OBAMACARE = " N " WORD
Saturday, August 8, 2009
OBAMACARE = " N " WORD
The first time I had heard the term Obamacare with it's attending sneering smirk the speaker might as well said the N word. Makes me want to cry (see previous blog).
I did a little local canvassing in my small Alaskan village the last couple of days and figured out a couple of things about my communities lack of interest in the health care legislation battle. What really caught my attention though was the phrase Obamacare and the blatant racism projected while uttering the word. In the office of one of my clients was a wealthy gentleman from seattle up to do some sport fishing. We were discussing health care, cash for junkers, and President Obama in general. "You don't really want Obamacare do you?" was what he hissed . After thinking about the tea-bager town hall invasions and all the other nastiness associated with the right wing noise machine lately I began to wonder, is all the hate and anger about race and its attending fear; power and losing some of it to another ethnicity? At dinner tonight I dared bring up the subject with another group, though less progressive then those a few day before, and found myself attacked. Could have just have been their Yukon Jack shots and Guinness chasers - yuck. All evening I kept hearing the N word in different veiled ways. They even attacked my ethnic origin. What kept going through my mind all evening was Gabby in Blazing Saddles trying to warn the towns people of Rock Ridge about their new sheriff "The sheriff is a N(BONG!)".
So, what is my point you ask? I don't know. I guess I am just venting really. I know how I deal with unlearning my own modes of racism but do not have the tools to penetrate the blindness of others.
M. Paul
The irony is that while wealthy racists stand to lose if "Obamacare" passes, many racists of the relatively low-income blue collar variety would be the main beneficiaries. These are the ones who face bleak financial futures if reform measures fail to pass.
Many are impervious to logic, but if any are willing to listen, it would be important to remind them why they have a vital personal stake in the reform legislation.
Could economic self interest overcome racist inclinations? During the presidential campaign, an article (in Salon, I believe) reported the experience of a woman engaged in canvassing in a blue collar neighborhood in western Pennsylvania, going door to door. One doorbell ring was answered by the woman of the house, and the canvasser asked her, "Do you know who you're going to vote for in the upcoming election?"
The woman called back to her husband in the other room, "Honey, who are we going to vote for?"
From the other room, a loud answer promptly came back, "We're voting for the nigger."
August 8, 2009 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
How is being wary of Medicare-for-All racist? I think this is a matter of everything being a nail to someone who has a hammer.
Isn't it just as likely that they are mostly republican, conservative and simply wary of single payer, which is all the news has been pitching as being the plans currently before Congress. Perhaps what Barack needs to do is go around the corporate media and start making these pitches himself.
I am sorry, but if I hadn't actually read the legislation being moved through committee and relied on the news to tell me what was in it, I would be totally uniformed on this issue. I say this is more a failure of the media than some sign of racism.
The democrats aren't selling the very common sense proposals currently being considered or the numbers would be moving. Conservatives would be sneering at "Hillarycare" if she had won and they would be right if it had been handled in the same way.
August 8, 2009 7:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
JEM
Both "Obamacare" and "Medicare-for-all" are phrases calculated to generate an emotional response rather then simply describe. If one(the media) was trying to be objective I sapose the phrase "house bill 12345" would be more aproprete. I find most of the hatefull responders are not "simply wary of single payer" . Mostly they have been compleatly miss-informed.
I must agree on your assesment of the media exept for of course sites like TPM and Washington Monthly which are my main sorce of news in my remote part of the world. As for the decifering the legislation being debated I am just enough of a cinice to be sure it will be disfigured by comprimise. Hopefully it will not be too ugly for us to claim it as our own.
Are the dems really doing such a poor job selling health care or is Obama juggleing under the weight of a Depresoin?
M. Paul
August 9, 2009 1:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
A bit of both, I suspect. This shit should have sold itself to the left and right, so it really is the democratic parties deep dysfunction that is keeping this from getting done.
I believe that was Barack's biggest mistake. He left it up to the democratic Congress, who he knew from personal experience were a bunch of fools, to craft and sell his most important legislative efforts. That was nothing more than the president's learning in action.
Again, I totally disagree that Obamacare or Medicare-for-All are "charged" statements of any sort.
In the first case, as I pointed out, every political movement used easy to digest phrases to belittle the other side's proposals. In the second case, that is the name of the bill that the bill's authors gave it. They have positioned health care reform as a partisan battle and then are surprised we it plays out on partisan lines. It isn't just the fringe minorities who think single payer is a draconian first step given the actual problems we have and the existing system we need to fix.
Moderates in both parties and independents are supporting this legislation, too. Where the support breaks down is out further on the right where all they hear is the "public option" being positioned as either single payer itself or a Trojan horse to get there. Not sure how one can blame the audience for failing to get a message that has been poorly delivered, at best, and horribly bungled in my estimation.
Like I said above, this shit should have sold itself. Just like most "progressive" solutions to our problems should. It's just that the democratic party sucks at selling progress to a little over half of the country.
August 9, 2009 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Blazing Saddles by Mel Brooks is one my favorite movies. It is rich with material.
August 8, 2009 11:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't why the link didn't work?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upvZdVK913I
August 9, 2009 12:39 AM | Reply | Permalink