I always thought “raghead” referred to dumb white guys who diaper their hair: http://chrisvreeland.com/moran.jpg

Who knew it meant something else?

Jake Knotts is a former cop. One has to wonder how many convictions might be overturned based on “shoddy” investigative techniques.

Oh. This is South Carolina. So, not too many.

Jake Knotts is the prototypical Southern redneck poll. Fat, ignorant and pig-eyed. One suspects his forebears came to Merka in chains, directly from the king’s gaols.

Jake Don Knotts is a former cop.

Fiqqst for more jokey obviousness.

I love this part;

One of the first controversies I ever became involved in as a blogger was when Ann Coulter used “raghead” in her 2006 CPAC speech. At a time when even Ace of Spades (!) signed a petition condemning her, I defended Coulter because (a) I love Coulter, and (b) the person to whom she applied that term was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for whom no slur is sufficiently derogatory.

My argument then was that no generalized prejudice could be inferred from Coulter’s use of the term specifically directed at Ahmadinejad, a Jew-hating genocidal maniac who deserves a Hellfire missile where the sun don’t shine. (In her own defense, Coulter said: “You know, OK. I make a few jokes at Muslims, and they killed 3,000 Americans — I think we’re even.”)

Well then, Robert Mugabe is a nigger, and Meir Kahane was a kike. Surely you can’t infer generalized prejudice from my use of these words, can you?

By the way, the collective association of Muslims with 9/11 is what confirms it as a generalized prejudice, even more than the racial slur.

Knotts has apologized and I don’t see any point in demonizing him

Swell folks like McCain do not demonize without a point.

Swell folks like McCain do not demonize without a point.

I LOL’d.

Nikki Haley is a Sikh? Huh.

Y’know, I had previously assumed, based off the name, that Nikki Haley was some bottle-blonde twit.

Here’s the part I find amusing – that so very many people are offended about the derogatory term “raghead” being used to describe someone with Sikh ancestry.

Sure Knotts probably don’t know the difference between Musloms and Sikhs, but the word “raghead” is used because of turbans.

The laughable thing about this is that it’s all based on ignorance, yet they cling to their defense of it.

Muslims don’t wear turbans, nor do Iranians; Sikhs aren’t Muslim and neither is Obama. And India is an ally, not our enemy, and even most Muslim countries are, technically, our allies. Knotts defended himself by saying we’re “at war” with these “foreign countries,” when, of course, we’re not.

So here they are, using the wrong epithets on the wrong people, defending them by citing reasons that are factually incorrect, all to vigorously uphold their use of a vile ethnic slur.

But let Sir Paul imply that George Bush isn’t much of a reader…..

DKW – I once took swimming lessons (beginners lessons for adults who didn’t know how to swim) and a Sikh gentleman was one of my classmates. He had a bathing cap he used to keep his hair covered, but also it was quite fascinating the way he tied up and secured his beard so that it didn’t get in the way when he was in the water.

I’m thinkin’ Knotts thinks of non-European countries the same way he thinks of non-European people- they all look alike, so it’s just safest to assume you’re trying to shoot them.

Yeah, I was kinda amused when they first started using “raghead” as an epithet against Muslims. I couldn’t figure out what the hell they were referring to until I realized that what they meant was “brown” – be they Hindu, Islamic or even Christian. So it’s funny to me that Knotts finally managed to get “raghead” targetted at a Sikh (not actually a Sikh, but Sikh enough in the mind of someone who thinks that Sikh and Muslim are synonymous).

That plus McGrav’s comment about Stacy and demonization. I am literally (not actually literally) busting a gut here.

Bret Michaels is a raghead.

Shorter GOP:

Just because we call black people niggers, and just because we call middle-eastern people ragheads, and just because we refer to dark-skinned people as macaccas, and just because we want to round up and deport all the hispanics, and just because we want to reverse civil rights . . .

. . . means it’s completely unfair to think we’re racists.

Sikhs carry concealed daggers. They cannot be trusted, for real Americans carry concealed firearms only.

There’s a passage in Dennis Lehane’s “Shutter Island” (haven’t seen the flick, so I’m not sure if it made it in) where the warden of the prison makes this long, creepy, very RSM-esque speech about how even though black people are niggers, there are white niggers too. I can’t wait until that’s an official GOP plank.

