You know there are times that I simply want to cuss. This is one of them.
The Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson tops my cuss-meter charts this week as the winner for utter tomfoolery in the scramble to be at the top of the "find a black face to spout idiocies" sweepstakes.
Lord knows I'm sick and tired of having "ignant" black tools of the right-wing agenda being granted face time as guests on Fox News and other venues to spew bigoted, twisted versions of biblical buffoonery into the airwaves and cyberspace.
I stumbled across his videotaped sermon at Raw Story:
“I think that one of the greatest mistakes America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote,” Peterson says. “We should’ve never turned this over to women. And these women are voting in the wrong people. They’re voting in people who are evil who agrees with them who’re gonna take us down this pathway of destruction.”
“And this probably was the reason they didn’t allow women to vote when men were men. Because men in the good old days understood the nature of the woman,” he adds. “They were not afraid to deal with it. And they understood that, you let them take over, this is what would happen.”
The View covered the story, as did
The Daily News:
The misogynistic tirade continued, with the reverend warning against women in positions of power because they "freak out” and “go nuts" if confronted with an issue.
"They can't handle stress. They can't handle anything,” he said. “You walk up to them with an issue, they freak out right away. Especially if they can't get the problem resolved right away … they go nuts. They get mad. They get upset. Because it's not in their nature. They don’t have patience. They don't have love."
He said wherever women are in control, evil finds its way through, referencing homosexuality and gay marriage as examples.
”Wherever woman reins, evil is taking over," he said.
Fox News has hosted Peterson as a guest since the sexist comments were made public.
Hannity, who brings him on air, sits on the Advisory Board of Peterson's
Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND). Teapublican Peterson has landed on my infamy list for other comments like:
"Barack Obama hates white people, especially white men" and that "Barack Obama is Jeremiah Wright Jr. He is the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus! He embodies the aspirations of every left-wing black group that wants to tear down this country and take power away from the "oppressive" white man. He's not an obvious race hustler like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson; but Obama is a smooth pathological liar—with a wicked heart". Peterson has also thanked "God and white people" for slavery and described slave ships as akin to "being on a crowded airplane"
Had enough yet?
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Funny how the visibility of these clowns has multiplied exponentially since Barack Obama ran for POTUS and then took office.
You can barely blink before they shove yet another fool in our faces to mouth ministerial mumblings as if they think that the title of "Reverend" or "Pastor" will grant them the magical power to become divine leaders of a black exodus from the Democratic Party to be saved by right-wing salvation sellers.
The hype is being ramped up as we speak with pun-idjits salivating about how black folks are now "not gonna vote for Obama" 'cause he has supported same sex marriage.
Don't hold your foul breath, fools. It ain't gonna happen.
Are their black people who don't support same sex marriage? Sure. Are there white people who don't support same sex marriage? Yup. But all the media noise is about black folks' views. Chicken Littles abound. Even though most of this "sky is falling" rhetoric comes from the deep-seated wishes of the right, the recent self-appointed spokespeople for enlightened "post racial" peeps of color like Touré are gaming their way into face time.
Guess what? Black people are not single-issue voters. And the hype around this reeks of the same bullshit used to portray black folks in California as the engineers of Proposition 8, deflecting scrutiny from the power behind the debacle of the Mormon Church.
Clips of homophobic black pastors abound. Concern trolls multiply. As Black Kos Managing Editor Dopper0189 pointed out Friday, it's funny how they haven't quoted the Rev. Wright (whose clips were on endless loop during the last primary), who was outspoken against homophobia and whose church has an LGBT outreach ministry. May I remind folks of one fact? LBGT does not equal white. But the interviews I've seen hyped on the tube have rarely featured LBGT black folks.
How can we forget faces trotted out during the primary like Rev. Joe Watkins, an MSNBC favorite black shill for the right whose ravings can still be seen there from time to time. I wrote about this phenomena back in 2008 in Okay. I'm embarrassed.
It's getting worse. It isn't just right-wing Reverends. Any black face will do as long as television producers can find one to spew conservative spittle.
To be honest, most black folks I know cringe when they see someone black making an ass out of themselves on national television. We know why they have been hand-picked to do so, but it doesn't make the feeling go away. I have no idea how white people feel about the scores of white bigots we see on the tube. I'm not white. Those who reject them probably don't do so with a shudder thinking, "they make us white people look bad."
Lots of us raised in black homes had an endless mantra drubbed into our heads about how our individual behavior could reflect on black people as a whole. That's where the "represent, represent" refrain comes from in rap.
Can't tell you how many times when there is breaking news about some kind of mass murder or serial killer on the news, I've held my breath waiting to see what color the perp is. Do white folks hold their breath and then shudder if the perp is a Jeffrey Dahmer, who will reflect the behavior of all white people? I don't think so.
This feeling about black faces hand-picked to "represent us" as spokespeople is reenforced daily, since historically we have rarely been top news anchors, haven't had a black POTUS before, and only a few "leaders" make the news, while anyone with a black face arrested for something is displayed and described as "black rapist, black thug, black criminal ..." in every newspaper.
Willie Horton, anyone?
I am not making the argument that the black community is monolithic. We are diverse, and run the gamut in perspectives. But as an oppressed sub-culture within the United States, that very oppression and the struggle against it has welded a solidarity, which is why currently most black folks are Democrats, just as in the past they were Republicans (to counter the Dixiecrats).
The vast majority of activist black leaders since the days of slavery have been ministers. This is rooted in the history of slavery, with the black church as the only institution where blacks were allowed to congregate before the establishment of black colleges. From Sojourner Truth, to Nat Turner, to Martin Luther King Jr. we have a long list of preacher-leaders (even Malcolm X was a minister).
Republican Party gurus and political strategists are well aware of this history. Not that they only choose to manipulate reality with pastoral faces—any black face as a front will do. Bad enough we had to be subjected to the replacement of Thurgood Marshall on SCOTUS with Clarence Thomas. Then, in recent years we had to laughingly watch the antics of RNC Chair Michael Steele. That worked real well didn't it? Like black folks were supposed to see him as the Republican pied piper to lead us out of Obama-land.
Um, no.
We have had to stomach the raving of "commie finger-pointing" Allen West (R-Fl), who is at it again over Obama's marriage equality stance.
The faux candidacy (thankfully ended) of Herman Cain hasn't shut him up. He meddles in Florida.
The same way the choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate for McCain did not herald a flood of women to follow her uterus into the voting booth as a Republican substitute for Hillary, this "pick a black face" to be ventriloquist dummies for the right doesn't work.
The use of "find a black to attack a black" so they can duck charges of racism doesn't work either. We know who the puppet masters are and the strings glow in the dark.
And using the same illogic on Latinos won't work either. Marco Rubio as a veep pick for Willard won't lure Latinos out of Democratic voting habits.
So back to my rant on Peterson.... I wish that a group like Color of Change, which has been in vanguard of the battle against on-air bigots would throw a few more names into their hopper.
I'll throw Peterson's into the hat.
Who's on your list?