Monday, June 24, 2013

HATRED 102: Catholic League President Defends President Obama Remarks -- He Was Talking About Segregation, Not Catholic Education

This morning's St. Augustine Record carries a letter written by an angry bird, accusing President Obama of being anti-Catholic, or anti-Catholic schools, because he spoke in Belfast about segregation. Taking a snippet out of context, the way known Republicans looove to do, it appears she is not part of the reality-based community. 
While right-wingers are spewing the out-of-context quote on the Internet, no less an authority than the President of the Catholic League said President Obama was denouncing segregation in education and housing in Northern Ireland, and that the Reagan Coalition and Catholicvote.org are "insane" to suppose he wanted to abolish Catholic schools.
As Sir Winston Spencer Churchill said, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on."
I'm against segregation, and I'm embarassed that the St. Augustine Record would print this carping harpy's letter.
Meanwhile, the Record is guilty of only recently refusing to print an "adversarial" letter about discrimination by tthe St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau -- malpractice in marketing tourism in our Nation's Oldest City.
As admitted May 14, 2013, VCB is refusing to advertise in Miami, refusing to target African-American families, refusing to provide information on GLBT-friendly places, refusing to target youth, writing off the lower 50% of income earners, tourism "redlining," in probable violation of our federal and local Fair Housing laws.  VCB's consultant invited competitors to raise their prices, a per se violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, Section 1.
Today's hate letter in the Record typifies the genre. dumbing down debate and feeding the fires of hatred.
As Senator Robert Kennedy said in the Indianapolis ghetto on April 4, 1968, the night that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis: "What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."

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