Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The truth about Bunny Ears

Were you among the people fooled by Ron Paul's disingenuous claims that he neither wrote nor read the racist commentary appearing in the Ron Paul Newsletter? Check it out:
But in an interview with The Dallas Morning News published on May 22, 1996, Paul not only acknowledged writing in a 1992 issue of his newsletter that "95 percent of the black men in Washington, D.C., are semi-criminal or entirely criminal," he defended his writings by insisting that they were being taken out of context by his critics.
The controversial newsletters include rants against the Israeli lobby, gays, AIDS patients and the late civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. -- who was described as a "pro-Communist philanderer.
One newsletter, dated June 1992 in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, says "order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks."
In his 1996 interview with the Morning News, Paul denied suggestions that he was a racist and said he was not evoking stereotypes when he wrote the columns. He told the newspaper they should be read and quoted in their entirety to avoid misrepresentation.

He did not deny writing that, "If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet of foot they can be." When asked by the newspaper what he meant by that, Paul responded, "If you try to catch someone that has stolen a purse from you, there is no chance to catch them."
Sorry to quote so heavily; normally, I'm not fond of "cut and paste" posts. But Paul still commands a fairly sizable "progressive" following. So I thought you folks ought to know this material.

16 comments:

AitchD said...

The doctor is obviously psychotic and insane.

Peter of Lone Tree said...

"The doctor is obviously psychotic and insane."
Well, that seemed to work okay for the present occupant of the White House.

Anonymous said...

He is no more crazy than half the people I run into everyday. As Micheal Moore puts it....He hasn't quite refined his racism.... Here in the Doctor's backyard, the minute a black or Hispanic moves into the neighborhood, all the houses go up for sale. Blacks take offence to that but the Hispanics just shrug and buy the houses anyway and are perfectly happy living in all Hispanic neighborhoods.
Ron Paul doesn't sound any more crazy than any of the Republican presidential candidates to me and yet we are so indoctrinated into the Neocon world view that we don't see how crazy these candidates sound to the rest of the world. Does Rudy sound any less insane when he turns down the Saudi Princs's donation after 9/11 to NY but is perfectly happy accepting campaign contribution from corporations that are being bailed out by Saudi money? Does McCain sound any less crazy when he backs Bush's policy of selling so called "Smart Bombs" to the very people that were behind 9/11 while he advocates the occupation of Iraq for the next 100 years? Isn't it unbelievable that a presidential candidate openly talks about amending the US Constitution to reflect the views of a sub-group(his version of Christianity) of a sub-group(Christians) of the citizens in a country that prides itself on advocating freedom including the freedom of religion?
The only difference between Ron Paul and the rest of them is that being a Jesus freak or a war monger or an imperialist or a fascist is a lot more fashionable than being a plain old racist.

AitchD said...

beeta, Ron Paul grew up in Greentree, PA, in the early1950s, so his stunted growth and evident brain damage is likely due to the enormous quantities of lead in the air he breathed there. Rudy grew up in Brooklyn; he went to law school; he functioned as a United States Attorney and brought Mafiosi to trial; he served as mayor of NYC; he got his name on ballots to run for POTUS; so, of course Rudy is highly abnormal and acts that way. McCain's insanity and psychosis are self-evident (and sad), much of it being explained by Naomi Wolf's recent reporting about conditions of torture and isolation. Huckabee's advocacy for a sky-god amendment to the Constitution is, and ought to be, beneath discussion. OTOH, if he becomes POTUS and vetoes any bill that doesn't advance his Xtian agenda, he must be removed from office immediately and treated with compassion and the best medical services available.

Anonymous said...

aitchd,
LOL....and then there is that....

Anonymous said...

"Progressive" ..."regressive"....I believe a stellar example of the latter is when the reporter asked Paul "what he meant by that"--but then I consider white guilt-to-a fault an inherently regressive
and unfortunately prevalent attitude today.

Anonymous said...

Many or even most of the heroes in this world are tragic heroes, or considerably flawed persons. MLK Jr., for one, substantially plagiarized his thesis, cheated on his wife, and etc., yet remains a towering and even great figure in history for his better positions in life.

A candidate who lies about his past bigotry could be unbigoted (is that a word?) now. Or he may still be a bigot, normally a deal breaker when it comes to my support, certainly.

However, Paul's positions to end the war on drugs and end foreign military misadventures would probably do the African-American community far more good than anything his (socially unacceptable, hence unactable upon) possible continuing bigotry might do to harm their interests.

...sofla


...sofla

Anonymous said...

beeta wrote:

"The only difference between Ron Paul and the rest of them is that being a Jesus freak or a war monger or an imperialist or a fascist is a lot more fashionable than being a plain old racist."

I have to disagree, beeta. Ron Paul is ALL of the above and then some. "Plain old racist"?(!) He's an antiabort, homophobic, racist neaderthal who's ALSO a fascist.

BTW, the model for the Nuremberg race laws, that is, Hitler's Nazi race laws was the American eugenics movement. That's right! If you doubt it, then check out Stefan Kuhl's, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism [London: Oxford University Press, 1994] and Edwin Black's War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race [New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003]

"But he's against the war!" So what? David Duke is too, is that any reason to lend credence to knuckle-dragging boneheads and fascists?

"Libertarianism" and "free market capitalism"? That's a laugh!

Anonymous said...

Ken Hoop wrote:

"...but then I consider white guilt-to-a fault an inherently regressive and unfortunately prevalent attitude today."

White guilt-to-a-fault? Let's see, hmm, practiced genocide on the indigenous population, enslaved Africans for profit, stole a third of Mexico after waging a "preemptive war" based on lies and fabrications... sounds like white privilege to me!

Anonymous said...

Tom,
You are absolutely right!
Racists usually suffer from other related afflictions as well.
ps
You forgot free trade.........

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Skeeter Sanders said...

Whether Ron Paul is a racist or not is moot at this point -- he's a LIAR and a HYPOCRITE.

You gotta laugh at some of the enabling justifications that Ron Paul supporters are using to defend him in the face of all this irrefutable evidence. . .

They remind me of the followers of another famous political extremist of the 1970s and 1980s, who's now 85 and retired from the political wars: Remember Lyndon LaRouche?

I find it fascinating that much of Ron Paul's political agenda is almost word-for-word identical to that of Lyndon LaRouche.

Anonymous said...

But in an interview with The Dallas Morning News published on May 22, 1996, Paul not only acknowledged writing in a 1992 issue of his newsletter that "95 percent of the black men in Washington, D.C., are semi-criminal or entirely criminal," he defended his writings by insisting that they were being taken out of context by his critics.


Right, and undoubtedly most of these quotes *have* been taken out of context. The "shocking" quote above is not even a complete sentence (notice the comma after "Washington D.C.") - how much do you want to bet that the full sentence was something much more reasonable, and that whoever wrote this piece butchered it in order to smear Paul? And what do we make of people whose favorite form of evidence consists of out-of-context quotes? Is this really an honest or intelligent form of argumentation?


He did not deny writing that, "If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet of foot they can be." When asked by the newspaper what he meant by that, Paul responded, "If you try to catch someone that has stolen a purse from you, there is no chance to catch them."


I guess I'm just not shocked by people willing to acknowledge the high black crime rate (should this topic be entirely off-limits?) or the fact that blacks on average run much faster than whites.

Anonymous said...

being a Jesus freak or a war monger or an imperialist or a fascist is a lot more fashionable than being a plain old racist.


Even more true if you're running for the Democratic nomination, huh? ;)