Well my sister in law sent the wacked out, crazy, frothing at the mouth, Obama is .....

[bunny planet]

an anti-semite and a rascist email to me today. Plus, oh joy, she is coming next week for a visit to see my exhibition. I was, but am no longer. looking forward to that visit. She's been fed a steady diet of Hannity and Rush for the last couple of days and now believes that Obama is a dishonest bigot who secretly supports Farrakan. What am I going to do. It is inexplicable to me that someone as intelligent about most matters as my sis in law can hear the same speech I found moving and inspirational and see and hear something entirely different. I sent her back an email saying simply that I would never, ever discuss politics with her again since the last time she and her husband ambushed me in Nashville and gave me laryngitis for my opening there. I think I'll stay in a hotel when she comes. She won't quit, she's relentless and quite nuts when it comes to this stuff.

This is so depressing.

[Berry Cool]

1. Is this a new one? As in, a replacement for the "He's a Muslim" email?

*sigh*

Your SIL needs to go on a Fixed Noise diet. Badly.

Know what I'd do? It might not work, but I'd ask her, "Did you REALLY listen to Obama's speech yesterday? Would you be willing to? And then let me know what you think? Or would you be willing to listen to what I thought?"

It might not change her mind, but it might force her to think about whether or not the words she's hearing sound like the words of a dishonest bigot.

You might also ask her: "How bigoted do you think Obama can afford to be against white people when his own mother was white? Do you think he hated his mother?"

This is what really amazes me. I would think it would be ridiculously easy to paint Obama as a black racist white-hater if he were 100% African American. But for Pete's sake, he had a white mother. Yet these idiots STILL think he hates and reviles white people and wants to hurt them.

[bunny planet]

2. Here's a snippet of what she wrote to Mr. Bunny - she has endless ranting capability

Hence, my use of the email medium. Don't want to freak anyone out in
person. But you may rightly surmise I am passionate on this issue.
Frankly, I wish Obama lived up to his press because I love watching him
stick it to Hillary in debates and I prefer his health plan. His cadence and
self-assurance is mesmerizing. But I can't get around his dark underbelly
and think the man is a cipher. The most dangerous men in the world have been
powerful speakers. He makes me uneasy precisely because he is charismatic.

'The most charitable interpretation of his association with the Rev. is that
he was naiive to the extremity of his views, which you seem to propose, but
such naiivete is not a good qualification for the job of commander and chief
of the USA in these troubled times. Obama also said before this bruhaha
broke (in one of the debates) that he would sit down and chat with Machmoud
Achmedinejad, the tyrant of Iran without preconditions. Never mind that
Achmedinejad has said repeatedly that Israel should be "wiped out" and
refers to it as "a filthy bacteria." This kind of naiivete does not endear
him to me. I am reminded of Chamberlain chatting with Hitler.

There is a Part II to my rant, and here it is, hopefully not so aggressive:

Forgot to mention the most damning action behind the screen of the speech,
that of Rev. Wright's precipitous and fortuitous abrupt RETIREMENT within a
day of the speech so that Obama could conveniently refer to him in the
speech as his "former" pastor (implying, problem OVER, 20 years of
association becomes old news). Meanwhile, he retains his membership in the
church and all his black support therefrom. Pretty disingenuous. Are we to
believe this "retirement" was not at Obama's request? Pretty happy
coincidence. There was a tv interview with the church's congregants and
many expressed their anger that suddenly Rev. Wright was out of a job. Rev.
Wright is a feisty 63 year old man of explosive vigor and vitality who from
the looks of it from his videos, loves his work and had no prior intention
to retire at this juncture. With any luck, he'll be on the guest speaker
pulpit after the election, but he won't be stumping for Obama right now.

This "retirement' belies Obama's normalization of the guy, saying he's just
a typical black of his generation, victim of racism, only occasionally
getting political, etc. If Wright is so "typical", how come Obama doesn't
want any more of his toxic rants on the airwaves? He sure doesn't want any
reporters attending any of Wright's future sermons. Duh!

This also speaks volumes about Obama's loyalty to his friends. Once Wright
became Kryptonite to Obama's campaign, he was jettisoned by forced
retirement while Obama had the audacity to say he wasn't repudiating him.
Obama "disappeared" the guy, not out of conviction, but political
expediency. This is old politics, not new politics. Obama may be such a
convincing liar that he believes himself. It's happened before.

Meanwhile, stay tuned for Obama's new tome, "The Audacity of Hype".


