News Michael Savage Says Everything But White Power
June 18,2009 
One of your top 5 conservative radio hosts in America.
Michael Savage: “The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America”
One of your top 5 conservative radio hosts in America.
Michael Savage: “The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America”
I can’t work up any outrage or surprise for anything Savage says, I know he’s a bile filled toad but I also know he’s going to stay on the air for years because enough people like his message. And now I’m depressed.
“I’ll find a poster on stormfront to host a show”-Roy Masters
False equivalence in 3…2…
my money is on the false equivalence involving Jesse Jackson saying “heimietown” or whatever, that seems to be popular these days.
If we take the literal meaning of the word epitome from the dictionary, a typical or ideal example, and place that in Savage’s sentence that outraged Oliver it is a much milder statement than a recent Supreme Court nominee’s statement that comes to mind.
Typical or ideal does not exclude other examples as does our newest prospective SCJ’s statement. Nor does a radio personalities mindset have anything to do with interpretating Constitutional law. Not meaning that the Constitution is a matter of discussion here but her repeated statements are ample cause for concern that she might do her job fairly, her track record is controversial, but I disgress.
The math backs up Savage’s statement as typical and as for ideal, white married heterosexual is an apt discription of those who founded this country and who have actually created the vast amount of accomplishments we now take for granted. Not all by any means but an overwhelming majority.
Now if you listen to the clip of Savage it is clear that he is speaking against the liberal agenda and the end results of the politics of identity upon this nation. He is bitter yet the statement that Ollie highlights is literlly quite defendable. Just sayin.
Who had 5:09 pm? Collect your winnings.
It isn’t what he says, AO, it’s what he doesn’t say. Or more to the point what he doesn’t HAVE to say. The people he is speaking to are all nodding their heads in agreement with the good *smirk* “doctor.”
Funny thing is, they wouldn’t let him in their clubhouse.
AO,
keep pushing that cool, refreshing beverage.
Everyone who likes it wants more! “OH YEAH”
“The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America”
Uh, isn’t Savage, nee Weiner, Jewish? Single? Has very butch facial hair and lives with his mother in San Francisco?
But he’s white, so I guess batting .250 will keep him on the team…
Note to Conservatives, it actually helps your case to say “that motherfucker does not speak for me, thought I would fight for his right to say his ignorant bullshit”.
He is bitter yet the statement that Ollie highlights is literlly quite defendable.
No, it really isn’t, but we knew that we could count on you to try, AO.
Who knew that Michael Savage was an admirer of Michael Moore?
white married heterosexual is an apt discription of those who founded this country and who have actually created the vast amount of accomplishments we now take for granted.
You left out “Christian.” Why’s that?
You also leave out every non-white unmarried homosexual who has ever created any accomplishment for this country. So don’t tell me who’s taking what for granted.
Amused Observer: “If we take the literal meaning of the word epitome from the dictionary, a typical or ideal example, and place that in Savage’s sentence that outraged Oliver it is a much milder statement than a recent Supreme Court nominee’s statement that comes to mind.”
Only if you believe the lies spread about her. And when you take only part of a statement and pretend it’s the whole statement, it is a lie.
“The math backs up Savage’s statement as typical and as for ideal…”
AO is defending bigotry. No surprise there.
He is, after all, the epitome of the Republican Party.
He is, additionally, part of the reason the GOP lost in 2008 and 2006, and will likely lose in 2010 and 2012.
Oh, and Amused Observer, how’s you health?
I ask cause you seemed so concerned about mine, and I just wanted to return the favor.
Notice any weight gain since Obama was elected? Have you had to deal with headaches? Snapping at people? Irritable?
‘The math backs up Savage’s statement as typical and as for ideal, white married heterosexual is an apt discription of those who founded this country and who have actually created the vast amount of accomplishments we now take for granted. Not all by any means but an overwhelming majority.’
Aren’t you forgetting slave owning bigots in your description? Or that these same men of vision and their descendants spent decades trying to annihilate the indigenous population? Or that minorities still enjoy the fruits of prejudice so eagerly planted by those, like you, who see only Caucasians as civilized and entitled?
People like this prick Savage are vile and meaningless; those like you who agree with him, are lower than dirt.
Keep wallowing in your own filth, it’s where you belong.
Jrfunk,
Am I forgetting, not at all. Some white Hetero males owned slaves and even more mobilized and died to eventually set those slaves free. Yup, we slaughterd the natives and created this country in the process. Nobody is perfect but so what.
White europeans created this country, we made the towns and cities, created the rich agricultural system, Designed and built the buildings, bridges, and streets. Created the railroad systems, invented the airlplanes. Discovered and put to use electricity, telegraphs, radio, TV,the vacuum tube, transister, and microchip. We sent man into space and landed him on the moon.
