It Takes All Kinds - Local Edition

The following actually was scheduled for 11/12/2011.  I have no idea why it was not published.  Blogger must have hiccuped.

It still applies.

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I saw something last week that gave me a bit of pause.

Stationed in front of the local Post Office were a pair of young ladies with an obvious political message.  It was a pretty cold day for early November and you had to respect their passion even if you disagreed with their politics.

One of the young ladies was white; perhaps 'European' in today's vernacular.  The other was definitely of African extraction, although I have no doubt that she is every bit the American that I am.

The posters on display showed our President, Mr. Obama.  Bearing the 'toothbrush' style mustache once popularized by Charlie Chaplin.

And Adolph Hitler.

The accompanying text suggested that these young ladies support impeaching Mr. Obama for some reason.

I am pretty adamant about opposing that sort of hyperbolic imagery.  I thought it compromised civil debate when it was applied to Mr. Bush.  The same is true now that Mr. Obama is the subject of such criticism.  Neither one was/is even close to being in Adolph Hitler's league.  People with legitimate public policy disagreements should be able to agree on that much.

I suppose the other option was the young ladies were conducting a social science experiment to see how people would react.

I didn't stop to find out which was the case.

Tar, Feathers, Railroad......Premature

I haven't spent any time delving into the firing of Shirley Sherrod; formerly with the USDA.  She was fired when video surfaced of her speech to the NAACP in which she said she had not provided all of the service to a white farmer that she was obligated to supply.  The audience of the NAACP apparently applauded that particular line in her speech quite enthusiastically.

I am still not going to spend much time on it, except to note this post from Eric Scheie over at Classical Values.  In it Eric suggests that Ms. Sherrod's speech included the suggestion that she was wrong to withhold her valuable services and that she has a different view of her job.  The one from which she was fired.  Give the larger context of the speech, it seems appropriate to suggest that her dismissal was unjust.

His other comments regarding the commitment to free speech and pointing out racism among the NAACP audience are also worthy of your time.

What White People Gave The World

Courtesy of Megan McArdle, I now read Ta-Nehisi Coates on a regular basis.  In a recent blog, Ta-Nehisi indicated that he "studied white people".  After all, no one wants to be some sort of bigoted fool that doesn't know anything about other people.

Number One on his list???

1.) Dragonlance, Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman--This book was one of my earliest introductions to fantasy and thus to the limits (or lack of limits) of the imagination. I read Dragonlance before I read Tolkien, and was just amazed by the bigness of the world. All I wanted for my tenth birthday was to swing my sword like Caramon, and get a Tika on my side. Talk about the original ride-or-die chick. She is single-handedly responsible for the early onset of puberty amongst untold legions of geeks.

I was always a bit more of a Sturm Brightblade man myself.  But yeah, Tika is so hot that she could launch a thousand wet dreams just by walking into your average North Dakota prom.