Santorum’s Not a Racist Homophobic Bigot
Rick Santorum is back in the news. This time, the news media is wondering if he’s racist. You might confuse this with the times they accused him of being a homophobe but it’s completely different. Hey, I guess he should take comfort that they didn’t blame him for the Tuscon shooting.
Yesterday it was all over the media that Santorum said something that all the talking heads on CNN agreed was at the least racially insensitive. But notice that none of the media are discussing what Santorum actually said. They’re completely ignoring the point he was making. All they want is the question -“Is Santorum Racist?”
They intentionally convolute in order to distract and attack.
It’s funny that the same media that apologizes for using the word “crosshairs” feels perfectly comfortable accusing a possible GOP Presidential candidate of “playing the race card.”
Here’s what Santorum said:
“the question is–and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer–is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well, if that person, human life, is not a person, then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, no, we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.”
Cue the media firestorm.
Newsbusters reports:
The media picked up on the comment and, without publishing what Santorum said leading up to the segment, questioned if he had racial motivations. Jennifer Epstein’s Politico piece was headlined “Rick Santorum plays race card on President Obama.” Epstein labeled Santorum’s remark “eyebrow-raising.”
USA Today reported “Ex-Senator Ties Obama’s Race to Abortion Rights.” New York Magazine’s piece was titled “Rick Santorum Can’t Believe Obama Doesn’t Know Exactly When Life Begins, Because He’s Black.”
Other sources picked up the piece, such as Slate, the Washington Post, the Daily Caller, the Huffington Post, National Journal, MSNBC.com, and ABCNews.com. NBC correspondent Norah O’Donnell ran the clip of Santorum’s comment on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” and asked her guests to comment.
To anyone with a brain it’s perfectly clear what Santorum is saying. He’s saying that not so long ago black people weren’t considered fully deserving of human rights by our government and therefore he’d hope that Obama would understand the dangers of governments picking and choosing who is human and who’s not.
It’s the same thing that happened when Santorum took on the right to privacy. He said:
“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”
Then everyone was saying that Santorum was equating homosexuality with incest and bestiality. But he wasn’t. He was making a valid legal argument. And you want to know something- Santorum was right. Right in both cases.
Does it hurt his political chances to be so unguarded with his comments? Yes. But is he right? Absolutely.
And his comment drawing a parallel between slavery and abortion is one that’s raised constantly even by Alveda King but they don’t yell about it when she’s saying it, the media just ignores her as much as they can.
I agree with Santorum. The argument against abortion and slavery are the same. It is the cry of the victim that “I am human too.” And until we acknowledge their humanity, I hope Rick Santorum goes right on saying the truth.