Not Paying Attention, Or Simply Hoping We Weren't?

That’s my question to Representative Marcia Fudge (D), The new Chairperson of the Congressional Black Caucus, who in an expression of her bona fides last week held a press conference to let the world know that the opposition to the appointment of Susan Rice as Obama’s Secretary of State by some Republicans was both racist and sexist, despite having been predicated on incompetence and a marked lack of qualification.

“All of the things that they have disliked about things that have gone on in this administration they have never called a male unqualified, not bright, not trustworthy. I don’t recall it ever happening,” Fudge said.

Really?  I guess Turbo Tax Timmah Geithner doesn’t count, right?

The micro issue of Geithner’s taxes was enough to make him unfit to address the country’s macro economic issues, according to some Republicans and Democrats.

Most of the opposition, however, came from Republicans. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., who said he spent part of the weekend puzzling over his own taxes, said on the Senate floor, “Here we are making an exception to the rule and I, for one, think it’s not the time to make an exception.”

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a middle-of-the-road Republican who often sides with Democrats, opposed him.

In a speech prepared for the Senate floor, Collins said, “Throughout the state of Maine and, indeed, throughout the nation, millions of hard-working Americans pay their taxes on time and in full. Our taxation system is essentially an honor system that depends on self-assessment and honesty. When taxpayers make mistakes, they are expected to correct them promptly and completely. How can we tell the taxpayers that they are expected to comply fully with our tax laws, when these laws have been treated so cavalierly by the person who would lead the Treasury Department and, ultimately, the Internal Revenue Service, when he was applying them to himself?”

Hmmmmm.  I guess memory isn’t what it used to be.

Still, Representative Fudge wasn’t the only one trying on the mantle of victimhood that day.  Representative Gwen Moore also seems to have forgotten that politics is a bare-knuckle sport.

“What unmitigated gall for these men to attack the permanent representative to the United Nations Susan E. Rice,” Moore said.

“We all understand that all of us have been disappointed in one way or another about the results of the election – but to batter this woman because they don’t feel they have had the ability to batter President Obama is something that we, the women, are not going to stand by and watch.”

Yes, of course.  It is “gall” to be angry that she stepped up to the plate and lied to the American people repeatedly about Benghazi.  As a high-ranking State Department official, she certainly didn’t have access to information in the week between the attack and her Sunday morning appearances to at least form a reasonable suspicion that the youtube justification was crap.  And as someone who has been a high-ranking State Department official for years, she certainly shouldn’t have been able to come to the conclusion that the “insulting video” excuse was insulting to the American People.

And to call her “unqualified” after a brief review of some of her actions over the last 10+ years certainly rises to the level of “battery”.   In fact, not only is this OUTRAGE!!!111!!! justified, I wish that the same models of this year’s victimhood could have found the same voice and outrage when Condolezza Rice was under attack.

But then, these defenders of the flower of womanhood embodied by Susan Rice are the same people who hurl venom and vitriol even today at Sarah Palin, and cheered at Sandra Bernhard’s racist rape fantasy for her.

If we keep accepting lies, we will continue to get them. 

As long as that happens, an honest conversation is impossible, and we are all screwed.