The correct slur for muslim is towel head not raghead, for example Yassir Arafat wore a “towel” on his head like a muslim even though he was Christian but he was also a brown Palastinian who hated Jews which makes him a defacto muslim terrorist and trumps his actual religious beleifs because we all know that it is impossible for real Christians to be anti-semetic. The fact that Sikhs hate Muslims for some minor reason like decades of violence and oppression between Pakistan and India is besides the point because again, they are both brown which I beleive is central to his point.

Y’know, I had previously assumed, based off the name, that Nikki Haley was some bottle-blonde twit.

That’s because Nikki Haley is not her name.

I had always assumed that raghead referred to this type of head gear and not to a turban. This at least looks more like a rag than turban does.

. . . means it’s completely unfair to think we’re racists.

You forgot: “And if you call us racists, YOU’RE the racist!”

One of the first controversies I ever became involved in as a blogger was when Ann Coulter used “raghead” in her 2006 CPAC speech. At a time when even Ace of Spades (!) signed a petition condemning her, I defended Coulter

It’s inspiring to see that even in the face of overwhelming popular pressure someone has the integrity to stand up and courageously defend the grand old American tradition of racist slurs.

“Safety is our primary concern. Well, profits, then safety. Oh, no- profits, image, then safety, but still- it’s right up there.”

http://twitter.com/BPGlobalPR

I’ll have a go at a shorter shorter GOP:

Liberals getting mad at all the racist things we say makes them the real racists.

From gocart mozart’s BP-PR link:
Words can not express how sorry we are. So we are going to stop apologizing and just give our investors 10 billion dollars.

Yaknow… when the crux of your argument is “I defended Coulter because I love her” ya mighten want ta rethinks that a bit.

Well, I guess I get why she changed her first name from Nimrata. (Her last name got changed when she was married, IBTP.) Although Nimrata falls prettily out your mouth when you speak it (it’s like little polished pebbles tumbling into a lively woodland stream), it doesn’t Americanize well. You know: Nimrod.

As to the rest of it, I am not thinking about it. Y’all go ahead, though; somebody’s gotta do it.

I love “foreign countries.” Is he aware that every other country in the world is a foreign country?

I love “foreign countries.” Is he aware that every other country in the world is a foreign country?

Every other country except Israel and sometimes (depending if we’re talking health care or Iraq war) Britain. Also, half of Americans are actually foreigners.

Well, yeah, and if you’re a true USA APPLE PIE PATRIOT FER FREEDOM, you consider every foreign country an enemy for their sin of not being American.*

*Israel doesn’t count because its existence is of greater financial benefit for douchebag Americans, be they the Kristol flavor or the Hagee flavor, than it is to almost all actual Israelis.

FYWP and sorry, Chris.

In related news George Bush is a raghead. Oh… sorry, wrong head.

The South Carolina Republican Party must be defended because the Florida Republican Party is too important to become the “Most Laughingstock” state party.

re: keffiyeh v turban

A “New Yorker” cartoon, circa 1940. Bearded man in a turban, kneeling on a prayer rug by the road, in the midst of his devotions. Beside him, a loudmouth American leans out from a Cadillac convertible and brawls, “Hey, Jack, which way is Mecca?”

Remember all the to do about the Mohammed cartoons? His turban-bomb?

And more recently/relevantly:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2368
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/carnival_of_insults.html

The Sikh community has converted from wearing very nice fabrics as a turban to dumpster dived rags out of a sens of environmental responsibility. Also, stitching the multicolored rags together give them an amusing hobo look rather than a threatening foreign religion look.

DKW, from your link:

So my liberal friends tend to see the flag as the cloth that is used to strangle the Constitution, and they dislike it.

A co-worker, conscientious objector, veteran of the ’60s anti-war marches, asked me privately, quietly, from the point of view of someone who had studied a lot of history, “don’t you think we’re overreacting to this?” Then he said something like, “After all, it’s not Bataan. ” I was kind of shocked.

The liberals were right, just like always.
~

“After all, it’s not Bataan.”

That’s right. At Bataan, the victims were American, Gawd damn it!

