Tuesday, July 15, 2008

The New Yorker's Willie Horton Incident


In the Fall of 1988's presidential election the GOP's attack machine, led by Karl Rove's dirty-politics mentor Lee Atwater, ran ads against Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis for allowing convicted murderer Willie Horton to be freed on weekend furlough during which time he committed rape and robbery. George H.W. Bush, the Republican nominee, publicly stated that Dukakis had allowed Horton to "terrorize innocent people." The campaign was designed to tap voters' worst racial stereotypes and fears. And it worked.

Cut to 2008. In its July 21 issue, in an unconscionable display of poor taste, racial insensitivity, fear-mongering and bad timing, the venerable highbrow literary journal New Yorker put a cartoon on its cover depicting Democratic presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as fist-pounding, machine-gun-toting, flag-burning Muslim terrorists. What on Earth were they thinking? Just some 'good-natured satire' designed to mock America's racist dumbasses, right? But the humor has fallen way short of what was intended. Quite frankly, the cover is incredibly offensive and highly irresponsible.

The campaigns of both Obama and GOP presumptive nominee Sen. John McCain reacted harshly:

"The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. "But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

McCain's spokesman Tucker Bounds said, "we completely agree with the Obama campaign, it's tasteless and offensive."

But editor-in-chief, David Remnick, defended his magazine's decision to run the controversial cartoon: "The intent of the cover is to satirize the vicious and racist attacks and rumors and misconceptions about the Obamas that have been floating around in the blogosphere and are reflected in public opinion polls. What we set out to do was to throw all these images together, which are all over the top and to shine a kind of harsh light on them, to satirize them. That's part of what we do."

But rather than succeed in satirizing these vicious and racist attacks, rumors and misconceptions, the New Yorker's cover cartoon feeds into them. First of all, not every reader is a Manhattan 'limousine liberal' who'll "get" the satirical intent. To be sure, there are plenty of so-called Democrats and liberals who, despite their public political personas, are closeted conservatives who marinate in the same racist witches brew of attacks, rumors and misconceptions. Deep down, they want to see a black family occupy the White House about as much as their bigoted brethren on the right. But these people would likely feel this way regardless. Where the magazine's cover is most damaging is with those on the fence. People who happen to pass a newsstand and quickly glance at the cover thinking "Yup, that Obama couple must be really bad if this is on the New Yorker cover.". What about young people who see it? Will all of these folks "get" the satire, especially if only in a quick passing glance?

The New Yorker gambled big with this cover. If it's intention was to be controversial and dominate the news, it succeeded. But if it's goal was to present a compelling message with redeeming value, it failed miserably. It's attempt at social commentary in the form of biting racial satire did nothing but pour gasoline on an already raging fire.


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54 comments:

Anonymous said...

This just goes to show how incredibly thin-skinned Obama is. He is too weak to handle satire from his friends on the left. He is too weak to have town hall style debates with John McCain. Obama was too weak to confront his racist pastor for 20 years, only doing it when it was politically convenient. Obama is too weak to defend America from its enemies. Obama is too weak to be President of the United States.

Its time to warm up the Clinton machine and nominate Hillary. I'm not voting for Obama. NEVER!!

Anonymous said...

Let's face it: Young Obama supporters believed that this would be a civil election about the issues. Oh if only that were true, naive ones!

The Republicans are going to play nasty and dirty without regard to the truth as usual. Obama better get his act together before the Repubs define him over the summer. They are on their way to do that now.

Also Obama needs to go on the offensive against McCain. He needs to stop playing defense to McCain's daily charges. We have too much to lose by playing nicey nice as we have in past elections. It didn't work then and it won't work now.

Get fighting Obama!!!!!!!!!

If we lose it's because of not fighing hard enough and telling the American people who McCain really is and how he voted with Bush over and over and over. He is not the maverick that he once was.

Please wake up Obama campaign movers and shakers! We need you to go after McCain now before it's too late.

Anonymous said...

McCain town hall meetings are filled with hand picked audiences. Why would Obama want to be set up like that?

Wake up anon 9:20 am!

Anonymous said...

9:29,
You are an idiot to think that only McCain would be hand picking the audience. Get real. Do you really believe that McCain and Obama would have a town hall style debate with only McCain picking audience members ? You must be a college student....you wake up and get to class.

9:26,
Obama is too weak to fight.

Anonymous said...

