(10 am – promoted by ek hornbeck)
From an editorial by Kathleen Parker titled, appropriately enough, Getting Bubba:
“A full-blooded American.”
That’s how 24-year-old Josh Fry of West Virginia described his preference for John McCain over Barack Obama. His feelings aren’t racist, he explained. He would just be more comfortable with “someone who is a full-blooded American as president.”
Whether Fry was referring to McCain’s military service or Obama’s Kenyan father isn’t clear, but he may have hit upon something essential in this presidential race.
Full-bloodedness is an old coin that’s gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.
Who “gets” America? And who doesn’t?
I’d like to be clever and snarky about this, but my blood is boiling just a bit too hot for that right now. So I will have to succumb to rant mode.
What Ms. Parker has done here is that she has conflated all of the most obnoxious hate in this country down into one sickening phrase…”full-blooded American.” What the hell kind of “heritage, core values and made-in-America” is she talking about? We know that whatever it is, it does not include Barack Obama. But who else is excluded? Maybe this will give you more of a clue:
It’s about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.
Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry’s political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically — and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century — there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.
We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants — and we are. But there’s a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.
Ah…so now the picture is becoming a bit more clear, isn’t it? We’re also going to exclude those who came here in the last year as opposed to the last century. I wonder just what the cutoff date would be for those immigrants who are considered “full-blooded?” Sounds like according to Ms. Parker, there’s some magic time in the 1900’s when immigrants went from being full-blooded to what…part-blooded Americans. I wonder if that cut-off date would be in any way related to changes in immigration patterns from Northern European countries to where the “brown-skinned” people live?
This all makes me so angry, I’m not even sure I can craft a sane response. So here’s what Steven D had to say:
So let me just say this to the dishonorable Ms. Parker: go take your racist, nasty, screwed up ideas about what real “full blooded” Americans stand for and stick them up the orifice where fecal matter exits your small minded, bigoted body. There are no “full blooded Americans” whose core values and blood sacrifice entitle them to a superior status among the many people who live and work and play and die in this country of ours. There are only one kind of Americans, and neither the color of their skin, their heritage, the number of ancestors they can count who landed on Plymouth Rock or fought in any of our innumerable wars, nor the faith they practice (or don’t practice) has anything to do with their relative importance vis-a-vis each other under the law of our land.
Yeah…what he said.
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with the rantings of a lunatic like Kathleen Parker. But I think this one is important. That’s because this kind of oh-so-thinly-veiled hate is the face of the most ugly form of racism currently alive in this country right now. As the candidacy of Obama continues to unearth this kind of insanity and the anti-immigration crowd gins up their rhetoric…lets call it for what it is.
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a) probably doesn’t include my daughter, since she is 1/32 Cherokee
b) probably doesn’t include gay people, since our blood is no doubt tainted in some way.
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about this kind of language is that the people of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Argentina, Bolivia, and yes, even Mexico (to name just a few), would consider themselves “Americans.” The small-mindedness of people like Ms. Parker and her friend Josh Fry is astounding.
That’s what we can all look forward to for the next 6 months, as the GOP cast about for new and exciting ways to code their antiquated, stinky, stupid immoral beliefs in the superiority of some shades of skin over others. But they’re not racists. They’re euphemiracists.
“nonpatriots” in uniform and serving in Iraq and Afghanistan right now should be sent home pronto, so more of the “full blooded American” patriots could replace them? Oh, wait–the “full blooded Americans” like Bush, Cheney, the vast majority of neocons and their puppet pundits,as well as many of their most ardent supporters are too chickens**t to actually put on a uniform. They show their ignorance repeatedly and though I should be immune by this time, still, it makes me sick.
the native americans (aka “indians”) should be pretty pissed about this. And they’ve gotta be pretty unhappy about their liberal immigration policy back in the day.
Fully blooded american. meh. As Bill Murray said in “Stripes,”
election tactics though so even though it is despicable…. best pay attention. This is how the right will attack Obama because they can’t use a directly racist meme.
His patriotism will seem “not quite sincere” because of his father’s place of birth. The right are masters of figuring out what angers and fears people and packaging it into what appear to be legitimate grievances. So. The fact that working class people in this country have been screwed by corporate globalism will be shifted away from that to a critique of immigrants/cultural diversity as a means of explaining economic woes.
