George Orwell must be rolling over in his grave

This morning's email from color of change got me to thinking about something that happened last Saturday. I was confronted by someone who obviously watches Faux News and who thought it would be hilarious if he repeated Faux' talking points just to freak me out. I was pretty calm for most of the time, but boobism is difficult to combat. When it comes to attacking Barack Obama however, you can't come across as racist, god forbid, so Faux News watchers have other ways of smearing the hell out of him... and it has nothing to do with presidential issues or even truth.

It turns out that the Faux News watcher overheard the tail end of a private conversation I was having with a woman about how the media ripped Sen. Clinton a new one for her outfits, her wrinkles, her cleavage, her hips, her pants, her age, etc... the end of the conversation was about how the media kept quiet about John McCain's obvious physical distortions and that thang growing out of the side of his face (which appears to be a threat to national security.) If you got half the conversation, you'd think that I was just ragging on McCain for being one ugly mofo, when in fact I was comparing news coverage of 2 candidates. And so? It was a private conversation.

The point of the matter was that this man only overheard two women lamenting the sexist coverage of Senator Clinton while ignoring the overt ugliness of one GOP candidate and went on a tirade towards me a little later on. He started by saying that on election eve, it would be broadcast across America, Michelle Obama's using the word "Whitey" to describe white people and McCain would win. I suggested that it would only be fair then that the world would know that McCain called his wife a cunt in public. That devolved into a discussion about how "whitey" is a terribly racist thing to say while I maintained that whitey is not a racial slur and who the hell cares about that story since it isn't even true? Well it supposedly matters a lot to white men. (Doesn't it seem that a lot of "conservative" white men have an awful lot of issues with black people and women of all colors? I think so. It's like they are guarding their balls or something. Well they actually should guard their balls.)

Then came more accusations that the Democratic candidate is a Muslim would swear on the Koran if he became president, that he uses "terrorist fist jabs" to communicate with his allies, that his middle name is Hussein, that his last name rhymes with Osama, etc etc. It was useless to even argue with such nonsense during this onslaught of carefully orchestrated lies by Faux News to scare "whitey" into voting for McCain. Oh there were a number of ridiculous topics to discuss last weekend.

I had all my arguments and actual facts at hand and used them well when I could get a word in edgewise, but when you are arguing with someone who only uses lies as facts, it's hard to keep your blood pressure down while re-educating such a tool. Later on he said he was only having fun with me, but I sincerely doubt it. I tried to tackle actual issues after that, but it was to no avail because false character attacks on Obama seemed to be the order of the day. I had never even said that I supported him for president or not, but I ended up defending the hell out of the candidate.

Again, no actual issues were discussed. I tried to bring up a few and was met with a blank stare, a pause and then more ad hominem attacks. Yay. This is the state of trying to talk to my fellow Americans. I am going to sign this letter to Faux news over at colorofchange.org


These are the references used in the colorofchange.org email and this is pretty much the type of crap that McCain supporters use to disparage those who aren't voting for him for whatever the reason.

References:

1. "Fox News' E.D. Hill teased discussion of Obama dap: "A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab?" Media Matters, June 6, 2008 http://mediamatters.org/items/200806060007?f=h_clips

2. "Fox News in trouble again over Obama smear: 'baby mama'" Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2008 http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/06/baby-mama.html

3. "Dems cancel debate over Fox Chief's Obama joke," CNN.com, March 10, 2007 http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/10/debate.canceled/index.html

4. Liz Trotta on Fox News Channel, May 25, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjYpkvcmog0

5. "Fox Attacks: Black America," FoxAttacks.com, June 2007
http://foxattacks.com/blog/572-fox-attacks-black-america

6. "Fox Attacks: Obama, Part 2," FoxAttacks.com, June 2007
http://foxattacks.com/blog/32376-fox-attacks-obama-part-2

7. "Fox News and its problem with African-Americans," ColorOfChange.org overview, March 2007 http://www.colorofchange.org/cbci/message.html

8. "SMEAR: Obama's Books Contain Racially Incendiary Remarks," FighttheSmears.com, June, 2008 http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/therealquote

9. "Schlussel: Should Barack Hussein Obama be president "when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam"?," Media Matters, December 20, 2006 http://mediamatters.org/items/200612200005

10. "Tennessee GOP Smears Obama With Alleged Ties to Anti-Semitism and Farrakhan," TPM Election Central, February 27, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/28y72j

11. "Obama, Clinton to skip Fox-backed debate," MSNBC.com, April 10, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18035439/