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Jewish World Review July 26, 2010 / 15 Menachem-Av, 5770 The Facebook follies: Arguing the race war By Dave Weinbaum
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Here we are, a year and half after a man with a white mother and black father has
governed as the leader of the free world—a man who was voted in with significant
white support — arguing about race like we never have in my cognizant lifetime.
President Obama ran as a bridge to the black/white debate. What we've been
reduced to are racist allegations on all sides. Most finger pointing was initiated from
this administration, the NAACP, black Democratic Congressmen and the liberal
media. Most have been proven false.
Then there is the Journo-list, a group of lib media bloggers who loosely conspired
against the release of the Reverend Wright caustic sermons by diverting attention. Their
ploy was to call any famous conservative a racist without a scintilla of evidence. They
cited Newt and Fred Barnes as likely dupes.
With this, "when-was-the-last-time-you-beat-your-wife?"-type charge, how does one
respond? (Last Thursday if you're Mel Gibson).
These are the types of things I argue on Facebook.
Before I get into the back and forth of the 140 + posts between me, a young
"independent" black friend I'll call "Larry" and several liberal and conservative friends
(yes, I do have liberal friends—surprise, surprise) it might help to clarify why I bother.
You can't make bread without going against the grain
In 2004, a friend advised me to go on Yahoo Financial Message Boards to check out
what top management was saying under alias about the company I was involved in. I
checked it out and started to wander around other companies, such as Pfizer, IBM,
Microsoft, etc.
What I found was some of the most anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, hate-
filled bile I'd ever seen. I looked for bloggers disputing the latter but like Bush not
replying to Democratic falsehoods about WMDs, I found none. So, I got myself an
alias and started posting against these slanderers, some of whom I was convinced
were Islamic terrorists.
They retaliated with MORE bile, accusing me of all sorts of things, not the least of
which was being an agent of Mossad. I resorted to something I hadn't done much of, research. As I proofed one of my responses the thought entered my mind that it resembled a political op-ed.
If marijuana leads to heroin, do blogs lead to punditry?
Sooo, I sent some off.
Thanks to the Rolla Daily News and Binyamin L. Jolkovsky, owner of the immensely influential Jewish World
Review, I've had a weekly column published starting about seven years ago. These op-eds generate between 20 and 160 comments each from all over the world and the
columns are taken and posted on many other sites. One was used almost in its entirety
in a speech President Obama gave in his first Foreign Correspondents banquet.
Having replaced Yahoo with Facebook, I post questions and interesting news items
from the Net or my website, www.daveweinbaum.com
The reasons I do this?
Below is a question I posed on Facebook after hearing it on the Limbaugh show.
If Obama and the NAACP are so concerned about ridding
themselves of racists, why aren't they demanding the
resignation of Eric Holder?
When I posted this question, I immediately got responses from Larry.
The argument goes back and forth. I cite links for my arguments. Larry argues
emotionally about equal treatment under the law, something I agree with. Larry, when
pushed to produce evidence, tends to think that I'm responsible for his research as
well. Everyone opines for or against.
It's a gas!
"I don't agree with anything you say but I love this. What
are we going to argue about next week, Dave?"
— Liberal Female Blogger on my newspaper columns
In fact, Larry and the gang are all babbling away on my "wall" as I write this. Time to get in their face (book) and retort back, in their face!
Well, maybe after golf—gotta keep my priorities straight.
G-d I love to argue.
Does it show?
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JWR contributor Dave Weinbaum hosts DaveWeinbaum.com. He is a businessman, writer and part-time stand-up comic and resides in a Midwest red state. Comment by clicking here.
© 2009, Dave Weinbaum |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||||
