A county judge in Lubbock, Texas has caused a kerfuffle for posting anti-Obama notices on the courthouse wall. Actually, they are more about Obama T-shirts, but they are pretty offensive nonetheless.
One notice is a fake diary entry:
Let’s see here. I need to shower, shave, eat some oatmeal (it keeps my cholesterol down), put on my new “Obama: Change we can believe in” T-shirt, grab my 9 and a few rounds, hold up a convenience store, and then go buy some crack. Who knows, maybe I’ll slap the wife around a little bit too… if I have time.
Another notice shows nine arrest photos of people (almost all minorities) wearing Obama T-shirts, with the caption:
Just think about this for a second: Did you ever see anyone arrested wearing a Bush T-shirt, or for you older folks, an Eisenhower?, Gerald Ford?, Ronald Reagan?
There are other anti-Obama cartoons as well. Some people accuse the judge of being racist, but even if you think he isn’t being racist, I don’t think it is appropriate for him to be posting political materials like this in the courthouse.
Even so, I can’t help but have some fun, so here’s a few retorts that I would love to post below his notice:
For heaven’s sake, stop arresting only people wearing Obama T-shirts!
That’s what happens when you make it illegal to wear Obama T-shirts in your county. In addition to DWB, you must have DWWOTS.
Nobody is stupid enough to be caught wearing a Bush T-shirt.
The judge defended his actions, saying he didn’t think there was anything wrong with what he posted and that he had not heard from anyone who did. To which I would respond: Did you ever notice that as a judge, people might be a bit reluctant to complain about your offensive materials plastered all over your courthouse walls?
If you think of a cute retort, I welcome it in the comments.
UPDATE: A reader contributed this particularly good one:
Republicans don’t get arrested in t-shirts. They get arrested in suits.
17 Comments
I thought this was a joke. Sadly it’s not. Let’s assume for a moment that he’s an out of the closet, unapologetic racist (for the sake of argument). Even so, he must be one of the stupidest men ever to walk upright to NOT think someone would find about this, photograph it, put it on the web, and notify a news outlet.
Are people really this blind to their own prejudice that they don’t even see the stupidity of their actions, even if they believe their beliefs are sound?
Because I have known (too many) people who are privately bigoted (not usually all the way racist, thank God), but have the sense to keep quiet about it.
But then again, my best friend is physically handicapped and much prefers people who call him “cripple” or “gimp” to those who say “handi-capable” in a show of PC over-compassion or only make fun of him behind his back. Maybe it’s better that the racists don’t hide it. At least then we know who they are.
The judge doesn’t really say why these people were arrested, does he?
Could it be that these people were trying to get into the town hall meeting on health care reform?
One more thing. Ever since Obama became a serious contender, and then eventual President, I’ve never seen such a surge in blatant, real, hateful bigotry and racism. Maybe part of it is that we now have the internet, so it’s easier to see (and the web provides cowards the ability to hide behind a computer screen), but we’ve had the internet for over 10 years and I’ve never seen it like this. It’s actually very disheartening.
i’ve come to rely on this site as a kind of one stop shop for the latest in political humor & in some cases a more realistic view of the political scene. so thanks so much for that. this is yet another ‘incident’ that hasn’t hit MSM. i wish i could say i’m surprised but i’m not. just be clear though…not all Texans are bible thumping YEC radical right Repugs. yes, even in Texas there are liberal, open minded…even atheist folks too. we’ve got a window of opportunity coming up next year to shake things up & return to our Democratic roots. return to reason. return to being on the forefront of scientific advances. etc etc etc. 2010 is an election year. now we just gotta field some electable candidates of the more liberal & Democratic variety. *sigh* atm…looks like slim pickings though. 🙁
Speaking of someone who lived in Texas for ten years, I’d say don’t give up on the Lone Star State. There have been some encouraging polls lately that show that Texas might turn blue in the next election. See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=180×58423
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/03/dem-advantage-over-gop-ha_n_250043.html
and http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-dreher_04edi.State.Edition1.25b83af.html
excellent links. TY! thing is, i’m old enough to remember when the underdog in the fight was a Republican. 😉 so its time the pendulum swung back the Democrat way. or if by some miracle a truly electable independent came along… 🙂 that would be even better.
Democratic roots. Texas has only had the Republican roots since Karl Rove using Bush stole elections from the Democrats with the lies. Hopefully you can get them back.
Wise Country is named after my Great Great Grandfather Henry Wise who helped Annex Texas from Mexico.
I lived in Dallas for about 4 years, and so I’m not surprised. The conservatives were just certain that any other white person must already agree with them (as well as be their religion, share their taste in food, and a whole bunch more).
