Mary Elizabeth Williams reports from Salon that this past Tuesday, the Right-wing radio host, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, ripped off the rubber mask of tolerance and revealed her true ugly, reptilian face.
Kind of like that moment in the original "V" series, when the aliens' masks got ripped and showed their dark green, scaly hides and vertical-slit eyes -- except in this case, Dr. Laura's ripped mask revealed she was wearing (gasp!) a Ku Klux Klan Hood!
... the controversial radio host/crackpot [Williams reported] fielded a call on her program from an African-American woman who said she was weary of her white husband's family and friends' racist comments. ...The caller... explained that her husband's comrades ask her questions like "How do you black people like doing this? Do black people really like doing that?" -- which Schlessinger promptly dismissed as "not racist... A lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black," Dr. Laura continued. "Didn't matter what he was going to do in office. It was a black thing."
Ruh-Roh. If I'd been Laura's on-air publicist, I would have been making the "kill" sign -- drawing an index finger across my throat -- to get her to not go there. However, that's a message never given to coddled and pampered Rethug media stars, most of whom can't seem to keep their inner Strom Thurmond in check (Imagine trying to tell Lard Boy not to make a racist comment!).
Anyway; filled with the righteousness and moral rectitude she so often preaches from her little radio pulpit, Laura charged ahead: Look -- it's Stalingrad! We can take one city; how much trouble could it be?
Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant
The caller then pressed on, asking: "What about the N-word? The N-word's been thrown around" [i.e., by friends of her husbands']. To which Dr. Laura airily retorted: "Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a buh-lack comic, and all you hear is nigger nigger nigger. I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it's affectionate."
The caller, clearly agitated by now, nevertheless remained respectful, asking, "Is it ever OK to say that word?" Schlessinger responded by accusing her of having a "chip on [her] shoulder," telling her, "Don't NAACP me", and that [the caller] possessed "a lot of what I hear from blackthink." For the kicker, she added, "If you're that hypersensitive about color and don't have a sense of humor, don't marry out of your race."
Predictably, a large number of people said Laura was a silly bint and offensive in the extreme. On Wednesday, she issued an apology on her website.
Though she said, "I did the wrong thing," adding that she was so upset about the incident she had to cut her show short, she also continued to display her trademark cluelessness. "I was attempting to make a philosophical point," she explained, adding that "I ended up, I’m sure, with many of you losing the point I was trying to make, because you were shocked by the fact that I said the word."
Sure; absolutely, that's why people were disgusted.
For the clueless, like Frau Schlessinger, use of the n-term between blacks is a recognition of solidarity around past slavery and present second-class-citizenhood in the eyes and minds of people like herself. It's an "Our Thing", infra dig reference, and not to be used by outsiders. Period.
Guess you can't use HBO as your guide when it comes to determining the reality of racial sensitivity and common humanity -- eh, Laura?
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