Did you hear the latest in racial politics.
Mitt Romney used the “n” word. Not the “N” word, the “n” word as in “isn‘t working.”
Romney has a website devoted to the slogan:
And has it hanging up behind him during speeches:
And that has Tommy Christopher of Mediaite seeing things:
The slogan is a multiple entendre, but one of those entendres, intentionally or not, is evocative of a nasty racial stereotype about black men.
When I first saw the banner this afternoon, the multiple meanings were clear: President Obama‘s policies aren’t working, the Obama presidency isn’t working, President Obama…isn’t working, as in, doing any work. That’s not a nice thing to say about any president, but like it or not, it becomes a more loaded accusation when leveled at our first black president.
Just to be sure it wasn’t just me, though, I asked several friends about the banner, and four out of four pointed out, unprompted, the stereotype of the “lazy,” “shiftless” black man. One of the people I called was cable news fixture Goldie Taylor, who, upon hearing my description of the banner, said “Are you kidding me? You have got to be kidding me.”
Well, that resolves it. Tommy Christopher and Goldie Taylor have spoken.
And so has Ed Kilgore, who plays the “denial is confirmation” card:
Many regular folks seeing or hearing this slogan, personalized as it is to the president, are most likely to take it very literally: Barack Obama could fix the economy, but is too lazy to try. People in politics who blow dog whistles invariably deny it and usually express great umbrage at the very suggestion they don’t mean exactly what they are saying and nothing more.
I have a different interpretation.
“Obama Isn’t Working” has nothing to do with the color of Obama’s skin and everything to do with the size of Obama’s historic ego:
Obama isn’t working. He isn’t working at working. And he isn’t working out.
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Comments
Well, I guess that Salon.com is racist too. Here’s one of their current headlines:
“Obama’s race to save the Rust Belt”
Now if that is not just loaded with double meaning.
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/obamas_race_to_save_the_rust_belt/
As usual, rather than address the actual allegation(s) implicit in the slogan, namely the policy failures, they play the race card.
Romney’s people just lifted this slogan from Maggie Thatcher’s first campaign. The only difference is that Thatcher’s slogan went, “Labor Isn’t Working.” Even the posters of the two campaigns are similar.
Yeah, originality isn’t exactly Romney’s strong suit.
Neither is honesty.
“Obama isn’t working (of course, hard to say since Republicans block everything)”
is probably a little long to fit on a banner.
“Government isn’t functioning, because Republicans won’t let it”
is probably also not exactly the message Mittens wants to convey.
Even when the Dims has supermajorities in both houses of Congress, Obama still couldn’t get anything done, except employ finagling to ram Obamacare through against the will of We the People.
If Obama can’t accomplish anything because of the mean ol’ nasty Republicans, it’s just another piece of evidence that Obama is a divider, not a uniter – never has been, never will be.
“nordic-prince”? That’s quite a handle. ‘Republiklan’ fits you better than most, I’ll bet. Do you wear cool armbands at your meetings?
You know where the phrase ‘We The People’ fits even better? Election 2000, when the guy who didn’t become president got half-a-million votes more than the guy who did.
Sorry you don’t like the health care law, but it was originally an idea from the Republiklans, so go whine to them.
Since the Tea Party congress came to town, there has been zero done to help the country, because conservatives want the economy and Americans to suffer.
Because that’s just the kind of people you are.
Do fish laugh?
No, they don’t. But they’d be laughing at your pathetic bait.
Given enough time, I’ll bet fish could evolve the ability to find even you funny. 😉
Well, better a laughing fish than a dog-eating president.
Yeah, not everybody grows up wealthy enough to strap a dog onto the roof of a car. 😉
The ‘Obama-ate-dog’ thing is funny, because it reminds us how liberals like to travel the world and interact with other cultures, and see that different cultures have different ways. The Chinese eat dog also, and the Swiss eat horse. The dingbat up in Alaska eats moose that somebody helps her shoot.
Conservatives are by nature cowards, and you have a hard time with anything that seems different or ‘foreign’ to you.
Yep, Obama ate dog, because as a little boy growing up in Indonesia, dog was on the menu at times.
I’m sure dog wound up on the menu of many frontier Americans as well, most certainly when the frontier was the Klondike.
Not everybody spends their whole life in Kansas, Dorothy. Some of us get out and see the world.
