Kilmeade fancies himself an erudite historian, but anyone who reads his “books” knows better. I was trapped into reading one when our book club assigned it. This League of Women Voters book club discusses non-fiction, generally political and historical works by renowned authors such as McCullough, Goodwin, and Beschloss.
Next to these, Kilmeade’s 4th grade essay was painful to read. Completely puerile and ridiculous. Everyone in the club denounced it and the one who suggested it was apologetically abashed.
Kilmeade wasn’t offering educated insight. He was following the Fox script that requires bashing Muslims, women and Democrats, in any order.
Omar is a target and she knows it. It doesn’t matter what she actually says. As soon as she appears on TV, the RW hates her and twists what she says, or just invents inflammatory remarks to ascribe to her.
She and a few other female freshman reps have already had daily death threats and a constant barrage of slander aimed at them. Do you think changing up a few phrases will make an iota of difference? Fox has their enemies list. She’s on it. If she didn’t say something they disagree with, or can pretend to disagree with, they will put words in her mouth. She might as well say what she thinks. The relentless attacks and defamation can’t get any worse.
Wonder if there’s a conspiracy theory out there that says Trump got jealous and hired all “those people” to level the tallest building for him. Would serve two purposes - make his building the tallest and smear “those people” as the perpetrators. He could afford it, since (he says) he’s richer than god.
Something in me bristles every time 9/11 comes up. Not that I would downplay the human loss and suffering involved. That was truly horrific. But that this event has been so overplayed and politicized, mostly from the right, that I want to scream at anyone for bringing it up as a political ploy of any sort. Which is almost every damned time.
I am SICK of 9/11 for the political fallout and damage it has done and continues to do. I’m sick of the sleazy politicians who have so callously exploited it. What Omar said was not exploitation. What her accusers are doing is exploitation.
“…You can’t keep handing them weapons to use against you…”
If she had you or any number of people who deal in language to edit her pronouncements, she could make her points without handing weapons to her enemies. Either she has bad writers on her staff or writers dumb enough to sabotage her. Effective political leaders stay up all night drafting and revising to make statements sound ex tempore. When you are forced to say, “I’m as American as you,” you need some new ghost writers.
I imagine she does try to think before she talks, but given the spotlight and microphones on her 24 x 7, she has no space to grow into her role like other freshman politicians.
I witnessed 9/11 with the same horror. HOWEVER… while you are berating her for not being respectful enough of the horror we watched on TV, I suggest you consider the absolute horror she may have witnessed and lived day in and day out as a child in Somalia.
And whether or not Omar survives all this will be a test of where the heart of the country truly is. We’ll see if she struggles for re-election in 2020, or whether she wins easily.
ETA: You can get away with spreading any kind of filth you want about African Americans and asylum seekers at the border and Muslim Americans and naturalized Latino citizens. You can do it by dog-whistle or you can do it directly the way Trump does and make up lunacies out of whole cloth that defame and inflame.
And she can’t speak her mind? No. I’m just not buying it and if I agree at all that she needs to be as @mattinpa says above, more circumspect – and I do agree – it’s only because I want to see her survive and keep speaking truth to power. And win again in 2020 in a landslide.
The GOP base is animated by greed and grievance: the former for the wealthy, the latter for the hoi polloi. They are literally in the business of finding ways to take offense.
Omar didn’t detour from her point to wallow in 9/11. Is that a fatal mistake? Is that a rhetorical faux pas? Only in the context of a political discourse that’s entirely ruined because one of the parties is acting in bad faith.
I agree and I spoke to that point. I don’t mind her saying what she thinks. I mind her not thinking about what she says in ways that make it easier for them to attack her. And it makes it easier for them to paint all Democrats as radicals, not real Americans, out of touch, insensitive, etc. etc. You have to be circumspect in private life, and you really have to be in public life too. You have to think about how things will sound to different groups. It’s part of the damn job.
Her family moved to the United States 27 years ago.
You say you “watched…with horror and fear, as the towers in NYC exploding smoke and fire, began to come apart.”
Are you quite sure she did not watch with just as much horror and fear as you did?
Neither. The events of 2001 are eighteen years old. Whereas the remarks she made last month came just days after Muslims were massacred in New Zealand.
Well some groups have to worry far less. And some not much at all.
But I get it that this is becoming a distraction. Every time I see her name now, I think oh no. What now? I do not believe that she is totally at fault, the GOP’s been doing this for years and years and – as others have said – she could be mild as milk and they’d still figure out a way to turn her into a Jew hating, America hating, radical Muslim who’s secretly out to destroy our freedoms. She wears a headscarf after all. They have the visual.
But the thing is, she’s not mild as milk and that works to their advantage, not hers – or ours. So it’s a problem for me because I have a hard time accepting that someone who speaks the truth needs to tone it down.
So let’s just say I wish she were better at thinking on her feet and beating them at their own game. AOC has that gift – though even she has success only up to a point. They’ve got the anti-American socialist who’s going to take your money away cudgel to beat her with.
Get a grip … replace ‘Omar’ with Hillary and it’s just as valid. What you seem to be advocating is that every (woman??) the RW targets should just shut up and sit down.
"Omar is a target and she knows it. It doesn’t matter what she actually
says. As soon as she appears on TV, the RW hates her and twists what she
says, or just invents inflammatory remarks to ascribe to her. "
And another thing: (if I recall correctly) Mike Pence proudly proclaimed he’s a Christian first, a Republican second, and only then an elected official committed to the constitution and the people of the United States! Where’s the outrage?
I’m not clutching pearls and I dislike the clutching of pearls and the freak out. But as I’m sure you know, it’s a mark of intelligence to be able to entertain opposing points of view at the same time. That’s where I am on this.
