The GOP’s peculiar vocabulary of race
"Newt's claim that the NAACP "demands" food stamps shows why his rival's talk of "blah" people is hard to believe.
"If Rick Santorum is upset that pretty much nobody believed him when he said he wasnt talking about black people living off somebody elses money, he has Newt Gingrich to blame. A day after the GOPs flavor of the week changed stories and claimed, I didnt say black, when he said, I dont want to make [something sounding like black] peoples lives better by giving them somebody elses money, Gingrich again called President Obama the food stamp president. He told reporters in New Hampshire, I will go to the NAACP convention and tell the African-American community why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps.
"On Thursday I performed the mental exercise of giving Santorum the benefit of the doubt, and laid out the way the GOPs 60s era rhetoric about welfare queens and welfare cheats has been updated to include much of the multiracial working class, including whites including anyone who has a public sector job, a union-protected job, or collects unemployment, Social Security or Medicare. It seemed theoretically possible while still hard to believe that Santorum was merely sharing the new GOP line that were all welfare queens now, any of us whove ever benefited from a government program.
"Then Gingrich made my thought exercise seem unduly kind, by demonstrating exactly why people should be inclined to distrust Santorums new story and believe he was talking about black people: The modern GOP seems unashamed of its prejudice."
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/06/the_gops_peculiar_vocabulary_of_race/singleton/