Don2 (Don1 Revised)
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A Microaggression Lesson from MSNBC's Melissa Harris Perry. Pay Attention Please!
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arkirk
Veteran Member
This is the woman who wore tampon earrings and blames everything, everything, on racism. Just ignore her and hope she goes away.
You know, Truasti, you actually don't know. You know, I think what she said about Paul Ryan's "hard work" is completely the truth.
Canard DuJour
Veteran Member
(..'fraid that still sounds like an American thing)
It's odd that if it was a completely non racially motivated random example this would some how "fix" it.
They do. I am quite happy to note when that happens as well. You have such a polarized society in the USA that none of you seem to be able to point this out on both sides without reacting with a "they do it toooo!" whine.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
Ryan was playing the race card. She logically deconstructed "hard work." She's allowed to in America. Thank you.
I am curious. How is "water buffalo" twisted into something racial?
Malintent
Veteran Member
this was my take as well.
I'd suggest that you find such a person, and address it to them in private.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
Don't forget that a lot of US conservatives are also pretty loud-mouthed about Canada, too, even though they're louder about Mexico. Of course there's a mix of xenophobia, racism, and a bunch of other things, some even positive in Republican rhetoric, but what happens when they do it to you?
Suppose there were a Republican, let's say it was Rush Limbaugh, who made a comment about Canadians being pussies but it was sort of an indirect insult. Let's suppose a Canadian political host invited a Republican onto their show and the Republican talked about how patriotic Rush was. Political show host then says, "let's be careful of how we use the word 'patriotic.' Rush loves the US and so he's patriotic in a sense. But I've got a photo of my grandfather's platoon from WW2 on my cubicle wall and in the greater context of patriotism I think about them <then continually gets interrupted> ... it's also patriotic to want to provide healthcare to all people in your country to some people ... <more interruptions> ... so the Republican message that one is patriotic who loves their country is true ... but it's what actively they are doing about it that makes them <more interruptions> ..." Followed by Republican counterpoint "well that's not fair. You can't generalize Republicans into anything. We're all different."
And then blasted through conservative media:
"Canadian political show host says you have to serve in the Canadian military to be patriotic."
"Canadian political show host obsessed with the Canadian military."
"Canadian political show host is basket case."
Alcoholic Actuary
Veteran Member
I keep a clock with math equations on it's face in place of numbers. Doesn't mean I'm constantly correcting folks at \(|i^2|\) o'clock, or believe every problem deserves a mathematical answer.
Weren't you the one pointing to the fact that she doesn't trot out the race card every time hard work is mentioned? Stands to reason she wouldn't be this time either.
aa
It's funny that the same people who see dog whistles and race everywhere (see black hole, niggardly, water buffalo, blackball, watermelon gum, etc.) think that a reference to "folks picking cotton" is just a random race neutral example of people who work hard.
To be sure, most of what MHP does and says is not race neutral. But I don't see evidence where she intentionally co-opted "Hard Work" into race sensitive language either.
"You know what's hard work? Slavery."
is different from
"The only hard work is slavery and to use it otherwise is racist."
I think in context she was trying to convey the first idea, which does not at all imply the second.
aa
maxparrish
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The real problem is that some people don't wish to look at the self-evident, not when they can glue their reality kaleidoscope to their eye socket - backwards. How can any miss the obvious?
The news event and subject under discussion was the promotion of Paul Ryan to Speaker of the House. Aguilar, a member of the pro-Latino amnesty lobby praises Ryan as a good choice because he is a bipartisan, work's harder than most going to Washington, is highly respected by Gutierrez, supports immigration reform, and is trying to govern.
Harris-Perry suddenly interrupts Aguilar with a her sermonizing bizzaro derail, admonishing him for using a common figure of speech and then she waxes on her own cotton field images. Still on her hobby horse, she rocks on her own interjected "feelings": "I just want to point out that when you talk about work-life balance and being a hard worker, the moms who are working, who don’t have health care, we don’t call them hard workers, we call them failures, we call them people who are sucking off the system.”
I guess MPH was "triggered" by hearing praise of a Republican, and was so distressed she had give the viewers a homily and denunciation of the out of context meaning of terms. On its own, its a laughable knee jerk reaction, but when you realize how often she uses the phrase (as well as she ignoring others using it) suggests she is a well paid clown act.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...lissa-harris-perry-and-her-hard-work-history/
What a mook.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
Is it the girl with Kaleidoscope eyes?
No, it's just Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin quote-mining and berating MHP so much that it's got conservatives in an LSD frenzy. They are there frothing at the mouth, arms flailing, running in circles, randomly yelling "race" and making up new words for things they do more intensely themselves: "micro-aggression." It started out as a good trip for the brain, now it's gone bad and they've all got their conservative wallets in a bunch.
I think it's due to quote-mining and repeating memes so much about reverse racialism, race baiting, and playing the race card, that everyone misses the obvious--that conservative blowhards were playing the race card on this one against Melissa Harris Perry.
