Some fringe leftists enjoy nothing better than to accuse conservatives of racism. It makes them feel very tingly with self-righteousness, and that is a great feeling to many a fringe leftist. The presidency of Barack Obama has been a banner time for such folk. Here’s one example from our old friends at the Sadly, No blog.
Before we get to it, let’s check in with our friend Tammy Bruce. Don’t worry, we’ll connect this up with Sadly, No soon enough.
If you don’t know Tammy Bruce, you should. She’s a woman of varied and interesting political positions:
Tammy Bruce is an openly gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, voted-for-President Bush authentic feminist. A lifelong Democrat, in the 1990s she worked to help elect Senators Feinstein and Boxer, and aided the Clinton for President campaign. Before we knew he was a sexual compulsive and “did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
I know other lifelong Democrats like her: people who abhor political correctness, have many sensible positions, and are fiercely independent. One thing about someone who holds such positions: you wouldn’t normally expect them to be unabashed racists. One other thing you should know about Tammy: she has a pet raccoon.
A native of Los Angeles, Ms. Bruce holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Southern California. She also notes her interest in politics and individual liberty was sparked during her childhood in part because of the work of authors Ray Bradbury and George Orwell, both of whom remain her favorite writers. Ms. Bruce lives in Los Angeles with Snoopy the Cat, Snoopy’s best friend Sydney the Dog, and puts up with a raccoon she has named Rocky, who refuses to leave her outside patio.
This information is freely available, by the way, right there on the Internets. That becomes important; you’ll see why.
Like many other people on both sides of the political fence, Tammy was put off by Barack Obama’s undeserved receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, and she posted a blog post about it titled: I Just Opened a Box of Cracker Jack. Guess What the Prize Was? The answer, of course, was:
The Nobel Peace Prize! . . . [T]he new prize in the box of Cracker Jack is, that’s right, the Nobel Peace Prize! I have one now, too. In addition to the million or so dollars he’ll receive (perhaps he should he should donate that to the US Treasury) I bet he’ll get a Mood Ring with the prize. He can keep that for himself.
In other words, it’s now a meaningless joke. It really got that way when Jimmah Carter got it, but this take the cake.
Following up on that sentiment, Tammy posted another item with a picture of her pet raccoon Rocky digging into . . . a box of Cracker Jacks.
The headline of that post: “Breaking: Nobel Committee Announces Another Peace Prize Winner.”
Cute, huh?
Not to D. Aristophanes from Sadly, No, who encountered Tammy’s post during an evening troll through the conservative blogosphere, doing what fringe leftists do best — looking high and low for any and all evidence of racism by conservatives.
And look! He found a picture of a raccoon! And you know what happens when you shorten the word “raccoon”!!!!!
And so, damn the research! To hell with looking up the easily-found information cited above about Tammy’s pet raccoon. Why bother reading her previous post, in which she compares the Nobel Peace Prize to the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks? Aristophanes skips all that overrated Googling and heads straight to spittle-flecked howling cries of RACISM!!!!
Really? A coon? Is this where we’re at now? Because this sort of stuff isn’t coded speech, it’s not a dog whistle or faux-irony … it’s flat-out, no-apologies, bottom-of-the-barrel, peckerwood racism. Coming from a supposedly mainstream, ‘mugged-by-reality’ class of political commentator.
Well, no . . . actually, it’s a photo of Tammy’s little pet raccoon digging in a Cracker Jack box. Kind of cute, really — if you don’t have race on the brain every moment of every day.
In Sadly, No’s comment section, a commenter calling himself “EJ” gently tries to warn D. Aristophanes:
She does, I believe, have a pet raccoon that she mentions from time to time – so maybe, just maybe, she just grabbed what she thought was a cute picture out of her camera without thinking about the implications.
I realize that’s giving her a huge and probably undeserved level of benefit of the doubt.
Notice how “EJ” still completely leaves the door open to the possibility — nay, the likelihood — that Tammy really is an unconscious racist. See, maybe, just maybe, she thought that a picture of her pet raccoon was . . . just a picture of her pet raccoon. But we sophisticated leftists, who have race on the brain all the time, are able to realize that she’s just being insensitive to the obvious racial implications of posting a picture of a raccoon. Whether it’s your pet or not!
I think the people being wacky here are the lefties. See, D. Aristophanes and EJ, if we show you a “pet” and you see a “black man!!!!” . . . that may not be our problem. It just might be yours.
But no matter. It’s Blogosphere 101 that once you have committed to a position with spitting violence, you can’t back down just because you’re wrong. And so, D. Aristophanes responds to EJ’s suggestion that the photo might have been innocent and non-racist thusly:
Then she’s a total moron. Whatever … I’m sick of giving these things ‘the benefit of the doubt’ … and it’s been three days since she posted that without realizing ‘the implications’, so screw her.
Hahahahahahahahahaha.
Those guys at Sadly, No, in addition to being complete assholes most of the time, are actually clever and funny from time to time. D. Aristophanes included. Hopefully, once he sleeps on it and realizes how silly this makes him look, he’ll smile a sheepish smile, laugh at himself a bit, shrug his shoulders — and apologize to Tammy — and then move on.
But to be honest, I don’t think he will — and I kinda hope he doesn’t. I actually sorta hope D. Aristophanes continues to play the clueless buffoon.
It would be good of him to act decently, sure. But this is way funnier.
ZOMG IT’S REALLY RACISM UPDATE: After a commenter questioned whether that was really Tammy’s pad, I decided to search the Internets to see if the image was elsewhere — and it is. (The commenter also e-mailed me in the interim to say the same thing.) So my assumption that this was Tammy’s pet raccoon was wrong. The obvious, inescapable, and totally bullet-proof conclusion is: Tammy the lifelong Democrat, pro-choice feminist . . . is an unabashed RACIST!!!11!!1!
Also, she is racist against whites, too — COME ON!! Did you see the word “cracker”?? Do you think that was just an ACCIDENT???!!!
Oooooor . . . she was expanding on the Cracker Jacks joke from her previous post, and she thought the raccoon image was cute because she likes raccoons.
Naw, the answer is obvious: RACISM!!!!!1!
ZOMG IT’S REALLY RACISM UPDATE x2: Tammy confesses. Details here.