Paul Ryan and the Inner City Man

[n2doc]

By Erin Nanasi

Paul Ryan, former Republican vice presidential candidate and House Budget Chair, believes he’s discovered the secret to unemployment. A few years ago, he blamed unemployment on people lounging around in hammocks, but his most recent attack has nothing to do with lawn furniture. Rep. Ryan voiced his opinion on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America radio program Wednesday, and you could have heard a cross burning pin drop.

Quick refresher course on right wing language: If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed a peculiar kind of code winging around the GOP. Call it a dog whistle, if you will. Food stamp president. Entitlement nation. Amnesty. It’s not just pundits who engage in the shrill blowing of the race whistle, politicians blow as well. Mitt Romney ran ads (that were thoroughly debunked) during the 2012 campaign, claiming President Obama had dropped the work requirement from welfare. Ask a right winger who’s on welfare in America, and odds are, they will tell you minorities as they try to justify their Medicaid Hoverounds and disability checks.

What Paul Ryan said isn’t so much code as it is in your face, blatant racism. Here is Ryan’s quote:

We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.

Inner city. Who lives in the inner city, according to the right wing? Why, that would be black people. Generations of men not even thinking about working. So, black grandfathers, black fathers, and now black sons, all refusing to work because it’s part of their culture. Also part of their culture is not learning the value of work. Paul Ryan now blames unemployment on black men. Small problem: ALL colors of men (and women) are unemployed at the moment. My husband’s unemployed, I have numerous friends who are unemployed, and we’re all different colors and creeds.
- See more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/paul-ryan-inner-city-man/

[VanillaRhapsody]

1. apparently he never heard the phrase "working poor"

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

2. Odd

Since he's worked feverishly to create so damn many of them, apparently so he can then call them moochers and takers.

Sorry ass bastard!

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. What a racist. But all Republicans are racist, and I don't care who takes issue with my saying it

I had a discussion with a Republican a couple of years ago, and I took issue with his constant spewing that these and those people in the U.S. are lazy, don't work, don't want to work, live well off welfare, yada yada yada.

So I told him that I was Latin, that I was a Democrat, had lived in various non-Latin countries, and that one thing I did not understand AT ALL was that Republicans were like a broken record, stuck on insisting that people in the U.S. are lazy.

I told him that I'd seen and lived among other cultures, cultures where the system is far more streamlined than here, and that people in these better functioning countries and cultures work a LOT less than Americans do.

I told him that there's an almost sick view of work here among the Republican capitalists, and gave him examples, one of which was that employees, when they had finished their work, were immediately given some mindless work because workers were not supposed to be seen without loads of work, that cashiers were not allowed to sit as they are in more advanced countries because that gave the impression that they were not suffering enough, and so on, all because the Republican-capitalistic view of life is that an employee should be working non-stop or they were not earning their pay.

His response? "Oh let's just stop discussing this. YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING."

You betcha I understand. I understand that Republicans are hell-bent on enforcing this idea that Americans are lazy, when in fact, Americans are among the hardest workers I've ever encountered.

[jsr]

4. +1

[Scuba]

5. + another

[Sarah Ibarruri]

6. Thanks! nt

[Scuba]

7. Hey, you're one of my favorite posters, glad to add a rec.

[okaawhatever]

8. Paul Ryan is right! The problem in America IS a culture of inner-city men too lazy to work. The

culture is political culture, the inner-city is Washington D.C. and the lazy men are Congress. Yes Paul, the real problem with America is Republicans in Congress who are too lazy to do their jobs. They place higher value on political culture than American culture and everyone is paying the price. Everyone except the lazy inner-city folks in Washington D.C. with their guaranteed paychecks and socialist styled benefits. For once you've spoken the truth, even if it was accidental.