Dear Newsweek Magazine

by matttbastard

Plz to be not spreading teh Obama = Antichrist meme:

Mat Staver, dean of Liberty University’s law school, says he does not believe Obama is the Antichrist, but he can see how others might. Obama’s own use of religious rhetoric belies his liberal positions on abortion and traditional marriage, Staver says, positions that “religious conservatives believe will threaten their freedom.” The people who believe Obama is the Antichrist are perhaps jumping to conclusions, but they’re not nuts: “They are expressing a concern and a fear that is widely shared,” Staver says.

[…]

[Todd Strandberg, editor and founder of RaptureReady.com] says Obama probably isn’t the Antichrist, but he’s watching the president-elect carefully.

Deeky’s OFFS FTW:

[U]sing phrases like “Obama probably isn’t the Antichrist” (emphasis mine) in your articles, even if it’s attributed to an interviewee, is pretty fuckin’ dicey, especially when the whole tone of the article doesn’t seem too concerned with countering that idea.

Signed. On.

Kthnxbai.

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Goodbye, Blue Sweater Vest

by matttbastard

Stephen Harper Party memoryholes all 2008 campaign vids from YouTube.  Because ideology and divisiveness are, like, so, um, last week.

h/t Accidental Deliberations

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Birdwatching.

by matttbastard

(Photo: Joeff Davis, Creative Loafing)

Jonathan Stein, responding to a disturbing AP report on the hundreds of hate crimes that have reportedly occurred since Obama’s election victory, seems genuinely perplexed by the racist sentiment being expressed in some quarters towards the president-elect:

I know no one actually believed that America would transform into a post-racial paradise because of Obama’s victory, but did anyone think we’d see a wave of hate crimes?

Yeah, whoda thunk it? I mean, it’s not like McCain-Palin ran a Wallace-lite backlash campaign, (deliberately) stirring up white working class animus towards an uppity socialist/terrorist Muslim who “just isn’t like ‘us'” (ie, not a ‘real American’) and is now POTUS.

Well, regardless, everything changed the morning of November 5th, right?

Cough.

Mark Potek of the SPLC, as quoted by David Neiwert:

I think there’s something remarkable happening out there. I think we really are beginning to see a white backlash that may grow fairly large. The situation’s worrying.

Not only do we have continuing nonwhite immigration, not only is the economy in the tank and very likely to get worse, but we have a black man in the White House. That is driving a kind of rage in a certain sector of the white population that is very, very worrying to me.

We are seeing literally hundreds of incidents around the country — from cross-burnings to death threats to effigies hanging to confrontations in schoolyards, and it’s quite remarkable.

I think that there are political leaders out there who are saying incredibly irresponsible things that could have the effect of undamming a real flood of hate. That includes media figures. On immigration, they have been some of the worst.

There’s a lot going on, and it’s very likely to lead to scapegoating. And in the end, scapegoating leaves corpses in the street.

Like I’ve said before, the next four years are going to be a wild fucking ride. And nobody with any sense should be surprised that a number of resentful white folk didn’t get the post-racial birdwatching memo.

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