Maureen Dowd, whom I don't hold in the highest regard as a columnist because of her snide and too-cutesy metaphors, wrote a more serious piece in yesterday's New York Times about Joe Wilson's disrespect during President Obama's speech to Congress.
She said had formerly disagreed that racism is at the bottom of the anti-Obama sentiments because other reform-minded presidents have always had their shrill detractors: FDR had Father Coughlin, Truman had McCarthy, and JFK the John Birchers.
But Dowd said that Joe Wilson's shocking disrespect for the office of the president convinced her that "Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it." She quoted African-American Congressman Jim Clyburn (D-SC) as saying that these outbursts have to do with delegitimizing Obama as president.
You can imagine this angry white Southerner sitting there being lectured to by a black man standing before Congress in his rightful role as president of the United States, and it was just more than he could take. In his shouted "You lie," there is an implied extra word: "You lie, boy."
Dowd made a cogent observation: "For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both."
Worth pondering, but that's not the complete answer. The anti-Obama cult is not just in the South. I think it's a more generic fear among those who feel their way of life is being threatened, and it focuses on different things. For some it's the illegal immigrants; for others, it's their guns or jobs. Others it's a more abstract and paranoid "government control" or fear of the Other or whatever hot button issue their preachers have fulminated against: abortion, gays, taxes, Muslims.
Fear and ignorance are dangerous motivators. Combine fear and ignorance with power -- and guns -- and we have a serious problem.
Ralph
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