We didn’t do all these things exclusively by our selves but we supplied the money, the brains and the bulk of the skilled labor.
We invented a form of government that has allowed us to live in greater prosperity and power than any nation on the earth ever did. Are we perfect? No. Is America perfect? No again. But we built a mighty fine place here. A place to be proud of, and we are. You got a problem with that?
‘We invented a form of government that has allowed us to live in greater prosperity and power than any nation on the earth ever did. Are we perfect? No. Is America perfect? No again. But we built a mighty fine place here. A place to be proud of, and we are. You got a problem with that?’
My problem is that your posts attempt to portray Savage’s ignorant rant on this topic as somehow intrinsically correct; which is bullshit.
If you want to support the idea that White men are the ultimate representation of all that is good on this planet, be my guest; it’s simply a historical fact that for all their positive traits, there is an equal volume of negatives.
If one were to read ONLY your posts on this topic, it would be evident that your opinion is that ONLY White men should be heralded as having provided anything of merit to humanity as a whole, which is simply not the case.
But then, what would a multi-ethnic inferior like myself know about it?
‘Yup, we slaughterd the natives and created this country in the process. Nobody is perfect but so what.’
That’s the most telling statement you’ve made regarding your opinion of Manifest Destiny; we destroyed an entire pre-existing civilization in order to create one in our image that is clearly more legitimate, and despite the fact that it was immoral and debased, we now have Mickey Mouse and internet porn so it was all worth it.
It’s hard to imagine how the term ‘ugly American’ could be drawn from that mentality.
Some time ago right winger “Amused Observer” snidely insisted I call him “racist” (until then I hadn’t).
He wasn’t kidding. He was telling me who he was.
His posts are increasingly devolving into ‘white pride’ and ‘white power’ essays.
Creepy.
When I refer to right winger “Amused Observer” as an ‘eliminationist‘, it’s because of his statements like: “Yup, we slaughterd [sic] the natives and created this country in the process. Nobody is perfect but so what.”
That right winger “Amused Observer” makes such casual genocidal comments in the context of celebrating what he sees as white power is very revealing.
[from an older post that seems increasingly relevant as "Amused Observer's" rhetoric becomes more revealing]:
Right wing eliminitionist “Amused Observer” supports terrorism.
Right winger “Amused Observer” complimented a terrorist assassin, claiming that the terrorist was “a man who had the courage of his convictions” who “did what he had to do.”
“Amused Observer” encourages terrorism, describing a terrorist’s act of terrorism as being a “moral” position.
Right winger “Amused Observer” uses celebratory martyr language, referring to a terrorist as having “sacrificed” himself for what he believed “was the greater good”.
Right winger “Amused Observer” even says of the terrorist that he “understand[s]“ … “thier [sic] motivations” and he was “not going to judge them.”
Here is Savage’s full sentence, which no one here seems honest enough to address:
“The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America, and yet it is the white Christian heterosexual married male who has been made the beast of America.”
You could easily argue among the same lines as people here are doing, but that sentence without the second half is far more controversial and offensive with just the first. For Media Matters to print the quote leaving that off is just another in a long line of examples in which they display their typical dishonesty. That’s not just ‘yes, we are liberal and our mission is to expose conservative misinformation’, that is just deceptive on their part. The audio has the whole sentence, but they know that every left-wing blog that posts this will do the same thing and then the inevitable conversations will all only be about the first half of the sentence.
And printing the sentence as they did,
Michael Savage: “The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America”
by leaving off the period could hardly be an honest omission with all the people they have working there fact-checking, proofreading and endlessly going over video and radio audio. It wouldn’t be honest to add a period, either. The correct way to print it would be to include several dots (…) to indicate an incomplete sentence, like we see here at of all places, Democratic Underground.
Pretty pathetic, really. But par for the course.
Really? That’s the best you have as a diversion? The omission of three periods? That’s supposed to distract us from the issue at hand? Can’t you try any harder than that?
I mean, it’s not like the back half of Savage’s rant does anything in the slightest to remit the odiousness of the first half. You said so yourself – kinda, sorta, in a weaselly sort of way.
Let’s just cut to the chase here, Dennis. No more foreplay. Do you agree or disagree with Savage’s comment in its entirety? The whole thing – I could care less about the ellipses. A simple yes or no will suffice; no equivocations are necessary or requested.
You could easily argue among the same lines as people here are doing, but that sentence without the second half is far more controversial and offensive with just the first.
I think it just makes Savage a whiny racist fuck.
‘A simple yes or no will suffice….’
No
Do you agree or disagree with Savage’s comment in its entirety? The whole thing – I could care less about the ellipses. A simple yes or no will suffice; no equivocations are necessary or requested. Matthew Hooper
No need to equivocate, Matthew. No.
