I suppose an apology or acknowledgement that you were wrong or insensitive would be out of … oh right, you guys don’t do that, do you? Just keep digging.
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Right. That’s why he greeted every other member of the Committee with the appropriate language greeting based on his perception of where they originated.
And I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn, great pricing, if you’re interested.
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Whitefish Energy. No Bid, No Audit Contract for $300M. Even after recission they are going to get over $100M and did squat. Claimed the job was difficult because of PR mountains. It is a miracle and one of the wonders of the world that Puerto Rico’s Electrical Authority was able to construct a grid over those same mountains during the FDR Administration, given how difficult Whitefish found it.
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You tell me, honky bitch. (That’s just my way of saying “Good morning.”)
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Everything this guy says to a Democratic Congressional or to a media outlet is accompanied with a smirk. The accompanying photo is representative of every such interaction. So, No, he doesn’t get any benefit of the doubt when he says something ‘off’.
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Yes.
My dad was an AF chaplain posted in Japan right after Korea…our family was able to move to Japan to be with him while he was posted there. We learned a lot of Japanese phrases and words, but never actually learned the language. For about 6 months we lived in the other half of a Japanese home with the Japanese family that owned it and got to know them very well. My dad used the Japanese words he knew until he died and would never have thought it odd. But, he always called Japanese people “japs” or “nips” and felt that “the Occidental mind will never understand the Oriental one”. He always was a supporter of civil rights and never allowed us to use any denigrating words for people of color, but it never occurred to him that he held racist views of people with Japanese heritage. My mother still thinks that the terms “kike” or “hebe” aren’t offensive, because she remembers other Jewish people using those terms themselves. It was a different time and culture…my dad was born in 1918 and my mom in 1921, so I cut them some slack…but Zinke isn’t in his 90s and has been part of the cultural and social changes of the last 25 years…he chooses to be condescending and superior and therefore has no concerns about how his attempts at congeniality might not be appreciated or appropriate. Used to call people like him Ugly Americans.
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How could ever saying “Good Morning” be bad?
a) When what you really said was “Good Afternoon”.
b) When saying “Good Morning” in another language is meant to publicly tell all around that the person you’re addressing isn’t a “Real American”.
c) When your attempt to use a foreign language shows your ignorance of that language and culture.
d) When using the greeting shows you as an ignorant racist pile of excrement.
e) All of the above.
My ancestry is German, as is Zinke’s. If I were to meet him some morning, should I start the conversation with “Guten Abend - Wie geht es dir?” I mean, dammit, look at him, he’s clearly Volksdeutscher. Aren’t I celebrating his culture by greeting him (in the morning) by saying “good evening” and using the informal as I would to a child?
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How do you say ‘get the hell out of my country’ in German? Clearly, with a name like that he’s an immigrant, probably here illegally and needs to leave.
Run for office.
Register people to vote.
Get out the vote this fall!
Take America back!
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I’ll explain it again, Ryan, so that even you can understand. When you single a person out for special treatment because they’re a member of a particular group, you are telling that person you’re highly aware of that difference. You’re underscoring it. It’s snapping a spotlight on that difference. It doesn’t make people feel included. It makes them feel excluded.
There might be a time and place where you could greet someone that way, or demonstrate that you’re aware of some aspect of their culture. That was not the time or the place.
James Fallows, who speaks Japanese and lived in Japan for a time, noted that the crudeness of the greeting might not have registered with most people and gave examples of using stereotypically ethnic-oriented phrases after someone of that ethnicity was trying to tell you something serious. He concludes:
Similarity is the “essentialism” — thinking it would be clever to respond not to substance of question but w note of the otherness of the questioner.
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My own dad is 94 and grew up in a time and place when different immigrant groups had a constant low-grade tension among them. To this day he’s very conscious of ethnicity, taking special note of it always. He’s profoundly decent and everyone likes him. But boy, is he aware. He’s also an only child, always somewhat inner-directed, and never got used to the fact that the nation is more diverse than it was when he was a kid because he’s just not much of a noticer. At any rate I think we all cut people of a certain generation a measure of slack about that. Most of them don’t mean anything bad by it.
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Oh give him a break this condescending racist asshole has leaking drawers.
ETA: Oops that should be doors, my bad.
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I served with a guy with an Hispanic surname. He spoke no Spanish, was no more Spanish than, say, Mickey Rooney. A great grand dad came from Madrid in the 1890s.
He was constantly asked, “What part of Mexico did your family come from?” Or, called Jose Jimenez when that comedy bit was popular. He was a big guy and if he got an insult more than once he’d tell the offender that next time he was looking at a punch in the nose. That worked.
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If he’s stupid enough to say it, he’s stupid enough not to understand why it’s offensive.
This whole (mal)administration is packed with clueless, tone deaf ignoramuses.
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A back derivation of uncouth…popular about 20 years ago…
It’s not just you…
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There’s a funny situation in my town—it’s heavily Mexican, about 40 percent, and many of them really like it if you speak even a little Spanish to them, their faces will light up. But I feel inhibited about trying out my few words on random people because I don’t know if you even speak Spanish, do I? But you’ll go in a supermarket and Anglo checkout clerks will be chattering away with Hispanic folks, it’s very cool. I just like to err on the side of caution that way.
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A key consideration is that saying “guten morgen” to Zinke would not be the same thing, a fact underscored by the context of the discussion of the Japanese internment camps. There were very few if any Zinkes interned, and those were probably German nationals. By contrast, many of the Hanabusas, of whatever generation, would have been interned.
He was basically telling her: no matter what generation American you are, you are still not fully American because of your Asian ethnicity. Whites get a pass.
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I thought it was “Sieg Heil.”
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I am beginning to suspect that Zinke is, (how can I put this?), an asshole, a racist asshole.
Why else you think he got the job!
Birds of a feather and all that.
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