Tagg Romney: Mr. White Privilege

[babylonsister]

Tagg Romney: Mr. White Privilege
Tagg Romney admits he'd like to slug Obama, becoming the latest white man that thinks he can say whatever he wants
By David Sirota


Tagg Romney, grandson of George Romney, son of Mitt Romney, is the latest flesh-and-blood embodiment of White Privilege on the national presidential stage. Though that stage has historically been a catwalk for the whitest and most privileged in the world, Tagg is in a class few achieve. With his lineage and his inherited wealth he equals George W. Bush when it comes to getting advantages by virtue of nothing more than whose crotch he popped out of in the hospital delivery room.

Now, thanks to his comments yesterday, he has surpassed even Bush, becoming not just an image of White Privilege, but an example of how that privilege quietly operates in too much of America.

In a post-debate interview with a North Carolina radio station, Tagg was asked about his visceral reaction to President Obama, and he said his first thought was that he wanted to “jump out of your seat and you want to rush down to the stage and take a swing at him.” He then laughed and added, “But you know you can’t do that because, well, first because there’s a lot of Secret Service between you and him.”

One of the hallmarks of White Privilege is the unquestioned and largely unchallenged assumption that white people can say heinous things about people of color without blowback or even mild criticism — things that people of color rarely dare to say about white people, for fear of serious retribution. Tagg — aka Mr. White Privilege — proves the point perfectly. He feels totally comfortable fantasizing about committing physical violence against an African-American man. And remember, he’s not just any white guy pondering such grotesque dreams. On the contrary, he’s one of the public faces of a national presidential campaign appearing in a public media interview, meaning White Privilege has made him feel so comfortable airing such notions, that he didn’t hesitate to whimsically broadcast them to thousands of voters.

To know that’s a reflection of the new intensity of White Privilege is to witness the relatively muted reaction to the episode from a media that otherwise treats every microscopic nuance of the presidential race as a “breaking news” event. What’s more, this is a country where, whether in an election season or not, any threat of violence against any president of either party is a potential federal crime and thus covered as a major news story. That is, of course, before Obama, a black man, became president, and representatives of his white opponent started joking about physically harming him.

If that’s not enough proof that this episode is a profound example of the pervasiveness of White Privilege, then simply go through the mental exercise of switching the races. Ask yourself: Would the media reaction be similarly muted if a young black male relative of Obama appeared on a radio show and publicly fantasized about violently bludgeoning Mitt Romney? No, it would be the opposite. It would be a multi-day, above-the-fold, 100-point-typeface story initially fueled by Drudge, Fox News and right-wing radio hosts, and then pervading the network news shows. We’d soon see headlines about security beefing up around Romney and his entourage, as staid “Face the Nation” and “Meet the Press” panels — populated by mostly white faces, of course — paternalistically lamented the “race issue” in America.

more...

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/18/tagg_romney_mr_white_privilege/

[SDjack]

1. Tagg doesn't have guts or pain tolerance to punch anyone, except

maybe a frail woman. However, he does have enough cash to issue a contract for that service.

[Zoeisright]

2. Those Romneys are absolutely repulsive.

Smarmy, lying, vicious little thugs who never had to work a day in their privileged, pampered, wussy little lives. I hate their fucking guts.

[amborin]

3. more than white privilege;

sociopathy may run in families

[nobunnyclue]

4. The priviledge to intimidate

... when you haven't faced it personally, you don't appreciate how Anti-American it is. I don't mean the mere privilege to threaten, but the threat with a real or perceived ability to deliver.

And it just so happens that it's the comfortable, economically secure, racial-religious-cultural "majority" that tend to reach their adult years without having been subjected first hand to that kind of punishment. They are the real ones who lack a true sense of ethics and personal responsibility for the consequences of their intimidation!

Put that in your "I really don't hold 49% of Americans in contempt" pipe and smoke it Mr. Romney.

[Catherine Vincent]

5. He was joking because surely he wouldn't be dumb enough to actually do it

But the fact that he said it, our msm isn't reporting much about it as opposed to, let's say, one of the president's daughters jokingly saying something like that.