9:35: I won't call you an idiot, even though that is what you called me. But you do not understand how politics is played.

It is all managed. McCain's people hand pick the people attending his town hall meetings. Local Repubs in every town help with making sure only favorable people are let in.

Where have you been all these years?

Pehaps you need to do some homework on the subject of campaigns and how they work.

Anonymous said...

9:39 is spot on about McCain's hand picked audiences. That is what Bush and his crowd have been doing for the last 8 years. They do not want to face the voters with real questions.

Wake up 9:35! You really do not know who politics work.

Anonymous said...

Republcans will not face Americans. They only answer to Republicans.

I feel sorry for the above poster who has no clue as to how campaigns work.

Anonymous said...

...and in your liberal imaginations you believe that Democrat town hall forums are NOT handpicked ?

wake up lemmings!

Anonymous said...

One only has to go back a couple months to find absolute proof that the Clinton campaign was hand picking audience members and giving questions to be asked by college students. This is status quo these days.

Obama and McCain should have a town hall style debate. Let 2000 members into the audience and let Obama's team pick 1000 and McCain's team pick 1000. I'm sure McCain is not worried about that, its the Obama team that is scared to debate.

The fact is liberals don't like the facts and they don't like to be confronted with the facts. Liberals like 30 second sound bites. Without a town hall style debate, the American people lose out.

Nobody knows anything about Obama because he has absolutely no track record, he changes his mind daily, breaks the promises that he makes to his base, and he's too scared to debate McCain.

Anonymous said...

9:45,

Uh, I attended an Obama town hall meeting in my hometown with my Republican wife. There was no litmus test from staffers handing out free tickets. It was first come, first served and there were thousands of people lined up for blocks waiting to get in.

For those who did not get in, Obama staged a mini-forum outside.

A. Magnus Publius said...

This is all political theater to amuse the gullible; on matters of substance Obama and McCain are on the same page. Both have avowed their desire to bomb Iran for Israel's sake, both support the burgeoning communist police state structure emanating from Washington DC, and both want a larger role of government in people's financial and private lives. Such is the position of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization devoted to promoting global socialism of which both McCain and Obama are members.

Anonymous said...

9:50,

Here's a set of facts conservatives are not all that interested in facing: http://www.alternet.org/election08/90956/?page=entire

It's a detailed list of 61 flip-flops verified by McCain's own words and deeds.

Vleeptron Dude said...

Since Nixon, who began speaking to the American people on the assumption that we are intellectual and emotional elementary school children, I have been forbidden from perceiving and encountering the politics of my nation as an educated, well-read adult who can understand big words and complicated concepts.

What you are saying, you patronizing asshole, is that satire and humor are too dangerous for the great mass of the American voters, and professional guides like Ostroy are necessary to keep everything sanitized and safely on the Schoolyard level.

Screw you, you badly educated jerk. And screw everyone whose kneejerk reaction has been to announce with a frown and a darkening of the brow: There's nothing funny about this.

There's everything funny about The New Yorker Obama cover, it's a scream, and during another Kindergarten Kampaign, it's brave for speaking aloud the dirty Internet whispers that dare not speak their name.

I put a lot of hard work and a lot of time into becoming an educated adult. Stop demanding that we keep it to ourselves so we won't scare the little kiddies who will choose the next president.

If you can't tell the difference between Willie Horton and "A Modest Proposal," you need to be recalled back to freshman English.

There's everything funny about this.

Anonymous said...

Look folks: It's all about the issues, but the Republicans do not want you to pay attention to the issues. They know they have nothing to run on but fear and character destruction through lies.

Yes all campaign events are managed and have been (in my memory) all the way back to the 1980s.

But it's about the issues. The crap that comes up is to just make folks not pay attention to what is important.

Please do not fall for the Republican tactics again and again and again.

They need to be brought down big time in order for our country to re-group. If McCain wins, we get McBush and his ilk for 4 more years.

Anonymous said...

veeplon dude: We have to deal with the majority of Americans who are not very well educated. Yes I said that. They do not understand statire, nauance or metafores.

That is why the Republicans can make such stupid comments and folks believe them.

How sad for our once great country that will never rise again if we continue to go the way the Republicans want us to go.

Vleeptron Dude said...

Yo Anonymous --

Your comment is the Quintessence of Patronizing and Infantilization.

You're smart, you're educated, you can see it's supposed to be a joke, you might even get a personal chuckle out of it.

