Through the Bushes and Reagan, Republicans in Congress and right-wing judges, these "angry whites" have mostly controlled public discourse and exercised a veto over public policy for the past 30 years. Obama's election represents the empowerment of all the people they fear and hate. The more successful he is, the more marginalized -- and enraged -- they will become.

As an analytical matter, Michelle is probably largely right. But you can't adopt the language of race bigotry to express strong partisan feelings without being comfortable with the concept of race bigotry. And anyone who is comfortable with the concept is, by definition, a racist bigot. I can't call a black person a "nigger" unless I accept, to some degree, that the word "nigger" has a true meaning. So I do not find the identification of an alternate fundamental motive to be comforting. Michelle's conclusion could be summarized thusly:

"They don't hate Obama because they're racists. They hate Obama _and_ they're racists."

Well, whoop-de-doo. They're still racists.

I think Michelle has measured this well. I once played on a baseball team that was competing for state honors. Different sides of the tracks and all found me and my team mates effette pussies as described by our adversaries beer drinking parents. Unfortunately our vetting found us down by one run for enrty in to the history books. Good lesson about people and fleeting justice for thirteen year olds all the same. Same kind of fans in this one. Leave the hard core to their caves. For the rest, they'll get over it. Life is full of disappointments. When proxy is all you think you've got that's all you'll have. I know folks that easily fit that description on both sides of the situation.

Good point, but I doubt they would call Hillary a fuming cone.

I think this understates the danger posed by these people. Remember a guy walked into a Tennessee church and killed 2 people because liberals were ruining the country, a notion he got from talk radio. I think the animus will get worse, brought on by a black president, homosexual rights etc etc., fueled by talk radio hatred. I wish I could dismiss it so easily, but the lessons of the past decade or so (OK city, Rabin's assassination) show that the combination of righteous anger and a chorus of like-minded supporters -- where talk radio comes into it -- can be a deadly mix.

Hilaryis44, blech.  I see Ali-bama and the 40 thieves and it loses me right there.  I won't bother looking into other nuggets they offer up.

I don't think that's entirely true, Rhubarbs.  At the least, there are different degrees of bigotry involved.  It's not that these people hate Obama because they're incredibly racist, but that they hate Obama and they're somewhat racist.

But I don't think I buy that the use of a slur requires that one accept its negative meanings to any significant degree.  It's entirely possible to understand a slur as merely an insulting label for a group of people (that is, understanding it as insulting in itself and not as insulting because of what the word means).  A slur can be understood as relating to a more polite label in the same way that curse words relate to 'darn'.

An example: in college, I did a collaborative project with some of my classmates and a group of French students.  Because we found the French students to be incompetent, we began referring to them as 'the Frenchies' among ourselves (I think another group in a similar situation called their French partners 'frogs').  We used the label, but it didn't mean anything other than "French people that we don't like very much".  Likewise, witness the ability of boys everywhere to come up with insulting and nonsensical nicknames for their teachers and classmates.  The insulting labels have no intended meaning that the appropriate labels don't have; they only communicate disrespect.

One last point: in particularly backwards places (where the incidence of racism is much higher than normal), it's hard to take the use of a slur as an indication of racist attitudes.  There could well be small towns in the South where 'nigger' is merely what one calls people of African descent.  Obviously, these towns are going to have a lot of racists, but it could be hard to tell the racists from the non-racists (or lesser racists, as the case may be) based only on the labels they use.

That's interesting -- at what where the French students incompetent?

I love this: "Wingnuts on both ends of the ideological spectrum don't just disagree with the opposition, they hate the Political Other with a righteous zeal that would have made Torquemada look tolerant."

Yes, because obviously both sides are the same.  That's why you heard all those people shouting "FASCIST!" and "KILL HIM!" whenever Obama mentioned John McCain's name at rallies.  It's why t-shirts reading "Rope. Tree.  FOX News correspondent.  Some assembly required." were such hot sellers on the left these last eight years.  It explains the steady stream of articles and books by progressive authors describing right-wingers as un-American traitors.  

Oh, wait: None of those things ever happened.  I wonder why.

