One expects Ralph Nader to say things like, “there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans,” which is a really crazy statement for someone to continue to say after the eight years we’ve had. One also expects Nader to say some things that a lot of liberals might agree with. But now it seems we should expect Ralph Nader to say things like this:
There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white?
noah
Blech!! Ralph Nader needs to shove his head in the toilet for a reality check. “Talk white”? What the hell? Just how is Obama supposed to talk considering he was raised in Hawaii by his white mother and grandparents from Kansas?
Ralph, this must come as a shock to you, but speech patterns are a learned thing. Not all African-Americans, or black people worldwide, have the same accent.
Even more ridiculous is Nader letting himself off the hook for being concerned about the plight of the poor by saying that because Obama has African ancestry the first thing out of Obama’s mouth should be about poverty.
Ralphie, poverty is an equal opportunity disease that affects more white Americans by numbers than African-Americans. All presidential candidates should speak out against poverty and trying to find a solution to it regardless of race.
Moreover, having an Arab-American, like Mr. Nader, decide to bring up another candidates ethnicity to slime him is really pathetic. How would Nader feel if someone asked him why he does not speak with a funny Lebanese accent, or ask him if he thinks he’s acting like a WASPy white guy?
Of course, Ralph wouldn’t want anyone to go there. Ralph wants to be judged on his merits, and acceptance as a white man, with all the privilege that entitles him to in our society. We don’t see Ralph running around talking about the discrimination that Arab Americans have faced since 9/11.
Jack ass. Hypocrite.
Tom
Nader is a hypocritical, self-promoting, blowhard ass (and those are his more flattering qualities).
marco
Well, I don’t think Ralph Nader is Arab enough!…
ousslander
by talk white, deos he mean in English and not Ebonics?
John
I agree with the previous commentators.
ChristopherM
Ralph Nader should go talk however he likes in apologizing to all the parents who have lost children in this futile war that wouldn’t have happened if not for his dumb ass. No difference? Whatever you polyester-wearing blowhard son of a bitch who hasn’t been relevant since the 70s.
Maxwell
What exactly is talking white? Ralph Nader is insane. Every time he runs for office, he just appears more desperate and out of touch. SO, will he start talking black to get the black vote, or start speaking Spanish to get the Latino vote? Come on Ralph!
Puddy Katz
As a Christian (Maronite) Arab of course Nader is only “half Arab” in the eyes of many Muslim Arabs.
He also never discusses his Arabness and therefore is trying to act European.
afrolito
I love how the usual white gays on this board, have no clue what they’re talking about.
Ralph is an irritant most of the time, but he has a point here, and it has nothing to do with speech patterns or ebonics. What he was getting at, is the fact that Barack has not addressed the real issues in the black community beyond semantics, and rhetoric. His support in the white community is fragile at best, and based on their own feeling that he’s the “safe negro”. If Barack started seriously addressing the real issues of poverty, economic racism, a corrupt criminal justice system, his campaign would over.
CHURCHILL-Y
Lol, It’s always great to read the comments from hypocrites like No. 1 who go around throwing hissy fits and decrying racism at every corner and then: “WASPy white guy?”
Ralph is telling the truth of course, Barack Hussein is portraying himself as an empty slate and we have only gotten glimpses of his real ideology through his wife and associations with black supremacist and homophobes, that’s why he knows he must remain an enigma as much as possible till after the elections because if he were to show people the real side of him that would be it.
jiminportlandoregon
Nader is a pathetic closet case who is in denial that his opportunity to be of any use as a public official has passed. It’s sad, really….
charlie in st. paul
I agree with numbers 9 and 10. Lots of white guilt and wishful thinking in this thread.
Bill Perdue
Afrolito, Olla.
It’s your turn. +10.
Liberals are such clueless twits! They have no idea what they’re talking about.
ChristopherM blames Nader for the war/genocide. What an outrageous lie. He should be blaming the real killers. First is Bill Clinton whose embargo of foodstuffs and medicine murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi babies and children. Then George Bush launched a genocidal rampage and occupation and is responsible for the deaths of (probably) over a million Iraqi children and adults.
Obama has sunken so low he supports ‘phased withdrawal’ from Iraq, which means the US won’t leave until they lose on the ground and their asses are kicked out like they were in Korea and Vietnam. In the meantime the killing will go on.