And they would think that of me, until I said something in my thick NYC accent. So, sadly, I’m not surprised. And I got out of the state as fast as I could: when everyone I met who heard me speak asked me how long I was visiting, I got the picture.
But this sort of mindset is common in other parts of the south. I lived in North Carolina before I lived in Texas, and I had to deal with it there, too. So I can’t say I’m all that surprised. (Iron Knee, Eva and all, if you ever declare Texas sane again, I’ll visit. But as it stood in Dallas in the late 90’s, no, thanks.)
“Republicans don’t get arrested in t-shirts. They get arrested in suits”
Although I fear there may be an uptick in people getting arrested in t-shirts with bleeding trees on them.
I still think McCain should apologize to the country for what he did to it. That (quite sincere) silencing wave of his hands to the booing crowd on election night when he mentioned Obama’s name clearly wasn’t enough.
I like Mike’s retort.
As a teenager, my husband went on a family trip with his older sister and her husband, who is from Texas. He described his brother-in-law’s family as “the nicest racists you’d ever meet.”
I think I just might use this as an opening activity in one of my classes this Fall.
Eva and Thought Dancer are right.
Karl Rove’s lies (and before him, Lee Atwater, and before him, the committee to re-elect President Nixon) are centrally to blame for much of the anti-intellectual rancor in today’s politics. Southern Dixiecrats were never totally comfortable in their alliance with Northern liberals, but they were gentlemanly enough to ROUTINELY pass bipartisan legislation in Washington. It’s totally changed today. Once in a while, you hear some of the old dinosaurs in Congress lament on how bad it’s become…George Voinovich, Ray LaHood, and Robert Byrd, to name a few.
I have a feeling that part of the reason the South is the way that it is is because it has a lot of people who rarely travel outside the South and widespread income inequality. It’s like this in other parts of the world, as well. Whenever you have a wide gap between the ruling class and the poor, and the ruling class as a whole isn’t particularly curious about the world, then you get the perfect recipe for racism and all kinds of social inequities.
@starluna. As a black man from the Northeast, having gone to my first Mississippi wedding a few weeks ago, I completely agree with your husband…
Don’t you remember the mass arrest of black people wearing ‘Vote for Change – Lincoln 1860’? No?
Ok, but seriously. Although I will say I totally disagree with his actions, I don’t think he was being racist. The first black president…This was going to raise race issue no matter how you slice it. But who is making this a race issue? Ignorant people, that are the type to get arrested. And it is no secret that black people are arrested more often. I am sorry, but that is statistical, not racist.
Shocker – you aren’t implying that Obama’s race somehow caused the judge to behave in a racist manner? I suppose the next time I’m rejected for a job, denied a promotion, sexually harassed, or otherwise targeted for some negative consequence I can blame Sonia Sotomayor for calling attention to the existence of highly educated Latinas? And here I was thinking that moving up the social ladder was actually contributing to a more just society.
The definition of racism used by social scientists is: The claim of a relationship between either immutable characteristics, social or cultural traits and behaviors with the purpose of asserting the superiority of a group. So, asserting that mostly black individuals (immutable characteristic) who support Barack Obama (social trait) are more likely to commit a number of illegal acts and get arrested (behavior) in what is obviously a claim of superiority is by definition racism.
Racist actions such as these also fall under prohibitions of “creating a hostile work environment” which can be claimed on both political affiliation and racial grounds. Don’t even get me started on the potential for overturning convictions now.
As far as the statistics around arrest numbers, I encourage you to google “disproportionate policing” to education yourself about the apparently high rates of arrests among non-white and poor groups. You should couple this with an additional search of the term “institutional racism.”
You might also want to read “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” (http://www.case.edu/president/aaction/UnpackingTheKnapsack.pdf) for a better understanding of white privilege.
And while you are at it, why don’t you go here (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/) to develop a better, and more personal, understanding of the concept of implicit bias.
You said it, Starluna.
I just love it that we can have a president (Nixon) who purposely ramped up drug laws so that he could arrest more blacks (to play into racial fears), but then people turn around and use the fact that more blacks get arrested as some sort of statistic and claim that it is not racist.
Reminds me of when while people first wrote IQ tests, which has a huge white culture bias, and then used them to “prove” that blacks were less intelligent than whites.
If you are going to hide behind a claim of “statistics”, then you cannot also imply that correlation implies causation. Nor can you use a statistic about a *group* to assign an attribute to an individual of that group. That’s just statistical!
The truth hurts.
Maybe they were arrested for stealing Obama t-shirts.
Ummm, Republicans tend not to get arrested due to not doing things illegal. Last I knew, it was not illegal to be stupid…just stupid and commit crimes. I can see more crimes being committed by people that are more inclined to vote Democrat than Republican.