Barbara Bush "cries" at The Butler Screening

[righteousmomma]

Politioco:

By TALIA BUFORD |

8/3/13 3:26 PM EDT

Lee Daniels hasn’t screened “The Butler” for the current occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but he did get to share a tub of popcorn with the Bushes when he showed them the movie a few months ago.

“Barbara Bush loved [my movie] 'Precious,' shockingly, and I couldn’t believe it,” Daniels said during a roundtable discussion at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention. “I thought it was a set up or something. She sent me this lovely, really powerful email … and she said please come up and show the Butler to us in Maine.”

The movie, which opens in theaters Aug. 16, tells the story of Cecil Gaines, who served eight presidents as a White House butler from 1952 to 1986, and how he saw the Civil Rights movement from inside the walls at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

 

 

 

 

 

I read this on Drudge . The perspective of the author of the article and the Daniels quotes in the article are so 180 degrees to my perspective that I became rather frustratingly irate.

So instead of me responding I shall quote some of the most sane , reasonable and informed comments I have read on any subject. (Guess because it was linked by Drudge) So in a separate window:

 

[righteousmomma]

ALL COMMENTS WERE AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE - NONE ARE MINE

 

−And one must conclude the Bushes were IDIOTS for allowing themselves to be used exactly how it could have been predicted. When the vile director states “Barbara Bush loved [my movie] 'Precious,' shockingly, and I couldn’t believe it,” Daniels said during a roundtable discussion at the National Association of Black Journalists’ he is revealing his own deep ignorance and prejudice about the former First Lady. He then snidely quips “I thought it was a set up or something." This strikes me as a disgusting betrayal of Barbara Bush's sincerity and her openness to share with this snake.

Then this nasty piece of work drives the knife all the way in: “It was so powerful because they hung their heads – both of them hung their heads, he said. “And that was a gift for me knowing that they felt it. That they felt that they knew…"

The implication seems to be that the Bushes somehow "knew" their complicity, and hung their heads in shame.

 

Vicious exploitation and blackguarding - predictable and fitting.

 

Exactly, and like all despots and their followers in socialist and communist regimes, they indoctrinate the next generation in the same lies, never failing to teach hate for the 'oppressors', when in fact, they are the oppressors.

You can talk about Republicans freeing slaves, getting the vote for women and blacks, authoring and presenting the Civil Rights Bill almost a decade earlier than LBJ or JFK and you'll get blank stares and silence.

The human brain is a funny thing. Once something like racism is scratched onto the record, it's almost impossible to remove those scratches and anything that doesn't play in those grooves isn't heard.

Funny, how every nation that indulged in slavery has gotten over it, except the U.S. which continues to manufacture a problem for political and financial gain.

 

 

So now when Johnson uses the N word it's so cute because it means he loves them, but if Reagan used the N word it would mean he's the biggest racist that ever lived. By the way, the Civil Rights Voting Act of 1957 - Republicans 167-19 for, Democrats 118-107 for) and the Senate 72 to 18 (Republicans 43-0 for, Democrats 29-18 for). Who are the racists?

 

It was mainly politically expedient for Johnson. Read the books revealing his white house tapes sometime, as I have.

Excellent points. Also, Johnson didn't love black people. He was a political animal. After the legislation, he claimed that "niggers" would vote Democrat for a hundred years.

 

 

 

You can't even collect social security unless you open a bank account and set up direct deposit. Bottom line, there are virtually NO voters without a state issued ID. As the dems are blowing smoke. As for doing away with voter rigts protection, all the court did is put ALL states under the same laws instead of separate federal supervision of politically selected states based on conditions fifty years ago.

[righteousmomma]

And finally the one lone dissenting opinion that sums it all up:

−

You're clueless. That's not what he said at all. You're willfully misreading it. He's saying that Southern racism is a complex thing. And that it's so complicated that a president (LBJ), who was for civil rights and pushed for equality, thought it was okay to use the N-word variant. In other words, even a guy who is against racism, didn't understand he was using racist epithets. Get a clue, dude -- pick up a book -- and stop looking at so much Drudge, Fox, and dead Breitbart. (Reagan? Really? Where did that come from. Man you Republicans are nuts.)

[NCTexan]

I didn't see the movie but I've seen the trailer.

 

I'm so ashamed of being "white" that I cried too...

 

 

I can't even look in a mirror now.

[Valin]

Oprah: Trayvon Martin In My Mind Same Thing as Emmett Till

Andrew Johnson

August 5, 2013 12:01 PM

 

While promoting her upcoming movie about a longtime black employee of the White House, The Butler, Oprah Winfrey said an interview that the death of Trayvon Martin was the same thing as the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy killed in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white woman. Trayvon Martin parallel to Emmett Till, she said.

 

Let me just tell you in my mind, same thing, she said in a preview of an interview with The Grio, an NBC News website.

 

She went on to urge black Americans to not get stuck in that and not allow yourself to move forward and see how far weve come.

 

(Snip)

 

http://youtu.be/F14TjzNvozU

[righteousmomma]

That is reprehensible! I have always given Oprah the benefit of the doubt. But She just cooked her goose with me.

[Valin]

And finally the one lone dissenting opinion that sums it all up:

−

You're clueless. That's not what he said at all. You're willfully misreading it. He's saying that Southern racism is a complex thing. And that it's so complicated that a president (LBJ), who was for civil rights and pushed for equality, thought it was okay to use the N-word variant. In other words, even a guy who is against racism, didn't understand he was using racist epithets. Get a clue, dude -- pick up a book -- and stop looking at so much Drudge, Fox, and dead Breitbart. (Reagan? Really? Where did that come from. Man you Republicans are nuts.)

Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word

Randall Kennedy

 

January 14, 2003

Its the nuclear bomb of racial epithets, a word that whites have employed to wound and degrade African Americans for three centuries. Paradoxically, among many black people it has become a term of affection and even empowerment. The word, of course, is nigger, and in this candid, lucidly argued book the distinguished legal scholar Randall Kennedy traces its origins, maps its multifarious connotations, and explores the controversies that rage around it.

 

Should blacks be able to use nigger in ways forbidden to others? Should the law treat it as a provocation that reduces the culpability of those who respond to it violently? Should it cost a person his job, or a book like Huckleberry Finn its place on library shelves? With a range of reference that extends from the Jim Crow south to Chris Rock routines and the O. J. Simpson trial, Kennedy takes on not just a word, but our laws, attitudes, and culture with bracing courage and intelligence.

 

 

http://youtu.be/cifZwgd5ITU

 

 

Ok, he's a Harvard Prof. and a Lefty (but I repeat myself) but this is an interesting book about this subject, and worth the time spent reading it.

[Valin]

That is reprehensible! I have always given Oprah the benefit of the doubt. But She just cooked her goose with me.

OTOH....There is this...."She went on to urge black Americans to not get stuck in that and not allow yourself to move forward and see how far we've come".

 

 

Will we ever "get beyond race"? Probably not, 1. Lot of really stupid people out there looking for an excuse why they haven't "made it" 2. People like to be around people like themselves. White institutional racism is (Thank God) a thing of the past, what we are dealing with now is people using race as an excuse for their poverty.

[NCTexan]

That is reprehensible! I have always given Oprah the benefit of the doubt. But She just cooked her goose with me.

 

The Chubby "O" has been right there with the Skinny "O" in my book for a LONG time.

 

However, some of these "womens" have been a little slow catching on.