For those of you who missed it,
Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski ran a post on Tuesday detailing the racist remarks Congressman Bennie Thompson made while on the radio program, New Nation of Islam. Thompson represents Mississippi’s 2nd congressional district, and has done so since 1993.
Thompson began his incoherent rant by
saying that essentially any opposition to the President was racist.
“I’ve been in Washington. I saw three presidents now. I never saw George Bush treated like this. I never saw Bill Clinton treated like this with such disrespect,” Thompson said. “That Mitch McConnell would have the audacity to tell the president of the United States — not the chief executive, but the commander-in-chief — that ‘I don’t care what you come up with we’re going to be against it.’ Now if that’s not a racist statement I don’t know what is.”
So, despite lacking any indication that McConnell’s opposition to Obama is racially motivated, Thompson is comfortable coming to the conclusion because, if it is not, then he doesn’t know what is. When the only lens you view issues through is race, I suppose the logical result is that you see every unwanted occurrence in your life as racially motivated.
The simple fact is, Thompson is outright wrong (is that racist, by the way?).
President Bush was constantly disrespected. Kanye West famously said
on live television during a Hurricane Katrina Relief drive, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Al Sharpton, whilst running for President in 2003, said
Bush sounded less like a President and more like a “gang leader in south central LA” (boy, doesn’t that carry some racial overtones?).
Actress and comedian Janeane Garofalo
compared the Bush Administration to Hitler and the Nazis, calling it the “43rd Reich.” Actor Martin Sheen called him a “moron.” Actor Sean Penn
called him a “traitor to human and American principles.”