Right before YearlyKos, O'Reilly was going after this community like never before. One of his craziest attacks was in this exchange with Diane Brady of Business Week Magazine where he compared us to the KKK:
"...this is hate of the worst order. It's like the Ku Klux Klan. It's like the Nazi party."
Many of you know where I'm going with this and I don't think I'm making that big of a jump. More on the flip.
Although I did not see the cesspool that was HarveyMilk's original diary, I saw more than enough in today's "Apology" diary. For those of you who have completely missed this controversy, KidOakland gives a rundown of what happened in the comments of Apology
[He]wrote a diary entitled: "I Sho's don't think no bad 'bout Obama, I sho's don't." And littered your diary with further Amos n' Andy language.
[He]posted a photo of a man in Blackface holding a spliff and linked your photobucket page where it was titled "Obmamam." And...it's still there with the same title.
Shameful, despicable and by far the most offensive thing I've ever heard of in this 100,000+ member community.
While I view most calls to ban a user as knee-jerk reactions that stifle dissent, what Harvey Milk did is in a league of its own. I want Dkos to be an open field of progressive debate but this community should subscribe to at least a minimum set of standards.
And we do. Markos and the rest of the team have set such standards that prevent flaming right-wing freepers from peddling their drivel here. At the other end of the spectrum, combative Green Party activists usually don't last for more than a day, either.
So what about overt racism in the mold of the KKK as O'Reilly alludes to? This community almost unanimously agrees (as do I) that mainstream political voices such as Republicans from Freeperland and Greens have no place on a Democratic site. But when someone resorts toracist imagery to attack Obama for something that isn't worth raising a peep over, a number of Kossacks see nothing wrong.
From the comments in "Apology:"
No need to apologize, from my pov.... (21+ / 0-)
Sure, your diary was harsh.
These are harsh times.
I'm 62 years old, and have seen hurt, harm,
murder and suicide. Gay people have every right
to fight back, and fight back hard.
While many, many members of this community took this guy to task, twenty-one people lauded his/her belief that HarveyMilk had "no need to apologize" and said that they see nothing wrong with Daily Kos becoming stormfront.com.
A few paragraphs above, I alluded to my indifference towards Obama's involvment with McClurkin. First of all, I am a gay adolescent in one of the least accepting parts of the country. The ex-gay movement is a total joke and no one takes them seriously. While McClurkin is a member of this laughable group, I seriously doubt that Obama would let him spew his ex-gay message at one of his events or do anything outside of performing in general.
Last year, my progressive ethics teacher who's like a second mother to me, showed us some clips from an ex-gay documentary. All you could hear in that room was an uproar of laughter. In a philosophically diverse class that included some pretty conservative classmates of mine, we unanimously agreed that the idea of "becoming straight" is a total joke.
Diaries such as HM's drive a wedge between gays and blacks and that drives me crazy. If you're going to exacerbate an already fractured relationship between two communities, do it over something tha warrants so much outrage.
There isn't a smarter, more passionate community of progressive activists anywhere outside of Dailykos. I care immensely about the image of this site and take pride in my participation here. I'm currently applying to college and against the advice of those around me, I listed my contributions here and my username in my resume. That's how much I value this place.
If we don't abide by our high standards of discourse, we have the potential to fit O'Reilly's foolish labels. HarveyMilk's racism should belong on a KKK pamphlet, not dailykos.com. I knew that O'Reilly was talking like a fool back in August when he made the KKK comparison and I know it just as much now. While O'Reilly most certainly won't notice nor care about HM's blatant racism, we fulfill BillO's condemnations when some of us don't even think an apology was warranted. If we let HarveyMilk continue to post here, then what are we?