Obama, like the Clintons and McCain, supports NAFTA. They all oppose socialized medicine. Obama and McCain both support the gutting of the Fourth Amendment in the FISA immunity bill. He, like McCain and the Clintons, shamelessly panders to bigots when he needs to. He didn’t utter a peep or protest when ENDA and the hate crime bill we junked by the Democratic (sic) Congress.
Obama is, despite the hero worship of liberals, a right centrist candidate in a right centrist party. In an interview with The Reno Gazette-Journal Obama, speaking about Ronald Reagan said that he’d “tapped into what people were already feeling, which was, ‘we want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing…†Instead of mindless praise Reagan deserves condemnation. He was a far right ideologue who did immeasurable harm to the standard of living of working peoples of all ethnicities.
In 2008 most of us will do what most voters do in most elections, lodge a protest vote or just ignore the whole charade. There is no way we’ll fall for the lesser evil bullshit. An Obama presidency will be four to eight years of the same old shit with whipped cream on top. No Thanks.
Steve
I am convinced that Ralph Nader is on the payroll of the Republican National Committee.
Each time he crawls out from wherever he hides, he says or does something to harm the Democrats and help the Republicans. He has to know what he is doing. He is (or used to be) a pretty bright guy. So he must be doing it on purpose.
emb
Ralph’s just not getting enough attention lately, poor thing. Just because he’s done nothing of any significance to anyone since he saved us all from Corvairs forty or so years ago. As for all the cries of “white guilt” and references to Obama by his first and middle names (yeah, I know it’s his name but WTF? Do you refer to “John Sidney” when you mean McCain? Sheesh, how transparent), I’m sure you have valuable things to say but maybe try to do it in a coherent and non-ad hominem way, so folks don’t just dismiss you as a wacko?
crazylove
I support Obama, and I am not a fan of Nadar. I say all of this to agree with Afrolito. What Nadar is referring to is that Obama must be the “magic negro” or else whites will not accept him. White America can not in general (not all whites, but collectively) handle race so do what several posters have done here- misconstrue what’s been said and contort its meaning so as to make what was said unrecognicable. It happens over and over again such that I’ve given up on expecting anything other than carricatures about what someone says in any depth on race. In other words, it’s easier to pretend he’s talking about ebonics than to address the real issue being discussed. If you discussed the later, then that would require addressing something other than the carricature.
Oh,a nd by the way, America really does have a center right and far right political system. This is plainly obvious if anyone bothered to look at the rest of the world’s advanced economic nations and compare what we do here. In England for example I would argue that the Democrats would the closest to the Conservatives. The same is true of other European countries. If you want a reality check- look at the guy in France, and conservative that they recently elected there- by our standards, he sounds like a Democrat. That’s how far right we are.
ChristopherM
Bill, you are completely missing my point. In his assertion that there is no real difference between democrats and republicans, Nader helped voters be able to gloss over a very real difference and put warmongering George W. Bush into office. Do you really think thousands of Iraqis and Americans would have been slaughtered in this useless war had Al Gore been president? Gore’s shitty campaigning deserves some blame for that, but Nader shoulders some of that as well. As far as corporate ties go, he is correct about the parties to an extent. But there is an enormous difference when it comes to taking over sovereign nations for no apparent reason. Reason, sadly, is something Nader left behind long ago, and I cannot take any of his attacks on any candidate seriously at this point.
Afrolito, I understood exactly what you think he was trying to say. But if you think there is such a thing as “talking white,” you are as stuck in the 70s as he is.
Mr C
PLEASE the statement was not racist. It was FUCKING STUPID PERIOD.
Nader and his dead eye can suck and rabid cock!
Mr C
I meant Nader and his dead eye can suck a rabid cock
Ms Churchchicken when you said “his real ideology through his wife and associations with black supremacists and homophobes” are we still reeling off this “proud” statement shit?????
Girl get off the can
I assume there are no fucking
WHITE SUPREMACIST AND HOMOPHOBES hey just love the gays…….HAHAHAHA wake up!
YOU STUPID BITCHES KILL ME
Your anger and hatred will get you NOWHERE.
But we do get a laugh out of it!
Bill Perdue
Christopher, Bush didn’t win so much as Gore, Kerry and the Democrats lost the election. The truth is that the biggest difference between the two is that Democrats are bolder liars. Not better, just bolder.
