Vile.
Despicable.
Petty.
The behavior of Republicans and the vile nature of the venom being thrown at Obama is beyond anything that I have ever seen or imagined.
Leaving policy and politics aside, as a society, we should be ostracizing all thinly-veiled and blatant racism in this country. We should be calling it out at every turn. It is not about playing the race card. It is about calling a spade a spade. This is much different than an overly-zealous expedition into an extramarital affair a la Clinton. This is crazy.
And, no, just because the Republican party keeps a black man in the house (Michael Steele) does not mean that the Republican party, in general, and countless elected officials, in particular, in addition to an entire TV station (Fox News,) are not racists and bigots. The truth is they are racists. And it is unacceptable.
So, recently as I watch the US political system and social fabric unravel, that scene at the end of A Time to Kill keeps running my mind. More below the fold.
A Time to Kill was that movie where two white supremacists come across a 10-year-old black girl, Tonya, in rural Mississippi. They do unimaginable things and dump her in a nearby river after a failed attempt to hang her. She survives and the men are arrested.
Long story short, her father, Carl Lee, goes to the county courthouse and opens fire killing the two supremacists afraid that they will be acquitted. Carl Lee then goes on trial for murder.
Matthew McConaughey plays the lawyer, Jake. Things in the case are not going well on a jury stacked with southern white folks that seem very disinclined to free a black man that had killed a white man. Jake advises the father to accept a lesser guilty plea. Carl Lee refuses, telling Jake that his views on justice and race are wrong.
The courthouse is packed to see the attorneys' closing arguments. Jake tells the jury to close their eyes and listen to a story. He describes, in slow and painful detail, the rape of a young 10-year-old girl, mirroring the story of Tonya's rape. It is heart-wrenching scene. He then asks the jury with their eyes still closed, in his final comment, to "now imagine she's white." It is a final burst of imagery that at last challenges the nature of the trial, raising the racist culture of the community in which the crime took place, that the actions of Carl Lee would not have been called to question before the court of law had the little girl been white. It unearths the fact that the father's motive in murdering the rapists would have been seen by the public as justified, and there would not have been any prosecution.
Well, think about Obama and what he has endured. The Republicans. The obtructionism. The breakdown in any semblance of decorum and civility. The Republican (Tea) Party movement. Everything.
Now imagine he's white.