But everybody else is too dumb, too ignorant, too badly educated. And that's the way all people who hope Obama wins MUST act. If we know complicated things, if we've read books, if we can read a little French -- we have to keep it to ourselves.

I really resent your explanation of why the best of us must enforce the liberal side of Kiddie Kartoon Kampaign 08.

Anonymous said...

[For more exciting Apollonian expo ck NewNation.org under "commentary," also CurtMaynardsBlog.blogspot.com. A.]


Cartoon Irresistably Compelling For Truth, Even So Grotesque
(Apollonian, 14 Jul 08)

Indeed yes, what an excellent and most poignantly expressive and accurate cartoon (see KennySideShow.blogspot.com "The New Yorker...," 14 Jul 08), wink wink, snark snark, chuckle chuckle, the negroid baboon shysters, man and wife, following their models, Bill and Hill, now presiding in office over the corporate bankruptcy clearing sale of the late, great USA, the white folk consigned to FEMA concentration camps--suckahs. The cartoon is so good--what artiste could resist the sheer logic, the TRUTH?

And what do Jews really care?--whether it's this couple of primates presiding and taking orders, or the "Manchurian candidate," McCain? If anyone gets out of line, MOSSAD will simply off them, him, or her, one way or another, and we'll get someone else, by God, to do Israel's bidding--Israel of course topmost enforcer for CFR-Bilderberg conspiracy--see TheNewAmerican.com for expo/ref.

Americans, Christians, and white folk need to snap out of their idiotic reveries--but over what, exactly?--what is it that has crippled modern mentality? What is it, in pt. of fact, which has seduced and captured the modern soul that society is now so pathetically enslaved to these murdering and so plainly ugly hook-nosed, hatchet-faced Jews?

First of course, is poor gentile morons are hostage--so largely of their own free will--to COUNTERFEIT (see RealityZone.com for expo/ref. on US Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) fraud) conspirators. But further, it's just simply that "good-evil" delusionary hereticalism to which people are so grossly addicted, poor, brainless fools, whether of "Christian" style or even atheistic, "rationalist" form, the two so ironically mutually hostile, esp. at lowest sociologic levels of the factions--the "crips and bloods" of Jew-friendly moralism. Note the "Judeo-Christian" (JC--see Whtt.org and TruthTellers.org for expo/ref.) hereticalists and "rapture-bunnies" on the "right," wooed by McCain vs. "leftist" rationalistic-styled, even atheistic for some, Pelagianists ("good-evil") pursued by Obama.

These pathetic victims and middle-class shit-brains of "moralism" ("good-evil" delusion/heresy/fallacy) need to awake to simple fact there's NO VIRTUE ABOVE HONESTY and "Truth," as of Gosp. JOHN 8:32 which is only thing to make them "free."

But that's the tough sell to ignorant scum--and CHILDREN--that there's no "good-evil" (or "Santa Claus") in a determined universe in accord w. God's will and strict cause-effect. For that's the false God these idiots want to worship, their brainless little "good-evil" delusion and wishful thinking--it's as simple as that. Ultimately dip-shits must face fact deliberate delusion amounts to same insanity, and madness is never healthy.

CONCLUSION: So the cartoon in question is extremely appropriate and truthful indeed, even if not quite in exact way Jew liars try to "spin" and construe. Idea there's something grotesque in scummy niggers holding highest office is just too compelling--even for ultimate liars like Jews. Honest elections and death to the Fed. Apollonian

Anonymous said...

The cover of the New Yorker says more about the mind of David Remnick, and his fears, than it does about Obama.
The cultural elite are such blowards. Doesn't matter if it's, William Bennett or David Remnick, you know it ain't nothing but a bunch of crap. I bet Mad Magazine will do a much funnier cover of Obamam. euclidcreek

Anonymous said...

that last post really shows the liberal moonbats are in full force today. Is it a full moon tonight ?

Anonymous said...

Everybody is so pleased with our great diversity and multi-cultures. Therefore, we cannot expect all publications to appeal to all citizens. I myself would have no ability to read a magazine printed in Spanish, and I have no interest in Popular Mechanics. So lay off The New Yorker. It has an audience and it has the right to appeal to its audience -- people who enjoy satire.

Water seeks its own level. There's nothing any of you can do about that.

Anonymous said...

Excellent cover.

Anonymous said...

