Thank You Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, Rightwingers Will Regret It

 – Stupid, white people do not mess with the memory of Dr. King and then get away with it –

By mal

I spent a lot of time in some neighborhoods on the South side of Milwaukee in 2008.

The area is a microcosm of America. Segregated, apolitical, isolated, islands of peace and social justice activists, often provincial, and with a rapidly changing demographic from what was once largely Polish and German [white] to a  multi-ethnic population, one aspect that stands out and that should inform political commentary is the 2008 mobilization of the heretofore politically withdrawn class, particularly black women.

Milwaukee in 2008 is an experience I’ll never forget. The embracing of the political process by many ethnic minorities who never vote, the energy, the hope; it was real. And it sure isn’t dead. Reading the various analyses on the GOP-Tea Party resurgence, though, one might believe so.

The Obama campaign brought so many people out to vote, the vote-obstructing Wisconsin Attorney General (and McCain-Palin co-chair) J.B. Van Hollen and the national GOP-vote obstruction teams knew they had only one slim chance to win Wisconsin, and the country: Defense, don’t let the other team score. Or in campaign terms, in anti-democracy terms: Don’t let the other team vote. [See  Targeting Black Milwaukee Voters, and Black Voters Across the Nation (Andrew Hacker, New York Review of Books, Sept 25, 2008) and Block the Vote by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast.] They lost. A record voter turn-out knocked the GOP on its collective ass.

Well, it’s been a tough two years. Personally, I would have done much differentally both in degree and substance than the Obama administration has done, but the statist-reactionary kooks on the right have managed to do something that Obama could not do himself in the mid-term campaign. That is re-mobilize the forces that brought us the first black president.

You see, stupid, white people do not mess with the memory of Dr. King and then get away with it.

That’s something that the Becks, the Newts and Sarah Palins are going to find out in about eight weeks on election day.
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And here’s saluting AlterNet for for its rebuttal to Beck and Palin who were decked out in red, white and blue on Saturday exhorting 10,000s of white people, real Americans, to restore their country, seize “honor,” and take back their government just like god and the founding fathers intended.

• Glenn Beck Goes Messianic at ‘America’s Divine Destiny’ Event Before 2,500 Screaming Fans by Peter Montgomery
• Glenn Beck Has a Long History of Racial Mockery on the Radio — His Civil Rights Talk Is Pure Fraud by Alexander Zaitchik / SPLC’s Hate Watch
• Glenn Beck’s Messiah Complex by Adele M. Stan
• Glenn Beck’s MLK Dream is Perverse, But What’s Our Vision? By Kai Wright / ColorLines
• Glenn Beck Is Not Martin Luther King Jr. by Robert Greenwald
• Glenn Beck’s Attempt to Bastardize Dr. King’s Dream