Here’s a question for all of you who think what Palin said was so horrible. How do you think it compare to Biden using an affected drawl telling an audience, which included black people, that Romney’s idea to “unshackle” Wall Street was:
Well, let’s see…
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That article is from August of 2012. Took you a while to get upset about it.
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Biden was simply continuing an analogy established by John Boehner, who used the word “unshackled” in talking about the budget proposal in the House.
Newsflash: Democrats often get a pass for some things that Republicans don’t. That’s what they (we) get for being part of the party that mostly acknowledges and has apologized for its racist past. Until the Republican party owns up to and genuinely apologizes for the Southern Strategy and the like, and stops pushing for things like Voter ID that will disproportionately affect black voters, they will continue to get called out on things that Democrats sometimes get away with.
Further, if the slavery analogy carries any weight at all, it would apply to individuals indebted to a large entity that they are powerless to fight back against. The U.S. won’t be enslaved to China, large banks won’t be enslaved to the U.S. government (not while there are contributions and lobbyists), but one person doesn’t have much recourse if one of those banks is taking advantage of him.
That’s all right, it will be someone who looks like her.
“One Girl, Two Cups”?
And 3) what Biden said, unlike what Palin said, was substantially accurate hyperbole; inaccurate only in implicitly limiting it to the blacks.
Dude, Obama is President. He has a large country to run. Why should he be expected to release his thoughts on every petty argument between every hack journalist and every washed-up politician out there? He has nothing better to do than smooth over Palin’s feels?
This is one of the reasons I feel for the guy. Every murder, every reality television show, every public argument or scandal that has nothing to do with him and that he cannot influence in any way, somebody’s gonna have a mike in his face asking him what he thinks.
And character assassination is the best thing that ever happened to the Sarah Palin brand. It’s the only way she gets her face on television and her words quoted in the press anymore. Lord, if no one was insulting Palin of their own free will, she’d be forced to hire stooges.
Waste of a good turd, if you ask me. And she’s fertile enough already.
Ok, your post comes across as a parody but I’ll bite.
Uh…Obama has a country to run.
Whatever he was criticized for, I don’t remember anyone complaining that George Bush never condemned Ann Coulter who made vastly more offensive comments than Bashir ever made.
Speaking of which.
Please, Ann Coulter has probably made more offensive statements than Bashir’s before she’s even finished her morning coffee.
All true, but she is also a flaming idiot and you know it.
Socialist!
CMC
Also seems dickish and worthy of an apology.
That’s a poorly written “Er, shit, uh, your guys do it too!” post. I saw “included black people” and thought well, i’d largely expect a crowd at any political meeting in the US to be fairly diverse, that that’s not necessarily such a depressing phrase to use. But in reading the actual article it does declare it to be a “majority” black audience, which does change things (insomuch as it makes Biden referring to slavery with his words more likely). It’s probably a subset of Gaudere’s law that any post on the subject of poor choices of terminology needs to include some example itself.
Anyway, what’s your answer to the question? Bad Biden? Bad Palin? Bad one and not the other for a reason? Both fine?
Biden’s was bad, for two reasons. 1) he is putting forth the complete lie that Reps want to put blacks in chains. Since he’s talk to and about the group that actual was “in chains” it was not metaphorical as much as it might have been hyperbolic. That combined with (2) him assuming more of an affected southern/black dialect makes it disgusting. And the fact that Blacks wouldn’t be insulted by that is quite astounding to me.
Palin’s statement I have little problem with. I don’t think anytime anyone use some variation of “slavery” that they are talking about that thing being just like the chattel slavery that plagued the U.S. for so long. She was using it the same way someone might say that you shouldn’t have a lot of credit debt or too big a mortgage, lest you be enslaved by them, that is, beholden to it. Am I missing something?
See comment #63.
What’s your reaction to that astoundedness, out of interest?
I would say that “beholden to it” is absolutely not a synonym for “enslaved”. You say that you don’t think when people use “slavery” that they are referring to something being like that particular form of slavery, but a) any kind of slavery is almost certainly going to be an offensive comparison unless the compared thing is, well, actually like slavery is some form. And b), why would it make it better that she used this particular word with no intention of actually drawing a comparison with slavery? If she compared it to slavery with the belief that the two were actually similar, she’d be wrong, certainly, but at least honest. If she’s just using slavery without actually believing it to be like slavery, then she’s just using it as a big emotive word for wrongness. Like people who add -nazi to the end of words of people they don’t like.
And, of course, this is missing that Palin later qualified her words, and, here’s the fun part, using almost exactly the same terminology that you highlight which makes Biden’s statement obnoxious (“shackled” versus “in chains”).
Now there’s a surprise.
This post confirms what I thought about your first few posts. Dishonest.
Shaking my head in disbelief. Rolling my eyes. Appreciating those Black conservatives that have the wherewithal, independence and courage to not follow along. And laughing my ass off when aRepublican wins an election because the voters assumed he was Blackand whined when they found out otherwise. HA! Funny stuff.
You know, even if you take the U.S.'s history with slavery off the table, it’s still a very bad thing. Are you of the mind that all allusions to “slavery”, “enslavement”, etc. directly and necessarily point to that particular history? I don’t think the phrase has to be a synonym for it to be appropriate in explaining it. Don’t know why you’re placing the bar there.
As I said, I have little problem when the word is used and there’s no or little chance of it being conflated with America’s history of slaver. Palin’s usage falls into that category, unless someone thinks that Chinese will be coming over here and running our companies the way plantation owners ran their plantations.
Conversely, Biden’s remark, speaking to a predominantly Black audience was trying to drum up fear that the Republicans wanted to put American Blacks “back in chains”—which they were actually in at one time. If you don’t see a world of difference between those two, I don’t think I can help you. And you may start campaigning for abolishment of the use of any variation of the term slavery when not talking about the actual American history of enslavement.
OMG? We used the same word to describe a thing that is tightly associated with it. Guilty as charged. I imagine that if you and I were both asked to describe water and each of us included “wet” in our definitions, then something must very well be afoot!