Back off of Free Speech, osty. This is all about the First Amendment. Let's not follow the gov't down the path of censorship. After all, censorship is becoming America's favorite past-time. The US gov't (and their corporate friends), already detain protesters, ban books like America Deceived (book) from Amazon and shut down Ron Paul. Free Speech forever (even the New Yorker).

Anonymous said...

So this is what some democrats are upset about? God forbid they should focus on issues that matter. Doesn't anyone remember the Bush and Cheney covers on Mad Magazine?

Anonymous said...

Lets just think. Satire? This is a graphic representation of something right? How many people will put their faith in McCain because of it? How many illiterate people in the US will see this " controversial satire" and take it completely seriously. I've been told that the New Yorker is a liberal thinking Mag. That cover is about as liberal as all the fascist , fox, cut throat right wing dictators and thugs combined. New Yorker, you have defined yourself as another trash publication , out of touch with decency , good taste, and the ability to portray satire. The cartoon itself isn't bitting enough to be good satire, and on top of that, it actually takes a stand politically, allowing half assed, incompetent publication and causing untold misunderstanding. Satire?

Anonymous said...

"...out of touch with decency , good taste, and the ability to portray satire..."

As opposed to Randy Rhodes (Air America) calling for George W. Bush's assassination ?

Anonymous said...

Those of us who enjoy a good "trash publication, out of touch with decency, good taste, and the ability to portray satire" want the rest of you to mind your own business and leave us alone. Read your "Aesops Fables" if that pleases you, and shut up about what we read. And God forbid a publication should take a "stand politically", which causes "untold misunderstanding." If a portion of the population is unable to understand -- we're stuck with them and can only ignore them while they sulk and feel victimized by intellectuals.

Anonymous said...

Maybe we should have an IQ test before voting. This measure would rule out most union members and hard core liberals.

Anonymous said...

6:21 Excellent idea. However,if you let only Republicans, all of whom have undoubtedly learned how and where to buy the IQ tests and thus cheat, vote, we'll get another "retard" as our President.

Anonymous said...

And now we'll sit and enjoy our trash publication on our liter-airy cloud drawing satire cartoons about our little world and forget that we've caused about 2,000,000 to run from their homes about 600,000 people murdered , scattered depleted uranium all over , and murdered our own people for a pack of lies. Really funny. Satire? Brought to you by idiots to be enjoyed by fools. What about the reasons behind the "sad-tire"

Anonymous said...

Great Cover!

Seems the doom and gloomers are dripping all over erudite comment about the images the Obamas project.

But there is always elements of truth in satire. Otherwise it just doesn't work or get the point across.

If the dems and left wingos have a need to be upset, perhaps they should turn their attentions to Obama himself and his less than, shall we say, congenial wife.

For it is Obama himself that brought the fuel for the satire to the table. It is his wife's own attitude towards america and whites that added to the mockery of themselves.

If you must be angry, be angry at the Obamas for being such sorry sacks of goods.

Obama is already in the discount bin. Yesterday's fad.

Anonymous said...

Andy,
I have to disagree. The cover is brilliant and the first real satirical jab at Obama. The irony is that Fox News started the "terrorist fist jab" commentary; now they will be the ones to hold the hands of disgruntled liberals who feel the New Yorker has crossed the line. Fox will console the masses offended by the despicable liberal media's attempt to destroy Obama at any cost. What irony, indeed!

Anonymous said...

Willie Horton. Who introduced him to American politics in the 1988 election cycle?

Well, golly. It was none other than Al Gore in the New York Democratic primary with the info fed to him by Liberal Icon Mario Cuomo.

Yet you couldn't vote often enough for Gore in 2000 notwithstanding his hateful racism (as measured by your own standards).

Let's face it. You leftists work backwards from your conclusion and make little effort to find logic.

For shame.

Anonymous said...

This is what I wrote to the New Yorker in response to the cover:

To the Editor:

What makes your July 21st cover of the Obamas so offensive is that the Obamas are the subject of the cartoon, not the people who demonize them. Instead of being a biting satire on those who perpetuate these false images and stories, the cartoon reinforces their message. Nowhere in the cartoon do we see the fear mongers who should have been the focus of the satire. A better choice would have been a dark room, with a snickering character surreptitiously photocopying thousands of copies of this despicable cartoon; or, perhaps, a Fox News intern altering a photograph of the Obamas on his/her computer.

Very badly done. I'm really shocked that someone did not stop this from being published.