But I still stand by my statements and it wasn’t meant as a diversion. If it’s still just as odious, Media Matters shouldn’t have had a problem including the statement in its entirety and not tried to hide the fact that it was an incomplete sentence that they highlighted. But that’s not selling the sizzle instead of the steak.
But that’s not selling the sizzle instead of the steak.
Because the real villains here are Media Matters for trying to make Savage sound like a racist instead of a whiny racist.
Dennis, both clauses in the sentence are equally stupid and racist.
fafaroo-
We disagree on a lot, well, just about everything. No, actually everything. But I will say you’re a pretty straight shooter and you just put words in my mouth, and I don’t do that with you. I said you could still pretty much make your same argument, but that the second half somewhat lessens the offensiveness of it. Media Matters isn’t the real villain and I didn’t say that, but what they did was intentional and cleverly deceptive, and if it was just as offensive, why didn’t they include the second half in the title? For brevity?
You’ve argued with me before on MM, do you think the absence of the period was something they just overlooked?
…leaving off the period could hardly be an honest omission…
The way it was displayed is in keeping with the AP style book. Quoting less than an entire sentence is not at all unusual.
LOL,
Thats a comma and this is the classic example of a soundbite out of context.
I don’t listen to talk radio and this is the first time I’ve heard the dude. I am aware of his reputation and to some extent his stage persona. He markets himself as the man you guys hate the most.
The lede here is displayed here with a snippet of transcript. Dishonestly displayed to deliberately alter the reader’s perception of the actual quote.
Many of you don’t actually read these things well enough to see what they actually say.
Media Matters is a liberal propaganda mill, this techique is thier stock and trade. Propaganda mills operate on the other side of the cultural divide as well.
Same idea.
Being able to qualify where in the food chain you’re operating is the first step to knowing who the rubes are.
AO
How should we perceive the actual quote?
And I’m getting tired of this ‘stage persona,’ ‘He’s just an entertainer’ crapola.
Wow, Savage has his defenders here. I’m a white atheist male heterosexual married guy, and AO does NOT speak for me.
That’s some serious bigotry, Amused. I can see why we don’t agree on anything. We live in different moral universes.
You’ve argued with me before on MM, do you think the absence of the period was something they just overlooked?
I don’t know, Dennis. I don’t think it matters because the second half of the sentence does not “somewhat lessen the offensiveness” of the first. It actually compounds the offensiveness.
Indeed, the second half of the sentence only makes sense if you accept the first half as true. It doesn’t lessen the offensiveness of the first half, in other words, because it is entirely dependent on the first half being true to have any meaning at all.
Thats a comma and this is the classic example of a soundbite out of context.
Please, AO, by all means, fill in the context for us.
Fafaroo,
Ollie’s snippet coupled with Savage says Everything but White Power
The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America
The complete quote;
The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America, and yet it is the white Christian heterosexual married male who has been made the beast of America.”
Two completely different ideas are being expressed here.
Many of you are evidently unaware of what the word epitome means. It’s a hard concept to follow but words have specific meanings.
Repack,
And where specifically is the bigotry in my statement? It’s true and casts no aspersions on other people, it merely states what actually happened.
‘I said you could still pretty much make your same argument, but that the second half somewhat lessens the offensiveness of it. Media Matters isn’t the real villain and I didn’t say that, but what they did was intentional and cleverly deceptive, and if it was just as offensive, why didn’t they include the second half in the title? For brevity?’
You’ve spent more time and energy decrying MM’s editorial decision re: Savage’s obviously racist statement than you have denouncing the statement itself; and you continue to suggest that somehow they and not Savage are the real culprits in all of this, which is the very definition of a canard.
Give it up. Savage is a prick and however MM chose to expose him is like shooting fish in a barrel; they couldn’t miss with the fodder he keeps providing.
He may be a prick. The fact is you guys don’t understand what you are reading. Nor can you recognize propaganda regardless of who is doing it. It’s funny in a sad way.
Two completely different ideas are being expressed here.
Please. Expand.
Seriosly Fafaroo,
Don’t think of it as something written by a guy you hate. Just step back and then read it without emotion clouding your thinking.
And where specifically is the bigotry in my statement? It’s true and casts no aspersions on other people, it merely states what actually happened.
That’s where we part company. You believe that is true, and I don’t. If you believe your statement is a quantifiable fact, show me the numbers and tell me where you got them.