Gore most certainly would have continued the Clinton run up to a greater genocide in Iraq. To this day Gore hasn’t criticized Clinton’s murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi babies and children. Not a peep.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq and the genocide are not an accident – they are American policy. The genocide is a bipartisan policy that virtually all Democratic (sic) and Republican leaders totally support. That includes Obama. Their insane killing rampage will go on until they’re kicked out or manage to finish off all the Iraqis, which is not particularly likely.
Secondly, Republicans with their theocratic, pro war, racist, homophobic, misogynist, anti working class ideology don’t WIN elections. They’re not very popular and they don’t bother to lie. What happens in reality is that the Democrats hand them victories on a silver platter after serving the rest of us with NAFTA, deregulation, FISA, DOMA, DADT, welfare cuts, the cruel mistreatment of imported workers, a gutted ENDA and a junked hate crimes bill just when we need it the most. The Democrats screw everyone in sight, default, and the upshot is that in most elections most people simply refuse to vote. Who can blame them? Democrats LOSE because people are fed up with their lies and backstabbing.
Look at the reality. Bush is a crack head, a drunk, a deserter and a sanctimonious christian dickhead. He wouldn’t have made it to Austin much less Washington if Gore, Kerry and the Democrats didn’t turned off enough voters to let elections be decided by a minority.
Bruce Church
Point of accuracy: Nader says “He’s half African-American.” He’s not. He’s half Kenyan. Interesting that the first serious black contender for the presidency of the United States has NOT come from a legacy of slavery.
AskThisBlackWoman
Bruce Church,
Kenya is a country not a race. There are white Kenyans, black Kenyans, mixed-race Kenyans, Asian Kenyans… You get the point. You are right, Barack does not come from a legacy of slavery, but the system of British colonization in Kenya wasn’t easy, to say the least.
todd
Ralph “Look at Me” Nader has done what exactly to stop the war, to honor the troups, to push a progressive agenda? The only agenda he has is a self serving, self promoting one. When is the last time this cretin held a job? He is a fraud, or otherwise he’d at least run for Congress and support Kucinich. LOSER
crazylove
His statement by the way is something that many in the black professional community feel to be true about Obama even as we support him.
The point? The above posters can continue to ignore the message by personalizing it to Nadar (afterall that’s what Americans do rather than looking at message and policy), but it’s not the reality that this is Nadar.
I would also add that in America it doesn’t matter after one generation whether one was an ancestor to slavery or not because to most of white America black is black, period. We don’t have a long running lexicon of conceiving of this as a multiracial society. Most people don’t perceive of Obama as half black, or half white, they see him as black. This is true of both black and white.
This may seem contradictory regarding the other points on race, but it’s not. This view of half-white/half-black is how they perceive of race in general (ie, half white,half black equals black) versus how white divides blacks up emotionally (“good black” versus “bad black” which translates into “ignore racism” versus “discuss racism”).
Bruce Church
Ask This Black Woman (post 22) wrote:
“Kenya is a country not a race.”
Of course. That was my point. RN said BO’s father was African-American. BO is, but his father wasn’t. He was a Kenyan national, not an American.
“Barack does not come from a legacy of slavery, but the system of British colonization in Kenya wasn’t easy, to say the least.”
Of course a legacy of British colonialism is not easy. But it is also different than a legacy of American slavery. We are all marked by the effects of both our personal and intergenerational histories, including trauma. I am not trying to diminish the legacy of colonialism, rather I am trying to point out, and give proper respect to, its differences from (as well as its similarities to) the more common history of African-Americans.
Crazy Love (post 24) wrote:
“I would also add that in America it doesn’t matter after one generation whether one was an ancestor to slavery or not because to most of white America black is black, period.”
That is arguable, and I would respectfully disagree. The experience of a third-generation welfare recipient growing in the projects with a single crack-addicted mother is going to be different than the experiences of member of a poor family from rural Arkansas with four generations living under the same roof and working together to scrap a living from the land. This is turn will be very different from the experiences of a third-generation Moorehouse grad. These differences can certainly carry over into interactions with “white America” and evoke very different responses.
Mr C
Some people are just plain and simple IGNORANT
Robert Lewis
Obama’s mother’s original Social Security Number Application
http://www.webofddeception.com