“Conservatives are by nature cowards, and you have a hard time with anything that seems different or ‘foreign’ to you.”
I’m a foreign-born Chinese who owe my present success to the conservative Asian values of responsibility, self-reliance and hardwork…and no, I don’t eat dog. Neither do my friends or family. Have dogs been eaten by certain Chinese in the past? Yes…but only by the sadistic and curious few (and foreigners like Obama) who could afford such amusements.
But you wouldn’t know that since you’re not from that part of the world that many patronizing, vacationing liberals claim to be such experts in.
“… it reminds us how liberals like to travel the world and interact with other cultures, … Conservatives … have a hard time with anything that seems different or ‘foreign’ to you.”
Uh huh. That’s why I married a girl in Fukuoka, Japan.
Conservatives are cowards? 5 years Marine Corps Infantry. What did you ever do in your life other than fellate anyone who bothered to give you a pat on the head. As for your jug-eard messianic bastard, he never missed a meal and his mommy had the money to jet him off to Indonesia and Kenya. Let’s not forget that the coward you worship could not even summon the spine or stones for ROTC.
Play the coward game all you want dickless. We serve your kind spits in our faces. Be thankful we have the courage to not give you what you cowards deserve.
You forgot the part “liberals like to travel the world and interact with other cultures.”
Taking a vacation is not “interacting with other cultures.” The only large group of people from the United States that actually lives overseas and interacts with other cultures is — the US military and its dependents (families).
I thought about giving PyramidRound one like for having the balls to venture onto this website to demonstrate just how stupid he is. But that might encourage his stupidity to the point of boredom or rising blood pressure or both.
Who cares where he got the slogan. If it “works”, use it.
If the Obama supporters are going to spin & twist normal comments into racial slurs perhaps Obama shouldn’t have run for POTUS. He should have spent a little more time thickening his skin. They really turn over every rock trying to find some perceived slur.
If handled properly, this is another gratuitous mistake by the Left.
I have tried to be restrained and realistic about the prospects for unseating an incumbent President, even one as bad as Obama.
Nevertheless, in contrast to the Obama campaign’s successful scams in 2008, the Left has made many more unforced errors than I expected. Together with the unusual absence (knock on wood) of such errors by the Stupid Party, that’s a basis for encouragement.
The slogan should Read: OBAMA HASN’T WORKED A DAY IN HIS LIFE.
Kitty,
The media has already deemed Hilary’s insult of SAHMs a “distraction.”
We have to move on like the media tell us.
Well, and there’s the little fact that we all know she wasn’t insulting SAHMs at all…but it sure was fun to pretend otherwise for a few days.
What he means to say is,
” … she wasn’t insulting SAHMs (who keep their mouthes shut about public policy) at all …”
No, I said what I meant to say, but perhaps you didn’t understand.
Hilary Rosen worded it badly, because as a mother herself, she knows how hard THAT is.
What she was getting at was that as a person of wealth, Ann Romney never had to get a job in the working world, has never filled out a job application, had to earn money herself, faced unemployment, or had to find a job in addition to having to raise children.
This kind of reality is what ‘working moms’ (who have to clock in somewhere and work for money) have to do, and Ann Romney never had to do that…silver spoon and all.
So she just doesn’t know anything about that kind of reality. Her reality is the reality of the rich….owning fancy horses and attending events, sitting in the reserved owner’s box drinking champagne, that sort of thing.
No, what you meant to say was that your a gutless pig and you’ll be STFU now.
To paint it as some racial slur is a real stretch only a guilt ridden liberal mind could assert.
Dont ya just love it when folks whiter than wonderbread do the thinking for all blacks right down to what should offend them?
Just because Obama called himself kind of lazy, if you’re veit, it’s verboten to quote him:
“There is a deep down, underneath all the work I do, I think there’s a laziness in me,” Obama said in his interview with Barbara Walters that airs Friday night on ABC.
Tommy Christopher and Goldie Taylor are lazy, too:
By The Way, You’re Kind of Lazy According to President Obama
What kind of a racist jumps to the conclusion that ‘not working’ is a stereotype for blacks?
Racists can’t jump.
And witches can’t drown.
I think I’m getting the hang of this game.
“What kind of a racist jumps to the conclusion that ‘not working’ is a stereotype for blacks?”
The kind of racist Tommy Christopher hangs out with, apparently.