I don't have anything against those sister-fucking, dog-ass-licking, yellow-toe-nailed, obese, illiterate, Deliverance-country honkies.  I just don't like Republicans and find them intellectually, morally and socially a lower life-form.  And no, I don't think of the basement scene in "Pulp Fiction" when I think of Limbaugh; the gasoline tank in "Reservoir Dogs" is more my style.

I'm not bad; I'm just drawn that way by the Rove-Atwater Tractor Beam.

Damn it, icarus. Now I have to go watch Resevoir Dogs again. However, I definitely think LImbaugh is a top candidate for The Gimp.

Or, you could take a look at some of the sexually "tinged invective currently being spewed" in the comments on the previous post, the one about Palin & Accountability. It looks just as nasty as some of the comments you read on the right wing sites.  Maybe the authors of some of those comments could tell us if they are genuine misogynists, or they just like to use sexist trash talk to insult women they despise.

It's possible that one the reasons why there's so much confusion about the racial component of the anti-Obama surge in TN (and no doubt many other places) is that the people involved are confused as a result of the de-activation of race as a lever in political culture.  Their traumatic discovery is that, now, race is rapidly declining as a spoken or unspoken marker of political attitudes.  They find themselves in the position of some crusty old guy in West Virginia in 1961 saying "I've nothing against Catholics personally but . . . "

Strab: I replied to you on the other thread, but asking loaded questions like "they are genuine misogynists, or they just like to use sexist trash talk to insult women they despise" is hardly a means of engaging in conversation.

The only true mysoginist is someone who thinks that a politician's plumbing is grounds *enough* to gain the vote of women; who subjects the position of the Vice-President of the United States of America to the unseemly, Viagara-driven slobberings of a Rich Lowry who actually talked about Paling being hot as a qualification for the position; and who uses sex - wink wink - to advance a political agenda.  You'll not hear a single person here talk about Susan Collins, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Olympia Snow or even Condi Rice in any but the most respectful terms.  We may - and I do - disagree politically with them, but neither their sex nor their sexuality is of any import.

The Winking Wasilla Woman is different.  She was chosen for her sex in the mistaken impression that somehow women are so stupid that they will see a vagina and a pair of breasts and will flock to it.  As it happens, Hannity and Barnes and Kristol and the other Right Wing hacks were the only ones who fell for the Cleopatra gambit; women, evidently, have considerably more sense than men in this regard.  But Palin actually pressed her advantage on this ground: it's one thing to have an old goat like McCain wet himself in the interview with Palin; it's quite another, and altogether more disgraceful, for Palin to try to wink her way into the White House.

So, please spare me the sanctimony and look deep and hard at the damage Palin's candidacy has wrought.

"...it's one thing to have an old goat like McCain wet himself in the interview with Palin..." Icarus, at the risk of sounding pedantic, I prefer the term "cream."  Don't you think that's a better term too?

Well, icarusr, you're right, I don't hear disrespect for the other women you mentioned.  But it was a little different around here when Hillary was the center of attention.  But I think I got called sanctimonious when I mentioned that too.  

It does strike me funny that someone who uses the kind of language you have is so outraged by a wink.  It just seemed goofy to me.  I was more appalled by her ignorance of national and international issues and her apparent belief that we wouldn't notice.  And I think that her choice was patronizing towards woman and even the social conservatives who might agree with her on some issues.  And then there was the divisive and dangerous atmosphere that she promoted at her rallies, but you know all that.  I just think that since this discussion is taking place in a public space, our language matters too.

Idaho students chant 'assassinate Obama' on school bus: Report

rawstory.com/.../Idaho_students_chant_assassinate_Obama_on_1112.html

[Madison County, Idaho was once dubbed "the reddest place in America" by Salon, but that didn't make it any less shocking when elementary school children allegedly started chanting "assassinate Obama" on the school bus.]

[The population of Madison County is not only heavily Republican but also 97.7% white. One of Rexburg's lone Democrats, a professor at the university, told Salon that "she remembers the time when a group of classmates followed her third-grader home, shouting out 'baby-killer' all along the way. She took it up with the teacher, who didn't seem to mind."]

Irony - to be clear, the French students were pretty good theoretical engineers, but they had no appreciation for the constraints imposed by real-world applications.  They'd come up with designs that were incredibly intricate and which would have broken down constantly (and which would have taken lots of time to build - we only had a year) when a slightly less elegant solution was much easier and cheaper to make and would have been much more robust.  

