‘Nuff said.

“I suppose it’s too late to ask that we restrict discussion of “The Picture” to the last thread?”

How I admire and share your optimistic nature!

Been manically scanning posts & comments for the past several days in between unusually heavy work schedules and resigned I’ll never get completely caught up anytime soon with the essential FDL.

Yet allow this old newspaper brat to counsel calm and deep breathing for fellow firepups who are quite alarmed by the graphic on Jane’s Huff post. Drudge and his like minded trolls will continue their smear campaign and FDL can handle and survive and grow and triumph just as Ted Lamont and his campaign demonstrate day in and day out.

I’m just saying in Jane and Christy I trust.

I couldn’t even read Jane’s post, the picture was so blood-chillingly vile and, what’s worse, substantively pointless. The racist potrayal is utterly without metaphorical or satirical merit. It has no discursive value; its sole purpose is to mock, shock, and offend by plunging a dagger into one of the most hurtful wounds in the American psyche and soul.

I’ve been commenting for days that it’s a mistake to overplay the racial angle in this race. Now my concern has come to life in a rather awful way.

After spending the past few days making hundreds of phone calls to CT voters from the Lamont campaign office, this is a depressing development.

I’ll be attending two Lamont events tonight featuring Revs. Jackson and Sharpton in Bridgeport and New Haven; I’ll poke around and try to do some damage assessment.

Peace.

I believe this picture is in a similar category. The fact of historic blackface performance and the associated societal structures and issues, generate an entirely appropriate visceral horror in many people. The dehumanization of an entire group of people is nothing to be taken lightly or mocked.

Because of this, most people make it a practice never to invoke or depict blackface. performance. I was going to say there is another side of this coin – which is that the historic practice of blackface performance and the society that created it should never be forgotten. In fact, though, there is a third issue. The horror of blackface performance, jim crow laws, and the abysmal treatment of black americans by their own country and countrymen is not solely an issue for black people. It is relevant to all humans and all societies. Just as any genocidal movements are relevant to all humans, not just the targeted group. What was done to one group yesterday, may be done to another group tomorrow.

One way to keep individuals and societies armed against the horrors that society is capable of is to permit the meaning (and evolution of the meaning) of historical events to grow and continue to evolve within society. Blackface perfomance happened, it was a fact, but now it means something. It means degradation. It means betrayal. It is a mirror held up to a distorted and poisoned perception of one group of people by another.

I don’t know if I entirely agree that the actions of Senator Lieberman amount to a betrayal of his supposed allies. I don’t know if his relationship to the Democratic party is one of fleeting convenience, just a veneer covering other alliances or mere power-hunger. I don’t know if his votes with regard to affirmative action and women’s issues, taken in contrast with his rhetoric, amounts to a proclamation that he is only interested in black folks and women as bodies to be condescended to at voting time.

If it does, then depicting him in blackface is a way to put that across, especially because it is such strong stuff.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/

Just hope this is not the Sunday that Timmeh gets a hankerin’ for biscuits and decides to give Joe the benefit of incumbency. Ned should, at a minimum, have read Jane’s piece and be prepared to direct the discussion to the substance, and see if Joe can respond.

This wasn’t an “I-approved-this-message” campaign piece, and Ned has nothing, really to apologize for.

He’s taken down the pic now. I guess Lieberman’s folks called him up because they were worried about Jane’s slam dunk piece on HoJo.

I hope you’re right immanetize. I really do.

I would understand why she would do that now — when it got into Drudge circulation, the issue couldn’t be disappeared. It might even make th eproblem worse. No matter what, it will have to be addressed — perhaps Jane will write: “I fully support the message of this image, but it was the wrong image for this post, now here is my post that goes with that image ….”

That way, there can be no complaint that something is being swept under the rug and Jane will have another, perhaps a more widely read, crack at Lieberman and the Inside-the-beltway Democratic Incumbancy Machine.