This is not meant as any kind of criticism whatsoever in any way of Gordon's writings.

It also makes a difference if your words are examined with a microscope to find the most remote possibility of turning an innocent phrase into some kind of "proof" that you're not really a patriot and that you don't really love America and have that "proof" paraded on every talkshow and radio show and newspaper the next day.

Perhaps if Gordon_Shumway had that kind of visibility - and enough people trying to trash his name - he would also require a campaign staff to attempt to protect against insidious insinuations on his character.

__________________
"No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities."
...Christian Nestell Bovee

Please. I'd rather believe the Washington Post over some mock outrage at a piece illustrating the objection to Obama, based "solely" on his "ideas", as opposed to his race. Like that is even believable, given the racial climate of the primaries, and now the "right" onslaught sure to come, in the following months.
In the comments, was mentioned that only Rice and Powell could be conceived as "viable" alternatives. Why? Because of their "slave mentality" and their loyalty to the status quo,(at any cost) which, by the way, not only undermines the interests of all Black Americans, but typical, "white", middle America as well, is the only thing that matters to the RNC, as opposed to integrity and decency?
Excuse me sir, but the imagined maligning of your fair city is chopped liver, compared to the much broader "maligning of America"....its' ideals, and its' charter...much more, the people the charter represents.
Fake. Fake indignity. Fake outrage. Distraction. Spin.
Remarkable that the prospect of an Obama presidency "polarizes" the majority, so succinctly.
Some whites, willing to put behind them, and the country, the years of injustice and division among the races, and embrace, readily, the words of Martin Luther King, so eloquently embodied in the personage of Barack Obama, who happens to be "half-white" (though that point is universally suppressed), hence, their support for his candidacy.....while others, gnash teeth, rant and rave and smear, plot and plan and express "mock outrage" at the fact that while they claim not "to be racists", it's his "ideas" that they abhor....I am reminded of one, so ill-prepared for the presidency, was voted "viable", as we now see, if for no other reason than the fact that he was the typical fare, a white man, from Texas, with a father who actually happened to be president before him. High qualifications, indeed.
Denial is pervasive. Denial about denial is moreso. Admitting the truth to ones'self, perhaps, is the hardest thing in the world to do.

excellent post

...though I doubt that the ones who should read - and think about it - will take the initiative to do so.

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"No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities."
...Christian Nestell Bovee

You, sir, obviously have no clue what the hell you're talking about.

This so called reporter from the Post came to my town with a preconcieved picture that was painted for him by words like "...like a lot of small towns in the Midwest...they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

He made claims about the conversations that go on in certain places in my town in which he had obviously never been. Implied that the city is full of racists based on interviews with about 3 or 4 people who live on the same block of one of the shortest streets in this little town. Then you claim we have fake outrage when you obviously have never been to this town.

You can go ahead & sing your little song if that's what makes you feel better. The rest of us will live in the real world.

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http://thecourier.typepad.com/rightonthemark/

"To educate a man in mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society." --- Theodore Roosevelt

Exactly what did you find "excellent" about that post?

It's nothing more than an uneducated diatribe.

__________________
http://thecourier.typepad.com/rightonthemark/

"To educate a man in mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society." --- Theodore Roosevelt

And your post was "prattle".
I got your "uneducated". Typical snobbery.

There was nothing excellent about it, Gordon Shumway.

And it wasn't an uneducated diatribe but rather a calculated attack on heartland America.

You are not allowed to disagree with Barack Obama....or even Eli Saslow. If you do, you are a racist.

Read the article again and tell me, what makes Findlay any different from any other city in America or even the world for that matter in regards to the information that is being presented about Barack Obama?

So Barack Obama is being smeared. Wowee! It must be the first time in the history of a Presidential candidacy that something like that has happened, huh? It must be because he is black.

Poor victim...

An attack on "the heartland of America"???? The obvious "real victim" here, undoubtedly.
Give me a friggin' break. If America had had half a backbone, it would have questioned George Bush and Co., at ev'ry turn. Instead, they gave him the proverbial "keys to the henhouse", "fox" that he is, and he decimated "the chickens", and no one cried "foul" (pun, very intended).
As "ill-prepared" for the presidency as he was, no one questioned his religion, his patriotism, his background, his race, his associations, his positions, his double-speak anywhere near what has been done to Barack Obama...talk about hypocrisy of the highest order! And then have the nerve to decry, "we're not racists, we are merely "vetting him" the way we'd do any candidate for POTUS." BS, and double BS.
The thought of a black man in the White House is cause for a run on the market for Mylanta, for some, and Advil and Prozac, for others. It's unprecedented. Folks don't know what to do. How to feel. Is it ok? Does race matter? According to some, it most certainly does. And it's friggin' America's fault. It's the friggin" American Heartland's friggin fault, for refusing, up until now, to have "the" conversation on race and race relations in America, that it now "must have", by default. No more pretending that "some of my best friends are..."..........no more "those people".....no more "watching Eyewitness News at 6, and believing that Jamecia and Tyrone, being interviewed about a shooting incident in the inner city, is representative of mainstream "black America". The Cosby Show is closer to "the norm", believe it or not.
And by all means, hold people accountable. There is good and bad in all.
But to point fingers at the black community, when incidents like 8 female cheerleaders, all white, from a Kingwood, Texas high school, engage in extra-curricular activities as the serial robbing of local convenience stores, as "a lark", and to finance their drug habits, goes "unnoticed" and "unheralded", and labeled "a fluke", then we have to talk about "media bias".
link:
Houston - News - Nice Girls With Guns


No, call it naivete on the part of Barack Obama, to downplay his race, and to believe that it wouldn't be a factor in his quest for the presidency. And because "others" have made it so, tread very carefully, when you point fingers at Obama, and make certain your motives are "unblemished" and not "racially motivated", because after all...........it's expected.

I hate racism, aaronssongs, but just like Eli Saslow in his article about Findlay, you are wrongly judging me.

False and pretentious claims of racism will not do one thing to solve the real racism that does exist. It will only continue the devil's ageless agenda to blur the truth, so that we are no longer capable of differentiating right from wrong, truth from lies, and real instances of racism from false claims of it.

There are any number of reasons that contribute to one's strength of convictions, and some of them are right and some wrong. Eli Saslow knows as much about the people of Findlay as he does about what reasons they have for the strength of their convictions. But he writes very definitively as if he knows.

People have every right, and even a duty to determine everything they can about a Presidential candidate so as to make a wise and educated choice at the voting booth. They have every right and duty to sift through everything they are reading and seeing and hearing about the people who are asking for our votes.

Welcome to the world.

There is barely a discussion if any at all about the color of Obama's skin unless Obama himself....or people like Eli Saslow and you bring it up. Why is that?

Oh yeah?
But where your flag pin?
It's pierced where?
No. Never mind. I don't need to see it...


Man wears patriotism on his sleeve and face
His Everett home is also painted red, white and blue