opinion
the Republicans’ Racial Politics
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N
ewt Gingrich is playing
racial politics and he is
playing to win. First he
says that black children should get
jobs as janitors (why not suggest
they get the same consulting con-
tract he did at Freddie Mac – I’m
with Mitt Romney here, what did
Gingrich tell Freddie Mac that was
worth more than a million dollars).
Then he says that he wants to tell
the NAACP that we should
demand jobs, not food stamps. He
so bristles at Fox commentator
Juan Williams that he gets a stand-
ing O in South Carolina. And he
has repeatedly described President
Barack Obama as a “food stamp”
President. It’s race baiting, pure
and simple, and few have called
him on it.
The true food stamp story goes
something like this. In 2006 just
26.5 million Americans received
food stamps. By 2011 the number
had spiked to more than 45 million
people. This has been the result of
the Great Recession that has left at
least 13 million people officially
unemployed for an average of 40
weeks. Those are the official num-
bers, but they may be twice as
high when we consider the people
who have part time work and want
full time work and those who have
dropped out of the labor market
because it costs too much to look
for work. President Obama is not a
food stamps president; he is a
president who inherited an eco-
nomic crisis. Newt is being
extremely disingenuous and
extraordinarily racist in his food
stamps rap.
While about 14 percent of all of
us – one in seven – gets food
B ennett
C oLLege
Julianne
Malveaux
stamps, in some states the number
is as high as one in five. In South
Carolina, for example, poverty is
greater than it is in the nation and
18.2 percent of South Carolinians
get food stamps. The number in
need much fuel to turn to fire. He
got a standing O by pandering to
racial stereotypes. And that pan-
dering may well have propelled
him into victory.
Newt has managed to paint food
stamps as a black program, partly
by describing our president as a
“food stamps” president, and part-
ly by putting food stamps in con-
text with the NAACP. But Mr.
Gingrich, often touted for his
intelligence, must be bright
enough to know that most food
stamp recipients are not African
American. Indeed, according to
the Associated Press, 49 percent of
Newt is being extremely disingenuous
and extraordinarily racist in his food
stamps rap
Maine is 18.6 percent, in
Louisiana 19.2 percent, in Michi-
gan 19.7 percent, in Oregon 20.1
percent, and in Mississippi 20.7
food stamp recipients are white,
26 percent are African American,
and 20 percent are Hispanic.
Indeed, some of the folks who
gave Newt a standing O are food
Indeed, according to the Associated
Press, 49 percent of food stamp
recipients are white
percent. Given the racial dynamics
in South Carolina, did Newt
decide to show out in a state where
there is more poverty than else-
where, and when the racial resent-
ments
(remember
I
said
Confederate flag waving) don’t
stamp recipients, but they chose to
bond with Newt’s racially coded
messages instead of their own eco-
nomic reality.
Poverty has a different face than
it has ever had before. People who
used to have big jobs and fancy
cars are now struggling to make
ends meet. People who always
struggled are now strangling.
More than 2 million families have
doubled up in the past year
because they needed a family life-
line to save their lives and their
worlds. More than 40 percent of
African American children live in
poverty. Newt Gingrich would
blame the poor for their situation,
but the economy that President
Obama inherited is an economy
that has thrust people into despair.
Food stamps are a lifeline for
many. How dare candidate
Gringrich attack President Obama
for providing relief to 45 million
Americans!
Most food stamp recipients are
people who used to work, and they
would, frankly, rather be working
than receiving assistance. But they
have downsized their lifestyles,
their dreams, and their expecta-
tions. They are waiting for the job
market to roar back. Half of the 45
million are white, and some of
them stood to applaud Gingrich.
Do they really think that a man
who disdains the poor will provide
them with a lifeline? Do they real-
ly believe that a man who is sell-
ing wolf tickets to the NAACP is
really concerned with the well
being of the least and the left out.
The poverty that too many Ameri-
cans experience is repugnant. The
extent to which politicians trivial-
ize such poverty is character
revealing. Who will put American
back to work? Who will alleviate
poverty?