What, no data? Q’elle surprise.
wtf doesn’t the second part of the sentence make it worse? my understanding is that he’s saying that poor victimized white Christian heterosexual men get a lot of unfair blame even though really they’re the epitome of everything right and good…
to me the only thing that is more stupid than saying that white Christian heterosexual males are the epitome of everything right with America is saying that they’re unfairly demonized. what a load of crap – they’ve never been demonized, it’s just that a few loud douches belonging to that social group are upset about their privilege (maintained on the backs of women, people of colour, homosexuals) being challenged.
please, though, tell me what he *actually* meant if it’s not that because really I’ll just be relieved that this guy isn’t quite as douchey as I think he is.
Right winger “Amused ‘White Supremacist’ Observer” is part of the Republican Party’s largest electoral problem.
Right wing extremist Michael “Savage” Weiner’s reprehensible pronouncement manages to insult everyone in America that isn’t male, white, married, heterosexual, or Christian.
Those are all the demographics that the Republican Party is losing ground in. Right winger’s poisonous attacks on those demographics ultimately spill on the Republican Party.
And here is right wing extremist “Amused Observer” defending a calculated and intentionally virulent racist and bigoted remark.
And that’s what still defines the core of the Republican Party: Racism, Sexism, and assorted Bigotries.
Right wing extremist Michael “Savage” Weiner’s reprehensible pronouncement manages to insult everyone in America that isn’t male, white, married, heterosexual, or Christian. –News Reference
Oh my, News Reference, what a ‘racial outburst’ that is.
Why do you feel the need to refer to Michael Savage as Michael “Savage” Weiner unless you feel the need to draw attention to his Jewish heritage and demean him for it by printing his birth name and not his real name, even putting quotes around his real name in mockery. You might as well just call him Jew neocon Michael Savage instead, although I’m not sure which way is less anti-Semitic.
Apparently what defines the core of you is Racism, Sexism, and assorted blatant Bigotries.
And I’ll add now, hypocritical douchebaggery of the highest order.
Dennis the Bigot: “Why do you feel the need to refer to Michael Savage as Michael “Savage” Weiner unless you feel the need to draw attention to his Jewish heritage…”
The guy names himself ‘Savage’. He’s clearly overcompensating. Mocking his choice of names is fair game.
But nice try on the distraction.
Amused Observer,
Thank you for making it clear who I am dealing with. When I speak to you.
Peace be with you.
No, Strowbridge, he’s mocking Savage’s Jewish heritage. He changed his name legally. News Reference clearly is drawing attention to his Jewish birth name to let people know he’s a neo-con Jew, especially when he prefaces Michael “Savage” Weiner, with ‘Right-wing extremist’.
You know this, yet you condone and defend it. It’s no distraction at all. You are just as big a hypocrite as he is, and I’m not just cleverly trying to make light of your obsession with my use of Jon Stewart’s birth name. This is far, far worse, and yet you not only let it slide despite its obviousness, you somehow condone after obsessing over my use of Steart’s birth name without mentioning evenly remotely to do with his Jewish heritage.
The difference? You obsessively loathe conservatives like me and you passionately hate Michael Savage, who changed his Jewish birth name, but you are quite fond of defend liberals like News Idiot who make crap up like you do and you love Jon Stewart, who also changed his Jewish birth name.
Piece of shit hypocrites, the both of you, made perfectly obvious.
Repack,
Is this what you dispute and ask for quantifiable data for?
“White europeans created this country, we made the towns and cities, created the rich agricultural system, Designed and built the buildings, bridges, and streets. Created the railroad systems, invented the airlplanes. Discovered and put to use electricity, telegraphs, radio, TV,the vacuum tube, transister, and microchip. We sent man into space and landed him on the moon.
We didn’t do all these things exclusively by our selves but we supplied the money, the brains and the bulk of the skilled labor.
We invented a form of government that has allowed us to live in greater prosperity and power than any nation on the earth ever did.”
Specifically which parts of my statement do you disbelieve?
“Weiner” is Jewish? Didn’t know that and don’t care.
“Weiner” is a German name by the way.
Michael Weiner is the guys given name.
I only include “Savage” out of respect because it’s his preferred [conceit] name.
More to the point, why would the right wing embrace and defend someone who explicitly defines himself as “Vicious or merciless; brutal”?
That’s the core of the right wing ideal: Brutal, vicious people that spit out vulgarities and assert they are superior to everyone not like themselves, in this case to women, non-whites, non-heterosexuals, the unmarried, and non-Christians.
Right wing savagery is at the core of the Republican Party.
That might work when you can scream the other person down or roll out the tanks (or dogs and hoses) when you are confronted, but in a democracy where votes are accurately counted, attacking the largest demographic (women) and growing demographics like non-white, the unmarried, and non-Christians, that doesn’t seem too bright.
But that’s a core part of elevating savagery over good sense.
