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I saw the discussion on MTP - as soon as Robinson made his 'reasonable sober people' remark I was shouting "Timmy, ask him to identify a solitary case of one of those reasonable sober people so that you can interview the individual and we can all see if the person is both reasonable and sober." Alas, that would be too much to ask of Timmy who once again wasted the opportunity to get to the bottom of what the truth really is - in this case by letting Robinson's comments go by unchallenged. I hate these kinds of comments because they are based on absolutely zero basis of fact - and once they get repeated, they take on a life and 'truth' of their own which is several steps above simple urban myths.

Robinson also had some rather stupid things to say about racism, how the hurricane had forced people to finally identify it, agree that it exists, confront it, talk about it etc. Here's my problem. Do we all want racism to go away? Well yes - except for Jesse Jackson and others like him who will be out of a job if they can no longer claim racism and thus extort big bucks out of corporations. So, if we all keep talking about racism (as Robinson suggests), how do we ever make it go away? Isn't the best way for racism to be made to disappear is for everyone to go colourblind - which by definition means that everyone must have stopped talking about it? I'm reminded of a decent politician a few years ago who was once asked to produce the numbers about how many blacks and people of ethnic origin that he have on staff (the motive being of course to embarrass him). His answer was classic "Our party would never do something so racist as to track figures like that." Isn't the correct answer to what YOU (whether you are a politician or not)are doing to help stamp out racism something along the lines of "I don't think about it, I don't talk about it, I don't let race enter into any decisions that I make - because I am colourblind with regards to race." If the answer is anything other than this, isn't that insuring that racism is perpetuated instead of hitting an end-of-the-line roadblock?