Also, I wasn’t born reflexively antipathetic to anything undertaken by the American military under a Republican administration wrapped in stars and stripes rhetoric. The Iraq war made me that way, much as I imagine Nicaragua and Vietnam did for previous generations.

This is interesting;

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100606/ap_on_re_eu/eu_cyprus_pope

The Vatican’s trying to call attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East in the middle of all these wars. Naturally, Islamic fundamentalism is of great concern, but the interesting part comes here;

The 46-page document said input from clerics in the region blamed the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories for inhibiting freedom of movement, the economy and religious life, alleging that access to holy places is dependent on military permission that is sometimes denied on security grounds.

It also complained that some Christian fundamentalists use biblical texts to justify Israel’s occupation “making the position of Christian Arabs an even more sensitive issue.”

In the comments section,

As a Palestinian Christian, I would like to emphasize that the real danger to the Christians of Palestine is Israel, we are Arab, Palestinian Christians who have lost our land and our homes at the hand of the Israeli occupation and murder and we ask the world to stop this. As for the Zionist opportunists do not try to spin this your way, the Christians of Palestine will never support the illegal occupation.

Something conservatives love to whitewash by putting it in strictly Muslim vs. Jew terms – ten percent of the Palestinian population is Christian and while they may have no love for Hamas, they’re just as persecuted by Israel as the rest and they hate them just as much for it.

El Salvador, also. I was in collage when Reagan took over.
~

Also, I wasn’t born reflexively antipathetic to anything undertaken by the American military under a Republican administration wrapped in stars and stripes rhetoric.

Shit, I was. In fact, I’m suspicious of any military action undertaken based on stars and stripes rhetoric. It likely means there isn’t a logical reason for it, so they have to appeal to emotions instead.

Thanks for the link;

Reagan may have pushed for democracy and human rights in the Soviet bloc, but he cared little for these values elsewhere

Republican foreign policy in a nutshell.

*searching keyboard for “UNSEE” button*

Knotts has apologized and I don’t see any point in demonizing him, but I’m honestly shocked that any politician would go there. It’s unfathomably ignorant. Sikhs are not Muslim and they’re not Hindu. (And exactly how is the fact that Haley comes from a Sikh family relevant to Obama’s Kenyan ancestry?)

Liberal brutes! Have you no shame?!? Don’t forget, scumbags are people too! Won’t SOMEONE think of the poor innocent scumbags? STOP TEH MADNESS!

Oh, & from now on please make your hatespeak conform to its proper racial or ethnic target-group, because goodness knows, we wouldn’t want to have anyone think your rabid sociopathic racism was IGNORANT or anything! You’ll wind up giving all the good wholesome intelligent racists a bad name!

Also, spelling counts! Sloppy errors like “niggre” & “wetbakc” will result in demerit-points! Spell-Check is your friend.

El Salvador, also. I was in collage when Reagan took over.

If there is a hell, that motherfucker is burning in it, for El Salvador alone.

I don’t think that second comma should be there.

Also, I wasn’t born reflexively antipathetic to anything undertaken by the American military under a Republican administration wrapped in stars and stripes rhetoric.

You are the kind of citizen the founders foresaw. If Washington et al. could see today’s war-fetishizers they’d spin in their graves or urns.

A musical lesson for Jake Knott.

Mooslims are raghaids. Them other brown weirdos is towelhaids. The other other brown scum iz dothaids. Get yer slurs straight.

Also Coke is anti-emetic. Also too FYWP

I know it’s a complete waste of time, but on occasion I like to post the No Religious Test Clause from the United States Constitution:

…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Wouldn’t it be neat if this were, like, the law of our land or some shit? Then it could be taught in our public schools!

When two reporters—Raymond Bonner of The New York Times and Alma Guillermoprieto of The Washington Post —reported the massacre in January 1982, the Reagan administration denied it had occurred. Reagan’s point-man on Latin America, Elliott Abrams, told Congress that these reports were no more than commie propaganda. That is, he lied.

Yeah, that guy.

G.O.P. family values.

Unfortunately, these days the New York TImes and the Washington Post compete for the prize of who can distribute ruling class talking points first.
~

I have no problem refering to our resident troll as a goat fucker.

