PJTV host, radio host and Tatler blogger Tony Katz got a turn at bat on MSNBC, and hit a home run.
CONTESSA BREWER, MSNBC HOST: That’s what a lot of people are saying it’s not a laughing matter. They say that there are questions about him, not because there really are questions about where he is born, but because he is black. […]
KATZ: But this whole idea of race, you know what, if there are birthers and they’re all crazy and silly for actually wanting to see a birth certificate, well let’s talk about the racers, the people who believe that everything is a conspiracy about race. It’s Obama’s race that people want to see the birth certificate. It’s Obama’s race that people don’t like the out of control spending. It’s not his race. It’s that he’s awful. The policies are terrible. ObamaCare is a lie and a failure. QE1 and QE2 didn’t work. It’s crazy.
As you’ll see in the clip, Brewer tried to make the case that the quest for the birth certificate was all about race because, hey, Bush’s critics didn’t ask him for one! No, they just called him “Hitler” and fabricated a smear on his military service.
The obvious answer to Brewer’s accusation: Bush’s father wasn’t a Kenyan communist, and Bush didn’t end up living in Indonesia for years. The Bush history, which was already very well known before he ever ran for president (he’d been governor of Texas and owned a baseball team, for goodness sake) doesn’t beg any sort of questions about citizenship, while Obama’s does. Pretty simple, not about race, but that’s not good enough for Brewer. Katz sends it into the bleachers.
KATZ: They didn’t say it was race. Everything that comes out of the racers, and they exist – the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Huffington Post”, some people at your very network, and you know I enjoy having these conversations with you. They are so focused. Everything is about race. It’s not about race. When we talk about Obama and the policies, it’s about the awful policies. It’s about the inability to bring down debt. It’s about the inability to tackle the deficit. And when everybody says, “Oh, they’re just after this because of race,” it is nonsense. It’s a way to stop people from having conversation. Political correctness at its worst. If we want to talk about the issues, let’s talk about the issues.
Well done, Tony.
Well well.
A pundit who isn’t scared about the race bait. And he’s a PJM guy!
This is line of response that should be adopted by every conservative and moderate in America.
Tell them the truth. They are the nutters, not us.
People might not be able play it as well as Tony did, but the method holds the promise of making a major change in the shouting match. If for no other reason than that it will stiffen the backbone of people who live in fear of being called a racist.
This approach could break through.
I predict that if it is used regularly and agressively, the race card will go back in the deck…because the majority of Americans won’t be afraid of it if they think thay are not a lone ranger.
“Racers.” Man, that is going to catch on. And it’s gonna hurt.
You’re right this will catch on. More importantly, perhaps we can finally move on. While undoubtedly, there are people who ARE racists, many, if not most are not.
I think that we may finally have achieved MLK, Jr.’s “dream”. I don’t care what race Mr. Obama is. I DO care that his, and his party’s, policies are bankrupting the country.
Unless on can read minds as they apparently CAN do at the HuffPo, one cannot make definitive statements that “Birthers” are racists. This is especially galling in the face of organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus who Contessa Brewer has to push aside to see the “real” racists in the Tea Party and the “Birthers”.
This is about white liberals and minorities who actually DO see everything through a lens of race projecting those same concerns onto people who are like the cartoon mule that takes a blast from the robot chasing Bugs Bunny and then says, “What’d I do? What’d I do?”
Hmmm…
I never jumped on the Birther bandwagon, so I must not be a racist. I’ll point that out to the next lefty that accuses me of racism… the response should be amusing, if nothing else.
“They never asked to see [George Bush's] birth certificate.”
No, they just accused him of being complicit in 9/11.
In addition, dubya was hardly a mystery. His family had been overtly in the public eye for most of the 20th century. He was hardly an unknown quantity.
The same could be said of EVERY OTHER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IN HISTORY.
There has been one, and only one, candidate who spent fifty times the effort hiding his past as revealing who he was, and that candidate’s name might be barack obama.
And they routinely portrayed GWB as a chimpanzee. And Hitler.
But you can’t say “Chimpy GoldmanSachs HitlerSoros” without being raaaaacist over the very first word.
Soooo, if we cannot question the policies of a minority in any elected office, should that exclude a minority from holding office? “A government of SOME people, for SOME people…” Ok, I know. I’m a racist. I will now self banish. And join Rev. Wrights church and beg for forgiveness. And yes, I’ll bring a check to church w/me.
If I buy into this notion from the Rainbow Left, then people of color who disagree with the policies of white politicians are all racists.
