John, you said, "HOWEVER, Little Hawk, you are saying that we should not confront and name bigotry when it raises its ugly head."

No. That is not what I'm saying. I'm saying that you shouldn't call another person whom you are having a discussion WITH a bigot, and you shouldn't confuse political attack aimed at ONE public individual with the more generalized form of hatred toward groups of people that we call "bigotry".

I took exception to GfS comparing Michelle Obama to a chimp, because it was unfair to Michelle Obama herself, but I didn't call GfS a bigot for doing it. And I'll tell you why. Number 1, I DON'T call another human being a bigot when I'm having a conversation with them. That's a good way of torpedoing the conversation and ending ANY chance of further useful communication.

Number 2, it isn't necessarily bigotry or racism to depict one political figure you don't like as a chimp. It's simply a personal attack on that political figure, that's all. Just about everyone here spent much time comparing George Bush Jr. to a chimp and laughing at pictures of Bush next to pictures of chimps or cartoons of Bush as a chimp or a monkey. Ha! Ha! We all (almost all) thought it was very funny, didn't we?

Was it racism? No. Was it bigotry? No. It wasn't aimed at White people as a race. It was simply a nasty personal attack on George Bush. But we were all for that, because we didn't agree with George Bush politically, right? We loved it! ;-)

I've seen caricatures of Iran's Ahmadinejad done up as an ape too. I've seen similar caricatures of Iran's Ayatollahs done up as apes. Many Iranians no doubt get very angry over that, just like Americans would get angry if it was coming back the other way, but the reason such caricatures of specific political individuals are done is NOT because of their race...it's because of the politics.

GfS doesn't like the Obamas strictly in a political sense as far as I know. Therefore he launches personal attacks on them, as we all do on political figures we don't like. He doesn't like either the Democratic or the Republican parties, and he has repeatedly criticized them both for what they have done when in office. His attack was not made on a whole racial group, it was a personal attack on Michelle Obama, for political reasons, in my opinion. That's unfair to Michelle Obama, because it implies that she is stupid and ugly, which is not true, but it's not an attack on Black people as a group. It's simply a personal attack on Michelle Obama.

If a cartoonist, for example, were to routinely caricature ALL Blacks or ALL Whites or ALL Jews or ALL Iranians to make them look apelike....THEN it would clearly be bigotry. No doubt about it. If a cartoonist, however, attacks only a specific political figure of ANY race or culture in that fashion, he's making a demeaning personal attack on that politician, but he is not demonstrating bigotry. Bigotry applies right across the board to a whole cultural group or race, it doesn't just go after one person.

For instance, the Nazis went after ALL Jews, didn't they? On principle. That's bigotry. And for instance, there was a time in the 1800s when cartoonists in many North American publications portrayed ALL Irish immigrants to America as apelike, ugly primitives. THAT was bigotry.

I see no evidence whatsoever that GfS despises and is against Black people in general, therefore I see no evidence of bigotry on his part. What I do see evidence of is that he made an inappropriately insulting remark about Michelle Obama which I don't see any reason for making.....but, hey! How many insulting remarks have been made here about George Bush or Sarah Palin? Hundreds. Thousands. And did we object to that? No. Not except for a few like DougR, Bearded Bruce, and pdq. Most of us really enjoy making demeaning and insulting remarks about political figures we don't like. We aren't demonstrating bigotry in so doing, we aren't demonstrating racism in so doing, we're just demonstrating the usual nastiness and killer instinct that politics seems to bring out in just about anybody...and not one of us is innocent of that.

In fact...we're quite proud of ourselves, aren't we? ;-D It's always considered perfectly allright to throw insulting crap at "the other side", and we all do it....but oh, my! What a fuss when the other side does it back to US!

Think about it.