“I asked several friends about the banner, and four out of four pointed out, unprompted, the stereotype of the ‘lazy,’ ‘shiftless’ black man.”
Far out, Tommy. I’d get myself a better class of friends if I were you, mate. Y’know what I’m sayin’?
The liberal kind. Give a white liberal a drink and he’ll don a hood.
How the hell can anyone take these people seriously
Romney isn’t working (out) either.
His ‘work’ has been running for President since 2004.
Still, he makes 20m per annum on investments, so it seems his retirement fund is working out ok.
That is, Romney isn’t working (out) as a credible conservative candidate.
Since the main consequences of Romney working was people losing their jobs while Romney’s Swiss bank account got fatter, I’m glad he’s “not working”
What would be the reaction from conservatives if Obama had a Swiss bank account and accounts in the Cayman islands?
My goodness … aren’t we on a roll! Wow!
Given that your jug-eared messiah owes everything to affirmative action we would point out the hypocrisy of jug-ears calling for higher taxes on the wealthy while hiding monies he did not earn in off-shore accounts.
The moral of this story scumbag is that you never F— with a jarhead.
I always thought that Newt could tear “The Won” a new one, but now I’ll left waiting for the debate between Mitt and “The Won” on macroeconomic theory. Clearly any administration that talks about the joys of funemployment and food stamps must be ripe for a “Truth to Power” moment. I only hope that Mitt will be ready.
But is that not ideal- to ‘retire’ at 60 & have 20 million coming in as investment income.?
Retire at 60 & have $50,000 coming in would be fine also.
I can’t fault The Romneys here.
Romney offers a perfect double entendre, and all the left can see is racism. Well no surprise there.
But it is revealing that Christopher uses
as evidence of Romney and his supporters are racist. Heck, anyone paying attention knows that Obama is not lazy nor shiftless – he and his family spend all their free time doing things all of us would like to do – and wish we could do if it were possible to etch more time out of our necessary schedules. People paying attention know that is not shiftless nor lazy, rather the pinning of regal opulence.
Me thinks that the one that really harbors thoughts of the “shiftless and lazy” black man is Christopher and his comrades. They are the real racists – admittedly soft, but so much more counter-productive.
Well, it’s also deeply dishonest….a trait that’s become pretty noticeable about Romney.
Any challenger is going to say that the incumbent president’s policies are failures…that’s part of running against an incumbent.
But saying that Obama ‘isn’t working’ when he’s got an intransigent GOP congress that absolutely refuses to do anything is simply dishonest.
But like Newt and others have pointed out, Romney’s really shown a talent for not telling the truth….in fact for telling lies that are easily shown to be lies.
It’s kinda creepy, actually, how easily Mitt just says things that aren’t true in his weird earnest, patrician, slightly desperate and flop-sweaty way.
“Any challenger is going to say that the incumbent president’s policies are failures…that’s part of running against an incumbent.”
—Yeah, it’s not original at all. I remember Ronald Reagan trying that against Jimmy Carter.
And Mondale tried it against Reagan, and Clinton tried it against Bush Sr., and Kerry tried it against Bush the trainwreck.
If you don’t portray the current president’s policies as some kind of failure, and talk about how your policies would be better, there is very little reason for anybody to think about ousting the current occupant.
Since you didn’t make a point, I guess explaining it to you again is what you were asking for.
Why do you continue to lie? First moron, the GOP controls the House not the Senate and by definition not Congress. Second, the GOP has only controlled the House for the past 2 years. What happened the previous 2 years? Of course you don’t have an answer for that. Let me refresh your memory. Obamacare – failure, Porkulus – mega-failure. Thirdly scumbag, your party has failed to produce a budget since 2007 and your dear leader in the Senate refuses to put any form of budget on the floor for a vote because he is too COWARDLY to face the consequences. The do nothing GOP you keep complaining about has produce 2 budgets in their tenure which is 2 more budgets than the cowards in your party have produced in 5 years. You can STFU now.
“And Mondale tried it against Reagan, and Clinton tried it against Bush Sr., and Kerry tried it against Bush the trainwreck …
Since you didn’t make a point, I guess explaining it to you again is what you were asking for.”
—Point being (for the reading comprehension impaired) it only works when it’s true … and dog gone, it’s really true this time.
“The slogan is a multiple entendre, but one of those entendres, intentionally or not, is evocative of a nasty racial stereotype about black men”
Oh my, look at all those “___’s”.