In reality, it leaves us where we were but with the added notion that we’re all racists.
The only problem there is that 95 out of every 100 black folks voted for Obama but white folks voted Obama into office because they voted on the issues. So the not racists are the racists and not the other way around. Numbers like that don’t lie.
This is called smelling your own body odor. Good luck liberals and people of color – your intellectual argument is that of a donkey.
Let’s work on last place teams in baseball. The good teams must be effing them over somehow. Let’s change the rules til the last place team is in first place – maybe some version of affirmative action where it’s 8 against 9. Here’s a startling notion – last place teams aren’t very good and all the excuse mongering, cries of racism and bullshit won’t change that, not in a thousand years.
It’s called life and it’s not fair – but when it’s always not fair to the same groups and nations it’s just last place. No shine, polish, lipstick required. All that’s really required is to come to terms with last place and stop handing me “I am a racist” t-shirts.
The Chicago Cubs haven’t won a championship in a century and at some point you gotta come up with a conspiracy there, don’t you? Hmmmmmm. Let me see. Racism?
If there had been any indication at all that GWB had been born outside the United States, the left would have been screaming to see his birth certificate. Let there be no doubt about that.
They made a stink out of McCain being born in the Panama Canal Zone (or slightly outside it according to the Pirthers), as if the child born to two US citizen parents would not be a natural-born citizen under jus sanguinis.
It would be interesting if when confronted by these baseless racist claims, somebody would say something to the effect that the claim was racially profiling, and make the claimer defend their position.
they DARN sure asked for McCain’s birth certificate, because he WAS born out of the country… and you know what? McCain brought it out and you can google it and find it on the web TODAY.
Obama’s birth was way more hazy than McCain’s. But Obama spent 2 years hiding his birth certificate AND refusing to even give any reason for not SHOWING it.
and his sycophants spent those two years coming up with names to call those who asked about it. Birther. Racist.
Why didn’t anyone in the media wonder why he wouldn’t show it?
Okay, Matthews wondered, a couple of months ago.
THAT’S IT.
the Democrats made dubya’s birth certificate an issue in Bush’s congressional race back in the late 70s. While Bush was raised in Midland Texas, his opponent produced it in a last minute campaign gambit to show that Bush was not ‘born’ in Texas, but in that far away and mysterious land of Connecticut.
Mr. Preston makes a good argument, But in fact the obvious answer is not that Bush’s father wasn’t a Kenyan communist. The answer is that in fact the Democrats and their media shills DID make a hue and cry about John McCain’s qualifications to be President, since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. And they made this hue and cry even though serving military and diplomats are special cases and are provided for in the US law. Yet at the same time the Press (including Ms. Brewer) was raising said hue and cry about the son of a serving officer in the United States Navy being born on a United States military base they did not raise one finger to ask any questions at all about a candidate whose father was, as Preston notes, a Kenyan communist and who not only spent significant amounts of time in Indonesia but who also, by his own admission, traveled to interdicted countries – something that could only have been done on a non-US passport.
This is not to suggest that Obama was not born in the United States – I never doubted that. But it is important to point out the enormous double standard. The Press told us that Bill Clinton’s history of draft-dogding was irrelevant. Yet they then turned around and tried to paint George W. Bush as unpatriotic (at a minimum) since he served in the Texas Air National Guard and did not see active service in Vietnam. The Press demonized Trent Lott for making a politically incorrect remark at a birthday party. yet they never discussed the fact that Senator Byrd was an officer in the KKK. The Press drove Senator Larry Craig out of office over what looks more and more like a trumped up charge. Yet Barney Frank, whose boyfriend ran a prostitution ring out of Frank’s house, never faced similar treatment.
There are many other such examples of the horrendous double-standard that conservatives and Leftists (they sure as heck aren’t ‘liberal’) face in the media. And that is the real story. The Left likes to hurl the race card since they think it will shut their opponents up. Time that our side face that card and show just how silly and irrelevant it really is. This response by Tony Katz is a model that the rest of us need to follow. Show the media we know how threadbare their arguments really are and expose their intellectual dishonesty.
BRAVO!
RACERS! I love it. A one word epithet that describes completely the shallow thinking that substitues as reason for those on the left.
I went to Murray State University. Our mascot is the Racers. Hate to see us mixed up with THOSE guys.
When listing the “Racers,” don’t forget to include 95% of all college professors.
