Here’s MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry from this weekend on how the term Obamacare is racist. Via Talking Points Memo:
MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry kicked off her weekend program with a monologue on what she called the “derogatory” implications of the term “Obamacare,” the colloquialism for the Affordable Care Act.
“It’s a word that has been with us for years. And like it or not, it’s indelibly printed in the pages of American history,” she said. “A word that was originally intended as a derogatory term, meant to shame and divide and demean. The word was conceived of by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man. To render him inferior and unequal and to diminish his accomplishments.”
But Harris-Perry said that despite the efforts of President Barack Obama’s opponents to reduce him to that one “disparaging word,” he President embraced the moniker.
No, Obamacare isn’t racist. It isn’t even derogatory. It’s just the nature of politics that legislative proposals become attached to particular individuals. Doubtless, the kids over at MSDNC consider “Hillarycare” sexist (or szomething). But recall that during the 2008 primaries, Slate used ”McCaincare” and Ezra Klein used “Giulianicare.”
This is nothing new, and it’s a construction liberals embrace for their own purposes, i.e., President Obama’s use of “Romneycare,” “the Bush tax cuts,” “Reaganomics,” “Bush’s war in Iraq,” ”Libbygate,” etc., etc., etc.