Parker is the perfect court hanger on and she’s scared about losing her influence and safe place in the universe. Right wing pundits and columnists rely on the displaced anger of working class Americans to peddle their crap and maintain their own power and by proxy the power of their masters.
White working class Americans have been screwed, so have working class Americans of all color, what the ruling elites don’t want them to do is recognize their commonalities. Sorry I rambled.
McCain’s birthplace in Panama Canal Zone raises eligibility questions
It’s used a lot by my good ole Southern cousin. I think it refers to something you once had that was so disgusting that you were forced to give it up, yet you secretly wish you had it back. I think it’s like those pretend Civil War battles, only this time you pretend the other side won. It’s something that can’t be named openly, partly because it would obviously sound stupid, but mostly because you think it’s your little secret that the “liberals” are always trying to expose. You don’t want to say it out loud but, dammit, you know you’re never, ever, ever going to change it. It’s something along those lines.
Americans are full blooded….bloated with the blood of Iraqi, Vietnamese and soon to drink the blood of Iranians.
Think of the Got Milk commerical.
I know how you feel about containing yet, another outrage!
As society continues to try and break down inequitable racial, religious, sexual and all types of biases — never meant to be part of our constitutional makeup in the first place — and, as we succeed, little by little, it seems to me the WASPS are now desperate to find NEW means to separate them (elitists) from others — “full-blooded American.” Just another asininity in the scenario.
The only “full-blooded Americans” are the native American Indians, to whom the “new” Americans dealt a vicious blow in every respect (as others may already have noted).
As we all know, anyone who is born in this country is an American — born on American soil. But, now that’s not good enough?
Now, it depends on the geneology of your ancestors — just how far back does your American heritage go? And at what point of your geneology history are you or are you not considered worthy of being deemed a “full-blooded American.”
This is scraping the bottom of the barrel — unfortunately, there are many Americans who would and do buy into that — uh, what do you wanna’ call it? Philosophy, theory, or just plain genetic preference? And, it is just one more attempt to keep biases alive and well!
National Conference for Media Reform. It is from June 6-8 and registration is $195. I’d be willing to donate some green for you to go and I’d be willing to ask others here to chip in to pay for your registration.
i think it would be soooooooooooo cool to have DD represented there. It’s over a weekend.
please take a look and let me know. i’d like to start fund raising for the registration fee ASAP.
you’re right there, i think… so we need to take advantage of this. if you’re interested, that is.
if Kathleen Parker misses her mind.
She must have had one at one time, maybe before her “full blooded” cohorts, and maybe her parents too, poisoned it.
We’ve seen goose stepping like this before. 50 million people died before the goose stepping stopped.
American genetic superiority
Ah yes, white Americans are the master race, they are genetically superior. Thank you for that information, Herr Medved.
I thought this dialog between Joe Pesci and Matt Damon in The Good Shepherd was very telling:
the German’s with their ‘super race’ insanity. White blue collar hard working American’s? Isn’t Obama some distant cousin of Cheney? Playing to bubba’s and fear of the bubba’s vote, is all over the TV. The importance of winning this vote without ever questioning it’s pig ignorance, and calling it values or culture is obscene. Why do both parties fish for their votes from this pond? I actually do know why and it’s really disgusting.
less than a full-blooded American all my life. Both my parents were first generation Americans and I was often reminded in my childhood that we were just johnny-come-latelys and somehow less valid than other citizens. I responded by developing a very biting wit to deal with those critics and more importantly developing a sense of needing to speak up. Hey–I’ve been yelling louder all my life and wearing the battle scars from doing it. Hasn’t stopped me yet and is most unlikely to stop me now.
for another great essay that generated fantab comments.
“insider v outsider” meme has long been one of my interests, not that i have anything meaningful to add to what’s already been said here. i too am excited about you attending the media conference as a DD contributing editor and very much look forward to how the experience informs you and your writing… somehow, i think it might propel be one of those “leaps” that writers talk about. 🙂
haven’t read Tahoe’s essay yet… sigh. am very far behind.
so much quality here, so little time to savor. 😉 heh