What troubles me about the Reid comments is that as someone who does not know the man personally I can’t help but assume that he does not have a single black American in his life that he is genuinely close to and spends any real time of consequence with on a personal level. Because if he did, I find it hard to believe that such a gaffe would be possible. (Note: black people who are paid to spend time with Reid or anyone else, as employees, whether as nannies or office staff, do not count as close, personal, friends.)

I heard Keli Goff discuss her article on Harry Reid’s comments on NPR today. Here is that segment as well as another view on the issue.

In short, Harry is basically the same kid from rural, white bread Searchlight, Nevada. He probably has never been around a lot of black people. In truth, his work to get more minorities working in the halls of Congress is a testament to his trying to go the right thing.

Let’s face it, the guy works in an almost exclusive white man’s club. The Senate has one African-American, one Latino, three Asian/Pacific Islanders and that’s only if you count White Poster Child John Ensign. And seventeen women. In a body of 100 people. That’s not exactly a microcosm of America. Hell, that’s not even a microcosm of upstate idaho.

So, yeah, his words are unsavory. Mind-numblingly stupid in a sense. Not that anything he said was incorrect. The first black president of America was always going to have to alleviate the fears of rural Democrats. Obama managed to do that.

But to have these racist “Kill the Kenyan socialist” asshats calling for Reid’s resignation is too much.

I say Reid should take each of them to task for their overblown charges of racism. When THEY quit, he will too. We lose the majority leader and the whole damn GOP has to resign and get replaced by uneducated Palinite teabaggers. Serves them right.

Great commentary on conservative idiots on this story from a couple weeks ago on the White House calling out it’s critics as fools.

Posted by commenter Ironcomr. DECEMBER 30, 2009 4:47 PM:

Birthers, teabaggers, radical right wing “christians”, secessionist, healthcare anti-reformist,etc., are all the same core group of poor, uninformed ultra-conservative pawns tricked by the corporate masters and cheerleadered by AM conservative talk radio to get these people to believe and vote against their own self interest.

It isn’t any wonder that the main weapon to keep the rank and file conservatives in check is fear. Conservatives fear that their guns are going to be taken away, they fear that U.S. will become socialist, they fear that health care reform will kill off the elderly, they fear that the president is a muslim, they fear that when minorities are in power that reverse racisms will run rampant, they fear that every nation under the sun wants to destroy the U.S. and on and on. This is the main message of Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, et al. to be afraid. After 8 hours a day at least 5 days a week conservatives literally become brainwashed through the radio and then some on Fox news to be afraid and angry.

Conservatives don’t even know what exactly they are trying to conserve. They speak of fair play and freedom but when a group other than their circumscribed group speaks about and want such things (i.e. gay rights, immigrants, minorities, the poor)these ideas suddenly become liberal pandering.

Conservatives don’t realize that what they fear most is change. The changing of American society and of the world. Thus their behavior is not much different from other conservative movements around the world, i.e. Taliban, Al Qaida, Likud, Abadgaran. These groups want to maintain the status quo and use fear and sometimes violence to achieve their means. These groups target the same type of people to believe in their ideology. These are usually the poor, rural denizens who feel that the rest of society is moving too fast and that they are being excluded because the city centers are thriving and they are not.

It is this simple mind trick that has allowed the military-industrial complex to roll along unabated for so long. The very thing president Dwight Eisenhower,a Republican, warned against. However, it was only recently that Republicans were up in arms against the slashing of the military budget and discontinuance of the F-22. This is just another example of how twisted and convoluted conservatism/republicanism is. It contradicts one of their venerated leaders and ideals.

Unfortunately, contradiction and hypocrisy have become the norm for conservatives, so much so that entire shows are based on it and have become very popular (The Colbert Report, Countdown, The Daily show etc.). When conservatives are confronted with this, the usual retort is that it’s the “main stream media” distortion, wholly ignoring that “main stream” = normal or average, non-fringe. Again this is just fear working on these people, fear that their ideology is being pushed to the fringe creating the us vs them mentality.

“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” Edmund Burke.