Hard as I might try, as I watch Republican politicians and mouthpieces stomp and swoon over recent comments by Vice President Joe Biden—he told a racially mixed crowd that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney "is going to put y'all back in chains"—I can register only one response to the conservatives' response: Are these motherfuckers for real?
The GOP—the party that gave us the Southern Strategy and "black hands/white hands," Jesse Helms and Willie Horton—wants voters to believe that they're somehow outraged that Biden would cast them as racists, that the Veep would stoke "anger and division and blame" by suggesting that Romney wants to return blacks to slavery.
The GOP—the party whose leaders have questioned Obama's citizenship, called the first black President everything from a Marxist to a Fifth Columnist and barely stopped a syllable short of calling him a nigger outright—wants us to believe it is Biden and Obama who are preaching "anger and hate," even as Mitt Romney cashes campaign checks from billionaire birther Donald Trump.
Republicans have insulted and disrespected this President like no other. They've yelled at him during a state of the union, shouting "liar" as he spoke. They've wagged fingers in his face on airport tarmacs and then accused him of being "threatening." They've smeared him with racist stereotypes and slurs at every turn, calling him a "gangsta," a "food stamp President" and a "tar baby." They've circulated pictures that portray his wife as a gorilla and him as a "spook."
They've railed about wanting "their" country back—as if America somehow belongs to them exclusively—and longed for an alternate reality in which the slave-holding South won the Civil War. Even now, as they try to make political hay of Biden's remarks, they seek to paint the President as some stereotypical "angry black man."
And yet the fake-mad charade continues unabated.
And for what exactly? Let's leave aside the fact that Biden's remarks weren't made to a black audience or even a predominantly black audience. Let's also leave aside the fact that Biden has made similar remarks before, as it pertains to the American middle class.
Instead, let's say Biden had made these comments on the floor of an NAACP convention or in a reading room at the Shrine of the Black Madonna bookstore. So what then? Was he really wrong? Sure, he was hyperbolic, but that's understood. Blacks don't think Mitt Romney could or would attempt to literally put us—or middle-class Americans as a whole—in chains.
And as overused as slavery metaphors too often are, did Biden really cross some line by hinting (at least to GOP thinking) at the darkest chapter in America's history to explain the conservative agenda? Again, how wrong was he, really?
Well let's see. Which party is it again that's pushing a Jim Crow-era ID law that could disenfranchise millions of minority voters? Which party is pushing to dismantle public education? Which party is it whose Texas chapter has called for a repeal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act? Which party's leaders openly say poor children should be janitors because they have no work ethic and don't understand getting paid for anything "unless it's illegal?" Which party blamed the housing crisis on the black and brown poor? Which party treats black welfare recipients as if they're all drug users and has pushed to have people tested for drugs just so they can live in squalid public housing?
So no, the GOP leadership doesn't want to put blacks in chains. They just don't want us to vote, control our political destinies, receive quality education, benefit from the social safety net or live in even the most decrepit housing stock. Nope, that's nothing like slavery.
But then what do I know? I mean, it's not like the Republicans would ever actually invoke slavery metaphors themselves to criticize their political opponents, right? Noooo, of course not. And if you think they would, well, as Pat Buchanan explains it, you've spent way too much time on the liberal plantation.
What??