Racist poem appearson Web site for GOP

[leQ]

A racist, anti-immigrant poem that led to the resignation of a top state official in Arkansas surfaced recently on the official Web site of the Republican Party of Winnebago County.

The poem, titled "Illegal Poem," uses broken English to suggest that white Americans are "crazy" to pay for public assistance to illegal Mexican immigrants.

Winnebago County Republican Party officials said Friday that the poem had been placed on the site by a volunteer Webmaster, and they promised to remove it immediately.

http://www.madison.com/captimes/news/stories/54012.php

anybody surprised?

[Skittles]

1. I'M SHOCKED

NOT

[robbedvoter]

2. I am surprised. Why are they removing it again?

[roughsatori]

3. was Amiri Baraka the author?

<sarcasm off>

[Voltaire99]

8. Did Ariel Sharon write that post?

<sarcasm on. always>

[roughsatori]

26. Perhaps they penned it together

NT

[sonias]

4. And here's the sick little poem in question

I found it on another web site. This is pretty much feeding into that whole myth of welfare queens and lazy Mexican stereotypes. I'm sure this rings true to the freeper types who just have to believe it's true. All their hard earned taxes are going to welfare frauds. Sorry freeps it's actually going to tax cuts for the rich and the military industrial complex. But freeps are never going to understand that.

Sonia
----------------


ILLEGAL POEM

I come for visit, get treated regal, So I stay, who care I illegal?
I cross border. Poor and broke. Take bus, see employment folk.
Nice man treat me good in there, Say I need to see welfare.
Welfare say, "You come no more, We send cash right to your door."
By and by, I got plenty money, Thanks to you, American dummy.
Write to friends in Motherland, Tell them come as fast as you can.
They come in rags and Chebby trucks, I buy big house with welfare bucks.
They come here, we live together, More welfare checks, it gets better!
Fourteen families they moving in, But neighbor’s patience wearing thin.
Finally, white guy moves away. Now I buy his house, and then I say.
"Find more aliens for house to rent." And in the yard I put a tent.
Send for family (they just trash), But they, too, draw the welfare cash!
Everything is mucho good. And soon we own the neighborhood.
We have hobby—it’s called breeding, Welfare pay for baby feeding.
Kids need dentist? Wife need pills? We get free! We got no bills!
American crazy! He pay all year, To keep welfare running here.
We think America darn good place! Too darn good for the white man race.
If they no like us. They can go. Got lots of room in Mexico.

[Interrobang]

5. 100% of people who think things like that...

...not only have never been on Welfare themselves, but even if they should happen to know someone who is, never bothered to enquire how much said person in question receives. Heh. I'd like to see anybody buy a house using a Welfare cheque, she said, having been on it, twice. As the man said, It war parfectly unpossible! (Diggory, in Goldsmith's "She Stoops to Conquer")

Typical.

[Julien Sorel]

6. I worked for a time as a case worker in the welfare department.

Some of these people who rant and rave about welfare would do well to spend some time working with welfare recipients -- it's eye opening. I grew up in a lower-working class home in a rough neighborhood, but I still wasn't prepared for some of the things I saw. The idea that people living on welfare 'have got it made' is laughable; that there are people in this country who actually believe that nonsense is unnerving.

[inthecorneroverhere]

7. why did you have to print it?

You could have just provided a link to Stormfront, or the actual similar place, for folks that want to read this dreck.

DU doesn't need to 'spread' this stuff, just alert of its _existence_.

[Dhalgren]

17. If people want to see it

it's better if it is here. I don't want to add any traffic to a site that has this up for its peotic value.

[Bozola]

19. Ooooo! Nice cadence!

Blah blah orange. Blah blah pornge.

(Pornge, if you recall from an earlier DU post, is the new Department of Tom "Elmer Fudd" Ridge's Eyebrows of Terror security color)

Not only is Chuckles the Clown a waste of protoplasm, he's a failed poet to boot.

[Catshrink]

20. That is totally offensive.

I can just see it taking off here in AZ. Our Sup. of Public Instruction is a totally against bilingual education and his practices just feed into that kind of mentality.

Is it still posted on the GOP site?

[Rex]

21. Ugh. I hate people like this.

I hope the sick fucker that wrote this not only loses his job but loses his house and all his material possessions.

These are the kind of people I wouldn't mind seeing homeless.

[alaine]

24. "lazy Mexican stereotypes"?

conversation between white woman (me) and black male co-worker at my last (total sweatshop) job:

Me: "They just want to work you to death in this place."
Co-worker: "I know that's right, you know it's bad when even the Mexicans start quitting."

