What is Un-American?
In the run-up to the election, some of my Obama-enthralled colleagues asked me if I thought there really were any people that deserved a label like “un-American”. Their interrogative was clearly rhetorical. But I said “of course there were”, and they were dumbfounded. I offered the following two examples:
- The people behind the General Betrayus advertisement (MoveOn.org) and anyone refusing to denounce the advertisement in no-uncertain terms. [I'll have more to say about these a$$hats in the future.]
- John Patrick “Jack” Murtha Jr., for the astounding assertion that U.S. soldiers “killed innocent civilians in cold blood” as a reason to pull out of Iraq and announce defeat during the 2006 debate on the surge.
No doubt, the incidents in Haditha were terrible. But Murtha’s statement was a broadside against the United States military. And the assertions do not appear to be holding up so well after the investigations that have unfolded. So here is a person willing to throw the US military under the bus to make political points. Pathetic.
But what is more pathetic, really, is that he is being returned to the US House of Representatives after his Iraq performance and his encores about racists and rednecks during the campaign. Murtha said of his constituents: first that they were racists and then, no, they weren’t really racists, just rednecks. He did this by way of explaining why someone like Barack Obama might have rough sledding in PA’s 12th Congressional District. If I were Murtha’s personal physician, I would up his intake of ginkgo biloba for what is clearly a “waiting room diagnosis” of dementia.
The rednecks and racists of Pennsylvania responsible for this can be found, approximately, here:
Rednecks and Racists in Pennsylvania
Maybe Murtha was simply repeating the joke
Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in between.
Maybe its not really a joke and maybe the people living in Pennsylvania’s 12th take the racist and redneck labels as a term of endearment. I wonder what the un-American Murtha could have said in order for the 12th to send him packing? It strains the imagination.