Saturday, September 01, 2012

Diversity


Face it, there were more black and brown people in Star Wars than at the Republican Convention ...

14 comments:

Travis said...

Are you counting the Wookie as a person?

Steve Perry said...

Of course. And the droids, too. Threepio is the smartest character in the whole saga ...

Anonymous said...

There's a useful metric...

John said...

I'm constrained to point out that there were several Latino speakers, and Condoleeza Rice, and (at least as shown during the ABC coverage the night of Romney's speech) people of color among the delegates.

As a result, I think the headline and accompanying photo was a little disingenuous...

I do agree with you, however, about Threepio.

Steve Perry said...

C'mon, they went on a diversity hunt for storefront props. R's are pushing 90% white, by the numbers; D's at 62%. Easy enough to check this. The R's know they can't win with just the white guys, so they are trying to attract The Others. And not doing too well at it. That's because they want their votes, but not them and people know it.

Threepio was white, but Artoo was gold ...

Anonymous said...

I'm a big fan of your work, but I can't agree with this one.

If you watched the convention via mainstream media, you missed speeches by:

Condi Rice
Mia Love
Ted Cruz
Marco Rubio
Susan Martinez

Just to start.

All of them are of African or Hispanic heritage.

None of them are "storefront props."

While we're at it, please recall that the Tea Party favorite for the nomination was Herman Cain.

Steve Perry said...

And are my numbers wrong?

Anonymous said...

Your numbers may well be right; as far as I can tell, they are.

But you might consider that those numbers might have more possible interpretations than just "they want their votes but not them..."

Non-whites in this country deal with a lot of bigotry. Some of the worst of it is aimed at any one of them who dares to proclaim themselves as Republicans.

Steve Perry said...

Anon --

The question you should be asking is, Why are there so few people of color in the Republican Party? It seems pretty apparent to me that the R's haven't been the party of Lincoln for a long time, and this right turn toward Ayn Rand certainly doesn't indicate they are going in the direction of helping the poor, the sick, and the the otherwise disenfranchised among us.

Not high on their list, any of that.

John Galt is a bigger fantasy than Middle Earth.

I'm not ready to go back to the good old unregulated times where the kids worked sixteen hours a day in a factory and the oil millionaires had only to worry about what to name their next yacht. Not when we could buy everybody health care with what we spend on the latest war.

What the R's are for and what they are against tell the tale. Gay? Black? Female? All three? Good luck finding a sympathetic ear among the white guys who want more tax cuts for the rich.

Isn't this the party that wants a Constitutional amendment to make marriage between one man and one woman? And to give a fetus more rights than the woman carrying it?

If trickle down economics is going to work, I'm still waiting for evidence of it.

Bush inherited a huge surplus and peace, Obama got a hole halfway to China and wars on two fronts. Is it all the R's fault? No. Has Obama done the best possible job? No. But I shudder to think about what what have happened if the R's had won four more years, and with Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from Let's Have More War! McCain and the Oval Office chair.

Philosophically, we aren't going to agree on this one. I have no problem debating with folks on the issues, it doesn't have to get personal, but I am in big disagreement with much of what the R's want. We aren't going to get past that.

Steve Perry said...

Oh, and just for grins, that Condi Rice was willing to be Bush's office wife for so long indicated to me how even really smart people get seduced by power. They used her like they did Colin Powell -- look! look! we're diverse! See!

That's a blue pill for me ...

John said...

Philosophically, we aren't going to agree on this one. I have no problem debating with folks on the issues, it doesn't have to get personal, but I am in big disagreement with much of what the R's want. We aren't going to get past that.

Agreed. Me, too. But I would also say that I'm in a big disagreement with much of what the D's want.

Neither party wants what is best for this country, they want to stay in - or get in - power. We don't need either extremist minority running this diverse country, we need people willing to compromise, to steer a center course, who will please neither extreme. But there is no moderate voice being heard; the media isn't covering any (not juicy enough) and within either party moderate voices are being shouted down.

Steve Perry said...

Certainly the D's don't have all the answers. They suffer from a lack of balls more often than not, and a lot of what they think makes sense doesn't resonate with me, either. I do think they tend to be a little more willing to negotiate -- part of that liberal attitude, I believe, but they aren't angels.

The biggest differences for me between the hard left and hard right is that the folks who believe God is on their side tend to see things as black or white, and their side is always white, given God's blessings.

God doesn't belong in politics.

My favorite Republican was Mark Hatfield. One of two Senators from either party who voted against funding the war in Iraq. I doubt he could get elected today -- there doesn't seem to be room in the party for anybody to the left of Genghis Khan.

If what you think is the most important goal of your party is to make sure the current President doesn't get reelected? That doesn't speak well of you or your party -- and Mitch McConnell said that out loud. You are supposed to be there to make things better for Americans. If you can't reach across the aisle now and then, that doesn't happen.

If you cannot compromise, you can't get things done. And yes, there are D's who are that stupid, too; however, if the choice is between the lesser of two evils, I have to go with the D's most of the time. I would have voted for a green fir 2X4 before I would McCain and Palin. Eight years of George Bush crippled the country, and whatever else you might think about Obama not delivering on his promises, he hasn't done anywhere close to that kind of damage to the Republic.

Joe said...

I wish I could remember the exact words or where I saw it, but the gist of it was:

"I am a Liberal, which means I would have supported every item on GOP agenda when Eisenhower was elected."

MDVillarreal said...

There may've been several people of color speaking at the RNC, but the actual people who were in the audience say who the party largely represents.