By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com
Lines in the Sand
The standing ovation Newt Gingrich got from his white, Republican supporters in South Carolina for calling President Obama the “food stamp president” is just a stunning display of deliberate obtuseness in action. What exactly do these people think they’re applauding? The bit where Their Man Gingrich conveniently overlooks that the state of our economy, which President Obama inherited from Bush, Jr. — a state that was caused in large part by the corporate greed and lack of regulation that the Republican party heartily endorses — has screwed a lot of people over financially and directly contributed to the need for families to rely upon food stamps to, you know, eat?
Now, the “food stamp President” nonsense is an important issue, yes. But beyond that, there’s an overarching problem with the flood of barely concealed racism inherent in so many things that come out of this man’s mouth. The things like “poor kids lack a work ethic,” and his idea to get rid of adult janitors and pay poor students to clean their schools, and his saying things like how he doesn’t want to give Black people food stamps, he wants to give them work (conveniently ignoring the part where the majority of people on food stamps are not Black, but I guess he doesn’t want them to work). Al Sharpton made the point on Rachel Maddow tonight that if this was really about food stamps, Gingrich would have said “people on food stamps” not “Black people on food stamps.”
These issues go way beyond one standing ovation for Newt Gingrich. More and more, this presidential race is becoming about both the race divide and the class divide. And there’s a lot of overlap there, but we need some unity here. There is a clear line in the sand being drawn in what will ultimately be a showdown once we get through the primaries and find out who President Obama has to run against, and that line has to do with the very core beliefs we have as a people about not only what our country was founded on, but what we want it to be.