Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Race as an Adverb

Commentary By Ron Beasley



I still believe there are 15 to 20 percent of the population that simply can't tolerate the fact that we have a black president.  That said I think Ta-Nehisi Coates gets it right when he says race is a factor but not "the" factor - race is an adverb not a verb.

As I've said, I'm not convinced that Joe Wilson wouldn't have yelled
"You lie!" at President Hillary Clinton, or President John Edwards. I'm
also not sure that "Birther-ism" is more sinister than alleging that
Clinton murdered Vince Foster. For the most part, think that Obama is
facing what any Democrat would face at this point in history--which if
you're black, is the problem.



.........



If we concede, as most reasonable people do, that racism is a factor--not the factor but a factor--in
resistance to Obama, then in fact, what we've seen this year is, by the
very nature of an Obama presidency, nprecedented. Put simply, we've
seen the crazy-tax, of which race is a portion, before. But we've never
seen the crazy-tax intensified by race.





The Republicans have done a marvelous job of demonizing Democrats/liberals for the last 40 years.  The reason it stuck goes back that far as well.  In the late 60s and 70s there was a movement in this country - the dirty hippies - promiscuous dope smoking acid dropping revolutionaries who rejected everything middle America believed.  It was often their sons, daughters, nieces and nephews - it scared the hell out of them.  On top of that there was the civil rights movement which threatened their White America.  The Republicans are really good at using fear as a tool and it worked. Things are bad now for middle Americans - they are afraid and rightly so and the Republicans once again are able to direct that fear.  The people want someone to blame and with a little shove in the right direction they will blame the Nazi - socialist Democrats instead of the corporate Republicans who are really to blame. The fact that the Democratic president is black just makes it easier for many.  



The Democratic party became associated with the hippies and payed the price.  I have to wonder if the Republican party will pay a price for being associated with the Glenn Beck cultists - almost as frightening to a majority today as the hippies were 40 years ago.



A different take:




Update:



Another good observation on the teabaggers from John Cole.

....who could have predicted that the right, after earnestly supporting EVERYTHING Bush
and the Republicans did the last eight years, would determine that the
tattered wreckage left behind was not the fault of� conservatism? It is
just priceless. Again, I ask, do you remember all the mass protests
organized by Freedom Works and the fiscal conservative teabaggers when
Bush and DeLay were jamming through the Prescription Drug bill? You
remember 60-100,000 wingnuts descending on DC screaming �I want my
country back?� while wailing about out of control spending? Me either.

This
isn�t about principle. This is about cynical partisan politics, with an
assist from the media and the glibertarian excuse makers- only a
complete fool would be blaming Obama for our current mess, and only a
complete fool could look at the last few decades and think the solution
to our nation�s woes is giving the Republicans another shot in 2010 and
2012.

Update II

Conservative Rod Dreher points out that there is blatant race baiting and Carter throws some fuel on the fire.



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