'The Confluence' Accuses Itself of Racism

Christina and I were talking about "The Confluence's" BlogTalkRadio show a few weeks ago, and I observed that the title of the show, "Conflucians Say," seemed kinda racist to me.

As Riverdaughter, et al, are fond of pointing out, Christina is a lot younger than we are, so she didn't get the reference to Charlie Chan.  I explained it to her, and that was pretty much that.  Being a charitable person, I assumed that Kim was aware of the expression "Confucious Say..." but unaware of its offensiveness. 

Imagine my surprise, then, to read this passage of a recent Confluence flame war with someone named Mandos:

Now I would never stoop so low as to accuse someone I’ve never met before as being racist, but part of Mandos’ response WAS a bit troubling.  In his attempt to be snarky and make fun of our radio program, he linked to this picture:

Mandos, apparently a lot of Asians find this kind of stereotypical depiction offensive.  Does that make you racist?

From its early years, Hollywood has had a predilection for certain Asian stereotypes. The image exemplified by Pat Morita in The Karate Kid can trace its origins to Charlie Chan, a character that spawned a whole series of films from the 1930s through the 1950s with a final appearance on television in the early 1970s. played by a variety of Caucasian actors, Charlie Chan was a blatant stereotype who spouted embarrassing aphorisms, popularizing the well-known “Confucius say” phrase, and perpetuated the accompanying physical image of a slightly bowing man with folded handsThe Year of the Dragon and Black Rain, which deal respectively with the Chinese and Japanese mafia. (emphasis mine) (Paik). The 1930s also created another influential character, Fu Manchu, a diabolical man who became the prototype for the Asian villain, which in recent years has had notable exposure in movies about organized crime like

And then there is this:

A Salt Lake City-based car dealership on Friday yanked a
series of television commercials that used a character
representing Confucius, this after formal complaints from at
least two Asian-American groups.

Ken Garff Automotive Group had been running the Asian-themed
commercials for its Honda cars. In the ads, a person would
ask a character representing Chinese philosopher Confucius a
question, and a voice in broken English would answer.

The University of Utah’s Asian-American Student Association
and the Utah Organization of Chinese-Americans, an
international social justice organization, sent letters to
the dealership this week saying they found the commercials
offensive and perpetuating Asian stereotypes and wanted the
ads taken off the air.

That was a lot of blockquoting.  So, to review, Mandos is a racist for posting an picture that the title of Riverdaughter's show is a reference to.

Audacity of Democracy director Brad Mays will be a guest on Unusable Signal this Thursday, and has said he will ask Kim, the creator of The Confluence, to be on as well.  Despite her recent attacks, I welcome the opportunity for her to clamor right-wing talking points, and I'd love to ask her about this. 

I also hope to interview the 2nd Amendment stalwart who hosts "Weapon Fetchit," and the Irish-dancing, very sad private eye who hosts "Jig-a-Blue's Clues."  I'll keep you posted.

On an unrelated note, I've been meaning to share this hilarious picture, from the Obama Porn (not that kind) site.  The other place that I blog at wouldn't likely condone the language.  Since I can't post the picture myself, click here to check it out.

Comments

[EAccess]

riverdaughter:

masslib: Please stop touting Obama. I’m asking nicely now. Next time, I will not be so nice. This is not a place for advocating anything Obama. This is a blog for keeping Democrats together as a powerful voting bloc. You are making people uncomfortable. Stick around and comment all you want but no more campaign work for Obama.

Love that pretzel logic. Forty percent of the early voters in Georgia are African-American. That's a massive voting block. What she has is a nasty little echo chamber.

As desperation sets in PUMA's are dropping the Hillary supporter shtick and going with straight GOP talking points.

[I smell like Patchoui]

I am riverdaughter's soul sister.

Tonight we are going to run around the forest nekkid and pull the moon down with our PUMA wristbands. We are 18 million strong. We are so united against Obama that we paid off Hillary's campaign debt in one weekend. We even arranged 100 free buses to Denver to protest. Just wait until election day. You will hear us roar. It will be John McCain in a landslide.

