Metal Reviews

MSNBC is a conservative network. It comes down to how they frame issues. Ed Shultz is good and so is obermann. But lets get real, those two are left leaning centrists.

Wait, WTF is Obama doing now? Opening vast areas of ocean to drilling, when he promised he was against it before he was elected? Bah. The man can't be trusted.

Thoughts, anyone?

Haven't heard about that.

Edit: So after checking it out in an article, I don't think it's a big stain on the guy's character. He promised by bipartisan deals and this is what it is. It's a concession to make larger deals for the larger goal of an energy policy revamping. It sucks but its politics. After all the hype about a totalitarian Pelosi-Obama regime, it was the right move.

If he truly pushed his agenda I think he would've would have forced oil companies to rebuild their platforms lost after Katrina and force 'em to build new refineries because no matter how much we drill, our refineries are at max capacity. This drilling won't affect how much gasoline consumers will have access to yet it might affect our gas prices in the standard virtual capitalism fluctuation way like how prices rise at every hint of danger in the Middle East. This is really dumb as an energy move but a respectable political move.

http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/03/31/ ... -of-maybe/

See that article says how iffy the whole situation is so I think it's a great political move as concession to conservatives without giving them much.

This however is fucking ridiculous:



Black people are commonly referred to as being over-sensualized, ex: having large dicks and taking all the white women. The phrase 'once you go black, you don't go back' is the epitome of this in a nutshell. Society, dare I say white society, want to act as if black people are hypersexualized and it's a common conception that this leads them to rape, as can be seen in all the unfounded reports of rape after Katrina with no actual foundation. To show Obama as raping Lady Liberty is fucking racist and it's rather despicable. It wasn't raping Lady Liberty when we outlawed theft yet that blatantly took away the freedom to steal from one another yet laws are always challenged as restricting rights when first proposed. Get over it, conservatives.

People from my school have been digging up our yard and planting shit to try and get food planted around campus. I don't entirely approve but it's pretty fun and everyone is talking about it.

It's not necessarily racist, though. Histrionic and laughable, sure, but not worth getting in a fuss over considering that it's a cartoon.

If it isn't racist then I would've liked to have seen it after Bush raped our privacy, our military's stability or the middle class. Or when Reagan raped the possibility future jobs by deregulating the movement of companies across seas, raping social security fund by borrowing heavily from it or raping unions. That's why I see it as racist.

To ignore the first black president being portrayed as a racist for doing things that some people disagree with seems an overly heavy-handed way of saying 'hey i'm cool and liberal; i don't call foul on conservatives when they portray obama in extremely racist stereotypes.' Maybe across the pond, blacks aren't seen as rape prone but looking at the Blazing Saddles joke for instance 'where all ya white women at' or even a highly common plea by women who fell in love with blacks as claiming that they actually were raped and they disapprove of miscegenation. Native Son or Invisible Man is about exactly that I believe or something along those lines. It was well laid out by Fanon as well in Black Skin, White Masks.

Oh come on, they wouldn't portray Biden raping Lady L? And because the left didn't make rape jokes about Bush, the right can't about Obama? Heck, you could just as easily argue that you're making Obama's blackness an issue rather than them, and seeing insults where none are meant. Being 'cool and liberal' doesn't mean not wanting to call foul, it means completely the opposite; not impeding on their freedom of speech to be foul. You may not get the 'joke', but that doesn't mean you have the right to tell others what can and can't be published. I'm not saying that the right aren't racist, just that there are better targets than this cartoon, which is douche-y and moronic, sure.

The article doesn't show Pelosi raping Uncle Sam now does it? I'm not going to ignore Obama's blackness because black people's blackness is still very much an issue in contemporary society. If it showed Scott McCoy raping Uncle Sam I wouldn't call it homophobic because gay people aren't portrayed as oversexualized and prone to butt rape. It's not right to point out his sexual preference but it wouldn't be homophobic.

