Posted on 07/10/2009 9:53:00 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
Yesterday, theHalfrican posted a link to the Free Republic Website where several of its regular members were bashing Malia Obama for wearing a peace symbol t-shirt. The thread had several derogotary, racist, and sexual remarks about Malia. It also included a picture of Michelle Obama speaking to Malia that was accompanied with a racist caption.
I wrote the media contact at Free Republic yesterday, kristinn@bellatlantic.net, questioning the nature of the posters and the site:
Hello. I am an independent writer developing a book about the grassroots conservative movement online, of which your site, Free Republic, is included as a primary online gathering place for conservatives.
Could you please tell me how the owner of the site feels about posts like this one:
http://www.freerepublic.com/...
...in which conservatives who post regularly at the site make several racist statements about the 11-year-old daughter of President Obama for wearing a t-shirt adorned with a peace symbol? Remarks included the following:
"We’re being represented by a family of ghetto trash." "Looks like a bunch of ghetto thugs. A stain on America."
"Looks like a typical street whore."
"What we now are sending the ghetto over to represent us. and if so who the hell is that flea bag who looks to be dragged from the trash dumpster."
"you could go down any ghetto right now and see exactly the same."
"could you imagine what world leaders must be thinking seeing this kind of street trash and that we paid for this kind of street ghetto trash to go over there"
"the world must be laughing like mad right now at that we have this kind of street trash in our white house."
"Wonder when she will have her first abortion."
"sad isn’t it that we now have ghetto street trash over there representing us in Europe."
"This disgusting display makes me more and more eager for the revolution.
"They make me sick.... The whole family... mammy, pappy, the free loadin’ mammy-in-law, the misguided chillin’, and especially ‘lil cuz... This is not the America I want representin’ my peeps."
In addition, the thread includes a picture of Michelle Obama speaking to her daughter with the caption, "To Entertain Her Daughter, Michelle Obama Likes to Make Monkey Sounds."
Before you dismiss this as only a minority of posters at the site, out of 100 posts on that thread I found only 1 that criticized such remarks. This is not the first time I have seen such an exhibition of blatant racism at Free Republic by members who regularly post there.
Here are my questions:
Does Free Republic condone this type of exercise in free speech?
Are these the type of participants Free Republic is happy to have posting at its site?
What is Free Republic's policy about posting racially offensive comments?
What is Free Republic's policy about making sexual insinuations about minors (particularly relevant in light of the David Letterman/Sarah Palin brouhaha)?
Does Free Republic believe its membership accurately represents the conservative movement?
Does the owner of Free Republic believe this kind of discourse is helpful to rebuilding the Republican Party and furthering its goals?
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your responses.
went back to the site today and saw that the offending thread has been pulled "pending review."
http://www.freerepublic.com/...
I do note that Free Republic has a disclaimer on the first page that claims it does not condone this type of post; however, I am not sure when the disclaimer was added. Does anyone know?
From the disclaimer:
Opinions expressed on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Free Republic or its operators.
Please enjoy our forum, but also please remember to use common courtesy when posting and refrain from posting personal attacks, profanity, vulgarity, threats, racial or religious bigotry, or any other materials offensive or otherwise inappropriate for a conservative family audience.
Free Republic is a site dedicated to the concerns of traditional grassroots conservative activists. We're here to discuss and advance our conservative causes in a more or less liberal-free environment. We're not here to debate liberals. We do not want our pages filled with their arrogant, obnoxious, repugnant bile. Liberals, usurpers, and other assorted malcontents are considered unwelcome trolls on FR and their accounts and or posts will be summarily dismissed at the convenience of the site administrators.
Free Republic does not advocate or condone racism, violence, rebellion, secession, or an overthrow of the government.
So, the site will readily delete posts from liberals just because they are liberals and therefore everything they say is automatically considered "arrogant, obnoxious, repugant bile."
But comments calling an 11-year-old black girl "ghetto trash" and a "whore" are pulled "pending review." What is to review? Your site either supports that kind of rhetoric or it does not. Which is it?
If the Free Republic's "conservative family audience" consists of people who say such things as they often do (like yesterday), how conservative are they? And how family-oriented are they? Where were all the posts from other Free Republic regulars or from the owner of the site decrying this kind of racism directed at a child for no apparent reason than the fact that a peace symbol t-shirt inflamed their hatred to disgusting depths, like a red handkerchief in front of a mad bull?
Conservatives continually reinforce the fact that the only families they care about are conservative ones; the only troops they support are ones that do not vote democratic; the only children whose lives they value are the children of conservatives or unborn. How many of those aborted fetuses they claim to hold so dear would they trash had they been born and grown into a pre-teen who wore a t-shirt with a peace symbol or supported a liberal president? Or was gay?