[Patrick McKinnion]

You know, I really don't understand why the various PUMA sites and sympathizers just don't drop the pretense they're not bigots. Because anymore their claims of not being bigots sound like "some of my best friends are n**gers/s**cs/g**ks/k*kes/etc."

The sad part is that they may honestly believe they're not bigots.

[Palomino]

Nasty little echo chamber is right.

And here's my favorite nonracist comment from the post that's up right now, cluelessly praising McCain's bogus mortgage-rescue scam:

"Absolutely incredulous [sic] shrinking rap star . . . Obama knows not what he does, over and over again."

But my Lifetime Achievement Award for Intertubez Asshatery goes to the asshat known as "garychapelhill," for so many of his stoopid, hissy-fitting posts but particularly for this one, which was up earlier today:

http://tinyurl.com/3kydez

You are mistaken, by the way, if you think that PUMA has Republicans behind it. That's not the case. These are very angry Hillary Clinton supporters, and actually I think their anger is completely justified in most respects. Many of them are good, well-meaning, but clueless people.

What's happened recently, though, is that the Confluence has become a morass of negativity, hatred, and delusion. As in the example citing "masslib," above, longtime posters are now being warned by the blog owner and other moderators, especially Asshat Gary, about their "tone" and the "pattern" of their remarks, and about "making people uncomfortable," as reality tends to do when you've decided not to live in the reality-based community.

So even though the people at the Confluence are not now and have never been Republicans, they're being played by Republicans as they reach for any discredited slime tactic or dishonest talking point to Smite the Evil Obama.

My recent experience with the Conflucians is that they've moved past the point where it's possible to discuss anything with them other than their agreed-upon points of Conflucian dogma.

I don't intend what I've said here about the Confluence to be a characterization of PUMAs or the PUMA movement in general.

But you should know your enemy, and the first thing to know about PUMA is that it was not founded by Republicans. If you think it was, then you're as deluded as some of the Conflucians.

[Patrick McKinnion]

Palomino - I have no doubt some PUMAs are exactly what you claim they are.

However, there's a lot of people in the PUMA movement who had ties to the GOP long before the primaries. Darragh Murphy for example.

Or the "Devout Hillraiser" Caren Z. Turner. Who donated $1000 to Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2007. And $2300 to Rudy Giuliani's campaign that same year.

And even if they didn't start out as GOP members, they're very much buddy-buddy now. "TexasDarlin" links to rightwing sites all the time. "No Quarter" is "Free Republic" with a better interface. PUMAs take Jerome Corsi's blatherings as holy writ - and ignore all the horrible things he's said about President Clinton, Sen. Clinton, AND even Chelsea Clinton. Or invite known racist anti-semites like Andy Martin to their conferences.

Many of these people who may have professed to be Clinton supporters are now not only going against everything Sen. Clinton ever stood for, but openly standing with and supporting the very people who spent almost 20 years dragging her and her entire family though the mud and slime.

Many of the people who claim to be PUMAs may not think of themselves as Republicans. But you wouldn't know it from their blogs now. And I have no doubt there's a core group in PUMAland that were, are, and always will be Republicans.

[Palomino]

Well, sure, Patrick. I have a post up that touches on these issues, and another coming later tonight or tomorrow.

http://tinyurl.com/47szdv

But the people who started PUMA were a bunch of commenters on the Confluence. It was pretty spontaneous, and they definitely were and are not Republicans.

You may be conflating the PUMA movement with the PUMApac organization. I make a distinction, and I think it's a useful one.

This is not to say that people can get into bed with the Republicans and not get up with fleas, or worse. I think the PUMAs are definitely getting played at this point.

And it's not to deny that there may be some bona fide Republicans involved in PUMApac, though I can't confirm that, either, from my personal experience. People donate to political candidates for all kinds of reasons, including strategic ones intended to benefit a different party.

Anyway, I think it's useful to maintain the distinction between the PUMA movement and the PUMApac organization if you want to speak with any authority about the background and motives of the PUMAs. If you don't want to speak with authority, I don't care, but you sound to me like you jumped early on to some wrong conclusions and can't let them go.