This is a short one - comparatively speaking. But the folks over at the Free Republic, a conservative blog swimming in diehard Republican loyalists willing to sacrifice one and all for the Greater Good, have crossed over the line.
Actually, it really wasn't much more than a matter of time before racially-charged insults and mockery of the Obama administration came out. The Vice-President and current top dog of the Young Republican organization had shown her true colors on Facebook with racial slurs and digs at President Obama on her home page. That page has since been removed and a retcon of her statements hurriedly established.
To see the racism that was inevitable, unfortunately, had to be something that the Obama family has experienced firsthand. However, where it crossed the line was when they went after the kids.
President and the First Lady Obama are adults, and they're public figures. But their kids? Their kids are just kids. The entire rash of racist insults spewing from the conservative forums of the Free Republic weren't aimed at Obama. They weren't aimed at First Lady Obama. They were aimed at the Obamas' preteen daughters.
The best thing about Internet anonyminity is that for the most part, you can get away with saying anything. It's also simultaneously the worst thing, because anything you say on the Internet, if it's linked back to you, can and will be used against you. By employers, potential significant others, your parents, and more.
I've explained the Facebook phenomenon to several friends - look, if you have pictures of yourself humping a stuffed unicorn and/or other really stupid stuff on Facebook, maybe you should, instead of complaining that they shouldn't be judging you on the basis of that picture alone, figure out that taking the damn unicorn picture down would be a good idea. But if it's out there and someone downloaded it, you have no control over it from that point forward.
In essence, if there are pictures of yourself looking like an insensitive jerkwad and/or complete doofus on the Internet*, don't complain when someone uses those pictures against you or places an assumption on your behavior.
Likewise, the Free Republic commentators probably didn't think that their comments would be analyzed, read, absorbed, and detailed, but were I a member of the Secret Service, and threats, even veiled ones, were made against a member of the First Family online, I'd expect that my usage and ISP would be immediately tracked down, and my "anonymous" handle rapidly become not so much.
But the end of the story is simple: the people on Free Republic who made racist comments about the 11-year old daughter may be family people, may be Christian in the extreme, may be incredibly intelligent, and may have all sorts of really brilliant things they do and say that mitigate their "online comedy".
But what they said, and what they did, was incredibly racist, in poor taste, and pretty much made every person who associated with the Free Republic identified as someone who is, was, or might be a racist Jim Crow advocate. Just like Audra Shay, current president of the Young Republicans, who may, or may not be, a racist, but committed a series of statements that could not be identified as anything BUT. Shay has released a statement that tries desperately to say that she is no racist - but the Lady Doth Protest Too Much. And Hides Her Facebook Account Too Much.
I don't care if people think they aren't racist, but I strongly believe that your actions speak louder than words. Telling someone that they are "a racist" allows the person far, far more wiggle room out of it and a whole heap of self-aggrandizing moral justification. Holding someone accountable for what they did is far easier to do and less difficult.
The thing is, watching people try to justify Sarah Palin's bizarre circus show behavior as some sort of plan is mildly entertaining in a "watching a train wreck from a safe distance" sort of way simply because I don't understand why one would actually excuse this kind of behavior in a political figure (though Palin's most recent salvo in politico world reminded us that she, like W before her, doesn't tend to actually read things before she opens her mouth). Likewise, when an adult man or woman makes threats and demeaning comments about an 11-year old girl whose only fault is being the daughter of a famous black man and woman, the only thing I can think of is that perhaps the shroud of Internet Anonyminity makes these people feel safe to allow their baser natures out to play.
And the parroting of voices, conservative or otherwise, means that many of those individuals are channeling purposeful hatred and dissent from an outside source that has nothing to do with their personal morals or convictions simply because they heard FoxNews' Sean Hannity say it.
At the end of the day, I still strongly believe in the IllDoctrine methodology of combatting this kind of prejudice and bigotry. Click play to check out what I still believe to be an incredibly effective method of checking someone willing to play the "I Can't Believe You'd Think I'm a Racist" game to weasel out of responsibility for their actions.
*Yes, that links to my Facebook page, the majority of pictures, on which, make me look like a complete doofus/jerk/idiot/goofball. If I truly wanted to fill it up more, I'd upload a lot more photos of myself doing kinder, gentler, less doofusy/jerkwad things. But I don't muck around with Facebook as much as my friends do, who happen to have a lot of photos of me doing silly things in costume.
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