See what I'm talking about (this is me again) She's been watching 24 hours of 10 minute hates obviously. I am so disgusted with this cynical mindset, but Cheney tellling the American people to go 'f' themselves yesterday, McCain's Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran, and 100 years of war, all ok with her. Just very sad. Ironically, she is the relative mentioned in Obama's speech, that you disagree with vehemently but you love so you can't denounce. Oy. Btw, if it was a radical rabbi calling for the killing of all Muslims or putting them into camps, she'd be just fine with that. I'm shuddering to think her candidate (McBush) will be swept into the office because of this Wright controversy.

[Berry Cool]

3. Here's how I'd start attacking this one.

Obviously your SIL is under the MAJOR MISIMPRESSION that Rev. Wright was forced to step down and retire FROM HIS PASTOR POSITION at his CHURCH only in the past few days, and believes that Obama worked secretly behind the scenes to FORCE HIS RETIREMENT FROM HIS CHURCH. Not so! He retired from his pastoral position months ago. She is wrong to be imagining his parisioners being upset with Obama for being somehow secretly involved with him retiring from his church position as a result of all this. It's not true. As for his "future sermons" that Obama supposedly doesn't want the media to broadcast, he won't be making any, so her point is academic.

Second, I would ask her whether she has ever heard of the Revs. Parsley and Hagee, and what they have to say, and of their relationship to Sen. McCain, and ask her whether she thinks he is similarly tainted by that. If not, why? How about Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson and how they blamed 9/11 on God being mad about feminists, gays and abortions and taking it out on America by removing His divine protection from it and allowing its enemies to attack? Weren't they saying America "deserved 9/11"?

Third, while I can certainly understand your SIL's tendency to mistrust "charismatic" leaders, she needs to remember that while charismatic leaders can indeed be Pied Pipers seducing their followers to destruction (Hitler, Jim Jones, etc.), they can also be great leaders who help save their people (Moses, Martin Luther King, and yes, I would say Churchill, in that he got a whole lot of people to trust he could lead them out of their misery). Charismatic leadership should never be blindly trusted, but neither is it by definition bad.

Fourth, there is a vast difference between being willing to "sit down and chat" with someone and being an appeaser. If Jimmy Carter hadn't worked so hard to get Sadat and Begin to "sit down and chat," there would have been no Camp David accords. "Sitting down and chatting" needn't mean knuckling under to a person you consider a despot. But it is an alternative to war. People talking things out, attempting to act like adults so that something good can be accomplished--what a concept! It's worth trying, at least, without jumping into war as a first resort.

Fifth, I would repeat, Obama no longer has Wright as part of his campaign, but he did NOT get Wright "fired" from his job or "force his retirement" from it for "political expediency." I don't even think he'd be ABLE to do that. He was not Wright's employer; the church was. What, she believes he pulled strings to get the church to fire Wright and ruin his career because he wanted to be president so badly? No wonder she thinks he's a two-faced lying snake who would throw his best friend out the window just for power.

Thing is, her perceptions in that area are WRONG.

She needs to be told.

If she still thinks being a charismatic leader is a sign of having a "dark underbelly," if she simply cannot trust too compelling a speaker because she fears that anyone who speaks well and looks good is likely to be a "cypher," if she thinks "seductive = evil," there's not much you can do about it except point out that charisma and the ability to get others to follow one are tools that are not good or bad in and of themselves; it's what one does with them that makes it so. Jesus got a lot of people to drop whatever they were doing and follow him. Not everyone believes he was divine, not everyone even believes he existed, but most people would not call him (whether they believe him to be divine, real or not) an evil character who led people to perdition.

I'm not saying Obama is Jesus or God or anything, either. I'm just trying to make a point. If she'd been in one of the towers on 9/11 and not known what to do, feeling panic close in, and she heard someone yell clearly through the din, "I have a flashlight! Come on, let's all get in a group and go down the stairwell together," would it have been a bad idea to follow him? Sure, he might not have helped save her...but what if his flashlight and his calm, steady voice of encouragement kept her focused and emotionally together until she was able to get all the way to the bottom and out?

All these are just thoughts. Feel free to share them with her, or not.

(fixed a typo)

[Botany]

4. I was going to just read this thread and pass on it or say something simple ....

... like "Well she is family keep it light and know she will not be
around for long." But after reading her first line;

"Hence, my use of the email medium." I have only one thing to say,
she is nucking futz. Good luck to you and btw if you do have a
mental health hot line or place you can ask a question to a "head
shrinker" go there ASAP and ask them how to handle her visit.

I am betting bi-polar manic w/ maybe a little ADD thrown in for
good measure.

Hence, my use of the email medium. Please!