Anonymous said...

Some seen to forget the discrimnation and offenses Jewish people have faced in our country. I remember that years ago when we were young teenagers, I asked my best friend who was Jewish (and I am not), how it felt to Jews who couldn't, for instance, join gentile country clubs. She replied, "We just build a better one for ourselves." Rather than victims the Jewish people are successful survivors.

Anonymous said...

anonymous 9:10,
The New Yorker staff members reading your letter to the editor are laughing at you because you are an idiot.
The cover is great, Obama is just to thin skinned to be President. If Obama is elected President, any criticism of the next administration will be responded with attacks of racism.
Obama does not represent change. He is just another politician. If you want a uniter, vote for John McCain. John McCain has a proven track record of reaching across the isle to work with Democrats, even when it pisses off his conservative base. The only track record Obama has is changing his mind.

Anonymous said...

To Anonymous 11:00 AM

Why can't you make your point without calling me names (idiot)? I'm serious. If you feel McCain is great, that's fine. Even though I don't agree with you I wouldn't make my argument by first calling you names. Lighten up.

p.s. McCain has voted with Bush 95% of the time. Look it up.

Anonymous said...

11:20,

Not only has he voted with Bush consistently, he no longer even supports most of the legislation he "crossed the aisle" to help co-sponsor.

McCain-Feingold... he's broken it
McCain-Kennedy... won't vote for it
Bipartisan ban on torture... backtracked

The list goes on.

As Dick Armey called him, "he's a legend in his own mind."

Well, that and the MSM, too.

Anonymous said...

Drill for oil????????????

Why????????????????

We would not see any benefit for at least 10 years.

What is wrong with Republicans????

Anonymous said...

New Yorker..You Lose

Anonymous said...

If you are bleeding and wounded..it's NOT funny. Cruel people never understand this. One day, by only by the Grace of God, will you understand your ignorance.They would understand that this country has NOT moved forward one iota. In fact we are moving backwards. But in that light we can at least face who we are and what we have done. We were wrong, we are wrong, and until we recognize the true character of this nation...we will continue to be wrong. This country is just as racist as it ever was, because it is run by those who put profit over people. Constitutionally, slavery and freedom cannot co-exist. So which are we free or slaves? I can tell you that the civil war was fought over rich folks suddenly losing their free labor...which the capitalists would not allow..in spite, of Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. It still exist today, and those who profit from it..rationalize it, but everyone sees it for ugly truth it is. The same with this cover. It cuts like a knife. Father, forgive them..they know not what they do.
Our country had both slavery and freemen? How can that be? Everone knows slavery and freedom can not co-exist under the same Constitution. Shining some light on racial hatred, painful memories, men who thought they were so superior they could own slaves and use people for their own profit. This country must account for its wrongs, and make amends or we will be back to tyranny. God have mercy on America

Anonymous said...

Sadly, this post says volumes more about Ostroy's unfamiliarity with humanity's greatest tool - humor, than it does about a New Yorker cover.

As is evident, I found the cover to be a howl, and I, of course, expect to eagerly support Obama this fall. But to Ostroy, its hilariousness amounts to nothing compared to whose, namely his, ox is being gored.

In other news, I am saddened as well that Obama has not come out and shared the laugh over the cover, but had his staffers call it "taseless and offensive". Had he publicly shared the joke, he would have both confirmed his hipness and put any fool who took the joke seriously to shame. Is there still time to turn the New Yorker cover to his advantage, or he would lose Ostroy were he to do so?

Anonymous said...

Obama is not going to lose Ostroy, no matter what he does. Look at the mission statement of this blog. Ostroy is a lemming for the DNC.

Anonymous said...

Very smart of the Obama campaign to focus all their ire on the cover so people will not bother to read the actual article about him (which is not flattering). It's a diversionary tactic.

Anonymous said...

6:01 PM,
By the way, I really miss her pant suits. Go Obama!

Anonymous said...

6:42 And we've missed your sexism, although I'm sure from this offering of yours that you're not one of the clever contributors whose remarks we "girls" enjoyed disputing during the primaries.

The Ostroy Report said...

To Anon 1:36: Your ignorance is astounding. Fifty years ago in America: lynchings, beatings, "No Coloreds Allowed" signs in restaurants and bathrooms, no civil rights. America today: black Democratic presidential nominee (Obama), black Secretary of State (Powell), black National Security Advisor (Rice). Yup Anon, America surely "has not progressed one iota."

