Tag: Bob Herbert

Once again the radical right wing known as The Tea Party, that has become the face and voice of the Republican Party, has shown it ugly side and gotten the attention of the media. The Tea Party movement with the blessings and assistance of the Republicans in Congress once again demonstrated that they are arrogant, ignorant, bigots.

The “Partiers” called Democrats, even the ones that supported their misogynist, hate agenda, “baby killers” from the floor of the House and several demonstrators were arrested for shouting racial and hateful epithets from the Gallery. The demonstrators outside and in the halls harassed the Black members of congress with the worst racist insults and even spat on them. They screamed insults at Gay members of the House.

The Republican members of the House refused to criticize these demonstrations and were insulted when they were chastised for their silence.

Last night and this morning, the media called the Republicans out on their hate. On “Countdown”, “The Rachel Maddow Show” and Bob Herbert, in the NYT, took them over the coals.

First, Keith Olbermann with a “Special Comment”, GOP self-destruction imminent. The party’s obsolete ideas will undermine its relevance (the transcript is in the link):

crossposted from Daily Kos

On Saturday, part of my regular activity is to read two noteworthy columnists, Bob Herbert of the New York Times, and Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe.   Both are Black, so it is not at all surprising that the columns of both are about the Obama phenomenon.   Both are interesting reading.  Herbert’s The Obama Phenomenon begins simply enough

The historians can put aside their reference material. This is new. America has never seen anything like the Barack Obama phenomenon.

.  Jackson, in his A night for the newcomers saw

An array of trump cards dropped like hammers in this part of eastern Iowa as a three-way dead heat in the polls became an 8-point Obama victory over Edwards and Clinton.

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So what is happening?

Bob Herbert provides must reading today, especially for Brad DeLong, Andrew Sullivan, Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias, Brendan Nyhan, and of course, David Brooks.

Herbert writes:

Andrew would not survive very long. On June 21, one day after his arrival, he and fellow activists Michael Schwerner and James Chaney disappeared. Their bodies wouldn’t be found until August. All had been murdered, shot to death by whites enraged at the very idea of people trying to secure the rights of African-Americans.

The murders were among the most notorious in American history. They constituted Neshoba County’s primary claim to fame when Reagan won the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1980. The case was still a festering sore at that time. Some of the conspirators were still being protected by the local community. And white supremacy was still the order of the day.

That was the atmosphere and that was the place that Reagan chose as the first stop in his general election campaign. The campaign debuted at the Neshoba County Fair in front of a white and, at times, raucous crowd of perhaps 10,000, chanting: “We want Reagan! We want Reagan!”

Reagan was the first presidential candidate ever to appear at the fair, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he told that crowd, “I believe in states’ rights.”

. . . Reagan may have been blessed with a Hollywood smile and an avuncular delivery, but he was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon.

Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

And while I expect nothing better from Brooks, Nyhan and Sullivan, I do expect better from people like Drum and Yglesias. And maybe now DeLong sees some value in Herbert's work.

Bhudydharma suggested ways that we could make things better and undo the mess of the Bush administration. Herewith mine — abolish No Child Left Behind. Bob Herbert provides reasons why this travesty of a law should be abolished.