It's like "hope" for your ears.
Sometimes you just feel like being a show-off. That you somehow you're the bigger Obama-ite because you've carved his visage onto the back of your head or you or you rock the "Dunk On McCain" T-shirt all-day, everyday. You've got an Obama ringtone of "Yes We Can." You've got the words "hope" and "change" tattooed on your knuckles. Good for you. For the rest of us, maybe we're looking to show our insane Fanhood of the Traveling Changelings and our esteemed respect for the Great Black Hopemongerer with something a tad more nuanced.
Like earbuds for our iPhones.
But for every harmless "I (Heart) Obama" contraption like these cute bits of ridiculousness, there is something that makes you go "Wow. That is totally racist."
You know something is racist when you can tell just by looking at it. Take Obama Waffles. They're like Aunt Jemima's, only instead of a head scarf he's rocking a turban/head wrap of some kind with references to Mecca. It was supposed to be a joke with its creators repeatedly explaining that it's "political satire" to a reporter with the American News Project in the above clip. They explain it is not racist if the box reminds you of Aunt Jemima because Aunt Jemima is a preferred product of the creators. So it's a compliment!
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
The "waffles" were unveiled during the Value Voters Summit which featured marquee speakers like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former presidential candidate Mitt "Mittens" Romney. The Associated Press picked up on the racist breakfast item and how event organizers quickly tried to play things down, getting the hotcakes out of there not wanting the potential bad press, no doubt.
They claimed they had no knowledge of how Obama Waffles were dancing on the edge of Little Sambo.
Once again, Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Values Voter Summit organizers cut off sales of Obama Waffles boxes on Saturday, saying they had not realized the boxes displayed "offensive material." The summit and the exhibit hall where the boxes were sold had been open since Thursday afternoon.
The box was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix. They sold it for $10 a box from a rented booth at the summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council.
David Nammo, executive director of the lobbying group FRC Action, said summit organizers were told the boxes were a parody of Obama's policy positions but had not examined them closely.
Never mind the fact that this unfunny breakfast treat is ignorant and plays on people's fears over Obama, probably the least scary black man in America this side of Will Smith, but it once again demonizes the religion of Islam as if praying towards Mecca was a gateway drug to suicide bombing.
I want to inform bigots such as these that Islam, Christianity and Judaism share a patriarchal origin in Abraham. That they differ in many respects, but share many of the same core principles. That Muslims actually like and admire Jesus Christ. Islam is a religion. It isn't fair to slander an entire group of people who are members of one of the largest faiths in the world, any more is it for me to condemn all Christians because a few anti-abortion extremists blew up abortion clinics and murdered doctors in the 1980s and 90s.
Every religion has good and bad apples in it. Every religion, at some point, has gone terribly, terribly wrong, abandoning its tenants. (Like the Inquisition, for example.) It's wrong to take peaceful, decent people of all ethnicities and backgrounds and conclude there is some failing in their moral fiber because they are the minority in a Christian/Secular majority culture.
Really. Grow up. Scoring political points is not an excuse to play on xenophobic, bigoted fears.
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