We shall observe below how you repeat the meme while leaving out the relevant part.
maxparrish said:
*ahem* she stated she was talking about the Republican Party messages directed at women and dare I include specifically Paul Ryan and his boner about inner city males who don't work.
"We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with." -- Paul Ryan
"There was nothing whatsoever about race in my comments at all — it had nothing to do with race." -- Paul Ryan
So to be fair, she was discussing the attackers' message and giving a different perspective on what hard work means. The reason the Republican Spin Machine had to crucify her wasn't because of "micro-aggression" it was because of transgression: she spoke the truth about their message as a strong, independent black woman with no apologies.
Yes, her ancestors were black slaves and she has a picture of them on her cubicle wall at work. And if the Texas government tries to force women to give up their tampons again in order for them to take part in the political process, maybe next time she will build a fort made out of maxi pads and live in it for a week to increase public awareness.
Get over it.
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barbos
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I was not aware republicans want too ban tampons. Why would they do that?
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
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maxparrish
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I don't know about Rush and Michelle, but your rant was a good job of 'mouth frothing, arms flailing, and circle running" as well, even managing to show us a bit of blowharding that a term of the campus left, "micro-aggression", is made up by those two.
I look forward to a whirling dervish of raging accusations showing us how to make a sober appraisal.
So to be fair, what the hell are you blathering about? Either there are fuller transcripts that I have not seen, or you've decided to mimic the scatter-brained thought processes of this emotional jabbering crackpot. Yes, she was babbling about a term, to deliver "her message" but so what? Be it about green cheese on the moon, black holes, or the need to language police the context of "hard work" - it was a glaring derailment into a tangential admonishment of a guest's phrase and followed by a rant had nothing to do with the conversation.
The conversation was over the pending elevation of Paul Ryan to Speaker of the House, and how he could handle the job. She questioned if he could wrangle in the party, and Aguilar responded with all the reasons he would be able to do so (as I already paraphrased).
“If there’s somebody who is a hard worker when he goes to Washington, it’s Paul Ryan,” he said. “Not only works with the Republicans but Democrats. You know very well that I work on [the] immigration issue, trying to get Republicans to support immigration reform … This is somebody who’s trying to govern.”
Harris-Perry interrupted to sermonize on that “hard worker” was problematic term since she had a picture of slaves working in cotton fields on her office wall. She continued with a rambling response including an attack on Republicans for demonizing working mothers.
And that rant about "hard worker" and working mothers had what to do with Paul Ryan's advantages in assuming House leadership? How about: NONE AT ALL.
So how is it that a host on a network show is so utterly desperate to caw on her right-minded perch that she 'just says moral sounding things', completely unaware that she is embarrassing herself?
No one would ever accuse Ms. Perry of having an original thought, but wallowing in language correctness is an astonishingly dumb way to avoid critical thinking - I mean, who is convinced by whiny desperates trying to out-piety their guests with self-righteous indignation over whatever manufactured outrage they can come up with in that moment?
No one.
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Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
You don't need a transcript. The video provides some additional words that you excluded:
MHP said:
So, yes, she's talking about the Republican Party message.
And you also don't need a citation for what Paul Ryan said about hard work because Mumbles already gave a link in the thread pages ago.
Mumbles said:
Mumbles was correct. Paul Ryan put the issue of hard work on the table for discussion.
His Republican ally in referencing Paul Ryan and hard work also puts it on the table for discussion not merely because of the references, but also because of his clear party support.
maxparrish said:
It's really the outrage of conservatives over MHP answering their clarion call that is desperate, whiny and emotional. Even if you look in-thread you will see unquantified lack of an argument, like "she's annoying." There isn't any critical thought there because when the logic is examined, she's actually right.
thebeave
Veteran Member
Mike Rowe, of the show Dirty Jobs, wrote an interesting response on his Facebook wall about this incident. He doesn't seem too fond of MHP's take on "hard work":
https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/1075683639108445:0
https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/1075683639108445:0
Mike Rowe is an evil and privileged cis-gender straight white male. Who cares what he thinks? Down with the racist, ableist, sexist, antidisestablishmentarianist patriarchy!
And again, we see the same problem. First, he fixates on "slavery", which she didn't discuss. Second...um, wait,that's all he does.
So I'll shift my argument a bit here, since, as always, some people have a real bug up their asses when it comes to the history of black people in the US. Let's say that the picture *is* of slaves, picking cotton on a plantation.
So?
They still worked hard - and for someone else's gain. Her objection to how we in the US often view the poor still stands - in fact, the entire stereotype of black people as "lazy" seems to stem from the days of slavery. She still didn't state that Ryan didn't work hard. Ryan still *did* say that "inner city" people had no "culture of work".
Nothing about what she said changes. The basic argument she made is still right. All the flopping around about how she brought up slavery is still hand-waving.