I mean, the Republicans spent decades trying to make as if Apartheid-era South Africa was a bastion of freedom and democracy against the communocivilrightsofascists, so it’s at least consistent with the narrative. Just like the Yalta Betrayal bone he’s been throwing to the bigoted right wing in Eastern Europe. But it’s still fucking unacceptable for him as a representative of the United States to shit on Mandela like that.

I’ll be really glad when he’s out of office. I think you’re right about the people mistaking the statement looking dumber than him – I think having him as President has made us all half-retarded.

I’m going to defend Bush.

It’s pretty obvious that what he was trying to say was that Iraq has no charismatic leaders like Mandela who can lead Iraqis to their promised land, because Saddam killed them all.

Now, you can agree with that or not, but he wasn’t saying that Mandela himself is dead, and I can’t believe that so many people seem to think he was.

It makes you look dumber than he is.

Ahh yes… “I’m smarter than you are”. Always the refuge of a TRUE genius. Superior intellect. Bravo!

Horsies=Wishes

Bush=Ass

Another great post Jillian!

Frigging preview.

In South Africa, Nelson Mandela is, deservedly or no (considering how quickly he liberalized and the fact his tenure has produced a monarchist party to the *left* of the ANC, I lean farther towards ‘no’), heavily lionized. And in no regard is he more lionized than as Freedom Fighter Mandela, something he does richly deserve. He languished in a shadowy prison for twenty-seven years, a two-generation procession of torture, abuse, and denial which the American right, Cheney and Bush Sr included, worked hard to prevent him from escaping.

Nelson Mandela is 87 and in horrible health. He is mortal. He is the only human being alive in South African history who everyone feels comfortable with – and happy with – and he is on the verge of death. Jokes, references, or metaphors involving his death are as well-appreciated as those regarding JP2′s death were among even liberal Catholics in the beginning of this decade.

There have been consistent rumors about his death spread by the sort of people who take on Nazi symbols and consider the end of Apartheid a war crime.

So basically, on the surface, Bush is helping spread the memes of people in South Africa who believe the ANC are a Judaeobolshevik front organization and Mandela is a secret Israeli agent (or whatever, I don’t know or care how exactly neo-Nazis think the world works). That’s offensive enough.

But when you deconstruct the metaphor, well, think about Saddam Hussein. (And considering that Apartheid SA was an Israeli ally during the time in which Saddam was Israel’s Public Enemy #1, South Africans know more about Saddam than most foreign countries.) Saddam went from the fairly respectable Israel as a nemesis to, after they humiliated him by pantsing him and his nuclear program, Iran – which is, well, something of a step down, but hey, at least they had human wave tactics, right?

But Iran beat him down to a stalemate. So he set his sights lower.

Then he fucked up Kuwait.

The Afrikaners wouldn’t have taken Saddam Hussein as an apprentice testicle-electrocutor, and Bush has just told a country that loves him that if he had been in Iraq his bitch ass would have gone down.

Mix that with his vice-president being a prominent pro-Apartheid campaigner while Mandela was being tortured in prison and his unprecedented decision to specifically snub Nelson Mandela for the high crime of criticizing his policy on the UN (Mandela took Clinton to the damned cleaners and Clinton wouldn’t have turned him down to save his life – it’s an international embarassment, albeit a minor one) – and the unfortunate confluence between the ‘Mandela is dead’ thing and the Mandela’s-death rumors spread by neo-Nazis there…

Well, I don’t think Bush wants to visit South Africa any time soon.

Did he really say that?

This is a joke.

Please?

Nobody, so far, has mentioned what else the President said, “There aren’t any Martin Luther Kings in Eye-rack, either. I mean the Junior King, not the Senior King. But there aren’t any Senior Kings or Junior Kings or Coretta Kings in Eye-rack, either. Saddam had all them killed too, by Eye-rackey James Earl Rays. My daddy had nothing to do with that. We were all sitting at the dinner table in 1968, and the news said King was dead, and daddy said right out loud ‘I had nothing to do with that’ without anybody asking a question or anything. Did I already mention that there are no Eye-rackey Dale Earnharts neither?”

You, sir, win the thread. If the great Heineken brewers could mix colloquialism and parody, they might produce a post such as this.

VERRRRY Feeble minded.

I think it’s an insult to the Iraqis, personally. At the beginning, there were some leaders who might have been the Iraqi Mandela: remember clerics like al Sistani or Muqtada al Sadr? We didn’t like them, and we made damn sure to ruin any chance they might have had of uniting the country.

Any potential Mandelas in Iraq would have been crushed by the people in charge: namely us. We didn’t want a Mandela; we wanted a puppet who would do what we told him. If Iraq were actually an independent regime, they would actually be able to kick Blackwater out of the country, like they tried.

Either Bush thinks Mandela was a puppet of the apartheid regime, or he expects us to believe that he actually would allow anyone remotely like Mandela to have any power in Iraq.

Both options prove Bush an idiot, don’t they?

Mandela? Bush may not have known one way or the other whether Mandela is still alive — hell, he may not have known (pace, defender of the Royal IQ) who Mandela is at all — it’s something to use, a bone to mouth, a rhetorical growl. That’s all.

With kind regards,
Dog, etc.
i remember home

Well, in some sense, Saddam did kill all the Mandelas that arose in the Shiite south of Iraq after GWHBush’s Gulf War, and the US – thank you, Dick Cheney – failed to support them and let Saddam pick them off.

Besides, when did the GOP become pro-Mandela? Didn’t Cheney once condemn Mandela as a dirty communist?