AO-
I can honestly say that what Savage said is, and perhaps rightly so, highly offensive to a lot of people. I am not comparing myself morally to him or anyone else, but I can also say I can’t imagine myself saying what he said. To me, he a cranky old man who has to fill in a lot of time on a radio show and he often says things on purpose to rankle his detractors. He reminds me of some of the older guys I play golf with, who on occasion during a bad round, will just go off on a tirade about something political and say really whacked out things.
I can also say I don’t have many qualms with anything you’ve said, and you do bring up good points. Unfortunately, a lot of people can’t handle looking at things like this in any sort of objective way. Apparently, white Christian heterosexual married males are supposed to hang their head in shame and accept the routine bashing they get when they’re portrayed negatively in the media, disproportionately so to the good things they’ve accomplished and stand for. Listing good things they’ve done means you are advocating ‘white power’.
To Repack and others, what you and I should be doing is agreeing whole-heartedly with the bad things he lists that this group has done, since they completely and unequivocally nullify the good things, and apparently, shutting the F up.
“Weiner” is Jewish? Didn’t know that and don’t care.
“Weiner” is a German name by the way.
Michael Weiner is the guys given name. –News Reference
Fuck you, you anti-Semitic white-trash piece of shit. Why don’t you just simply blame your bigotry on the ‘independent with a conservative streak’ side of you that you claim to have?
It would sound infinitely better than pleading ignorance.
‘He may be a prick. The fact is you guys don’t understand what you are reading.’
Sure we do; you’re supporting a racist asshole and his archaic opinions.
You couldn’t be making it any easier to understand.
No, Strowbridge, he’s mocking Savage’s Jewish heritage
No, he’s mocking the fact that Savage changed his Jewish birth name to something non-Jewish-sounding then set himself up as a spokesman for the downtrodden christian male.
And yes, AO, dennis, the part of Savage’s verbal dogshit that Oliver and MM didn’t quote, “…yet it is the white Christian heterosexual married male who has been made the beast of America,” is even more vile and offensive than the first part.
At least for anyone with a shred of moral sense.
Last time I checked unemployment for white men was roughly half that for black men and roughly two thirds of the figure for hispanics. Incarceration rate for hispanics is twice that of whites, and and that of blacks four times. When pukes like Savage say crap like “the white heterosexual male has been made he beast of America,” what they’re really complaining about is that nowadays the cards aren’t stacked quite as badly in favor of the white male. It’s the incoherent scream of the totally clueless.
‘I can honestly say that what Savage said is, and perhaps rightly so, highly offensive to a lot of people.’
So, if I said that White men in America are INHERENTLY racist, homophobic and misogynistic, it would PERHAPS be offensive to White American men?
Your endless dance of semantics only proves that you don’t really believe this dickhead’s statements are offensive in the least.
What a surprise.
Wilbur, you weren’t a part of the charades game Strowbridge has been playing the last six months or so and that News Ref joined in on, so you I apologize for this, but you don’t have an appreciation for their grossly ironic hypocrisy. But to differ on your point alone, the way News Ref prefaced it, it can only be described as his hatred for the ‘Jew neo-con’.
As to what Savage said, he was speaking about the media in America, or as he put it, the liberal media of the last 30 years. If he was talking about incarceration rates or unemployment, or anything to do with opportunities by the differing classes, you can’t tell from listening to that audio.
The complete quote;
The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America, and yet it is the white Christian heterosexual married male who has been made the beast of America.”
Two completely different ideas are being expressed here.
Ah, so you’re saying an ideal America would consist of a majority of white christian straight married (optional) people.
Sort of a master race, as it were.
Why do you feel the need to refer to Michael Savage as Michael “Savage” Weiner unless you feel the need to draw attention to his Jewish heritage and demean him for it by printing his birth name and not his real name,…
Heh. I see what you did there. Touche.
“Why do you feel the need to refer to Michael Savage as Michael “Savage” Weiner unless you feel the need to draw attention to his Jewish heritage…”
Because “Weiner Nation” didn’t test well.
Your endless dance of semantics only proves that you don’t really believe this dickhead’s statements are offensive in the least. –jrfunkenstein
My statement was in direct opposition to that, jr. So you use a hypothetical to dishonestly twist my meaning. If you have a major issue with my use of the word ‘perhaps’, fine. But it doesn’t mean I don’t think you are rightly justified to be offended, it just means, as I go on to say immediately after, that you aren’t looking at it objectively. How do I know this? Because jr, you haven’t said one objective word so far on anything, much less this topic, or much less on his statement, other than to express your disgust for it, and for anyone attempting to have a productive conversation about it outside the bounds of pure and simple disgust and bashing of Savage. To you, he deserves no defense, nor objectivity. And that, IMO, is the purpose of the way Media Matters and OW both word the titles of their blog threads, for the red-meat effects that way is sure to generate comments.
