ANYTHING to get your lather up. Slanted CONservative for a long time. Galling what a loud, crass imprint they leave on this city. And their damned in-yer-face billboards. Grew tiresome a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNGGGG time ago!!!

But by God they're gonna cling to limbaugh until they drop over dead.

n/t.

and his Big Finish was repeating the lines:

We need an AMERICAN president who will protect AMERICAN interests.

Not-so-subtle dog whistle to the birthers.

It is the view that only whites can be Americans

There's a difference between 'un-American' and 'not'-American.' And because of Obama's background and life experience, he has been vulnerable to both attacks.

The 'not-American part' is about more than race - it's about culture.

Obama's father was not an American. He was born in Kenya, spent most of his life there, and died there as well. Although an atheist, he was born into a Muslim family.

This sets Obama apart from most African-Americans and is part of the reason why there are insinuations he's not really American (i.e. the Birthers).

The 'un-American' accusations are much less about race and are best illustrated by his association with people like Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright. Yes, race plays into the Reverend Wright thing, but few would assert that Wright is not an American. He was born here in America to a Christian family and served in the military. They would say he's 'un-American' or 'anti-American,' because of his political views. Same thing with Bill Ayers, who is of course white. Nobody would say he isn't an American, they would (and did) say that he's anti-American.

So I think that's where this comes from. It's both a nod to the birthers and a nod to a wider audience that doesn't appreciate views that are highly critical of America. On the second point, there problem is more the message than the person.

Sounds like more of a southern thing to me. Growing up my classmates were always whipping this or that, or threatening to (though it sounded more like 'whupping').

It might be a dog-whistle, and y'all can feel free to school me on this, but it reads to me as more colloquialism than coded message.

dog whistle.

and without the cultural surround of Dixie are you sure it has the same resonance?

Take it another way: let's assume it is a whistle. In LA, with its vastly different racial history, would "whip" work the same way it would in the deep south? All I'm saying is let's be sure its a spade before we call it one, otherwise it loses meaning.

Read the opening chapter of "Society's Child", Janis Ian's autobiography, about what happened when she tried to sing that particular song(about a white high school student and her black boyfriend) at a concert in the area in 1965.

And, of course, more recently, the treatment the LAPD meted out to Rodney King...

just that it's racial history is different. It lacks, for example, the same history of lynchings (where Mexicans were a more popular target, though often for the same reasons), or the deep scars of slavery in which whipping was remains such a forceful image. It would stand to reason that certain coded behaviors would translate differently there than in, say, Georgia...if they translated at all.

I don't want to come off as defending Gingrich. He's a reprehensible human being and prone to using dog-whistles. I just wasn't convinced that this was an example.

Then again...Newt's dog-whistling is actually MORE offensive when you consider that he's only a pretend Southerner(he's from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for Gawd's sake, so he's actually a carpetbagger who got a late start)and apparently thinks he has to defend and embrace all the old shit ACTUAL Southerners are trying to let go of.

Like "Gingrich can beat Obama in the race"


I mean, that could be a racist dog whistle also.

Or a larger vocabulary on your part would be good:

Main Entry: beat
Part of Speech: verb
Definition: defeat, surpass
Synonyms: be victorious, best, better, conquer, exceed, excel, outdo, outplay, outrival, outrun, outshine, outstrip, overcome, overtake, overwhelm, shoot ahead of, subdue, top, transcend, triumph, vanquish, whip

the third grade. It was an interesting choice of words, and of course there's always deniability, and water-carriers such as yourself.

But it was a dog-whistle. Beat is a common enough term that it wouldn't have drawn attention. They had to go to the END of that little list to get to "whip", and they used it twice within a few seconds for emphasis.

Using 'whip' in the south is also pretty common.

It was, as Romney was doing with y'all, pandering to the southern base.

Does he do dog-whistles? sure. Was this one. I don't think so.

All I'm saying is let's be sure its a spade before we call it one, otherwise it loses meaning.

Does anyone who disagrees with you 'carry water' for the GOP or newt?

"If you elect me, Barack Obama won't be able to build his Underground High-Speed Railroad !"



(you KNOW Newt's gotta be thinkin' it).

That didn't seem racist at all, to me.
Besides, Newt was the "whip" for a while, wasn't he?

that, right after winning the election, Newt promises to cheer the prez up by taking him to Michael Steele's favorite nightclub.

Whipping recalcitrant slaves to break them was common in the plantations.

Good catch.