Hmm, howz’ about the defi_itio_ of I_compete_t.
He (The O_e) is _ot compete_t; lacki_g qualificatio_ or ability; i_capable: a_ i_compete_t ca_didate. 2. characterized by or showing i_compete_ce:
You’re such a bad widdle boy, tommy. OH a_d a hypocrite too.
I guess any observation about the failures and shortcomings of any particular black person is inherently racist because of the fact that they’re failures who happen to have skin color in common. The fact that such a large number of them actually are societal failures and parasites is apparently beside the point. Melanin saturation=body armor. Nobody should speak the truth because they’re black, not because what’s said isn’t true. They are the authors of the stereotype, which then becomes the fall-back straw-man condemnation of anybody who says anything negative about anyone who just happens to be black.
[…] You need not look far for an example of racial McCarthyism – take, for example, the reaction to Mitt Romney’s campaign slogan: “Obama isn’t working” – didja know that was racist? […]
So ANY comment about Obama as a failure is racist. But I’m perfectly willing to blame his white half, where he picked up his early socialist leanings, from his Mom and her parents.
The only choice the left would like to leave is to accept another term of affirmative action government, and adjust the election results like they adjusted his test scores. Race doesn’t determine how smart a man is, but it does determine if he gets affirmative action, and it did help Obama get elected.
How ’bout the next time we prove we’re not racist as a nation, by electing another black man, we don’t elect a dishonest Marxist.
Coulter has an opinion:
You don’t transfer from Occidental, which by his own accounts in his autobiography he mostly spent smoking pot, to a fine Ivy League university like Columbia if you’re not checking off ‘black’ on your application. So you know, the silver spoon since I’ve been alive has been an affirmative action silver spoon.”
And while she dismissed the rich-versus-poor meme some Democrats have been promoting, she did say there was another sort of class warfare occurring between those earning money from the government and those whose tax dollars are paying for it.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/20/ann-coulter-obamas-silver-spoon-was-an-affirmative-action-silver-spoon
It’s actually fairly straight forward projection. All progressives and liberals engage in this behavior. Nothing too mysterious about it. They always speak their secret desire and, when they discover that it’s politically or morally incorrect, they attribute the vile to the Republicans and conservatives. That’s why they’re always caught off-guard when reality shows up…. unexpectedly of course.
Calling him the first black president is racist.
Of course it is…
Everyone knows that the first black President was William Jefferson Clinton.
(and based upon his supporters rhetoric, I suspect that he should be the first female president as well.)
Monica preventing the hat trick!
I hope this get’s picked up more. The average person is not going to see racism in that slogan, and they will see this racial politics for the ridiculousness that it really is.
The reason “racist” is used so much by the left is it’s so much easier than actually, you know….thinking. So not only is Obama not working, neither are they. But the illusion is there.
“Racist!” is simply Leftist code for “Shut up.”
Perzactly. Well said.
If the Commander-in-cheif isn’t working, the WaPo thinks there should be more …
Wow. An entendre, huh? Is there “anything” a conservative can say that’s not an entendre? Or are we already past that point?
In Australia, the simple phrase “Quite so” can be taken for an incitement to violence: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/quite_so/
Nuance.
The complaint was dismissed. On balance it says “Quite so” could be interpreted as affirmative (to donking climate scientists ) or it could not be.
So your point is mute. It does help to read the judgement fully & not go ff on the telegraph’s wacky comments.
“Can be taken” … so nothing I said was incorrect. And the word is “moot,” dear. Not “mute.” You’re welcome!
He wrote the post, so he obviously isn’t “mute”. The fact that the “quite so” complaint even got off the ground proves his point, which is not “moot”. 🙂
Instead of denials, which won’t work due to the “denial is confirmation” dodge Romney and the rest need to learn a phrase that defuses this sort of crap.
“Is that the best you can do?”
Is charging hidden racism the BEST that supporters of Obama can come up with? No blazing examples of how hard President Vacation is working. No obvious effects on the economy that shows how masterful his genius is steering us into good times.
“Is that the best you can do?”
It’s a question that questions the whole charge, the legitimacy, the validity and the appropriateness.
“Is that the best you can do?”
Instead of trying to defend your own comments, make the person doing the charging defend their attack.
“If that’s the best you can do he must really not be working, or you would have shown me how I was wrong.”