I'm also not saying they can't print that at all. I'm just calling it as it is and that's racist. I get the 'joke'; it's a joke based on the portrayal of black people as sexual carnivores of white women, now, being translated into the black dictator who preys on our American values. If you think it's simply the president treading on liberties then they could've easily shown him stepping on the constitution. Instead, it's a black man raping, which is rooted in our cultural consciousness as what "they" will do if not controlled.

Eh, I don't see why you can't call a cartoon aimed at a gay man homophobic - that'd be more likely here than one aimed at a black man. Gay people aren't prone to anal rape, but black men are? Really? And of course they're going to go for shock value (reading around, apparently the right are using lots of rape metaphors at the moment) which will make more of an impact on people than someone stepping on something.

Overall, like I said, it's moronic, and so ridiculous that it's really not worth making a fuss over. Did Obama rape Lady Liberty by passing a bill that some right wing idiots and some other right wing people didn't like? No, he didn't. Is it more racist than stupid? No.

Black men aren't prone to rape at all yet it has been promoted in the cultural consciousness that that is true. Therefore, this comic promotes that falsity which has been a premise of racism for centuries.

Eh, if you really want to say that teabaggers are racist, there are easier targets - the pathetic people yelling the n-word and f-word at Barney Frank and others, for a start. Take them to task properly, not over a cartoon.

But a cartoon is a part of the wider culture and carry as much importance if not more than actions for the very fact that some people tend to disregard their importance. If anything calling Frank those names doesn't actually address any characteristic of him, while this cartoon addresses an issue which black men have to confront in how they are perceived by society.

Well, we're coming at this from opposite directions. A cartoon is a cartoon; someone screaming 'nigger' at a black man is something else entirely. Even if you're right, isn't the best response to make a Sarah Palin cartoon about how Republicans are retards?

And the fuss made about this cartoon means 1) more people will see it, and said stereotype of rapey black man will apparently then be spread, and 2) the creator won! They're trolls who think nothing of offending political correctness - heck, think they SHOULD offend, because the founding fathers didn't sacrifice their lives to see communist healthcare take hold.

Two different things yet equally racist. The one is an outward act of racism while the former is an ideology instilled into the culture which actually appears less important but is equally harmful. We have to deal with the actual acts of racism until we can change the ideology which creates them. To do what you're doing now will not change the problem, it will simply persist.

'Rapey black man' already exists in our culture so grappling with it only brings it to the forefront to question it rather than letting it lay latent, leading people to make these cartoons. They are trolls but trolls promoting systemic oppression and I have to challenge that.

I don't think they're equally racist at all, I think you're elevating the rapey black man "ideology". It appears less important because it is; this is a cartoon created by a tea-partyer, no? These are the same group of people, the ones screaming obscenities and the ones making crap cartoons - on that basis, how is the cartoon worse, or even the same?

And even if the rapey black man is a stereotype in America, I don't see how calling attention to it will help. Where was this cartoon published? If it was a major newspaper, then sure, bring the ruckus, they should know better. If it was some little blog (as I think is the case here, no?) then fuck them, who cares? Don't add to their readership.

A blog's cartoon is being broadcast across the internet while yelling a racial epithet. How is the blog not at least on equal ground?
It's a stereotype across all white culture. It's a minor blog. Either way it is being broadcast and reinforcing stereotypes. Agree to disagree?

Heh, sure.

Found this interesting:

http://www.votematch.org.uk/2010/index.php

It compares your views with the main UK political parties and sees which you're closest to agreeance on. Just got up, so perhaps not as clear-headed as I should have been on questions of European directives etc, but I still got Liberal Democrat highest, oddly followed by UKIP, then the Greens, then Conservative, with Labour coming in at the bottom. Interested to see what Rio gets.

Green Party: 68%
Liberal Democrats: 62%
Labour Party: 62%
Conservative Party: 41%
UK Independence Party: 39%
British National Party: 36%