What else can we do except shake our heads and laugh at these people?
Via Joan Walsh, Salon:
Hey, did you hear the one about the disappearing “Nigerian email scammers”? They’ve “become a lot less active lately” because they’ve “all been hired to run the Obamacare website.” That’s Sen. Ted Cruz, folks, on his Reactionary Real America Victory Tour Monday night, and he’ll be here all week, maybe all decade. Tip your waiter!
Declaring that our first black president’s signature policy achievement is being run by “Nigerian email scammers” is GOP dog-whistle politics at its finest. Of course, Cruz wasn’t just going for cheap laughs at the expense of the Affordable Care Act. He knows it’s a short hop from Nigeria to Kenya for his Obama-hating Houston audience. Polls show up to two-thirds of self-described Republicans still harbor doubts that the president was born here, and even mainstream GOP leaders indulge rather than dispel those doubts. Cruz enjoys them. (Remember, his father told an audience that only “political correctness” keeps Republicans from telling Americans that Obama is Muslim.)
So, a reference to Africans? Check. A stereotype about people who either work for or use government services, like “scammer”? A reference to “email” that’s a stand-in for “something about the Internet these people probably don’t understand anyway”? Check. It took Newt Gingrich several tries to communicate to his audience that Obama suffers from “a Kenyan anti-colonial mind-set” and is “the food stamp president.” Cruz did it with one dumb joke.
The Texas demagogue also knew Obama supporters would likely see through his “joke” to its slick birtherism and borderline racism – and he didn’t care. In fact, that’s part of the fun.
HT: Noel Sheppard