Care to comment on St Ronnie’s complicity in murder in El Salvador N.E.R. or are you too much of a pussy?

I have no problem refering to our resident troll as a goat fucker.

I am assuming he pays the goats–handsomely.

C’mon, give the Reaganites credit. They even had the ‘nads to slur the reputations of 3 American nuns raped & murdered in El Salvador by Ronnie’s death squad buddies there, suggesting that not only were they political activists and just got themselves into a death squad situation, maybe they were playing around with the sexytime and brought it on themselves.

I wonder if there is a special hell for parody trolls.

I imagine their comments are constantly deleted as they type them.
~

Wouldn’t it be neat if this were, like, the law of our land or some shit?

Nom de plume, it’s no fair to quote from the corrupted, liberal version of the Consitution. Once the Conservabible project is finished, they will get to work on the Conservatution. The clause you quote will go, along with any nonsense about “general welfare”, the power of judicial oversight, the Congressional right to overturn a presidential veto, the need for a supermajority to convict an impeached Democrat and of course all amendments except the second and tenth.

Then the Constitution will truly reflect the Original Intent of the Framers.

I wonder if there is a special hell for parody trolls.

The same one that’s reserved for child molestors, and people who talk at the theater.

ittdgy,

Yeah, I quoted that because it turned up in my search for the etymology of raghead – but now that I’ve read more from Douglas Youstabe Harper, I feel kinda dirty. d00d is a deranged nutcase, althoug different from his cohort in that he has a good grasp on teh Englishes.

Still, the point was that “raghead” references turbans. That it was applied by folks who couldn’t tell a Sikh from a Muslim or a turban from a keffiyeh is part of teh funneh of calling Nikki Haley a raghead. That rightwingers are so often wrong about everything, sometimes they are wrong about things that are already wrong and up accidentally being – not right but at least more technically correct. In the same wrong racist way.

they will get to work on the Conservatution

I actually just Googled “conservatution”, and was disappointed to see that the project has not yet been undertaken. However, I am certain that this is not the result of it being overlooked, merely that they are currently so busy rewriting the rest of the sum of man’s knowledge.

I get it, DKW.

I just wanted some mango credit, and eff Ronnie Raygun, also.
~

… and eff Ronnie Raygun, also.

Wait. What? Reagan was a raghead?

Wait. What? Reagan was a raghead?

Well, I never saw his long form birth certificate, so…

I departed the boat and came back soaking. McTaint’s arguments are internally contradictory, often within the same sentence. I’d describe the structure of his logic as follows:

“Someone made a racist statement. I reject this statement, although I agree with it, and disagree with my own rejection, which is based on its categorical nature. Racism is acceptable when applied to individuals, not classes of people, except certain classes of people who are asking for it. In conclusion, she may be a curry coon, but she’s our curry coon.”

QED.

N.E.R.

I read but rarely post here but you do seem to have an obsession with immigration regardless of what the thread is about. Why is that?

http://www.counterpunch.org/tripp06262003.html

A blast from the past on racism. I recommend it to the New England Ratdick.

@UKBrizzle:

NER is on the edge of losing his job, and he’s so angry about it he’s become abusive of his co-workers, started deliberately slacking off, drinks a lot, bathes at most twice a week, and has stolen a bunch of stuff from work. Meanwhile, coloreds are taking the same jobs for less money.

@ Spengler Dampniche

he’s become abusive of his co-workers, started deliberately slacking off, drinks a lot, bathes at most twice a week, and has stolen a bunch of stuff from work

Hold on, that’s the summary from my last work performance review. How did you know?

Wow, killed it early.

when they first started using “raghead” as an epithet against Muslims.

Yeah, this confused me too. I think it was the fact that Charlie Daniels had that book “It’s not a Rag It’s a Flag” at the same time. Like, you’re people of the flag, or you’re people of the rag, I was thinking?

However, I do think that the browner part of the world might want to think about adopting more US-friendly headgear. Like, say, those beer hats, with the straws that allow for hands-free drinking. It says you’re one of us and it’s great for the desert. You don’t have to put beer in them if it’s against your religion; I personally prefer sangria in mine.

