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I don't see anything wrong with what rather said. The point of the op is that libs would if a conservative said it.
once again wh, whooooosh... over your head.
You can keep your victimization sweepstakes notification, SnC. I would never seek to deprive you of it.
Go ahead and have a big cry with Yoni and DarrinS that the hypocrite Dems are not blacklisting Dan Rather for having a senior moment. You might feel better. The controversy you guys tried to stir in two threads, is gittin too thick for dippin chips.
Col' beer?
I don't see anything wrong with what rather said. The point of the op is that libs would if a conservative said it.
once again wh, whooooosh... over your head.
You're still crying.
I was watching home alone and the old man got to me.
that's what I took it as.
I also
Well it's kinda ridiculous. Why watermelons? I mean, I freaking love watermelons, don't get me wrong. But I've never heard anyone say so-and-so can't even sell watermelons.
I have heard about how much black people love watermelons, though.
I think Dan Rather was clumsily making a reference to blacks' affection for watermelon . . . but I don't really care. It's a harmless racial stereotype, IMO.
Good-natured racism, sorta like?
Clumsy reference to be sure, but I dunno, I associate watermelon sales to the guys selling them out of the back of their trucks on the side of the road regardless of skin color.
To each his own stereotype I guess.
He should have done the ol water to a drowning man line.
Was going to edit it, but nah.
I'll leave it.
But I realize that is reference for a good salesman.
I guess so. The more I think about it, the more I realize his quote doesn't make sense without the racial element.
But of all the racial stereotypes in the world . . . blacks liking watermelons is pretty dang tame.
Really?
Rather's invocation of the roadside fruit-stand was palpable for me. It's a weird metaphor for *retail politics* and salesmanship, but it's the exact image that occurred to me as I watched the clip.
I suppose there might be something vaguely slighting about picturing Obama as a guy at a fruit stand, and giving him a watermelon to sell was just bizarre.
Unless, as you say, certain inferences are furnished.
Oh god. Ya I learned some people have to be spoonfed here. I obviously typed in list form.
I never said chicken was native to Africa. Chicken were easy food to raise and cheap.
Watermelon has high water content, slaves didnt have much access to water, put the two together.
Its a very stupid stereotype. Whites consumed just as much watermelon and chicken back then and still do today.
You Dan Rather.
How'd he piss you off, Darrin?
Vintage postcards the Repugs, BecKKK, and conservatives would love today:
Baby Black Tibetan Monk?
Apparently it is one of Rather's trademark sayings that he has used in the past only the person in question wasn't black so nobody cared. In any event here is Rather's response...
I was talking about Obama and health care and I used the analogy of selling watermelons by the side of the road. It's an expression that stretches to my boyhood roots in Southeast Texas, when country highways were lined with stands manned by sellers of all races. Now of course watermelons have become a stereotype for African Americans and so my analogy entered a charged environment. I'm sorry people took offense.
But anyone who knows me personally or knows my professional career would know that race was not on my mind. Reporting on the injustices of race was part of the reason I became a reporter. I grew up in segregated Texas on the same side of the tracks as the African American community. At the time, enlightened people called them Negros. Many people called them much worse. When I covered the Civil Rights movement, I saw sheer hatred in ways that still haunt and shock me. For doing my small part in reporting on the South in the 1960s, I was called a traitor to my roots and other names not fit for print. I was threatened with death by people who would have welcomed me to their church on Sunday on account of my white skin if they didn't know what I was there to do. I do not take this issue lightly.
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