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Originally Posted by GioforPM
I'm OK with him being fired over what anyone with working ears and a brain that runs on logic knows he meant. Rogers' complaint lines were literally broken by this incident. I guess a whole lot of people had a pretty good understanding of it.
By your standards, pretty much no one says anything racist because they always couch their statements in innuendo and suggestive language. When people in Charlottesville say "you will not replace us" they never mention a race or religion. Yet we all know what they meant. Or when people talk about "globalists" or "welfare queens" or "states rights" or "thugs". Lee Atwater spelled it out.
NSFW!
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N____, n_____, n____.” By 1968 you can’t say “n___”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N____, n____.”
Also, if he's terrible ad lib, then he should be fired from his job ad libbing (if that was even an ad lib). |
See, obviously what he said was wrong, but he wasn’t, say, telling immigrants to go away. He did not say anybody wasn’t welcome in our country. He did not make any statements or inferences about superiority or inferiority.
He admonished people for not buying poppies / supporting veterans.
Do you think mentions of Charlottesville are perhaps false equivalency ?
The whole dramatic arc of the rant started with him lamenting whether or not to bother showing his poppy montage, because too few people buy poppies. The veteran he spoke with said to show it for people who do buy poppies.
He took it upon himself to chastise people for not supporting veterans. He was obviously wrong in using the loaded you people / come here combo to identify the people he was chastising.
His first reaction yesterday was not unexpected. He didn’t believe he did anything wrong, and he said it was because he thinks everyone should honour and support veterans. It seemed he wasn’t focused on the people he identified, so much as he was on his ask. He didn’t think he had mentioned immigrants and stood by his belief that everyone should get poppies.
In today’s interview, you can see he has been made aware of the choice of words people took exception to and their impact.
He should have apologized, and clarified. It appears it took him time to understand what people actually took issue with.
I don’t know. I was raised to give people the benefit of the doubt.
I could see him thinking he was doing the right thing, advocating for veterans.
I don’t see the guy as the bloody monster some of you are making him out to be.
Did he do wrong? Yep.
Is he a racist? I think it’s pretty darn awful to throw that label on someone. I wonder if the people who are saying it here would break it out and say it to his face in an honest conversation. I’m not saying to ask him if he thought it was racist. I mean to tell him unequivocally that he is.