I wonder what they refer to Bosnians/Albanians as. White European Muslims OH NOES

Oh sorry Bristol Person, I mislooked at your response and thought it was my previous comment when in fact it was not. I apologize by pointing out that you’re always near a Bath.

nsfw: BRISTOLS!

Following the move to London I can no longer access the spa’s of Bath. Damnit!

Your link scares me somewhat.

Why do you liberals defend the non-existent right of illegal aliens to stay in this country?

speaking for myself, mostly because assrabbits like you hate the idea so much. You shitchunks are so wrong about so many things (otherwise known as the Kristol effect) that the taking the opposite position is a pretty solid tactic. Don’t you ever wonder why liberals have been so right about so many things in the last half-century?

speaking for myself, mostly because assrabbits like you hate the idea so much.

Speaking for myself, I plead guilt

Speaking for myself, I plead guilty as well. Considering that conservative SOP the moment Obama was in office was to make him fail no matter what and considering that they’re willing to vote against their own ideas (the health care plan is Romney’s, the antiterror policy is Reagan’s, the immigration plan is Bush’s) the moment a liberal adopts them, it doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable.

A character in the first Wheel of Time book explained her motivation thusly: “If the Dark One wants a thing, I oppose it. Could there be a simpler reason, or better?”

Substitute “Republicans” or “Dick Cheney” for “Dark One” and you’ve got a political platform to live by.

Is ‘New England Redneck’ just someone playing as ‘Confederate Yankee’… or is it a real crazy person?

-K

someone playing as ‘Confederate Yankee’… or is it a real crazy person?

One would have to say: “Yes!”

I remeber the “America- right or wrong!” schtick from when I was a kid. I vaguely remember the McCarthy stuff and my mothers’ comments about “the commies”, although her family were all good hard-core union folk. I never bought the package of “America- right or wrong!” The VietNam nuttiness and the other inherent sickness in the ‘amurkan- raht er rowng’ concept. I don’t believe in hell, so just knowing that psychopaths like Ronnie Raygunz and Tricky Dick Nixon are dead, and George the W and Dickless Cheney are not on the throttle anymore is satisfying. The latter twos’ funerals will be heralded by more than those lamenting them. NewEnglandRatBastid- just another demented sicko, off his proper meds. Cheap entertainment, nothing more.

I never bought the package of “America- right or wrong!” The VietNam nuttiness and the other inherent sickness in the ‘amurkan- raht er rowng’ concept.

The older I get, the more I agree (though being a dual citizen kind of stacked the deck against nationalism from the start). If your moral values are meant to apply to anything less than the entire human race, then as far as I’m concerned they’re a waste of time. We’re all human beings before we’re anything else (nation, race, culture or what-have-you) – every fuckup in history has happened because of people who lost sight of that basic link.

The real irony is that the American Dream (of a country where everyone could enjoy the same rights and opportunities regardless of skin color, religion, national origin or other “group” identity) is based on a recognition of that common humanity we all share. The right wing, by turning American exceptionalism into a “we’re better than everyone else cause we were born here and everyone who wasn’t sucks” thing, betrays everything that’s actually unique and worth preserving about America.

If your moral values are meant to apply to anything less than the entire human race, then as far as I’m concerned they’re a waste of time. We’re all human beings before we’re anything else (nation, race, culture or what-have-you) – every fuckup in history has happened because of people who lost sight of that basic link.

The real irony is that the American Dream (of a country where everyone could enjoy the same rights and opportunities regardless of skin color, religion, national origin or other “group” identity) is based on a recognition of that common humanity we all share. The right wing, by turning American exceptionalism into a “we’re better than everyone else cause we were born here and everyone who wasn’t sucks” thing, betrays everything that’s actually unique and worth preserving about America.

YES!!!!! Thanks for this — I intend to quote it extensively.

RSM: Certainly, I’m the last person on the planet to be screaming “raaaaacist” at other people

You know, in this case at least, I believe him.

Shit, I was. In fact, I’m suspicious of any military action undertaken based on stars and stripes rhetoric. It likely means there isn’t a logical reason for it, so they have to appeal to emotions instead.

Same here. Also add in any rhetoric that depends on shouting “freedom!” over and over.

us of any military action undertaken based on stars and stripes rhetoric. It likely means there isn’t a logical reason for it, so they have to appeal to emotions instead.