5/09/2008

In Brief: Hugh Hewitt to Barack Obama: You Better Shut Your Bitch Up:
Hugh Hewitt, the radio host and writer, and a man who looks like he's got a reservation at the Hostel to slice up Asian chicks with a razor and jack off on the wounds, in his latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "an illogical series of brainless beliefs constantly repeated in a different order, a Phillip Glass symphony of fucktardery, if you will"), asserts that Barack Obama's real problem winning the general election won't be Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Oh, no.

He extensively quotes a speech by Michelle Obama, the candidate's wife, that she gave last Friday in North Carolina, prefacing it with: "This is not a speech from the mainstream of American politics. It is a radical critique of the country." And then he offers as evidence of this "radical critique" such Che Guevara-like quotes as:

"[F]olks are struggling like never before, working harder than ever, believing that their hard work will lead to some reward, some payoff. But what they find is that they get there and the bar has changed, things are different, wasn’t enough. So you have to work even harder."

And: "Let me tell you, single parents love their kids, too. But it is almost impossible to raise a family of any size on a single salary. So now you’ve got single parents who have to double and triple shift, taking on two, three jobs, working all the time, and feeling like they’re failing because that bar is moving, because how on Earth are you going to work as hard as you need to to pay the bills and be at parent/teacher conferences, and sit down and do homework when a kid has trouble?"

Yes, because Michelle Obama speaks about working class people, who, yes, are most often poor people, and speaks about them as if they actually contemplate their struggles and says that her husband might just be able to show that the nation gives a shit about them, she is "radical."

Hewitt conveniently posts on his blog the entire speech, which features such Emma Goldman-worthy bomb tosses like, "[T]he beauty of this country is that most Americans are like my father. That’s what traveling around this year has taught me, and I wish every American could do it, going into somebody else’s neighborhood, sit down in somebody else’s kitchen, share your stories and your fears, and cry a little bit, and you realize that we do share the same values. We are hoping for the same things."

That line didn't make the cut into Hewitt's column. If Michelle Obama's desire for people to be treated fairly and equally is what passes for "radical" these days, then our political discourse has shifted so far rightward that it must be "moderate" to believe that the poor shouldn't be rounded up and forced into prison camps to be raped repeatedly and made to pick the crops.