Over the past day, Rudy Giuliani has been roundly skewered for his racist and ridiculous assertion, made at a Scott Walker fundraiser, that President Obama doesn't love America because "he wasn’t brought up the way you [white men] were brought up and I [a white man] was brought up."
Now, Giuliani is defending himself from charges of racism by pointing out that Obama's mother was white. Ergo: he can't be racist.
There are no words:
Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York on Thursday defended his assertion that President Obama did not love America, and said that his criticism of Mr. Obama’s upbringing should not be considered racist because the president was raised by “a white mother.”
[...]
Critics suggested that Mr. Giuliani’s description of Mr. Obama’s upbringing reflected a prejudiced view that Mr. Obama was different from other Americans.
In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Giuliani dismissed the criticism and said he was describing the worldview that had shaped Mr. Obama’s upbringing.
“Some people thought it was racist — I thought that was a joke, since he was brought up by a white mother, a white grandfather, went to white schools, and most of this he learned from white people,” Mr. Giuliani said in the interview. “This isn’t racism, this is socialism or possibly anti-colonialism.”
Joe Biden once said that Rudy Giuliani only ever mentions three things in a sentence: "
a noun, a verb and 9/11."
I think we can now add to Biden's list.
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David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, recently published by Oneworld Publications.