Julianne Malveaux is President
of Bennett College in greensboro,
north Carolina
gingrich Bullies the Media, Avoids Issues
W
hether it was John King
of CNN or Fox News’
Juan Williams, modera-
tors of recent Republican presi-
dential debates have allowed
Newt Gingrich to bully them and
avoid answering their questions. I
don’t necessarily blame Gingrich,
I blame the journalists who fail to
hold him accountable.
King timidly asked Gingrich in
the last South Carolina debate if he
wanted to comment on an inter-
view with one of his ex-wives in
which she charged that Gingrich
had proposed having an open mar-
riage that would have allowed him
to simultaneously continue his
marriage and his relationship with
his then-mistress, who is now his
third wife.
In a carefully orchestrated attack
on what he calls the “elite media,”
Gingrich lectured King: “…To
make an ex-wife and make it two
days before the primary, a signifi-
cant question in a presidential
campaign, is as close to despicable
as anything I can imagine.”
In an effort to not appear con-
frontational, King took the tongue
lashing, with only a feeble attempt
to point out that the interview was
conducted by another network.
That, in turn, was met by Gingrich
saying, “You chose to start the
debate with it. Don’t try to blame
it on somebody else.”
Blaming the media for his infi-
delity is exactly what Gingrich
did. What’s despicable is Gin-
Page 4 The Portland Skanner January 25, 2012
t he C urry
r ePort
George E.
Curry
grich’s behavior, not the questions
he was asked.
Let’s review Gingrich’s record
by starting with his birth.
According to a story by Stephen
days when he hit her.”
Gingrich was adopted by his
mother’s second husband, Bob
Gingrich.
“As a high school student – pre-
cocious, lonely, overweight –
Newt secretly romanced his geom-
etry teacher, a buxom, matronly
woman named Jackie Battley,” the
Salon article stated. “The furtive
romance with his 24-year-old
teacher included nighttime ses-
sions in the back of a car in remote
areas of Fort Benning, Ga.”
Referring to that first marriage,
an article by Ariel Levy in the
Blaming the media for his infidelity is
exactly what Gingrich did
Talbot published in the Aug. 28,
1998 issue of Salon: “Newt him-
self is the product of a weekend
marriage. His 16-year-old mother,
New Yorker magazine (Jan. 23,
2012) observed: “As a student at
Baker High School in Columbus,
Ga., Gingrich fell in love with his
Marianne said she was shocked that
her then-husband’s affair was
conducted ‘in my bedroom in our
apartment in Washington.’
Kit, married hard-drinking, brawl-
ing Big Newt McPherson, whom
she met at a roller rink. But she
quit the marriage after just three
geometry teacher, Jacqueline Batt-
ley. She taught him to drive. ‘He
was her little boy,’ Gingrich’s
mother has said. They were mar-
ried in 1962, after his freshman
year at Emory, when Gingrich was
nineteen and Battley was twenty-
six.”
The New Yorker article recount-
ed, “He [Gingrich] ran for Con-
gress twice and lost before his
successful 1978 campaign, which
he organized around the slogan
‘Let Our Family Represent Your
Family.’ After he was elected, he
moved the family to Fairfax, Va.
One year later, he met Marianne
Ginther at a political fund-raiser in
Ohio, and within weeks, she told
the journalist John Richardson, he
asked her to marry him. It was
‘way too early, and he wasn’t
divorced yet,’ she said. ‘I should
have known there was a prob-
lem.’”
The story continued, “Before the
campaign, Jacqueline had been
treated for uterine cancer. ‘He
walked out in the spring of 1980,’
she told the Washington Post.
“That September, she was taken to
the hospital to have a tumor
removed. ‘I went into the hospital
for my third surgery,’ she said.
‘The two girls came to see me, and
said, Daddy is downstairs and
could he come up? When he got
there, he wanted to discuss the
terms of the divorce while I was
recovering from the surgery.’”
According to the Salon article,
“Six months after divorcing Jack-
ie, Gingrich married a younger
woman, Marianne, with whom he
had been having an affair.”