Red-Hot Racism for Columbus Day

I haven't liked Columbus Day for a long time, and the whole "500 Years of Oppression" is just a secondary reason for me -- even given Denver's annual Columbus parade, complete with American Indian Movement civil disobedience. Those who think there was something positive in Columbus coming to the North American continent, have to overlook his very genocidal tendencies in helping Ferdinand and Isabella chase the Jews and Moors out of Spain (Housley, The Later Crusades, pg. 311). In his later years, Columbus was becoming a messianic racist nutcase, spouting about how God had chosen him to eradicate the Jews of Europe. This is someone to celebrate?
Well, I guess so, given the way people are responding to recent hoopla about an African-American teenage girl being pepper-sprayed and punched in Fort Pierce, Fla. Admittedly, the facts in this case can be as controversial as those in the Jena Seven events, and the cops in Fort Pierce arguably used restraint. But when I saw the user comments regarding the YouTube video in question, I was dumbfounded (they might have been removed by the time you read this). Users, some giving full names, bandied about the word "nigger" as though it's commonplace and OK to use as a white person, which several YouTube observers obviously are. Now, the Fort Pierce brutality case is a borderline event, because the 15-year-old wasn't doing the slightest thing to comply with a cop's request. But to use a discussion as an excuse to dredge out racist terms that should have died a century ago, shows how far we have to go to eradicate racism in this country. 515 years of white folk eradicating everyone else in North America, ain't ya proud?

Getting Rid of the Tancredo Torpedo

One of the most embarrassing things about living in Colorado is noting that the residents of the suburban Denver regions representing Tom Tancredo have not risen up in anger to throw the racist dog out of office. Truth is, there are enough racist dogs of both major political parties who agree with his immigration positions, without realizing what an extremist view he holds in realms outside immigration.

The State Department made an unusual demand for presidential candidates to avoid talking about foreign-policy hypotheticals, after Tancredo talked of bombing Muslim holy sites. Admittedly, State also was upset with Barack Obama for two reasons - his willingness to override Pakistan's borders in chasing al-Qaeda, and his willingness to go on the record about the non-use of nuclear weapons in pursuing terrorists. (Unlike Clinton, Edwards, and most other candidates, I agree wholeheartedly with Obama's decision to take nuclear weapons off the agenda from the get-go, and think other candidates should remove the ambiguities.) But what really raised State's ire was Tancredo.

This is the acid test for Coloradans in his district. It's time to speak out loud and clear against this Neanderthal racist turkey. Failure to do so means you acquiesce in all his statements, including his latest claptrap about bombing Mecca, Medina, and Qom.