Perpetual victims find new and bad reason to declare perpetual victimhood

Politico:

Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family. http://t.co/SpB4rQDoAR
— msnbc (@msnbc)
January 30, 2014

The liberal cable news network MSNBC posted a tweet on Wednesday night in which it suggested that conservatives hate biracial families.

“Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww:  the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family,” read the tweet, which was accompanied by a link to an MSNBC.com article about the Cheerios ad.

MSNBC has deleted the tweet and apologized, but for the life of me I can’t understand why. For your consideration:

Daily Mail, 2011: A majority of Republican voters in Mississippi believe interracial marriage should be made illegal.

The recently conducted phone poll, by credible firm Public Policy Polling (PPP), slipped the unambiguous racial question into a broader survey about the political chances of Republican candidates.

PPP, a Democrat-affiliated polling firm based in Raleigh, North Carolina, said it ‘surveyed 400 usual Mississippi Republican primary voters from March 24 to 27’.

Within the usual questions about candidates and whether the respondent viewed them favourably or unfavourably, the survey then asked the simple question: ‘Do you think interracial marriage should be legal or illegal?’.

While 40 per cent of respondents said interracial marriage should be legal, 46 per cent said it should be illegal - and a further 15 per cent were undecided.

I’m sorry guys, but I’m afraid your victim card has been declined.

[photo by Jeffrey]

Because the real victims are always Republicans

Limbaugh and Nugent: from offensive to offended in no time flat.

[via Media Matters]

After marriage equality ruling, conservative leader plays the victim card

Wow, who could’ve seen that coming, huh?

Steve Benen: The Heritage Foundation’s Jim DeMint published a daily essay this morning on marriage equality, which struck me as … what’s the word I’m looking for … hilarious.

The crux of the piece is that opponents of equal rights for all Americans “deserve to be treated with dignity" — the classic “be tolerant of my intolerance" sort of schtick. Consider this gem:

[The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act] denies dignity to the millions of Americans and their elected officials who have voted to pass laws that tell the truth about marriage.

I’ve read that sentence several times, trying to make sense of it, but I’m at a bit of a loss. In fact, I’m not sure if DeMint even knows what “dignity" means, exactly. The former senator seems to be arguing that the nation has a choice: we can extend basic human decency to all Americans and eliminate the need for second-class citizenship or we can make proponents of discrimination feel good about themselves. We’re apparently supposed to endorse the latter.

Benen has more, but the point I want to make is that — no matter what the issue — Republicans are always the victims. DeMint has no legitimate argument to make, so he lays down the well-worn conservative victim card.

But DeMint’s op-ed isn’t meant to change anyone’s mind about marriage rights. What it’s meant to do is solidify the base who dearly cherish their own victimhood. Always outraged, always convinced that America is beset by enemies from within and without, always certain they’re the heroes in their little drama-queen narratives, the rightwing Tea Party base loves nothing more than to be told that they’re being disrespected/deprived of their rights/attacked by forces that only Republicans are capable of resisting.

Jim DeMint’s sad defense of institutional homophobia may be hilarious, but it’s also calculated to anger the Republican base with their imaginary status as perpetual victims.