Re: Tea Party Racism

On Jul 26, 2010, at 11:58 AM, [email protected] wrote:
> On July 25, 2010 at 7:57 PM Bruce Bostwick  
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Jul 25, 2010, at 1:06 PM, Doug Pensinger wrote:
> >
> > > Is the Tea Party fundamentally racist?  Or is it just coincidental
> > > that it formed as a black man was taking office?  For years,
> > > Republicans were in office busting the budget and passing bills  
> like
> > > Medicare D which was completely unfunded and will cost us  
> something
> > > like $72 B a year.  Where was the outrage then?
> > >
> > > Doug
> >
> > I wouldn't say it was fundamentally racist as a matter of actual
> > policy, or at least not overtly stated policy.  Most of the time,  
> they
> > carefully avoid using racist language or imagery in their public
> > statements.  Most of the time.
> >
>
> Don't overlook what is called "dog whistle" political statements.  
> This names comes from the well-known phenomenon that a highly- 
> pitched whistle will be heard by dogs, but not by people. And in  
> polictics there is a similar phenomenon whereby you can say  
> something that cannot explicitly be criticized when you you say it,  
> but the people who are supposed to hear it will understand what you  
> really mean.
>
> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics

I'm not overlooking it, hence my qualifying statement about overtly  
stated policy.  Covert communication is an entirely different matter.

There is almost certainly some degree of dog-whistle codespeak in what  
comes out of the Tea Party.  It's clear that they're occasionally (or  
even often) using specific wording that's somewhat unusual for what  
they appear to be saying at face value, and in my experience that's a  
sign that the words they're using are intended to mean something very  
different than what most people understand them to mean.  So I  
wouldn't rule that out, at all.  (And I'd love to get my hands on a  
fairly complete codebook., and would love even more to see live real- 
time de-obfuscated transcripts of such statements.)

"You wanna tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing?"  
-- Toby Ziegler