By Zack Linly, Black America Web
Reprinted – by Texas Metro News
https://blackamericaweb.com/
He’s baaaaack. But he– Sean Hannity– ain’t back all fresh, clean and new. Nope. He’s back dusty and moldy with the same old, boring, failed strategy the racists tried to use with Obama in 2008: Attack the pastor. Remember that nonsense and all the racist GOP whining over Obama’s pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright? Remember how it didn’t get in the way of him winning the presidency–twice?
Well, ever since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, white conservatives have struggled to get it through their heads that defaulting to the same racist, xenophobic and culturally tone-deaf attacks that didn’t work against former President Barack Obama 16 years ago. And they won’t work now.
In other words: 2008 called and wants its lame-ass racist talking points back
This week, Fox News’ most disposable Caucasian bobblehead, Sean Hannity—the “journalist” who once said the quiet part out loud when he casually admitted on his show that he doesn’t vet the information he broadcasts—decided to resurrect white America’s illogical “guilty by association” tactic regarding Black presidential candidates and the Black pastors whose churches they’ve attended.
Y’all remember when Fox News, the GOP and Tea Party America worked overtime to tie Obama to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who famously shouted, “goddamn America” and called the 9/11 attacks “chickens coming home to roost,” in a sermon called “The Day of Jerusalem’s Fall.”
Well, Hannity, who was all over the Wright/Obama story more than a decade and a half ago, is now onto the remix of a long-forgotten rerun by making the same non-connection between Harris and another Black pastor who is sure to give delusional and fact-averse white conservatives the MAGA-fied heebie-jeebies: Dr. Amos Brown. He’s the president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP and a pastor at the city’s Third Baptist Church.
We have a brand new Jeremiah Wright. His name? Reverend Doctor Amos Brown,” Hannity bemoaned. “Now, last year on the official vice presidential Instagram account, Kamala posted a glowing picture of the reverend with the caption, ‘It’s always an honor to spend time with my pastor, Rev. Dr. Amos Brown of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco. He remains a source of inspiration to me always.’”
More Hannity crazy talk:
“Now, this is the same pastor that told the San Francisco Chronicle that, ‘I know America. America is a racist country.’ And the very same pastor who blamed racist America for 9/11/01, only six days after we 2,977 of our fellow Americans, he said, ‘Oh, America. What did you do? What did you do two weeks ago when I stood at the World Conference on Racism when you wouldn’t show up?’”
These people just don’t get it
There’s a reason Obama was still elected to the White House twice despite how hard right-wing media went in on trying to make him anti-American by linking him to Wright. All conservative (read: white supremacist) politicians and pundits do is preach to their choir about things only their choir cares about. Sure, the nation’s most fragile jingoists disguised as patriots are going to wet their star-spangled pantaloons over a Black pastor shouting, “Goddamn America,” but the rest of us responded to the propaganda campaign against Wright by essentially saying, “What…What’s the problem? What did he say wrong?”
Similarly, people outside of MAGA America, where white conservatives are deathly allergic to non-whitewashed American history, aren’t going to stand against Harris because Brown said America is a racist country—because it demonstrably is.
Source: JEWEL SAMAD / Getty
As the saying goes: Stupid is as stupid does
Hannity and his ilk will keep on trying it—just like Donald Trump and his MAGAts, who don’t understand what’s in the Constitution they pretend to care about so much, are trying desperately trying to resurrect the “birther” nonsense to use against Harris despite the fact that it failed so miserably to prevent Obama from being elected two terms in a row.
In fact, conservatives generally don’t seem to understand that they’re only hurting themselves with their constant racist and sexist attacks on Harris, which have gotten so bad that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson felt compelled to convene a closed-door meeting to warn his fellow GOP legislators to cut it out. It just doesn’t seem to occur to these people that if Obama was a two-term president despite them spending his entire eight years in office calling him a radical Muslim terrorist sympathizer who isn’t really American and attends the church of a really mean, America-hating pastor, the same stale and racist tactics won’t work on Harris either.
If Kamala Harris loses to Donald Trump in November, it will most certainly be because she came into the race four months before the general election, which doesn’t give her nearly enough time to present an effective campaign or get America used to the idea of her in the Oval Office. And it most certainly will not be because white conservatives whined to white conservatives about things only white conservatives would truly find offensive.
The Hannities of the world would do well to get over themselves and find actual issues to challenge Harris on.
