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| The right hates Ebony magazine because one of their editors criticized Black conservatives. |
I've said it too many times.
Why should I continue beating it into the heads of our critics here on Journal de la Reyna?
I've posted every article about an issue that involves the community, the government and junk food media.
I've criticized Republican, Democrat, progressive and conservative respectively.
Way too many times, I've talked about how reactionary conservatives are when it comes to race. Often conservatives look at race with dark sunglasses. They believe that "racism is over", "Trayvon Martin was a thug", "Barack Obama is a....." and "Republicans freed the slaves".
They believe "us Black folk" are stuck on the "Democrat plantation" because we love "brotha Barack".
Republicans can barely break the 10% on Black members.
In the 21st Century, the Democratic Party nominated twice the first Black president. The American people elected the first Black person to ever reach that highest office.
Today in America, here in 2014, there are some who refer to the first Black president as a dictator. There are some who believe that every racist email, photo about the president is actually a joke. There are some who think that America is on a downward spiral because of the first Black president. These individuals believe that minorities benefit from "da gubmint". There are some who question the first Black president's birthplace, religion and stances on social and economic issues.
That's perfectly fine. They can do so at their discretion. For you see for every time a conservative acts out like this, Blacks tend to look at them as racist.
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| Ebony editor gets into a spat with the communications director of the RNC. Her company apologized over the weekend for the misunderstanding. The damage is done though. Republicans are going to make a case against the magazine and their favorite target President Barack Obama. |
In 2014, the Republican Party is mostly White. There's probably less than 25 Republican Congressional lawmakers who are minorities. One clearly visible figure is Tim Scott, the Black Republican senator from South Carolina. Then there's Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, two Hispanic Republican senators from Florida and Texas, respectively. Then there's Susana Martinez, the Latina Republican governor of New Mexico. Yeah, Brian Sandoval, the Latino Republican governor of Nevada.
You have Florida representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Barlart. And of course Raúl Labrador, the representative from Idaho. Jaime Herrera Beutler, she is a Republican lawmaker from Washington. They are Hispanic lawmakers.
And who couldn't forget Native American representatives Tom Cole and Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma.
Okay there are minorities in the political party. However, the party is still struggling to win over minorities.
The Republican Party is mostly ideologically conservative. It's most WHITE, MALE and OLD.
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| Benjamin Carson is the right's newest toy. |
The party elects people who come off as condescending bigots. They have put their political gambles on failures like perennial losers Mitt Romney.
The Republicans have failed the Black community so much it's nearly impossible to gain a strong turnout.
Ebony Magazine is part of the Johnson Publishing Company.
It was founded by John Johnson in Chicago, Ebony cover photography has since its inception focused on African-American celebrities and politicians, such as Dorothy Dandridge, Mariah Carey, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Carol Moseley Braun, Barack Obama, Zoe Saldana, Tyrese Gibson and Tyler Perry. The magazine has evolved over the years, in 2010 starting an obvious and persistent redesign with an end goal of updating and enlivening the age-old brand.
In the past, the magazine was persistently upbeat, much like its generic contemporary Life. Ebony, edited by John H. Johnson, has striven always to address African-American issues, personalities and interests in a positive and self-affirming manner. Advertisers have for decades created ads specifically for the pages of Ebony that featured black models using their products.
Ebony frequently makes headlines in the blogosphere and in the mainstream press.
Well the editor of Jamilah Lemieux made some criticism of former neurosurgeon and Black conservative Dr. Benjamin Carson over his attempts to reach out to Blacks with his own magazine.
“I have drinking games in mind already,” quipped Lemieux, regarding Carson’s tendency to communicate in outrageous talking points, like his comment that Obamacare is “worse than slavery” or when he said that women need to “re-educated” so they won’t “get all riled up” about abortion.
Okay, she has an opinion. She's not a fan of Carson.
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| "Uncle Juan" Williams' son Raffi worships Saint Ronald. He's gotten into a spat with the editor of Ebony over her criticisms of him and those so-called "freed" Negros. |
But here comes the folks over at Loserville getting riled up over it. "Uncle Juan" Williams, a fixture on the network is none too happy about it. He's also steamed over the fact that Lemieux called his son Raffi a “white dude”.
Raffi Williams is the director of political outreach for young and minorities for the Republican National Committee. He was appointed to that position by Reince "Find The Rainbow" Priebus.
The Raw Story reports that Lemieux got onto Twitter to criticized Carson.
Someone asked Lemieux if she didn't want to know more about the publication, to which she replied, “I 100 percent do not want to know more, I wish I knew less!”
Then Raffi Williams — who wears his hair in loose waves and poses in front of a painting of Pres. Ronald Reagan in his Twitter profile photo — tweeted at Lemieux, “Wish you knew less? Hoped you would encourage diversity of thought.”
“Oh great,” Lemieux replied, “here comes a White dude telling me how to do this Black thing. Pass.”
The faux pas set off an immediate firestorm among users of the conservative Twitter aggregator
Twitchy.com and other conservative media outlets, who branded Lemieux a racist and proceeded to hurl insults and invective.
“I hear you like to judge people by the color of their skin,” wrote one.
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| Loserville sics their favorite son on Ebony. |
“‘Go away?’” said another, “I think you’re confused about how this twitter thing works. Also, you’re a racist.”
RedState.com commentator Aaron Gardner wrote, “This morning a news editor from Ebony decided to show her ignorance and racism to the world.”
Lemieux apologized to Williams, but for Gardner that wasn't enough.
“Quite frankly, Lemieux can take her apology and cram it,” he wrote. “I find it hard to believe that Lemieux’s apology was from the heart considering she is the daughter of a former Black Panther.”
By Thursday morning, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus was joining the fanned-up outrage and demanded an apology on Williams’ behalf from Ebony. Williams appeared on Fox News, complaining about how he’d been treated by Lemieux.
Thursday afternoon, even as Lemieux supporters kicked off an #IStandWithJamilah hashtag on Twitter, Ebony complied, issuing a stiffly-worded apology for what the publication called Lemieux’s “lack of judgment.”
The right’s heated reaction to the Twitter spat strikes some as spectacularly overblown and more than a little bit hypocritical. Clutch magazine’s Britni Danielle wrote, “The hypocrisy of Fox News, Reince Priebus, and several Conservatives is astounding.
While many Right Wingers have no problem pandering to extremists in their party like Ted Nugent who regularly spew on racially charged rhetoric (i.e. calling President Obama is the “Food Stamp President” or a Kenyan-born Muslim Socialist or a “subhuman mongrel”), the moment someone, particularly a Black person, does not subscribe to their views (or chooses to not engage as Lemieux did when she told Williams she wasn't interested in anything he had to say), they cry reverse racism and cloak themselves in victimhood.”
Conservatives launched a purported boycott against Ebony last September for its series of covers in the wake of the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed unarmed teenager in 2012. The publication’s covers featured black male celebrities and their families dressed in the type of “hoodie” sweatshirts that Martin was wearing when he died.
The magazine’s sales figures rose in the wake of the conservative initiative. As Daily Banter blogger Bob Cesca said, “You can’t boycott something you've never purchased.”
