An exhibitor at the 2008 Value Voters Summit - sponsored by the Family Research Council and counting among its speakers former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been selling seemingly racist anti-Obama waffles.
The product is pictured (at right) and portrays Senator Obama closer to a character out of Fat Albert than the man who is running for the President of the United States.
The first image shows a gaping caricature of Obama under the words “Obama Waffles,” with the tagline “Waffling the World Over.” The second shows Obama in a turban with the words, “Point box toward Mecca for tastier waffles.”
“I asked the ‘chef’… if he was at all concerned that this might be viewed as a white man putting a black man into a frying pan,” Raw Story reporter Larisa Alexandrovna wrote Saturday. “He laughed and said, ‘I hope so.’”
Summit security would not allow photographs to be taken inside the exhibit hall, but you can view a video from the American News Project here.
The waffles are also sold online. The site selling them says they are also sold at the bookstore Books-A-Million, though nothing comes up in a search at the bookseller’s website.
Read more… (Including how Lou Dobbes bought a box for his wife..)
Exactly what kind of values do these people promote? Looks like the spreading of more spurious lies and innuendo, and blatant racism.. Gee, sounds like great family values.. Just stay away from my children.
The Family Research Council calls themselves a Christian organization. Maybe not so much..
Actually, they’re a think tank and powerful group of lobbyists who hide behind religion). Christians follow the teachings of Jesus Christ which are taken from the Bible. I’ve read the bible. I don’t recall in any of those teachings where Jesus said it was “family values” to lie, slander, misrepresent, and smear another human being – (let along another professed Christian) – in order to win an election and take control of a government. I must have missed that chapter.. I only remember Christ’s teachings to be about loving one another, and caring for those in need.
Take note of the photo of Barack Obama on the top of the box, dressed in a Muslim head-dress. These people KNOW Obama is not a Muslim. They know he is a professed Christian. I didn’t realize scaring families by spreading lies was a “Family Value”.. This is despicable, and they are responsible from trying to perpetuate a myth and sell fear to people who believe these men of the FRC are spiritual men.
These are not Christian principles, and this group misrepresents themselves by hiding behind the title of “Christian”. They are rich, powerful lobbyists with hateful, dishonest, and destructive tactics – perpetuating lies of this magnitude, and then they laughing about it.
They give Jesus Christ, God, and Christianity a bad name..
From Wikipedia:
The Family Research Council (FRC) is a Christian right non-profit think tank and lobbying organization. It was formed in the United States by James Dobson in 1981 and incorporated in 1983. The group was designed to be a lobbying force for conservative legislation on Capitol Hill. In the late 1980s the group officially became a division of Dobson’s main organization Focus on the Family, but in 1992 IRS concerns about the group’s lobbying led to an administrative separation. Its function is to promote traditional family values. The current president is Tony Perkins.
Lobbyists for Jesus..? Really?
Tony Perkins and James Dobson have also been members of the secretive, powerful Council for National Policy.
This is the same group that hand-picked Sarah Palin to be the VP for John McCain.
The Republicans have repeatedly made comments with blatant racial undertones, while couching them as either jokes (in this case) or misunderstandings. (See this and this.) The speeches given at the Republican National Convention were nasty and divisive. Republicans are leaving their own party and supporting Obama.
It seems that the Republican Party has taken the Bush mantra of “Either you’re with us or against us” and applied it to their entire party. Either you are one of them (white, fundamentally religious, and heterosexual, willing to lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie about lying and are mean-spirited) or you are not.
Let me ask you, are you one of them?
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17 Comments
September 13, 2008 at 7:55 pm
And should voters be asking candidates, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Republican Party?”
It started getting real bad when Reagan took office. He’s dead now (have to keep reminding the wingers of that) but his legacy of Victory Through Fear lives on in the likes of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, two people who do not have a single fiber of moral being between the two of them. They sought winning for winning’s sake, and power for power’s sake. They knew that their tactics would never be taken to be “the high road”, but since they felt that the ends justified the means, they were able to compartmentalize their evil sides and focus on winning at all costs, including the cost of their integrity and humanity.
If the Republican Party truly wants to be known as the “Party of Lincoln”, and survive another eight years, then they must rid themselves of this self-destructive realtionship with these fundamentalist religious groups.
September 13, 2008 at 8:05 pm
The “Party of Lincoln” was in power during our first Civil War. It appears they want to be the party in power during our next Civil War as well.
Let me ask you, are you one of them?
No. I am not.
September 13, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Neither am I, Iolair. I am not “with the President”, so I must, by his definition, be “with the Enemy”. I am no medical or psychological expert, but isn’t this kind of thinking (”You’re either with me or you’re my enemy”) indicative of some form of mental illness (psychosis, neurosis?)
September 13, 2008 at 8:10 pm
And, if so, Iolair, isn’t someone supposed to be writing some kind of letter saying they will be taking over until the president is better? I realize that would be Dick Cheney, but wouldn’t it be nice to see them follow the Constitution at least once since they were sworn in (which was the last time)?
