Carter Claims There Is “Racist” Tone Against Obama
September 15, 2009

In an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, former President Jimmy Carter said he has been extremely bothered by the heightened climate of racial and other hate speech since the election of President Barack Obama. Watch the video here.

Rush Limbaugh responds: “Can we really have an African-American president in this country when the constitutional body, the press rolls over and plays dead, becoming propagandists and stenographers — and then calls anyone who disagrees with that president a racist?” - (Rush 24/7 Members: Listen)

I respond to Glenn Beck’s coverage of this moronic outburst from “Mr. Peanut”
 

Dear Glenn,

I wrote to you earlier today about yesterday’s program, and in that letter I mentioned my concern about the racism in our government. Listening to today’s program, it occurred to me that I failed to define why it is that I believe racism is running amok in our government.

I did not intend to suggest that I believe that our Government is filled with white people who look down upon, denigrate, or revile non-white people. In 21st Century America, the vast majority of Americans have put such nonsense behind them. It is only the lunatic fringe who clings to the idea that skin pigmentation is remotely related to personal worth.

Racism is, in fact, the making of distinctions among individuals based on skin pigmentation or ethnic origin. The true racist is the one who suggests that honest disagreements among individuals must be based upon ethnic or racial attitudes, as Jimmy Carter and Maureen Dowd (and many others in Washington) have recently claimed.

These attempts to make every issue be about race only reveal the inherent racism of the speakers. If these speakers were not racist, the idea of race even entering into the conversation would never have occurred to them. I find this attitude extremely disturbing when I see it in so many of our elected officials.

But it also disturbs me greatly when I see three or four certain individuals who are frequent guests on Fox News, or who are even “Fox News Contributors,” try to put racial overtones on nearly every issue they discuss on air. I certainly cannot see racial elements beneath every topic of conversation, and I believe that the vast majority of Americans — regardless of their skin tone — can’t see it either.

I would find their comments much more believable if they could simply leave race out of their conversation. Since they are unable to do so, it convinces me that they are preoccupied with skin pigmentation; is that in itself not the very definition of racism?

This evening you played a sound bite of former president Jimmy Carter claiming that Americans can’t accept the idea of a Black man in the White House. You also played a clip of Maureen Dowd making a similar claim. They (and those like them) just can’t grasp the concept that the real issue that offends honest Americans is not Mr. Obama’s skin color, it is his dishonesty and his complete lack of regard for the Constitution that offends Americans.

But to be completely fair to former President Carter, at his advanced age it is not uncommon for one’s memory and judgment to become clouded by the effects of age, and his anti-Semitism is a matter of record. His comments in that sound bite clearly reflect his obvious personal attitudes toward people of color; otherwise, the subject would never have occurred to him.

Maureen Dowd, on the other hand, is far too young to use senility as an excuse for playing the “race card.” That leaves only the obvious reason for her comments.

Keep doing what you do so well.

Rick Sawyer
Parkersburg WV