Go look at the M/M thread and compare and contrast to those here if you disagree.
Apparently, white Christian heterosexual married males are supposed to hang their head in shame and accept the routine bashing they get when they’re portrayed negatively in the media,…
A. Who is doing this bashing of which you speak?
2. No, white christian hetero males need to get over themselves and stand in line like every one else and not just expect to cut to the head of the line.
Heh. I see what you did there. Touche.
Sorry, Duros. I can’t take credit. Newsie and Strowbridge deserve it all.
You’ve referred to Micahael Savage as Wiener also, and you’ve joined in on CSS’ Jon Stewart charade game, just not to the same degree, nor with the same malice aforethought, to either.
I can only assume that the reason right winger “Dennis” keep calling Neo-Con-Artists “Jews” is that “Dennis” hates Jews.
But right winger “Dennis” has already said that he agrees with Michael “Savage” Weiner’s hatred for non-Christians so I suppose “Dennis” not only hates “Jews” but also Buddhists, agnostics, Muslims, Deists, atheists, Hindus, Sikhs, and every other Non-Christian Religion.
Right winger’s hate is a central animating force of the Republican Party.
It’s the Republican Party of Hate.
Why, exactly, do you hate Jews, “Dennis”?
Dennis,
I’ve never listened to the guy in my life other than the clip Oliver posted. I’m aware of his abrasive reputation. I do enjoy poking holes in liberal propaganda. I don’t believe in political correctness at all with the exception of politeness to the unoffensive.
I’ve had relations in this country since 1715, longer if you follow the wee bit of Cherokee, on both sides of the major issues from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War. From the Republic of Texas to the West Coast. The last of the blood fled Eastern Europe in the 20′s. My family tree has horse thieves and politicians, heros and knaves. My people have oppressed and been oppressed. I don’t feel a shred of white guilt over any of it. People live in the context of thier times.
I do feel like I have a vested stake in this country. I’m proud of what we have established and achieved here but I am not blind to our faults. I oppose those who would tear us down either through malice or ignorance. Yet freedom of speech means listening to much you disagree with, but not in silence if you so choose.
Well said, AO. Reminds me, I need to finish the last section I’m reading of Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy. Pretty brutal stuff went on back in that time period in the Republic of Texas. Makes Lonesome Dove seem like Mary Poppins in comparison.
AO,
Yes. the statement is selective for the desired result.
For example, White guys owned the slaves who built a lot of the stuff you are talking about, and the white guys take the credit because they were holding the guns. Everything south of the Mason Dixon line was built by Black labor.
Culturally, our national music is Black. Blues, bluegrass, Jazz, everything that isn’t stuffy and European, in other words everything interesting, comes from Black roots. “Rhapsody in Blue,” probably one of the most famous American orchestral compositions, is based on Black musical forms.
Chinese labor built the railroad from the west.
A Jewish immigrant, Albert Einstein, provided the theoretical basis for a lot of later Christian guys’ inventions. In fact, Jewish Americans dominate many of our sciences.
In the arts, I would dare to suggest that homosexuals are vastly overrepresented. I went to a play the other night, and the listing of the cast members’ other activities didn’t conceal the fact that most were gay. I’m sure many of the so called heterosexuals on Savage’s list were closeted and gay in another era.
My sister is an attorney. Although it has been less than 30 years since she attended law school, she was often the only woman in a class. She had to put up with an attitude on the part of her male contemporaries that a woman didn’t belong there, and with judges who found her mere presence irritating.
My point is that first, the statement ignores the contributions made by other demographics and second, that doors were not open for any BUT white Christian heterosexual males in the halls of power.
Now that these doors have been kicked open a little, we have a president who would not have been permitted to acquire an education or run for office during much of our history, and we see that people are people and that ability cuts across all demographics when opportunities are equalized.
Your claim is also selective for success. When assigning blame for bad things done in America, how much of that falls on the WCHM demographic? How many criminals or business failures fit the demographic?
On second thought, don’t even bother with the numbers. The claim is nothing but racism/sexism anyway.
So what is the common theme, there, Repack? White guys had the money to get all that shit done, amirite?
Just step back and then read it without emotion clouding your thinking.
Right. Because you’re understanding of the history of the white hetersexual Christian male isn’t clouded at all by anything personal, Mr. My Relatives Came Over On the May Flower.
You seem to have a lot personally invested in the reputation of the white Christian heterosexual male and the ongoing recognition of his awesomeness.
So Mr. Objectivity, please think a little bit on how your understanding of the awesomeness of the straight white christian male relates to your other statement that “People live in the context of thier times.”
Repack,
You’re backpeddling.
“That’s some serious bigotry, Amused. I can see why we don’t agree on anything. We live in different moral universes.”
