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| Cover Up the Abuse of Chinese Sweatshops |
There are some pundits who actually believe that without Apple and its Foxconn subcontractor, the factory workers would be dead anyway. There is no shortage of eager applicants lining up at Apple factories in the company city of Zhenzhou, they say. And polling reveals that if you happen to own an iPhone, you are less concerned than non-owners about where these products are made. So go ahead, feel better about yourself, and support your corporate Democrat at the same time.
In keeping with the propaganda that everyone aspires to the American Dream of material riches, and that prosperity is just around the corner, the Obama campaign is also rolling out St. Patrick's Day shirts just in time for the March 17th holiday. O'Bama has a tiny trace of Irish blood, milked to the hilt during a 2009 visit to his ancestral home town, where he famously quaffed a Guinness. So who knows? Maybe the Luck of the Irish can magically transport you over the rainbow to the pot of gold. Just fork over $30 now, to help the champion of
Uh-oh. There is just a wee problem with this design. The symbol of the Irish is not the four leaf clover. It's the shamrock, which only has three leaves, to represent the Holy Trinity. Calling Cardinal Timothy Dolan of St. Patrick's Cathedral! (He is already mad at Obama over the contraceptive kerfuffle,) And Christopher Cahill of the Irish Historical Society tells the New York Times that the tee shirt represents a major gaffe and is downright abnormal. The Obama Campaign, while promising to investigate the error, instead wasted no time adding four leaf clover O'Bama pint glasses to its catalogue of kitsch. Sure, and they really care.
New York Times commenters of Irish descent are not amused at all. "The beer mug is a ethnic slur that wouldn't happen to any other group without a huge fuss," writes Emily Kelly of New York. "I'm Irish, Catholic and offended by President Obama. Let him know it's not ok! Stand up and be counted now and on election day."
And John O' of Westchester chimed in: "St. Patrick's Day is rapidly becoming an occasion to besmirch the Irish; last year Mayor Mike's comment regarding boisterous parade marchers and now the President using a weed as a symbol to reflect his Irish-ness. However, there is no greater insult than the use of St. Paddy's or St. Pat's to refer to the great day. If the President would champion a law making it a federal crime to use any reference other than St. Patrick's Day, perhaps he won't have to take back all the shirts and glasses."
Never mind. Here are a couple of better selections. The first manages to offend everybody, and the second inadvertently tells the truth:
7 comments:
As a person of Irish descent, I am not surprised. This kind of crap has gone on for centuries.
“The history of English government, especially in Ireland, is a history of playing off one prejudice against another. Divide and exploit! The British ruling class has made this a way of life. And you Yanks learned it at their knees!” - Joseph Herity
As Sydney Smith once wrote, “The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots.”
It continues today.
Irish breakfast = beer in the morning; Irish flu = hangover; Irish handcuffs = a beer in each hand; Irish seven-course meal = a potato and a six pack; etc.
And now four leaf clover O'Bama pint glasses.
“When all the tourists had gone for the day, we used to piss on the Blarney Stone. It gave us a strange feeling of superiority when we saw tourists kissing that place where we had seen our own piss, and it splashing off so pretty and yellow.” - Stephen Browder
@Denis....yes, absolutely. And also...the Paddywagon!!!
While I am NOT an Obama supporter, my lifelong-Democrat Irish uncle Jack referred for years to O’Bama as a term of endearment, to bring along whites with racist tendencies. So I question the current uproar. Yes the 4 leaf clover is misplaced, but that is more likely ignorance on the part of some intern than malevolent intent.
Anyway, it is about time Apple got its just deserts for using slave-like labor to produce icrap in China to make obscene profits. And it is not just Apple. Americans have lived high on the hog while people in some backwater worked their ass off for peanuts.
