Palin praised racist writer who called for RFK's assassination

Oh. My. God.

And she actually quoted him?

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by: Fiona @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 19:53:05 PM CDT

Palin's hero: Poisonous ideas from the far right.

From an article critical of William Buckley's paens of love for Pegler's politics:

Pegler's career took off in 1933 when he became a nationally syndicated columnist with Scripps-Howard, roared along under the Hearst family, and ended 30 years later under the auspices of a twitchy sect of neo-Nazis and professional racists from the White Citizens Council and the Rev. Billy James Hargis' truly reptilian Christian Crusade. At his peak in the 1930s and 1940s, Pegler was a leading popularizer of one of the most concerted antidemocratic crusades in this country's history: the vicious backlash against the New Deal and the labor movement to which it gave legal protection. This anti-Roosevelt front included the country's major industrialists, anti-Semitic, red-baiting pamphleteers, Congressman Martin Dies' Committee on Un-American Activities, and an assortment of Depression-era demagogues (and men on horseback who conspired with Hitler's agents in this country).

Although Pegler did not turn against Roosevelt until the president's second term, he quickly became a shrill cheerleader for the right's campaign to paint the New Deal's democratic advances as an internationalist Communist plot. Pegler compared union advocates of the closed shop to Hitler's "goose-steppers." (In his view, the greatest threat to the country was the corrupt labor boss; his exposé of a union official's mob connections earned him a Pulitzer in 1941.) By the 1950s, however, Pegler was showing some nostalgia for the Third Reich. His proposal for "smashing" the AF of L and the CIO was for the state to take them over. "Yes, that would be fascism," he wrote. "But I, who detest fascism, see advantages in such fascism."

There is more about Pegler not to love:his assertion in November 1963 (at the height of the civil rights movement) that it is "clearly the bounden duty of all intelligent Americans to proclaim and practice bigotry"; his embrace of the label racist, "a common but false synonym for Nazi, used by the bigots of New York"; or his habit of calling Jews "geese," because they hiss when they talk, gulp down everything before them, and foul everything in their wake.

Pegler was the McCarthy committee's occasional collaborator as well as its big media flack. Buckley, meanwhile, co-authored (with one of the senator's future speechwriters) what Sam Tanenhaus described in the New York Review of Books as "the most sustained defense of McCarthy," the 1954 best-seller McCarthy and His Enemies. In it, the authors spell out rather chillingly whom the McCarthyites' true target was: not the then virtually dead American Communist Party but the liberals who had "no stomach for battle" and had criticized the red-hunters for trampling the Bill of Rights.

This, then is the kind of political writing and opinion that shapes the world-view of Caribou Barbie, and it is chilling and frightening to think of an individual shaped by such poison occupying the White House.

I tell you Chica that no greater abomination exists than women denying their spirit of sisterhood and instead becoming the oppressor. -Rebeca, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

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by: MauraHennessey @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 19:58:28 PM CDT

well

"clearly the bounden duty of all intelligent Americans to proclaim and practice bigotry";

at least he acknowledged his bigotry, his current followers call it something altogether different - they call it being Christian

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by: ol cranky @ Wed Sep 17, 2008 at 18:29:21 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Sadly those were not her own words

That speech was crafted for her by one of Bush's speechwriters...not one word was her own.

Likewise, not a single word she has spoken on the trail has been her own...

She is nothing more than an actress at this point, reading a script.

The only 'off script' moment was "In what regard, Charlie?" and look how well that has worked out for them...

Question:  What does an atheist do when they fall to the floor and start "speaking in tongues"?

Answer: Get a CAT scan.

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by: Snooky Ookums @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 20:04:33 PM CDT

I think you're giving Palin too much credit

After all, the speech was written for her.   All she did was read it off a teleprompter (and not especially well, I didn't think).

I doubt if she has a clue who Pegler was, any more than she knows the Founding Fathers didn't write the Pledge of Allegiance.  For that matter, I doubt if she knows anything at all outside her own narrow personal experience.  Every "idea" and "belief" she has seems to have been spoon-fed to her by some damn minister or political spinmeister.

If I thought she actually knows who Westbrook Pegler was, or Joe Allsop or any other political thinker from previous generations--if I thought she's read anything at all besides the Bible-- I might have some faint hope that she might be fit for the job she's running for.  But let's be honest--even an archaic crypto-Nazi like Pegler is outside her intellectual range.


Cynic, n.  A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.  
-Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

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by: QScribe @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 20:04:34 PM CDT

Not so sure Q

In my wild eyed young fiscal conservative days(ok and I was more socially conservative then too) I read Buckley and Buckley was close to and quoted many of the words and ideas of Pegler.

I tell you Chica that no greater abomination exists than women denying their spirit of sisterhood and instead becoming the oppressor. -Rebeca, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

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by: MauraHennessey @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 20:14:20 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

C/mon

do you really think she reads anything but the Bible and the scripts the Good Lord wrote for her?

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Lurleen on Twitter.

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by: Lurleen @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 20:51:55 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

As you said

She might know some scripts that are good for her, but I doubt she really reads the Bible.  If she did, she would sit in judgement of herself and publicly apologize for the things she has done.

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by: Will St. James @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 21:42:18 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

touche

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Lurleen on Twitter.

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by: Lurleen @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 21:49:40 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

What's with the Truman thing they keep pulling?

Truman famously trashed the Republicans.

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Lurleen on Twitter.

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by: Lurleen @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 20:50:13 PM CDT

Godwin's Law be damned

I am becoming more and more convinced that Sarah Palin is a neo-Nazi.  This emphasis on "small town values" makes me think of Hitler's love of the German "Volk."  Pitting American against American -- some Americans will not be worthy under a McCain/Palin dictatorship.

Only time will tell...

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by: aerdrie @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 22:27:48 PM CDT

Forgot to mention

the hatred of liberalism and modernity on the part of the neocons like Sarah Palin.

For historical comparison, I suggest a reading of Fritz Stern's "The Politics of Cultural Despair."

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by: aerdrie @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 22:30:39 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Remember the View

When McCain was on The View and mentioned that he would appoint judges to the benches that would overturn Roe V. Wade. (Not sure I phrased that right, but the sentiment is he same) Then Whoopee asked him about slavery. The judges he has in mind would also throw out Lawrence v. Texas, thus bringing back Paragraph 175, erm, I mean...

And Sarah is more extremist than he is.  

watashi no yomeiri wa doko desu ka

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by: belfrieboi @ Wed Sep 17, 2008 at 11:57:21 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Wanted to add

as back up, a quote from McCain. He has said on The View that he would like to see judges over turn the stance on abortion. But what is worse than Pro-Choice?

"I think it's a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice. We just have a--albeit strong--but just it's a disagreement. And I think Ridge is a great example of that. Far more so than Bloomberg, because Bloomberg is pro-gay rights, pro, you know, a number of other issues."

If McCain wins expect to see me with a sign that says "Canada or Bust"

watashi no yomeiri wa doko desu ka

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by: belfrieboi @ Wed Sep 17, 2008 at 12:01:42 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Immaterial whether Palin believes or knows what she is quoting

The fact that people behind the scenes are writing the speeches in the dog-whistle mode just shows that the Republicans haven't changed in their support of the policies of the ultra-racist block of the US. Her particular dog-whistle is more shrill than most.

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by: NancyP @ Wed Sep 17, 2008 at 15:37:15 PM CDT