Aha, ok -- but that sounds less like a competence gap and more like a misunderstanding/disconnect in regard to what the parameters were for the task.  It also seems like "easier and cheaper" weren't as positively weighted for them as for you guys.

If the newly elected prez was Alan Keys the rightwingers would be OK with him being black, I'm sure. The right has lost and will probabaly not win anything importand again for a very long time, thanks to the miserable record of Bush & the GOP Congress. The realization if this hard truth has many on the far right fuming and they will continue to rage on about everything, Obama's race included. Just ignore them, I say.

As Cottle says: "But while I'm sure some of the ravers and vandals in question are hard-core racists, my guess is that most are just low-level bigots less riled up about the color black than the color blue. " Valid point given NYT's electoral shift map, Yet Adam Nossiter's article of 11/11 (NYT) "For South, a Waning Hold on National Politics" indicated that in Alabama, according to "David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, pointed out that the 18 percent share of whites that voted for Senator John Kerry in 2004 was almost cut in half for Mr. Obama.'There’s no other explanation than race,” he said."

Of course you know the answer to that. Its BOTH. And I would like to add Christian extremist to that list.

Carol

I think the really bizarre web sit is  tnr   These were rabid Obama  supporters whose hatred of Clinton knows no bounds. The things these people, who call themselves progressives or liberals, write is borderline insane, and worse, is not even original. If you are going to be nutso, at least be creative.

www.chicagotribune.com/.../chi-kass-13-nov13,0,2881384.column

So just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker: "McCain Girl."

"People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn't be wearing it," Catherine said. Then it got worse.

"One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed," Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

But students weren't the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain.

"In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain," Catherine said.

If Catherine was shocked by such passive-aggressive threats from instructors, just wait until she goes to college.

Strab: Agree with you on language in a public place; at the same time, I confess I do swear like a sailor in my suit and in class; it is my one concession to radicalism of any sort.  I should note, of course, that Burke, apparently the father of conservatism (one can dispute that, but that for later), also used very strong language no less arresting in their impact than the four letter words of today in addressing the rot at the core of the British government and the French revolution. (He used the imagery of rotting flesh and oozing pus and so on - me, I think the F work is a lot milder than "putrefaction", but that's a personal matter.)

As for the wink, I was not offended - it takes much to offend me - but rather, if she decided to behave like a floozie, we are entitled to attack her as that, that is all. :-)

Incidentally, Strab: the attacks on Senator Clinton related not to her gender but to her "narrative".  When she started questioning Obama's experiences and stressing her "35 years in public life", it was a legitimate question to ask how much of those 35 years were as a political spouse.  It is not that political spouses don't matter, but that that is not grounds enough to question someone else's credentials.  The problem was, as soon as raised the political spouse issue, her supporters cried sexism.

Finally, I refer to McCain as an "old goat", and I mean no disrespect to either old people or goats; similarly, when referring to Jacon here as a "jackass", no one is being a specieist against jackasses - or jennyasses. ;-)

It's amusing that jacobt1 accuses progressives and liberals of not being original when the majority of his posts simply parrot the articles to which he provides links.

Most of the liberals I know don't hate Republicans specifically.  They hate ignorance, stupidity, dishonesty, utter bullshit, and anti-intellectualism.  That the rightwing is so closely associated with many of these mortal flaws is just a coincidence.

Lyn39 said:,

"Most of the liberals I know don't hate Republicans specifically."

Forget about Republicans. Obama liberals hated Clinton specifically. They hate a girl with a wrong T-shirt . They just hate people who don't worship Obama.  

Children have  already learned that they have to whisper each other to express anything less than total admiration for Obama. This is not even a  Brezhnev Russia,. It's  a Stalin Russia.

