He’s often wondered


Cliven Bundy has more bad ideas he wants everyone to know about.

Bundy is attempting to use his newfound fame to spread more than just his views on grazing rights, telling the Times he planned to hold a daily news conference.

Remember Joe the Plumber? I think what we have here is another such populist hero – Cliven the Cowboy perhaps.

During Saturday’s conference, Bunday shared his views on “the Negro”:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Mmm. I love drive-by sociology performed by random tresspassers and resource-thieves.

Comments

  1. Menyambal says

    “Negro” isn’t the right spelling for the way he said it.

    That comes from a guy who uses public land for his own personal gain, at a massive government subsidy, then doesn’t even pay the piddling rent, then rants against the man while clutching a gun.

  2. Juliana Ewing says

    So why was he even talking about “the Negro,” anyway? What was the relevance?

  3. Blanche Quizno says

    Oh boy. Where to start?? I think we just need hitch ol’ Cliven up to a wagon and have him pull a wagonload of us around to show us aaaaallll the land he’s using and not paying for. And we can take turns whipping him if he gets lazy.

  4. rowanvt says

    @ 2, A. Noyd-

    I was thinking the same thing earlier today; if only he’d called them welfare queens, the republicans would have continued flocking to him.

  5. jeffrey dreisin says

    The thing about being stupid is you don’t you’re stupid much less how stupid you are. It is now possible to call a certain level of stupidity, Cliven stupidity. The name already sounds like an adjective so let’s appropriate it. Anyone who holds the same views as he does, that is, anyone who is that stupid, can be called clivenly stupid. It’s a useful category. And any outlet that bothers to broadcast the idiot’s cliven views, is obviously cravenly cliven. I mean this guy might be a dumn (a combination of dumb and damn) asshole but does provide good emotive and linguistic source material.

  6. StevoR : Free West Papua, free Tibet, let the Chagossians return! says

    “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said.

    Interesting use of the word “know” there!

    What Cliven the racist cowboy “knows” seems based more on complete wilful ignorance and his own anecdotally semi-supported opinion NOT any sound understanding of reality desu ne?

  7. says

    Cliven Bundy is approaching an archetype for what’s wrong with the Right:

    He’s a racist. I’m sure that if we asked the right question, he’d come out as a virulent homophobe.

    He has no problem mooching off of the commons; in fact, he regards that as his absolute right. At the same time, he disparages anyone else who benefits. The worst of the “I’ve got mine, sucks to be you” libertarian.

    He uses patriotism when it suits him, but is happy to reject the authority of the federal government when he wants to. The irony of him saying that he refuses to acknowledge the existence or legitimacy of the federal government, while being photographed riding a horse and waving a huge US flag is more than most irony meters can deal with. For fun, I wish someone would ask him his opinion on illegal immigration and whose job it is to deal with that — dollars-to-donuts, he’d say “Border Patrol.”

    His ‘solutions’ to problems and disputes go straight to guns.

    He’s also a flat-out liar. He claims some “ancestral” right to graze in that area, but the facts don’t match up. His family moved into the area in 1948 and started grazing cattle in 1954. Like many on the right, it’s all about a good story, not about truth.

    Speaking of stories, I suspect that he and his supporters have bought into the romanticized image of the Old West. They’re playing out an adult version of Cowboys and Indians with real guns instead of pointed fingers. One wonders if he gets teary-eyed at the mention of Randolph Scott or John Wayne.

  8. says

    A couple of other things.

    He’s a coward/chicken-hawk. More than comfortable putting other people at risk to protect his ass. Using innocents as a human shield is despicable.

    After posting the Blazing Saddles clip I realized that there were similarities. I’m sure he views himself like the townspeople in BS; plucky Westerners fighting back against a corrupt government. Of course in his version of the movie, the hero is white.

  9. Pierce R. Butler says

    ArtK @ # 8: … I wish someone would ask him his opinion on illegal immigration …

    Bundy has thoughtfully volunteered his opinions on “The Spanish”:

    “I understand that they come over here against our Constitution and cross our borders,” he says. “But they’re here and they’re people. I worked side-by-side a lot of them. Don’t tell me they don’t work, and don’t tell me they don’t pay taxes. And don’t tell me they don’t have better family structures than most of us white people.”

    “When you see those Mexican families, they’re together. They picnic together. They’re spending their time together,” he said. “I’ll tell you, in my way of thinking, they’re awful nice people. We need to have those people join us and be with us.”

    How much that statement has to do with his loss of support among certain teabaggers I leave to your imagination.

  10. says

    @ Pierce R. Butler

    How very enlightened of him. Yet another example of how prejudice can fall when we’re exposed to real people.It sounds like he’s moved past the “… some of my best friends are …” stage and on to “these are good people with admirable traits.”

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