The truth is that conservatives do not know the meaning of Jesus' words despite how much they love to use them when it suits their inner hatred of all those who are different. Worse, they lack basic human decency, as they demonstrate time and again.
I don’t have a problem with poking fun at the Obamas in general and certainly not with critizing them. While I don’t think it’s a good idea, I also don’t think being critical of Michelle Obama or the peace sign shirts was off limits, either. But I think it’s a lot more constructive to just to stay away from race because it walks right into a very effective stereotype the left has hung around the neck of the right. That said, there are still some comments made here and some articles linked to that make me wonder and in every case where I’ve asked a moderator to look at a message or reply, it’s been pulled, even though my comment is usually that I don’t think it looks good and the moderator should use their own judgement to evaluate it. And for the record, I’ve never hit the abuse button for an Aunt Esther picture. If you really want, I can dig up examples (I’ve done it before) and obviously Jim Robinson felt there was enough merit to this particular complaint to start a thread about it.
I can’t hep myself...I have to ask...what was the statement??????
Yes, I know. Didn’t think we should draw undue attention to that unfortunate fact. I’m sure the DailyKOS management will delete all that cruel, mean-spirited stuff from their website as soon as they discover it’s there. Probably planted there by unscrupulous conservative trolls, btw.
acutally checked out one of those threads, which was done right after Bristol gave her interview to Greta. I could only handle one thread due to the utter stupidity posted. However, there really wasn’t anything negative about Bristol that I saw. Several of the comments were actually supportive of her.
Kos posters have a complete and total disregard for human life, and they clearly beleive that sex is something completely appropriate for everyone...with everyone...whenever. But I didn’t see any Bristol trashing on the thread I read.
By the way, our moderators ha to ban a cute and fuzzy little lib troll called “jazzguy” today when he attempted to post this:
“All of you stupid, ignorant, racist assholes WILL burn in hell. And you better believe it!”
And I later received the following love note from him:
“You all need to die NOW!”
jazzguy (jzguy5@hotmail.com)
No different than using the term "white trash."
I refuse to be cowed by the PC thugs and as long as the mods don't object, neither do I.
The comments that I read were directed at Malia and her cousin who was with her. They were the same comments posted in this article. They were not directed at Michelle. Most of the “ghetto” comments were made by one poster, who just kept posting them over and over again.
He looked like an extra in a rap video.
And you will lose sleep over this creep’s message..right??
My moral values are not determined by the moderators.
Well good for you, Sandra Dee.
I don’t think the racist element hits 10% but I do think a small real racist element is there. It’s not only the particularly nasty comments about things like Michelle Obama’s appearance but it can also be seen in the black on white crime threads and some threads about other things like education.
Free Republic was excellent at stopping this sort of thing in the past but two things changed. One was 9/11 and a lot of general anti-Arab and anti-Muslim “euphemisms” were given a pass because of the anger against Islamic radicals and the other was an attempt by white supremacist groups to use Free Republic as a recruiting ground (messages were found on their message boards to that effect) and while that was resisted, I think some have stuck around for the long haul. That, combined with a lot of other issues lead me to believe, in general, that race relations are getting worse, not better, because both sides are playing into each other’s stereotypes.
People need to remember that all it took was one idiot with a toy monkey with an Obama sticker on it at a Sarah Palin rally to make the media argue that her supporters were racist. I’ll go back to the crap in the soup analogy. It doesn’t matter if there is only a drop of it. If you put a drop of crap in the soup, it spoils the whole thing and nobody is going to want to eat it. Racism is like that on the right. Even if it’s a drop, it spoils everything it touches.
Again, all of this said, the abuse button works pretty well, the moderators and reasonable, and challenging the racism tends to help, too. So the takeaway message here is that the Freeper readers can also help police the site because the moderators can be everywhere.
Post 284
I agree, you made your point very well, without profanity or insulting langauge. I would change your reference to an “insult to our military” to include that it is insulting/offensive to the American people that President Obama (and his family) represent. President Obama should behave in a manner that reflects badly on him nor his country and neither should his family. I would also say (looked at the thread briefly and left) the attire of Malia’s apparent companion was even less appropriate than hers.
When they do posters here should be free to point it out but they should adhere to high (hopefully) personal standards as well as those stated by the creator of this forum. If we do that we should ignore criticism from the left, as they will attack regardless.
It is also clear that they are not bothered by the tone or the language in the referenced thread, they simply attack it to quell descent. Judging from many of the posts, following an attack, it works .
Better Sandra Dee than the KKK.
So much for rational discussion.
Silly me. My fault.....sorry and all that stuff.
Yeah, you ended that with Sandra Lee.
I miss the days of Zell Miller.
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