Off the Main Trail

Finding a Progressive Path in Kentucky

Ric Caric

Ric Caric
Location
College Town, U. S.
Birthday
May 14
Company
Regional University
Bio
I'm married with two daughters and have been teaching at a state university in a red state for 21 years. My blogging covers a lot of issues but I'm a progressive kind of guy who tends to focus on political process, conservatism, and religiosity. Living in the Bible Belt gives me a little different though not necessarily more friendly perspective on conservatism. I also get in the occasional sports post.

Ric Caric's Links

Salon.com
SEPTEMBER 15, 2009 11:38PM

A Case of Racist Weeny-ism

Rate: 1 Flag

I've been blogging for three years and one of the themes of my first year of blogging was the weenie boy masculinity of the right. Things have gotten so bad with the right that it's more accurate to characterize them as a freak show and I've done so on several occasions.  But I saw a good example of toxic weenieness today from Dan Riehl, a conservative blogger and teabagger who attended the Washington protest on Sept. 12.

Michelle has a disturbing video posted. It's of several black students beating a white student on a school bus in St. Louis. Here's the deal. I haven't mentioned it before.

Riding out of DC on the Metro, 9/12, there were some folks from South Dakota and also another Mid-West state I can't recall in the same Metro car. We were talking, nothing special, really - politics, of course.

In the back were maybe ten or so black kids taking up that section of the car. There was no confrontation, just one or two of them talking loudly enough to make sure they'd be heard.

Without resorting to the poor diction it was along the lines of, these are the people who think Obama is the anti-Christ. That McCain he wasn't chit. Obama's going to be president as long as he wants, so these people better get used to it, etc. It went on but not really to a level that was so loud, or so confrontational that it needed to be addressed.

We just ignored them without much trouble at all.

Yeah, they were technically thugs. But the reality was they were still wannabes really, pretty young, not that big, or many. And if the several adults there for 9/12 actually needed to do something about it, the kids wouldn't have lasted very long. Maybe if they were bigger, or more numerous, it might have been worse. Or it may not have happened at all. Who knows?

But what's unfortunately becoming increasingly clear is that, for the people who thought Obama's election would make America post-racial? I'm afraid you're wrong. Some of the potential racial narratives that may still play out during his presidency might not be that pretty at all.

I can't say as I'm not concerned that America might not end up more racially divided than we've been in 30 years. And that burden is as much, if not more Obama's to carry as it is anyone else's. Whether he's up to that along with everything else, we'll have to wait and see.

I can't think of any better way to exemplify weeniness than stereotyping some little African-American guys as "thugs" and then fantasizing about beating the snot out of them. A "small man" in every sense of the word, Riehl dreams of making himself into a big man by beating up some black kids.

We should probably thank Riehl for being so honest in his blog. Too bad it's likely that that kind of weenie racist dreaming is so prevalent among the tea-baggers.

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Comments

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Thank you for your post. I'm so concerned about what the right wing Christian extremists are doing. Theocracy is not my idea of what the conservative movement used to mean. I think it's much worse than people realize.

I read an article today by Frank Schaeffer: "Glenn Beck and The 9/12 Marchers: Subversives From Within" This describes much more eloquently than i ever could, what worries me the most.
I wonder: what did you think the conservative movement used to mean?