Chicago Trib columnist Steve Chapman: Race and opposition to Obama

[Martin Eden]

As far as conservative commentary writers go, Steve Chapman can sometimes be a voice of reason. He wrote in February 2003 that Bush was making a http://www.bwcitypaper.com/Articles-i-2003-02-13-31619.111115_Bushs_Thoroughly_Bogus_Case_for_War.html">Thoroghly Bogus Case for War. However, this morning I just had to dash off a LTTE in disagreement with his latest commentary:

A new president, pursuing policies well within the political mainstream, evokes weirdly angry and intense denunciations from opponents -- a reaction hard to explain in terms of anything he has actually done. Does that suggest, as Jimmy Carter insists, that their true motivation lies in racism?

No, it doesn't, because I'm not talking about Barack Obama. I'm talking about George W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- both of whom, from the day they took office, managed to convince a minority of Americans that they were not just wrong but illegitimate, dangerous and thoroughly evil. Obama's troubles are not exactly unprecedented.

It's generally forgotten that on Inauguration Day in 2001, Bush was greeted by thousands of protesters who threw eggs and bottles, made obscene gestures and carried signs jeering, "Hail to the thief" -- a reference to the legal fight needed to settle the outcome of the election. To the protesters, he was a corrupt enemy of democracy.
<<snip>>

What Obama may not have recognized before he arrived in the White House is that hating presidents is an irrepressible American tradition. The haters hung George Washington in effigy. They called Abraham Lincoln a dictator. They said Franklin Roosevelt was a Bolshevik.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0920chapmansep20,0,1666316.column">read the full commentary

My LTTE:

Steve Chapman's commentary (Race and opposition to Obama, Sunday Sept 20) attempts to place the vitriol hurled at President Obama in the same category as the verbal attacks on GW Bush and other presidents. While it is true that almost all presidents have been assulted with nonsense by lunatics on the fringe, what is different this time is that the core of the opposition is full of nonsense. Whether the teabagger movement is fueled in part by racial fears is debatable, but their cries that Obama is a Kenyan muslim communist fascist bent on euthanizing grandma are evidence of a more widespread mass delusion.

Yes, the vitriol hurled against GW Bush was every bit as intense, but there is one crucial difference: a basis in reality. The Bush administration did in fact misrepresent the intelligence on Iraqi nukes and ties to al Qaeda in order to launch a war that has killed thousands and will cost trillions of dollars.

If there was any truth to claims that Obama is a non-citizen who wants to kill granny, then Mr. Chapman would have a valid point in characterizing it as more of the same.

[The Magistrate]

1. Your Letter, Sir, Is Much Sounder than the Column

Bush was in fact illegitimate, receiving the office in a manner hugely tainted, at the least.

President Obama won fair and square, and by the most sizeable margin and majority in decades.

Persons who claim President Obama is illegitimate, a usurper, etc., are delusional: persons who said the same concerning Bush were factually accurate.

[Skittles]

2. friggin' OUTSTANDING

K&R :thumbsup:

[Demeter]

3. Too Many Equate Bush's Unpopularity With the Sour Grapes Dished Out to Democrats

Like comparing rotten apples to golden oranges.

[Martin Eden]

5. That's why I had to call BS on Chapman's commentary

He was helping to perpetuate a myth that is being used to justify the vitriolic nonsense hurled at Obama by the teabaggers and the RW punditocracy.

[zeos3]

4. K&R

[Martin Eden]

6. The Chicago Tribune published my letter!

Link:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0925vplettersbriefs2sep25,0,773029.story