And here is my nomination for a Rick Santorum theme song.
http://youtu.be/Xbt30UnzRWw
@All,
This is NOT a fake headline for this recent article about Rick Santorum:
(WARNING: Before clicking on the link, please practice safe surfing and place your coffee on a sturdy table far away from your keyboard or any other sensitive electronic equipment. Trust me on this one.)
http://weldbham.com/blog/category/news-politics/
@ black sheep (formerly anonymous)
Obama and the Irish share similar heritages as "second-class citizens."
More than a century ago the Irish were not "white," but "Negroes turned inside out," while Negroes were "smoked Irish."
Irish immigrants were extremely poor and were forced to live in the slums of the cities. There they lived with the free Blacks. They socialized together. “White” Americans saw this as an indication that the Irish should occupy the same social status as Blacks. This gave rise to the above two derogatory terms used by the "white" Americans.
Irish immigrants were substitutes for slaves in the South. Gangs of Irish immigrants worked ditching and draining plantations, building levees and sometimes clearing land because of the danger of death to valuable slave property.
Southerners explained the use of Irish labor on the ground that “niggers are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard...nobody loses anything.”
Early Irish immigrants were empathetic toward the plight of African slaves and maintained their long history of anti-slavery.
However, their strong moral opposition toward slavery and the other social factors ostracized them from the mainstream "white" American society. In order to climb up the social ladder, the Irish felt they had to prove their "whiteness." To be accepted into America, the Irish were willing to work menial labor and servant jobs. The Irish and Blacks were pitted against each other for these jobs. To keep jobs away from Blacks, the Irish often joined unions that consisted primarily of Irish workers. To demonstrate their "whiteness," many Irish workers threatened strikes if Black workers were hired. "We won’t work with niggers! No nigger apprentices! No niggers!" There was physical violence against Blacks.
As Frederick Douglas stated, "The Irish, who, at home, readily sympathizes with the oppressed everywhere, are instantly taught when they step upon our soil to hate and despise the Negro."
Thus, the Irish went from being victims and opponents of racial discrimination to proponents. By doing so, they climbed from the bottom of the social ladder by disassociating themselves from Blacks at the bottom.
Our Irish heritage.
“Mike Daisey Takes a Bite Out of Apple,” Michael Winship quotes Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/24-10
Mike Daisey takes a bite out of the NY Times’ David Pogue, “David Pogue is only competent to review gadgets.”
“I don't mind it when I hear this talking point from people who wandered into this conversation midway—it's broken into the mainstream, and not everyone has spent two years working exclusively in the realm of Chinese labor practices, and so you need to educate people.”
“But why do I have to educate David Pogue? Why is David Pogue unaware of the nature of assembly lines for the creation of the devices he reviews every day?”
“I'm not asking that Mr. Pogue agree with me. I'm saying he has shown he isn't competent to have this conversation from the platform of the New York Times.
“If Mr. Pogue won't do his work and know enough about the situation to write articles that live up to what's really at stake here, he can stop. Now there are journalists doing the yeoman's work of holding this industry accountable who do not have as many conflicts of interest as Mr. Pogue has.
“He can go back to reviewing gadgets.”
http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/2012/02/david-pogue-is-only-competent-to-review.html
@ Will - Go Ricky!
Santorum claims that Dutch elderly wear "Don't Euthanize Me" bracelets.
According to Santorum, in the Netherlands euthanasia makes up "ten percent of all deaths, and half of those people are euthanized involuntarily, because they are old or sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don't go into a hospital. They go to other country."
View from Amsterdam: Rick Santorum is a “crazy extreme Catholic” with “a surreal view of the Netherlands.”
http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/dutch-outraged-over-santorums-euthanasia-clai
“How dare some ignorant, education-disdaining, science-sneering, woman-hating horse's ass like Santorum lie like that and think he deserves a shot at the highest office in the country? He deserves to be marginalized right out of the public sphere.” - Nicole Belle @ Crooks and Liars
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/santorum-claims-rampant-euthanasia-du
I second that sentiment.
And what does this say about those Alabamians behind his surge?
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