How typical. The right-wing government needs Mexicans in this country for their cheap labor and because they are such hard workers, and then they turn around and incite white working class right-wingers to resent them and keep voting these cheap-labor bigots into office. Talk about a win-win situation.

[study_war_no_more]

27. maybe the broken english isnt intentional?

Wisconsin has slashed their education to the bones.

[AnnabelLee]

9. IIRC, Maine Mary was sent that poem

by one of her constituents. Sickening.

[Voltaire99]

10. Racism is the theory. GOP/DLC Politics is the practice.

The poem is that rare kind of revelatory moment when the placid mask is peeled back to bare the rotten wormy grin beneath. And voila: here is your neighbor, your co-worker, your boss, perhaps even a relative or family member, revealed. If you grew up in the white American middle class suburbs, this poem is of a piece with what you hear all the time, an outlook as common and as fussily maintained as the manicured lawns.

But I think anyone familiar with GOP politics--and that of its ideological cousin, the DLC--isn't surprised to find this on the party's web site. There's a reason it's surfacing now. In the post-911 era of the Two Minute Hate, this virulence is institutionally favored in order to win public consent for such deeds as the bombing of Afghanistan wedding parties or the looting of Iraq and, as always, to provide distraction and redirect anger from the failures and incompetence of the plutocracy.

To our masters, racism is better than 1,000 Karl Roves.

[liberalmuse]

11. Disgusting!

However, I'm not surprised that it was on a Republican web site. That mentality is practically a part of their platform. Talk to any rabid right winger for 10 minutes and you're bound to hear some racist comment about immigrants, even though they wouldn't be here without immigration.

[dbt]

12. When that 'poem' surfaced here in Arkansas,

The email had a footer message that said 'Send this to every taxpayer you know.' That's the part that got whatever state gubmint official in hot water. People that work for Governor Tubby down here are such knee-jerk dittoheads that they will forward anything if an email tells them to do so.

Morans.

:evilgrin:
dbt

[dionysus]

13. i got the same poem

forwarded to me by my born-again fundie brother, only it was reworded to be about immigrants from pakistan, of all places!

[Tom Kitten]

14. Pretty sick ignorant shit

I'd say just download and preserve the web page, and use it as evidence come campaign time...and to think they're looking for the Hispanic vote come election time? Jesus Christe!

[MaraJade]

23. Hi Countfloyd!! Your idea sounds like a winner to me!

Repugs are always trying to cozy to to Hispanics, especially in
TX. I think that people need to know what the "Goofy Old Party"
really thinks of them.

[JohnKleeb]

15. well this is appealing to the latino voters they want NOT

Seriously them trying to be inclusive to latinos to me is a bunch of bullshit when they are always making fun of latinos you know making fun of the spanish language and stuff.

[RedSock]

16. morans

all the morans who complain that those people have it so good and don't have to work never want to exchange places with them and live the good life. i wonder why ...

[JohnKleeb]

18. they are morans heh you know them

BTW redsock we cremed you guys like RFK would have Nixon. baseball of ocurse.

[regnaD kciN]

22. There's a "Winnebago County" in Arkansas???

Too funny!

[dbt]

25. No Winnebago County here

State much too poor!

:evilgrin:
dbt

[ewagner]

28. This really angers me

I worked with two brothers from Winnebago county who ran a rather large dairy. They had a lot of trouble keeping help....until they hired a Mexican family. The brothers paid them well and everyday, like clockwork the workers can and worked hard. The brothers were so impressed with their work ethic that they threw a Cinco de Mayo celebration for the family and invited all the neighbors. It was a hughe success. The two brothers treated their workers with respect for their heritage and kindness and in return received more than an honest day's work.

Working in the dairy industry in Wisconsin I ran into a lot of Mexican immigrants working in the industry. They were for the most part well respected because they took jobs that non-minorities wouldn't take (barn cleaning isn't any fun even in this day and age) and they showed up every day and didn't bitch or complain.

Usually the workers were paid an average of $25,000 per year and several families I knew got health care benefits from their employer.

The kind of hatred expressed in this poem is exactly opposite of the real life experiences I have had. Obviously the poem was posted out of ignorance.

[otohara]

29. Liberal Media attacks the Winnebago GOP and it's Webmaster....

This is their response, calling the paper liberal

http://www.winnebago-gop.org/response.html

[snippy]

30. How very republican.