"Only a few times did anyone say anything remotely positive about her McCain shirt. One girl pulled her aside in a corner, out of earshot of other students, and whispered, "I really like your shirt."

www.chicagotribune.com/.../chi-kass-13-nov13,0,2881384.column

I've heard of scraping the barrel, but this is getting silly.  I make the basic assumption that children's reflection of their parents' and community's political preferences would lead to it being equally isolating to wear an Obama t-shirt to a majority-white school in rural Alabama, for example.

jacobt:  I agree with your last comment.  There was an inordinate amount of rage directed toward HRC.  I didn't agree with her position on several issues and she wasn't my first pick to be the nominee, but I didn't hate her.  The firestorm that erupted shortly before she lost the nomination didn't appear as much to be her fault as it was her supporters.  

So yes, you make a point.  Still, angry liberals don't scare me as much as angry rightwingers.

ironyroad said:,

" being equally isolating to wear an Obama t-shirt to a majority-white school in rural Alabama, for example."

However, liberals are supposed to be open minded tolerant people. As turned out, they are closed minded haters.

Lyn39 said,

" Still, angry liberals don't scare me as much as angry rightwingers."

Because you are a liberal.

jacob:  "liberals are supposed to be open minded tolerant people."

That's true, and mostly they are -- it doesn't change that general rule if you pick one example in which a bunch of 12-year-olds are the key players.  "Liberals" and "conservatives" as labels are generally applied to adults, or at least to young people old enough to judge the issues.

I'm sure you could find some rural conservative school which has a wonderfully tolerant culture going on, but it wouldn't change the basic nature of American conservatism.

ironyroad,

"That's true, and mostly they are "

It's not true. I doubt  you could find any liberal  school or college  which has a wonderfully tolerant culture going on

"Grossmann's parents, Bruce and Dawn, said that in the weeks leading up to the presidential election, Annie had trouble on campus because of her political leanings and for being a hunter.

Bruce Grossmann said a "PETA person" had to be removed from her dorm room because he was upset by a photo of her with a black bear she had shot. Also, he said, she attended an icebreaker on campus and was booed when she identified herself as a Republican.

"I don't think she was prepared for the close-mindedness," he said. "I told her she needs to take a lower profile [for the sake of] her academic and her sports careers."

That's probably good advice, but it's one more reminder of why our colleges and universities have been described as "islands of repression in a sea of freedom."

www.powerlineblog.com/.../022059.php

Anybody who thinks that wingnuts are going away or that this election is the demise of Republicans and conservative politics is foolish beyond belief. One only has to remember 1992 when Clinton came in with a a majority in the Senate and House. Two years later, the Republicans were in control, four years after that Clinton was impeached and then Bush came in with Congress and the Supreme Court in his pocket.

As for racism - racism is bred into the human psyche and anyone who doesn't understand that, doesn't understand human history. Racism is the most obvious of the human characteristic to hate the alien, the other, the outsider. It is a part of everyone. Why do you think war is a natural state of mankind?

jacob:  "It's not true."

Au contraire, mein Lieber!  The point about liberal arts colleges is that they do in fact prepare students to understand a wide range of philosophies and perspectives, both in the sense of what's a wide range today, and in the sense of a spectrum of ideas shifting throughout histtory.

"The point about liberal arts colleges is that they do in fact prepare"

The point is, they don't.

"jacobt1 said:

"The point about liberal arts colleges is that they do in fact prepare"

The point is, they don't."

The point is, they do.

Over to you, Jacon Trollgorithm.

"The point is, they don't."

Clearly, they may fail in some cases.

"The point is, they do."

Thery can't possibly do. Most of professors are left wing dogmatics such as Bill Ayers. They didn't not try to bomb Pentagon but they do share his ideology.

There are very few actual left-wing professors in the U.S.  There are a lot of liberals, however, and some libertarians, as academia tends to attract thinking people.

Which reminds me -- getting back to the original topic of the thread:  I wonder does jacob surface here as a rabid partisan as described by Michelle, who would be broadcasting hate from the loonie fringe even if, say, Hillary had won, or is he just a racist?

What's the difference between left-wing and liberal?  Who is in your opinion "left-wing " and who is "liberal"?

"who would be broadcasting hate "

Anything less than total and absolute admiration of Obama is considered to be "Hate".

Not at all.  Hate is hate.

I'm racist.

"There are a lot of liberals, however, and some libertarians, as academia tends to attract thinking people."

Conservatives are too busy succeeding:  running companies, hiring people, and creating wealth to be attracted to academia. As they say, 'those who can-- do; those who can't--teach'