So Bob Beckel Said "Chinamen" and Then Hundreds of Sad People Pretended to be Outraged and Now a Congressman Is Calling for His Firing

Beckel said this a few days ago on The Five:

"The Chinese are the single biggest threat to the national security of the U.S. They have been, they will be and they can wait, they’re very patient. Do you know what we just did? As usual, we bring them over here and we teach a bunch of Chinamen-- eh, Chinese people-- how to do computers and then they go back to China and hack into us."

So like then people just went crazy cutting the clip and posting it on YouTube and saying how crazy offensive this was!

And then a US Representative demanded he be fired:

Charles Cooke and Kevin Williamson talk about this latest nonsense distraction on their podcast.

On the same basic subject, Cooke writes about the criminalization of a float depicting the "Obama Presidential Library" as an outhouse.

A quick recap for the happily uninitiated: The "controversial float" in question was one of many included in this year’s Independence Day parade in Norfolk, Neb. The entry, which featured a zombie standing on an outhouse marked "Obama Presidential Library," was created by a veteran named Dale Remmich, and was designed, Remmich claims, to express the "political disgust" that he feels at the Obama administration’s mismanagement of the Department of Veteran Affairs. As is the habit now, pictures of the float were quickly pushed around the Internet, attracting the attention and disapprobation of such august institutions as the Washington Post, CBS, ABC, and the Huffington Post -- and, it seems, the interest of the United States Department of Justice. This week, the World-Herald reports, the DOJ "sent a member of its Community Relations Service team, which gets involved in discrimination disputes, to a Thursday meeting about the issue."

The issue?

Present at the summit were the NAACP, the mayor of the Nebraska town in which the float was displayed, and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, which sponsored the event.

Now for the obvious question: Why? What, exactly, was the problem here?

The whole piece is good, but I love this ending:

There are few things more indicative of human liberty than the ability to castigate power with impunity -- up to and including the moment of offense. "To learn who rules over you," Voltaire suggested, "simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." Is Barack Obama to be a ruler?

Answer: Yes.

posted by Ace at 07:08 PM

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