Don’t fight on their turf. Make their high ground a quagmire.
I think you have have come up with a juicy Republican meme:
Is that the best you can do?
Of course, I’d couple that slogan with some nice charts showing things like the debt and unemployment during the Obama years in red…. which happens the be the color of more concern to independents and Republicans than any old skin color.
President Vacation?
Still not even close to the amount of time Bush spent on vacation.
You guys are funny.
Say, you’re pretty good at regurgitation the progressive talking points – did you memorize them, or write them down on handy 3 X 5 cards for easy reference?
The ‘trick’ is to simply recall the days that Bush was at Crawford or on official business at Camp David and count them as vacation days.
Crawford was wired as a “Texas White House”. I think he spent the month of August there each year.
The fact that someone may work somewhere other than their official place of business doesn’t compute with some people because:
(a) They would never do it themselves
and
(b) The required gray matter to reach that height on Bloom’s Taxonomy Scale of critical thinking is lacking.
PyramidBottom, or whatever it is called, is aptly named.
The people who feed the trolls with these pathetic lies clearly know that the trolls (and this includes idiots like Bashir) are too stupid to verify their talking points. Just more poo flung against the wall by resident idiots.
And, in defense of the trolls and many Obama supporters, one has to actually work to understand that working from another location is not only valid but often very efficient.
otoh, in defense of Obama, isn’t it better that this stuttering clusterfark of a miserable failure thinks the office of the Presidency is just another affirmative action goody? After all, if Obama did really work who knows what damage this toady of terrorists, racists, and anti-Americans might accomplish?
How many more times has Obama played golf in three years than Bush played in eight?
We’re talking while in office.
Yes, very good stuff. I like it. “Is that the best you can do?”
Let me add a couple enhancements: “Is that the best you can do? I mean, really, is it?” Or, in the case of the race card, “Is that all you got? The race card again? Seriously, once again that’s all you can come up with?”
We are at the point that if we say the sun rises in the east, that is a racial slur!!!!!
When all you’ve got left is the race/gender card, it shouldn’t bode well for your long-term success.
Let’s see – we suck at this, but y’all are racists. I’m not betting the farm on that one!
I would add THE SENATE IS NOT WORKING.
Progressive is not working.
Reid is not working.
Liberal is not working.
Misplaced compassion is not working.
White guilt is not working.
NASA is not working.
Obamacare is not working.
this could go on forever …
But the Secret Service is hiring hookers!
The ‘working girls’ are working. So there’s that, at least.
#YayObama
There you go!
Obama! Providing jobs to Colombian with your tax money!
Put that on a campaign poster!
Fourteen percent of Americans are not working, thanks to the non-racist Obama.
The race card is not working. 🙂
This is just eye-rollingly stupid on the part of Christopher, Kilgore, et. al. Making a racist claim such as this would–in a just world–relegate them to the trash heap of commentary. Not one thing they say from here to eternity should be considered valid–or rational.
Perhaps I need to adjust my glasses, because I’m not seeing the racial slur.
See my post, below. 🙂
This is just another iteration of what Andrew Breitbart (RIP) said at CPAC would be coming all year long – and he was “armed” with a box of “dog whistles” for the lefties:
Andrew Breitbart CPAC 2012 full speech. The dog whistle reference begins at the 15:00 mark.
He knew they had nothing!!! He was right. We are Breitbart! 😀
(Oh, and guys: I hope you didn’t stay up too late feeding the @Pyramid troll. What a bore he/she is. 😉 But I enjoyed your take-downs. The poor troll had no chance!)
Thanks DINORightMarie. It was good to hear Andrew again.
I rather like “Is that the best you can do?”
It does rather contain the appropriate level of scorn and condescension that is deserved by the liberals with their childish shallow worldview where intentions are all that matters. Where if you ‘care’ it doesn’t matter what level of destruction you leave in your wake.
It goes along with “Hows that hopey changey stuff workin’ out for ya?”
Aparently we’re unwilling to recognize that in addition to BO “not working” he’s trying to make sure no one else is either.
Has any troll beclowned himself quicker than Pyramid?
Only his last three iterations. There’s a reason he adopts a new screen name every day, you know.
[…] is in way over his head, that Barack Obama does not have a clue about what he is supposed to do – that’s somehow racist. Black people are so delicate and weak and they are all exactly the same that one black person […]