Where’s a serious discussion about health care?
March 30th, 2010 | 
Author: This picture continues to upset me:
And it isn’t Sarah Palin, though I am not a fan. It’s the whiteface caricature of Barack Obama in the background. I know it is based on the Joker from the Batman movie, but I also know exactly why this particular image was selected. This particular photo is not unique to this picture; there are many other similar posters that are out there, at different rallies and in different circumstances. It seems to have been adopted by a segment of folks that are virulently anti-Obama, but to me this is not the normal political caricature. This is a racist caricature, pure and simple.
Several commentators have written about this phenomena, including Frank Rich most recently in the New York Times. There are people that are not against the health care plan per se; they are against Obama, or they are against a black man, succeeding in a societal initiative that they reject — or maybe it doesn’t matter about the initiative at all. So the reaction they have is to be offensive, to pull out the racial stereotypes and the content-free insults or to spit on Congressmen or whatever they feel like doing because they are wronged in some abstract way; someone else is getting something that they don’t get or wasn’t “earned” or whatever the case may be in their narrow-minded little heads.
If we want to debate the points of the healthcare proposal, let’s debate the health care proposal. I haven’t heard much in the way of a serious debate about why people should lose their health care because of the economic situation or their employer’s bad times. I am not sure why my top notch health care plan should be tax-free while millions of poor people have no coverage at all. These are points that can be discussed, and in fact they have been discussed, debated, and formed into a plan that has been voted on and approved in Congress.
But the whiteface racism, this offends me. It is hard to imagine a world where we can discuss long term problems and solve issues like climate change or poverty when a health care initiative can’t be discussed and debated without these visceral, offensive, and content-free reactions.
Posted in
Health Care v.s Profit for Sickness
Eat real food, walk, ride a bike, make a friend
v.s.
Choke down crap, drive, stress, flip someone off
Thats the REAL debate or serious discussion about health care.
To simple you say? The TRUTH often is.
So kill your TV, junk your CAR, be the change..
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Thanks for the great site. First caught wind of this from a Ted video. Getting to my point, I do not believe that the issue of race is something that should be pursued. Trivial gimmicks such as this one should not be recognized by legitimate media sources. Like so much other garbage that pollutes our media, topics such as these merely distract our view. This being said I do agree that Obama is/and will be fighting a war of color throughout his term(s). And I may be a bit to brazen in my opinion that topics such as this one do not belong on thelongnews, but rather on foxnews and CNN. No disrespect meant and thank you again for the great site!
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