How Jan Brewer is trying to portray Barack Obama:
I won't speak for the rest of you, but these Willie-Horton-isms from the Right Wing were tired in 1988. One might think that by 2012 we might be beyond race-baiting tactics with the "brave, patriotic white woman" standing up fearlessly to the "dusky Kenyan." One would, apparently, be wrong. This is exactly what's going on. It certainly didn't begin with Jan Brewer, but racism was definitely a major factor in her achieving her current office. She's still using it for political leverage.
I'm finished with the politics of garish, angry, paranoid trailer trash. Call me a snob, or whatever. It's not that we don't have our problems right here in New York. Maybe it's that we spend less time trying to champion ignorance. When we go to the polls, whether we are left, right or centrist, we usually try to promote the most intelligent or savvy in our midst. Realizing our own personal limitations, we elect people who seem smarter than ourselves. Mike Bloomberg, for example, might be a dick (not might), but few people are going to question his intelligence.
We don't suffer from an inferiority complex so stultifying that we are willing to have some mouth-breathing Bocephus speak for us because we're afraid someone with an education might hoodwink us...
And to a much lesser extent than many places across this country, we do not run our lives by racially fueled fear and bigotry. That's a good start.
So to the state of Arizona and to Jan Brewer, sit down and shut the fuck up.
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