First off, I won't dance on his grave nor mock the guy. To be honest, that would be far to easy.
Instead I want to talk about his legacy. I don't think it is very pretty. And to be honest I had not really thought about this until now.
My parents are sane Republicans. Moderate. But my brother married into this huge family a few years ago. I spend a ton of time with them, cause well they are family. What is the phrase, you can pick your nose but you can't pick your family. I didn't pick these people.
Clearly I am a liberal and darn proud of it. But I also know it doesn't help my cause, our cause to always beat people up if they say stupid stuff. This family my brother married into says a lot of stupid stuff.
They say things like Obama is a nigger.* I am rarely speechless, but when this happened I was. I just can't process how this can just come up in conversation. Now keep in mind this just came up in a conversation at the dinner table the same why I might ask you about the weather.
Now I am a curious person so I wondered how college educated folks could still use that word.
What I found was staggering.
See Obama was called a "sand nigger." I had not heard that phrase before. I found it has dual rascim going on. A nigger and a Muslim. I tried to explain that not all Muslims live in the Middle East, but that didn't work. I tried to explain that Obama's mother was "white." I tried to explain the word "nigger" isn't used anymore by folks that are not racist .... and it was at this point my dad jumped in to explain that I was in fact correct here. But none of this worked. I tried a lot of things .....
The next day I am sitting at my computer and I get a ton of emails. You know the "crazy" kind.
Keep in mind this is around five years ago. Obama wasn't President yet.
I followed a lot of the links in the emails. Almost every time they went back to a Breitbart site (or Malkin or Rush). That the NYT would quote Andrew. CNN hired him. IMHO that gave him "street creed." I mean he must be a "real" journalist. That is his legacy ..... he empowered this thinking and made a ton of money doing it.
*I should note I find this word so offensive I can't explain, but I think it should be said cause it is needs to be called out 24/7. Using symbols for some of the letters just doesn't work for me. The words needs to be written as it intended when used!