David_Hilliard
Loves Spam
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2007
- Posts
- 464
Leave it to the Germans to lay bare their ugly racist proclivities. "Uncle Barack's Cabin" is the headline on the front page of Die Tageszeitung, a leading Berlin newspaper, over a large photograph of the White House. Nice. The reference, of course, is to Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
According to one of the rag's editors, "the headline is intended to be satirical. Uncle Tom's Cabin is a book that all Germans know and which they associate with issues of racism." The headline is supposed to make people think about these stereotypes. It works on many levels.
It certainly does work on many levels. It demonstrates conclusively that the Goebbels mentality is still very much in evidence in Germany 63 years after the end of the Holocaust. It exposes the racist undercurrent that still exists in the land of Richard Wagner and Herman Goering more than six decades after the collapse of the Third Reich. And perhaps it illustrates the resentment of some Germans at the fact that Barack Obama takes great pride in the fact that one of his uncles helped liberate the Nazi concentration camp of Ohrdurf, near Buchenwald.
But the offensive Tageszeitung headline is also a warning to us here in the United States. Between now and November, the bigots and reactionaries among us are certain to exploit every slimy racist undercurrent they can discover in a desperate effort to keep Barack Obama out of the White House. They must not be allowed to get away with it.
According to one of the rag's editors, "the headline is intended to be satirical. Uncle Tom's Cabin is a book that all Germans know and which they associate with issues of racism." The headline is supposed to make people think about these stereotypes. It works on many levels.
It certainly does work on many levels. It demonstrates conclusively that the Goebbels mentality is still very much in evidence in Germany 63 years after the end of the Holocaust. It exposes the racist undercurrent that still exists in the land of Richard Wagner and Herman Goering more than six decades after the collapse of the Third Reich. And perhaps it illustrates the resentment of some Germans at the fact that Barack Obama takes great pride in the fact that one of his uncles helped liberate the Nazi concentration camp of Ohrdurf, near Buchenwald.
But the offensive Tageszeitung headline is also a warning to us here in the United States. Between now and November, the bigots and reactionaries among us are certain to exploit every slimy racist undercurrent they can discover in a desperate effort to keep Barack Obama out of the White House. They must not be allowed to get away with it.