To Anon 1:48:
Because of salevery, the lynchings and the beatings, it's not ok for white people and the media, or The New Yorker, to poke fun racially at someone like Obama, whose people have endured centuries of hate and persecution and discrimination. It would be ok to satire his lack of experience or his youth or even his supposed lack of humor. It's ok to satire McCain's youth or his inability to read from a teleprompter. It's not ok to exaggerate and reinforce stereotypes and push racial hot-buttons for the sake of "humor"...especially when it comes from the highbrow white establishment. Obama is trying, with his candidacy, to break through hundreds of years of racism and help push this country into a new age of toleramce and acceptance or maybe even equality. He nor I nor many other thinking folks see any humor in mocking that.
Andy

Anonymous said...

How is the cover racist? Muslems are those in a religion who follow Mohammed and they are adherents to Islam. It's a religious affiliation not race? Terrorists come in all colors -- remember Oklahoma and T. McVey? White war protesters have burned the American flag in demonstrations. Nothing in the cartoon cover was a racial slur.

The Ostroy Report said...

Anon 2:24, despite me growing very impatient, frustrated and just plain infuriated by the racists in this country....let me attempt briefly one more time to get the point across. Yes, Muslims are are "in a religion" and yes, "terrorists come in all colors," but the New Yorker cover chose the color black, and it also chose to portray the Muslim faith as a terrorist cult, with the most politically famous and accomplished black couple in America as merely two machine gun toting members of this violent cult...just as they are trying to win the most coveted power position in the world. If you cannot understand this very simple point then you are either dense or racist, or both. I will not waste my time anymore with you or anyone else like you. I have zero tolerance for ignorant racists on my site. Take your backward mentality over to Hannity's site, where you will not only be understood, but appreciated.

Anonymous said...

I live in Turkey, so I only read blogs occasionally, and usually as a gauge for how people are reacting to the news back home. I've not been totally surprised by the visceral reaction to the New Yorker's cover.

I saw the cover reprinted in a Turkish daily, surrounded by words I can only sort-of read. The image fascinated me for a lot of reasons: it's provocative, it's satire, it's a poignant criticism of the media's portrayal of Obama... At my first glance, though, I knew that most people weren't going to get it.

I won't claim to study satire, but I know a little of the genre's history. Satirists from Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, to modern practitioners, like Bobby Henderson (of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) and The Yes Men, have all experienced the same problem at some point: being taken too seriously.

Taken at face value, with no context, the cover is both absurd and hateful. Yet, the cover DOES have a context. You are living in the states, how is it that you don't know that?

E.D. Hill, of Fox News, used the term "terrorist fist jab" to describe a gesture used by the Obamas. The American media has been constantly on the attack, reporting claims that Barak Obama has ties to terrorism and that he is a Muslim.

Your fight is with them, and not with the New Yorker.

The New Yorker cover is making fun of those absurd claims and slanders, exaggerating them and using an otherwise tasteless image to highlight the ridiculous, racist, and hateful claims of 'legitimate' news media.

I suggest you direct your anger to solving the source of the problem, rather than attacking the critical satirization of it.

It disappoints me that the Obama campaign reacted the way it did. I don't know how to help someone learn to understand, much less appreciate, satire. I can only tell you this, Mr. Osteroy, you didn't get it.

Don't worry, though, you're in good company.

Anonymous said...

Sean -- Thank you. Please contribute often.

Anonymous said...

Ostroy,
Is it OK for Randy Rhodes (Air America) to call for Bush's Assassination? I don't remember you condemning that.

The Ostroy Report said...

Of course I condemn that sort of statement. It's moronic to even suggest I wouldn't

Anonymous said...

Which is the more offensive attack: a call for the murder of our President or a cartoon that depicted a candidate as a Muslim in an attempt to help him?

Where was the article about Bush and the state of our citizens' thinking?

Where is the outrage at the offense of the SLAVERY of girls as young as nine in prostitution rings and then their arrest as criminals.

I wouldn't mention any of this in relation to this blog, if the response to the "racism" in the cartoon had not been, generally, beyond all reason. Racism is not the worst problem in our country when a black man can be our next president.

Anonymous said...

"Of course I condemn that sort of statement. It's moronic to even suggest I wouldn't"

OK, but YOU DIDN'T. Can you point to your condemnation when Randy Rhodes made the statement ? Of course you can't.