Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Althouse

Legal Commentary

: Althouse

Geoffrey Dunn Slams Sarah Palin in Racially Charged Article at Huffington Post.

Did that catch your eye? Maybe not, since the name Geoffrey Dunn probably doesn't mean much to you,* but the title of his article caught mine: "Sarah Palin Slams Michelle Obama in Racially Charged Passage From New Book." Oh? Did Sarah Palin ? and her editors ? lose their minds and wield anti-black epithets and stereotypes against the First Lady? No, of course not. Here's what Dunn wrote:

In passages leaked from her forthcoming book America by Heart, Sarah Palin... has taken another cheap shot at First Lady Michelle Obama.

That link goes to another HuffPo post by Dunn claiming it was a "cheap shot" for Palin to refer to "people" saying "they've never been proud of America." Back to the new Dunn item:

In a passage on perceptions of racial inequality in the United States, Palin slams President Barack Obama, who, she asserts, "seems to believe" that "America -- at least America as it currently exists -- is a fundamentally unjust and unequal country."

And then she goes after Michelle Obama:

Certainly his wife expressed this view when she said during the 2008 campaign that she had never felt proud of her country until her husband started winning elections. In retrospect, I guess this shouldn't surprise us, since both of them spent almost two decades in the pews of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church listening to his rants against America and white people.

That's it?! Palin had the audacity to remind us about Jeremiah Wright's highly racial tirades? She doesn't even call Wright racist! She refers to the statements he made "against... white people." That's an astoundingly tame reference to the outrageously inflammatory sermons by Wright that surfaced during the 2008 campaign and amazingly didn't sink the Obama candidacy. Watch the video at that link. Wright is yelling at the congregation to reject Hillary Clinton because she's white.

Shamefully lame, Mr. Dunn. Even as an effort to prop up President Obama, it's lame. Do you think it benefits him for us to go back to Jeremiah Wright?

__________
* Don't you know Geoffrey Dunn is an "[a]ward-winning journalist, filmmaker and historian"? That's what it says at the post.  According to his bio:

Dunn has produced and directed more than a dozen award-winning documentary films, including Dollar a Day, 10¢ a Dance: A Historic Portrait of Filipino Farm Workers in America; Miss?or Myth?; and the recently completed Calypso Dreams.

Oh, that Geoffrey Dunn. Not to be confused with Griffin Dunne (who was so cool in "After Hours") or the Geoffrey Dunn who was born in 1903 and played the part of Mr. Lunnis in "The Leather Boys."

Full post as published by Althouse on November 20, 2010 (boomark / email).