Keeping our sense of humour
The Republican mind is a surprising thing at times. Sarah Palin’s sneer at community organizing, Sarah Palin’s sneer at fruit-fly research…and then their jokes.
‘A member of the Florida state Republican committee sent out an email to 8 people that said this:’
From: Carol Carter Friday, January 30, 9:30 AM Subject: FW: Amazing!
I’m confused.
How can 2,000,000 blacks get into Washington, DC in 1 day in sub zero temps when 200,000 couldn’t get out of New Orleans in 85 degree temps with four days notice?
Carol Carter
Jeezis.
Somebody was unamused (so it’s not all Republicans, so I shouldn’t say ‘the Republican mind’ – except that’s obviously not a left-wing ‘joke’) and Carter was told to apologize.
From: Carol Carter January 30, 5:54 PM Subject: Earlier e-mail
I have been asked to send this apology for my earlier e-mail. I am sorry that it was received in a negative manner. I do hope that we are going to be allowed to keep our sense of humor.
As you can now see, it went to very few people. I did add Todd Marks in this apology, as he is in the mix now. I am also sorry to learn that some of these persons are not real team players. There really was no reason for this to go beyond those that I e-mailed (8 people). This was not an e-mail blast as I do not have that capability.
Carol
I’m fascinated by that ‘I do hope that we are going to be allowed to keep our sense of humor.’ Our sense of humor…about people who don’t own cars or don’t have enough money for gas or who are too terrified of losing everything to abandon their houses, being trapped by rising flood waters and drowning in their attics or surviving the floods only to die of dehydration and heatstroke two or three days later. This is something people should have a ‘sense of humor’ about? This is funny?
It’s a sick, sick, sick mind that finds that funny.
I’m sure Carol Carter will find the 200 or so (and counting) deaths from the bush fires in Southeastern Australia very amusing too.
“I’m confused” were Carol Carter’s two opening words of the e-mail.
I bet she is more confused about having to hand in her job notice.
I believe this is not the first time Hillsborough County Republicans have had to apologise for racist e-mails.
According to Janet Zink at jzink@sptimes .com “In October, former state party finance chairman Al Austin offered a mea culpa for forwarding an e-mail joke referring to the assassination of Barack Obama, and just days before the general election former county GOP chairman David Storck apologised for a forwarded e-mail warning of the threat of carloads of black people going to the polls to vote for Obama.”
Just like all corruption is Republican and all vote fraud is Republican, all racism is Republican.
On the Blogs, there is a game called Name That Party. Do you know how it goes? You pick a news media report about corruption. If the party affiliation of the corrupt part is named (eg Mark Foley R), you put it in the comparison box. Then you find one where the corrupt party isn’t named, ar the party affiliation is mentioned on the last paragraph (see page A122). Then you go find out what that person’s affiliation is.
Guess what?
Yes yes yes, but I said I shouldn’t say ‘the Republican mind’ but I also said that’s obviously not a left-wing ‘joke’ – well, is it? Would a non-Republican make that joke?
I don’t know what to tell you – there just is a really ugly squalid stupid bottom-feeding streak in the contemporary Republican party. Sarah Palin displayed it with great relish, and so does this Carol Carter. So what’s your point? There is no such streak? I don’t believe that, because we saw so much of it in the past few months (and years). That the Other Party or the left in general is just as squalid and in the same kind of way? I don’t believe that either – and you just saying it isn’t going to convince me.
But as for corruption – ohhhhhhhh no, you’ll never find me denying corruption in the Democratic party. That’s one of many reasons I’m not a Democrat.
So…in other words…you’ve done it yet again. Accused me of something I don’t do; rebuked me for saying things I don’t say. Undercut your own point by going overboard. Thrown crap on your own reputation for arguing honestly by not doing so. You never learn. You could have disputed the racism point, but instead you had to talk to me as if I were someone else.
Pffffffff.
I’m not a Democrat either, but the right and the left are not symmetrical. In another context, another site and even in another language, I called someone a leftwing clown. I was then asked if I could name a serious rightwing political figure, and while I had some historical references (Churchill, De Gaulle), I simply could not name a contemporary example. Now, I can name a number of serious progressive (or left) political figures: Obama, Michelle Bachelet (president of Chile), Lula (Luis Ignacio Da Silva), José Luis Zapatero, Felipe Gonzalez, etc.
Well OB, sorry for my distance from your state of mind on this. I will try to drop back to less elliptical way of making my point.
You identified Republican with racist. I consider that sweeping bullshit, like another commenter’s claim here before the election that only Republicans engage in vote fraud. I compared your post with ‘Name that Party’ because I think that racism by Democrats is invisible to the enlightened, but not absent. Huge gobs of confirmatory bias appear to be operating here, as media circles and email forwarding chains supply selected nutrients for our prejudices.
I had seen another variety of the sorry joke that triggered your post, and it wasn’t worth a snicker. It also claimed that Republicans couldn’t get a crowd like that on a weekday, because they had to work. I though vicious but at least funny a purported Bush administration response to German criticism after Katrina – acknowledging that ‘Germany had special expertise in moving vulnerable and sick people by rail.’
Another Inauguration joke pointed out that only one of the parties present had a former KKK member as senator. Do you think that is because the Republicans are, to a person, still current members?
I just panicked and came back to the thread – did I not say Democratic, but Democrat? How is it terminated correctly in differnt parts of speech? Damn, I am losing my sense of humour. Nooooooooo!1!!!
ChrisPer – where did I identify Republican with racist? Will you ever learn to read properly? Look at the damn post, will you? I did no such thing! I said the Republican mind is a surprising thing at times – and I went on to note that not all Republicans were amused by the ‘joke’ – how is that identifying Republican with racist?
And yet you accuse me of huge gobs of confirmation bias. Jeezis.
Not you alone, OB!
I think it was a racist joke, and you lumped ‘the Republican Mind’ and ‘their jokes’, then excepted the ‘somebody’ who was unamused. Looks like you apply the opprobrium to the majority of Republicans, but you are right, I am the one who called it racist.
But I had the rather unpleasant experience before the election of seeing a racist cartoon posted at a forum I visit, and in the course of getting the mods to trash it discovering it wasn’t a troll creating an evidence trail but a genuine racist who thought he was among friends. EEEEW. I start to appreciate that it hasn’t disappeared yet.
Yes, I did lump, or rather refer to, ‘the Republican Mind.’ That’s because I think that is a kind of joke that appears only among Republicans (and people to the right of them) – not because I think it’s a kind of joke that is universal among Republicans. As I said – there just is this squalid streak in the Republican party, which embarrasses many Republicans but delights others. Yeah in that sense ‘the Republican Mind’ is an unfair overgeneralization – but since I go on to admit as much a few sentences later, I don’t really think it’s worth a gotcha.
Yeah. It hasn’t disappeared yet.