“And where specifically is the bigotry in my statement? It’s true and casts no aspersions on other people, it merely states what actually happened.
That’s where we part company. You believe that is true, and I don’t. If you believe your statement is a quantifiable fact, show me the numbers and tell me where you got them.
What, no data? Q’elle surprise”
You call me a bigot and then state your disbelief in my statements. When pressed you bring forth a selective qualifier.
Your statement regarding contruction south of the Mason Dixon line is quite misleading. The bulk of the white population did not hold slaves and many of those who did not built most everything themselves. Your point on music is well made but glosses over the traditions of Irish jigs and English ballads. Bluegrass in particular has deep roots in the fiddle playing of early mountaineers of scotch irish extraction.
You are quite correct in lauding the efforts of jews in America, as a group they are our smartest and scientifically most able members of our society despite facing quite open discrimination.
But you have no case for your accusations of bigotry or any real evidence to negate the gist of my statement. In short, the way you feel has greater sway over your statements than the way you think.
Fafaroo,
“Just step back and then read it without emotion clouding your thinking.”
Refers specifically to you accurately deconstructing Savage’s sentence strucure and understanding the differences in meaning between his actual statement and the version Oliver put up edited for propaganda purposes.
Which in turn has nothing to do with the strawman you set up below.
“Right. Because you’re understanding of the history of the white hetersexual Christian male isn’t clouded at all by anything personal, Mr. My Relatives Came Over On the May Flower.”
Refers specifically to you accurately deconstructing Savage’s sentence strucure and understanding the differences in meaning between his actual statement and the version Oliver put up edited for propaganda purposes.
You see, Amused, I don’t see anything mitigating about the full sentence. In fact, I think the second clause simply extends the racist thought as it portrays the SHWHM as a victim of inferior others.
In other words, it doesn’t mitigate the racism of the first sentence, it actually justifies it.
If you think I’m wrong, complete Savage’s thought. If the epitome of “everything right with America” can understood and expressed through racial, gendered, sexual and cultural categories, then we should be able to describe the antithesis of all that’s good in American using the same terms.
Would you care to have a whack at describing them?
You are quite correct in lauding the efforts of jews in America, as a group they are our smartest and scientifically most able members of our society despite facing quite open discrimination.
There goes the “Christian” premise you are defending. How do you know that all these Jewish academics were heterosexual?
Jews were the despised minority in Europe for centuries, unable to achieve success until the restrictions on their entry to the halls of power were removed, and forced by Christian-dominated guild laws to confine much of their business activities to banking.
So it is with all demographics. As long as WCHMs controlled access to powerful positions, they were overrepresented there.
I live in a part of the country where people of Asian, African and Hispanic descent are well-represented among the most successful, Jewish not so much because of the local demographics, and where women and open homosexuals once denied access are doing as well as their WCHM counterparts.
If your claim is that a demographic with the ability to limit the access of others has a higher rate of success in the areas they keep others out of, I will agree with it, but that does not mean other demographics do not have the same abilities when permitted to express them.
Fafaroo,
Let us examine the troublesome sentence with the word epitome replaced by it’s meaning,
The white Christian heterosexual married male is the typical or ideal example of everything right with America, and yet it is the white Christian heterosexual married male who has been made the beast of America.”
What is the subject of the sentence? What words are adjectives and what is the verb? What makes the first part racist? And the second part which is what the sentence is actualy about, your
charactorization of being brought down by inferior others is another strawman created in your mind, it is not found in the written text.
Your second theory does not hold water either. The typical or ideal of what makes America right is not by itself an arbitrarily exclusive term. The adjectives that modify the subject can not simply be reversed to achieve a valid statement that describes the antitheses of what’s good in America. We live in an anologue not digital world.
But Oliver deliberately uses editing and inflammatory ledes for propaganda purposes. That is his primary function here.
Repack,
That is all well and good but you questioned the validity of who had accomplished what in this country, and called me bigoted for accurately pointing out who was responsible for the framework, infrastructure, and technology that we take for granted today.
You are being arguementative over things have not mentioned because your original line of reasoning doesn’t stand up.
called me bigoted for accurately pointing out who was responsible for the framework, infrastructure, and technology that we take for granted today.
I called you bigoted for your assumption that this group is overrepresented in our history through some innate ability rather than its power to deny access to others and its power to write its own history, and for ignoring any bad effects on our country that came out of the same group. If you are going to trumpet the successes of that group, you must also compare their failures.
How many genocidal racists of the 19th Century were WHCM? What percentage of slave owners were WCHM?
Weren’t the treasonous rebels who seceded in 1861 primarily WCHMs? Following that up, would you argue my claim that the overwhelming majority of traitors to the United States fit the same demographic whose successes you are trumpeting? At least treason is an equal opportunity.
