I Don't Know Whether to be Amused or Angered by This

I wasn't going to post this originally, but since it looks like I won't be able to blog for the rest of the day, I'll use it.

Last week, Move Along, There's Nothing to See Here linked to this post from Atrios. That post links to a photo gallery called "Compassion" on President Bush's website.

Apparently, that gallery disturbs Atrios and his readers, because it contains lots of pictures of President Bush with black people, and they assume that compassion=interacting with minorities. I guess they didn't notice that:

#1: The introduction to the gallery says "Check out the latest compassion related photos," meaning that most of them are from a related series of events.
#2: Some of them were taken IN AFRICA!!!! Who knew there were black people in Africa? I didn't know that!

The comments to the Atrios post are very entertaining. I'd almost say they're better than DU, but you can judge for yourself with the selection I'll provide here (don't bother going over there unless you want to get really angry at idiots). Oh, and my commentary is mostly there to separate individual comments, so don't think I'm taking them seriously or anything. It's just fun to watch them twist reality to fit their Bush hatred:

I was once photographed with a black person too! I'm compassionate!

Sure you are.

Yas, massuh. Yas, massuh. No, no suh, massuh. Yes suh, massuh suh.

Yeah, you're hilarious, dude.

My God, there are more "colored" folk in those photos than in the entire Republican Party!

Are you noticing a trend yet?

George W. Bush - not afraid to be seen with black people!

I love how they think he would be.

...I think it would be a productive idea if everyone were to contact their local NAACP about this.

There you have it. Helping black people=racist. You gotta love these guys!

HEY!!!

Where's the pics of George with gay people?????? I thought he had compassion for us poor folks too??

How exactly do you tell if someone's gay from a photograph?

So Bush is actually black??? And all blacks are on welfare, have AIDS, just came from africa, eat at soupkitchens and need white people to teach their kids in school. And adore Bush.

Do you hear that? It's the sound of groupthink!

Did it ever occur to the fucking bastards that if their policies were so discrimminatory against minorities and the poor then they would have to be compassionate towards them.

Go back to class, kid.

last time there were that many black folks up on stage with Republicans they were being auctioned off

I hope this person isn't old enough to vote.

The racism in those pages really is remarkable--I hope someone is passing this on to black leaders.

"He's a Republican, and he's appearing with black people! He must hate them!"

Just another RNC coon show.

Wait a minute, you guys are the non-racist group, right? I'm confused.

...we kew W was an asshole, and suspected he was a racist, so what's the surprise here? I expect this kind of shit from the Bush campaign. Actually, it's kind of funny, in a disgusting sort of way, as several here have pointed out, and made use of. Save your outrage; you're gonna need it.

I still fail to see the racism here. Maybe a couple more comments can enlighten me:

What's dissonant here is that 'compassion' appears to be a euphemism for 'Bush meets minorities'. The White House site has its own ghetto, and its name is 'compassionate'.

So, if he ignored them, you'd have no problem, right?

I honestly thought it was a spoof site ... galling ... sickening. Can anyone say "bring me the niggra props"?

I can now safely say that this is the most racism I've ever seen in one comments section. This is really sad.

I am not going to invoke Godwin's Law. I am not going to invoke Godwin's Law. I am not going to invoke Godwin's Law...

...but so help me, if I see one more picture of the Shrub doing that salute, or looking like Leni Riefenstahl set up his photo-ops, I'm going to go into full-blown pogrom paranoia.

I think that was more disturbing to me than all the happy little pickaninnies in the pix.

Yeah. Bush is a Nazi, but you have no problem using racial slurs. Brilliant.

Incredible, the bush "compassion" pictures remind me of the south-american dictators of decades past. This is really sad.

I just learned about South American dictators, and I didn't hear anything about helping charitable organizations and such. When has Bush "disappeared" people like they did in SA?

...Okay, just one more, I promise:

Ya know - there are conservatives in my own family, and this is something I've noticed - to them, compassion means being friendly to minorities. You can send jobs oversees, block Planned Parenthood doors, refer black people by the N-word in private, but as long as you are ladling soup to some homeless minorities once a year on some Christian holiday, you're good to go - you're compassionate.

I really want to believe that being conservative doesn't _have_ to mean being racist, but the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Heck, Condi hates her own race, so how the heck is anyone else supposed to be enlightened?

I think that one sums it up nicely. "I believe that Planned Parenthood is mainly for blacks, all the jobs that get sent overseas are done by blacks, and helping Republicans makes you a race traitor, BUT...Bush is the bigot!"

I'll add this to my list of reasons why I have no faith in humanity.

Posted by CD on April 12, 2004 06:00 PM
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