“they never asked to see Bush’s birth certificate”
Lady…. Are you kidding me? George W. Bush’s father was a POTUS and you want to start a debate about whether his son might be an eligible citizen?…. Clueless!
On the other hand Obama’s father apparently was a drunken Kenyan bigamist according to the latest findings I’ve read. I can’t imagine why anyone might question Obama’s heritage…..
“Bush’s father wasn’t a Kenyan communist….”
…..A Kenyan communist that attended the most expensive private school in the US (Harvard) without spending a dime, while his infant son and mother were left to fend for themselves.
At least the Bush family paid for GWB’s Harvard MBA.
These people have always assumed that anybody who didn’t vote for Obama is a racist. They equate conservatism with racism, ignoring the fact that the Democratic Party was primarily responsible for creating and maintaining segregation in the South. Oddly, now that segregation is outlawed we see many African Americans seeking to use segregation and racial quotas against those without African blood. Racists!
I wasnt a “birther” either, and believed it was a losing thread especially with the media double standard in reporting. Anyone raising questions like this would undoubtably be labeled a nut at best, and racist as a norm. This should have been common knowledge.
This historic Presidency will be protected at all costs. Even if the US tanks financially, the history will be written by those ivory tower dwelling academics who will soundly lay the fate of the nation at Bush 43′s feet, if not from Reagan on. Leaving out of the collison course this nation was put on by FDR and LBJ.
I ping on over to the Kos, HuffPost, and other sites just to take a temperature of the opposition. And they are rabid and losing their minds. It will continue to get worse over the next 18 months, and I predict an ugly situation should the President not win another term.
Brewer has a brain the size of a pea.
“The Bush history… doesn’t beg any sort of questions about citizenship…”
To “beg the question” is to state a supposed question in a manner that presumes a particular answer.
For instance, to say “Don’t you want to know what foreign country Obama was born in?” presumes that he was born in a foreign country, i.e. it “begs the question” of his supposed foreign birth.
Incidentally, Obama is not the first President or presidential candidate whose birth citizenship has been questioned.
President Chester A. Arthur’s father was an Irish immigrant, not naturalized till Chester was 14. The Arthurs lived near the Canadian border, and Democrats insinuated that Chester was born in Canada.
Charles Evans Hughes (the 1916 Republican candidate) was born to British immigrant parents who were not then naturalized; his eligibility was questioned.
John McCain was born in the Canal Zone, and there was enough hooraw about it that Congress actually passed a resolution affirming his eligibility.
Obama is peculiar in that his father was never American. That, and his childhood in Indonesia.
If he was Boris Hrenovich Obomov, son of a Bulgarian Communist who studied in the U.S. for a few years and briefly married an American, and had spent his childhood in Iran… Would there be questions asked?
“If he was Boris Hrenovich Obomov, son of a Bulgarian Communist who studied in the U.S. for a few years and briefly married an American, and had spent his childhood in Iran… Would there be questions asked?”
not by the make believe media
Conservatives and libertarians do not ascribe Obama’s failures to race and never will, despite the left’s apparent desire that we do so. We ascribe it to ideology. It has ever been so. However, if Obama had been successful, it would have been the left that would mention his successes in connection with his race. They would be lauding not the American for his success, but the African American. And almost certainly at least a few on the left would ascribe such success to the fact that he is not white.
Think about that for a moment. There’s no real question that if the Democrats had fielded someone with Obama’s policies who was white that there would be no real change in what critics said or did. But *their* rhetoric would be different. Isn’t that the definition of racism? I always thought so.
Anti-Birthers want to make it sound as if there were no birth certificate fiascoes in the past, that this demand for the birth certificate was unique. It isn’t unique. It’s pretty damned common. Though never a birther myself, I recognized the legitimacy of the demand to see the long form, even if I kinda figured it wouldn’t say anything we didn’t already know. The left made the demand itself sound unseemly. It wasn’t. They went after McCain as well. The only reason it didn’t blow up into an issue was that he actually released it to the press (or, at least, one member of the press) when asked for it. Obama could have done the same thing, and didn’t. Trust is earned, and he still hasn’t earned it.
At NASCAR it’s always about race. Go Cousin Carl!
I don’t object to his brown skin – I object to his red politics.
Contessa.
So hot.
So very dumb.
guess that will be the last time tony katz is asked to come on msnbc
Katz’s Law states: “As a discussion about Obama grows longer, the probability of charges of racism approaches one.”
Of course it’s about race. Just like when Carter was President…
/s, for the hard of humor
videocopilot.net just sayin.