You are being arguementative over things have not mentioned because your original line of reasoning doesn’t stand up.
I think Repack says all that needs to be said in response above, but I’ll just add, Amused, that you yourself agree “People live in the context of thier times.” That being the case, it’s a little disingenuous, as Repack suggests, to hold out the accomplishments of straight, white, christian males in America as somehow indicative of innate, native ability when that same class was busy denying opportunities for just about everybody else.
Hell, women couldn’t even vote until the early 20th century. Does it make any sense then to argue that straight white christian men were just better political leaders than women due to their innate values and abilities, for the first 144 years of the country? Not really.
And the second part which is what the sentence is actualy about, your charactorization of being brought down by inferior others is another strawman created in your mind, it is not found in the written text.
Hey, perfesser, if heterosexual christian white men are being made out as beasts in this county, somebody must be doing that? Correct? I’m not adding that fact to the sentence. That is its implicit meaning.
Savage refuses to go on an identify this group of people who are demonizing the poor, downtrodden heterosexual christian white male. Why do you think he refuses to do so?
Since you are also refusing to do so, maybe you’d like to tell us why?
The adjectives that modify the subject can not simply be reversed to achieve a valid statement that describes the antitheses of what’s good in America. We live in an anologue not digital world.
Amused, Savage believes that those who represent “the epitome of all that’s right with America” can be identified through a certain combination of racial (white), gendered (male), sexual (heterosexual) and cultural (christian) categories.
If that’s the case, what combination of categories represent the epitome of what’s wrong with America? Certainly white, heterosexual Christian males cannot represent both the epitome and the antithesis of all that’s right with America, so it must be some other combination of OTHER demographic categories which represents the antithesis. Correct?
And, is this the group that is also demonizing straight white dudes? Somebodies doing that, too.
Or is their no agent implied in the second clause of Savage’s sentence? It just is, that white dudes are made out to be beasts?
The verb “made” has no subject, only an object? Really? It’s a strange metaphysical world you live in.
were not most of the “founding fathers” diests?
Epitome: traditional or ideal
Traditional in this sense is pretty much a mathmatical term. Who were these guys? The vast majority numerically speaking were…
Ideal if measured by thier accomplishments, who has accomplished the most or who has accomplished the best followed by what ever metric you determine best measures what ever you might be measuring for.
“Repack Rider” and “fafaroo” share the Hero of the Day Award!-)
They’ve made very thoughtful counterpoints to many of the right winger’s assertions.
Right winger “Amused ‘White Male Supremacist’ Observer”:
“Who were these guys? The vast majority numerically speaking were…”
Unmarried?
Deists?
Homosexuals?
White guys that stole their best ideas from Asia (gunpowder) and the Middle East (algebra)?
Diseased?
Benjamin Franklin was never officially ‘married’ (as I understand it). Franklin’s ‘wife’ was already married to someone else. Franklin’s was a common-law-marriage that omitted the fact that his ‘wife’ was married to another man.
My favorite founding father, Thomas Paine, was a Deist (a non-Christian).
There’s a bizarre rumor that the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, was gay (closeted log cabiners, a founding principle of Republicanism?-).
Without the Chinese invention of gunpowder, the English Pilgrims and the Spanish and the French would have had a much more difficult time getting a foothold in the Americas.
Perhaps the biggest advantage that Europeans had over Native Americans was that the Europeans were diseased, but had over generations grown resistant to disease, while Native Americans were NOT resistant to European diseases.
——————————-
I’m not trying to minimize the contributions that Europeans developed and added to our common culture over hundreds, even thousands of years.
But right wing white male supremacists like “Amused Observer” look at the rich and colorful tapestry of human history and selectively only see the white threads.
News,
You’re only going to dissuade those guys by calling them your heros. Everyone just rolls thier eyes at your postings. Nobody wants to be associated with your ridiculous comments.
“Amused Observer”: “Nobody wants to be associated with your ridiculous comments.”
That’s exactly what moderate Republicans who publicly identify themselves as “Independents” (and have privately begun voting for Democratic leaders) have been thinking about racist right wingers like yourself and the other savage right wing extremists for years, they don’t want “to be associated with your ridiculous comments.”
For the record, I’m not associated with anyone here nor is anyone associated with me.
I speak as an “Independent” with a conservative streak, only!-)
I speak as an “Independent” with a conservative streak, only!
You speak as a neo-conservative Jew-hating anti-Semite with no discernible skill set other than the ability to type.
Right wing stalker “Dennis” is off his meds again.
Please get help, “Dennis”, we’re all praying for you.
“Please get help, “Dennis”, we’re all praying for you.”
To the white heterosexual god.