I just read this article in the Washington Post about the reflexive defense of the rodeo clown who dressed up as Obama, put a stick in his rectum, and got chased by a bull while he played with his big lips. If you just read that sentence and wondered how in the world somebody could say it wasn't racist, I've picked out a few of the defenders from the article...
1. “I’ve got no respect for him,” said Virgil Henke, 65, a livestock farmer who explained his distaste for Obama with several falsehoods about his background: “Why, he’s destroyed this country. How much freedom have we lost? I don’t care whether it’s a black man in office, but we have to have a true-blooded American. I think he is Muslim and trying to destroy the country, catering to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.”
2. Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.), who tweeted that liberals are “thin-skinned and totalitarian,” has invited the clown to perform at rodeos in Texas.
3. Henke said he sometimes surfs the Internet for Web sites making fun of Obama and his family. For instance, he said, one site he looks at compares “Obama’s wife to a monkey — they have the same expression. The media makes it all hate. I don’t hate a black person. It’s just funny.”
4. Bernadette Brock, 67, who was square-dancing at the fair, said the rodeo incident was nothing compared with anti-Obama displays at lower-profile events. “Honey,” Brock said, “if you had been in some of our counties down here, this was mild.”
See? Not racist at all.
The clowns facebook page has over 60,000 likes.
I know this isn't a big story, but to me, it's just about the most depressing one I've read in years.