September 13, 2008 at 8:11 pm
This is out and out racism. It is disgusting and shameful that there are still white Americans that think they are better than anyone else. Put these racist in stocks and set them in the town square. I want to throw potatoes at them.
September 13, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Wayne, Megalomania..?
September 13, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Watching the video of the guys who came up with this brain fart storm, it was both fascinating and horrifying to watch these two racists try to justify their racist humor. At one point, they justified mentioning that Obama is a Muslim because “it was reported just yesterday, again.” Didn’t say where, but does that make it any more true than it already hasn’t been? They used a picture of Obama in traditional Kenyan garb as more “evidence” of his “Musliminess”. What’s more sad is that they are actually selling this shit. To people like Lou Dobbs (who said his wife would “love it!”)
September 13, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Muse, I was thinking more along the lines of “paranoia”? I realize that full paranoia results in complete distrust of anyone, but he has to be partway there by now. I worry how far he will go to preserve his imaginary legacy.
I’ve been reading that fascinating column by Jonathan Haidt, about Why People Vote Republican.
Emphasis (bold) mine. It explains a lot to me (and valuidates my beliefs, yes, I admit it. But at least someone who has actually studied the phenomenon has confirmed what I’ve come to believe – there’s something wrong with conservatives.
Of course, their distrust in anything scientific or academic will compel them to dismiss all this proof, and we’re practically back where we started.
September 13, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Remember, it’s Dobbs, who for how many years now, has railed on Immigrants – under the guise of The Poor Middle Class (of which we are, but not so much from immigrants as much as the employers who would rather pay slave wages than living wages). His rants are little short of racism, in itself. Those damned icky brown people.
Fuck you, Dobbs. And totally fuck the GOP.
September 13, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Since conservative-minded people respond to good vs evil arguments, how do we convince them that it is really the Republican Party who are the ones representing evil? The Repubs have already gained their trust and convinced them that it is we who are evil, so how do we convince them of the truth? Do we call out the Repubs and make them prove their claims (which we can do and they ought not be able to do, on account of they’re lying)?
These people who vote Republican do value the same things we value, it’s just that they value those things less than we do, and other things more than we do. Do we downplay (and minimize) the other things that they value, or do we simply try to expose the Republicans for the two-faced liars they are?
September 13, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Wayne, to be paranoid, he would have to actually be self aware enough to actually be afraid or worry.. I honestly think he is totally oblivious to everyone but himself.
I read Dr. Justin Frank’s “Bush on the Couch” (very good by the way), and John Dean’s “Conservatives with Conscience“. I was convinced about Bush after the first book. The second book helped me to understand how these people can profess to be Christian God-fearing men and lie and cheat like they do. There is some serious pathology going on. Especially with Bush. I couldn’t put that book down. It made too much sense to me, beings I have lived the last 16 years with an emotionally disturbed young man in our house. I recognized what he was talking about immediately (Dr. Frank).
September 13, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Hey, anybody remember the Contract With America?
This, about “family values”
But if you’re a child of the Governor, like Bristol, then there’s no problem. All is forgiven. The real sin is not in having sex before marriage, or even getting pregnant. The real sin lies in being poor and pregnant out of wedlock.
September 13, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Muse,
I read both of those, too. In reading through haidt’s piece, I’ve come to wonder if perhaps (maybe not this election cycle but next) if Democtas should just tell everybody, “I know you’re worried about the future, but you have to believe us when we say the Republicans are not inthe least bit interested in trying to allay your fears, they are only interested in trying to exploit them so you’ll vote for them. And when you do, they’ll keep you afraid and tell you that only they can keep you safe. People, they are lying!
Now, if you don’t like me, I understand, and that’s your right. But, please, I beg you, don’t vote for the Republican just because you don’t like me. Vote for a third party. But don’t stay home, there are other votes that need to be cast. Vote for whomever you wish, but if you don’t want to constantly live in fear, then don’t vote Republican.
September 13, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Wayne, I’d pay good money to hear Obama stand up and say that in front of a crowd or a camera. Good money..
September 13, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Wayne, thanks for that link. I am too tired to read it tonight, but I have it linked to read tomorrow when I get home.
I am always interested in learning how these people think and what makes them tick. I bought Thom Hartmann’s book “Breaking the Code”, but I haven’t got into it yet. Too many books, too little time..
September 13, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Wow Iolair, I remember it but never read it. That is wild.
You are absolutely right. The biggest sin I think is just being poor. The contrast you draw between the Governor’s pregnant unwed daughter and how she is being portrayed, and how the poor unwed mother is a burden and blight on society is pretty darn clear (and hypocritical).
September 13, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Wayne, if what is said about First Wave Indigos is true, then those who are born to “think Republican” are being phased out by evolution.
This, then, is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and we are living at the very edge of a new Renaissance of our species.