Posted on 07/11/2009 12:01:08 PM PDT by buccaneer81
Conservative Free Republic blog in free speech flap after racial slurs directed at Obama children
By Chris Parry, Vancouver SunJuly 11, 2009 11:01 AM
This photo of U.S. President Barrack Obama's daughter Malia, wearing a peace-symbol t-shirt touched off a storm of epithet-laced comments on the conservative 'Free Republic' blog
"A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto thugs." "Ghetto street trash." "Wonder when she will get her first abortion."
These are a small selection of some of the racially-charged comments posted to the conservative 'Free Republic' blog Thursday, aimed at U.S. President Barack Obama's 11-year-old daughter Malia after she was photographed wearing a t-shirt with a peace sign on the front.
The thread was accompanied by a photo of Michelle Obama speaking to Malia that featured the caption, "To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds."
Though this may sound like the sort of thing one might read on an Aryan Nation or white power website, they actually appeared on what is commonly considered one of the prime online locations for U.S. Conservative grassroots political discussion and organizing - and for a short time, the comments seemed to have the okay of site administrators.
Moderators of the blog left the comments - and commenters - in place until a complaint was lodged by a writer doing research on the conservative movement, almost a full day later.
"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?" wrote one commenter.
"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," wrote another.
Such was the onslaught of derision on the site that the person who originally complained about the slurs, a Kristin N., claims only one comment in the first hundred posted actually criticized the remarks as inappropriate.
A note on the front of the blog reads, "Free Republic does not advocate or condone racism, violence, rebellion, secession, or an overthrow of the government," but one comment on the thread read, "This disgusting display makes me more and more eager for the revolution," while another read, "I never actually wnated [sic] to be a pistol before but..."
After attention from other blogs, the thread was suppressed and placed under review, but before long it was returned to the site intact, and attracted a new series of racial slurs when the original complaint email was posted publicly to the site, with the sender's email address intact.
"The writer has a point," wrote site owner Jim Thompson sarcastically. "We should steer clear of Obama's children. They can't help it if their old man is an American-hating Marxist pig."
"I agree Jim," wrote commenter, by the nickname NoobRep. "The kids didn't pick their commie pinko pansy of a father. Nor did they choose to be put into the spotlight. But Obama/Soetoro is fair game and so is his witch of a wife."
"Poor kids. I hope they're not 'punished with a baby'," wrote another. "Hopefully they won't deal cocaine like the Kenyan."
"DIRTBAGS! All of them. Our [White House] is now a joke to the rest of the world. We have no respect and this is not going to turn out well, mark my words. We will be hit, and much worse than last time. We are now seen as weak and vulnerable. Ghetto and Chicago thugs have taken over."
Only after significant negative attention from a host of left wing political blogs did the maintainers of the Free Republic site place the thread under review for a second time, before finally pulling it.
In the wake of the controversy, some Free Republic posters complained about the vitriol.
One poster by the name of "fullchroma" wrote, "To Jim Thompson: The recent uptick here in racist vitriol, aimed at Barrack, Michelle and their children has made me wonder if I belong. My objection to Obama has nothing to do with skin tone. Is the ugly stereotype of Conservative racism true?"
Another, going by the name of TChris, wrote, "Free Republic is a political discussion forum. It SHOULD be beneath us as a group to stoop to such juvenile tactics as I see increasing here lately. Do we REALLY have to insult Mrs. Obama's appearance like a clique of nasty 14-year-old girls?"
But such opinions were not shared by all. Said Roses of Sharon, "Poor libs .... Too late, the battle has been joined." © Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
If you see a cringe-inducing comment, you can always hit the Report Abuse button and ask the moderators to review it for possible racism or whatever it is that's making you cringe. They respond reasonably, in my experience, and will remove clearly bad comments. Responding to the person who made the comment telling them that their comments make you cringe and why also helps. Part of the problem here is that I think the moderators simply don't catch everything they might pull if they did read it.
I didnt see the thread but it was obviously not the finest hour around here. I say leave the kids alone. They are innocents.
Conservative Free Republic blog
Hyperventilating propaganda from the left.
Perpetual double standards on display.
I agree. Kids should be off limits.
This has a point, we shouldn’t use some of those names, seriously guys. Now, if we didn’t call them those names then please tell me. We shouldn’t be like that to 0bama’s kids even if the left is that way to Sarah Palin’s...
Just like the Kosevilites they are hypocrites too!
Don’t you find it disturbing that liberal bloggers now have veto power over our threads?
Jim started FR because liberals were using veto powers over his comments.
Wasn’t a misspelling. They had your last name totally wrong (Thompson?). That’s even worse than a misspelling, IMO.
There, fixed it for you.
Stupid posturing and sermonizing is really inappropriate, since I am convinced we were set up.
Get a clue.
Well, it begins. No matter the arguments we make, or the examples we provide of the Lefts hate and vitriol, it will not matter. We have been branded, and now the attacks are underway to marginalize us. I have expected attacks for a while, so I guess I should not be surprised.
How does one send an email to this paper? to this author?
A quick Google search seems to show a slight delta of the bias in the report. Somehow they missed the 3.8 million references to the Palins, but quickly caught the less than 85k for the obambis????
Results 1 - 10 of about 3,830,000 for palin whore.
Results 1 - 10 of about 84,500 for “michelle obama” whore.
hmmmm.
I agree, but I tried making that point last year and was called a troll.
Unless its a conservatives kids...
Yes, and I suspect most of the people here understand that context. I did. But it's still a nasty comment to make (two wrongs don't make a right) and it looks even worse to someone who doesn't understand that context, like most Americans, and read them out of context as part of a left-wing hit piece. We can't say those comments weren't posted on Free Republic because they were. We can try to defend them but doing so successfully will take more than a sound bite and nobody is going to listen to us long enough to understand the counterpoint. It's always easier to not step into a hole than to climb out of it.
The left is now warming up to discredit a firefighter in New Jersey, who dares to testify about his Supreme Court case..let’s see if he or his kids are off limits.
Yup. Despicable. But just because they think the ends justify any means doesn't mean we have to. We have something they don't. We're right.
In that case I seriously question your judgement.
Even though it's clear that what you posted was a link to the "bait."
What's the wise saying? "Stupid is as stupid does?"
Any wonder they should hate us, and the net media skyrockets in popularity, while those “paper” things slowly die on the vine...?
THANKS FOR HELPING US GROW, VancSun..!
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