These days it seems whatever Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) says he's going to be called a racist for saying it.
The latest such outrage stems from Cruz joking about the ObamaCare website being run by Nigerian email scammers.
This evoked outrage from the usual liberal suspects.
MSNBC's Michael Eric Dyson substituting for Ed Schultz on Tuesday discussed the racial overtones of Cruz's remark with Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.).
Salon's Joan Walsh - who like Dyson sees racism around every corner! - wrote Tuesday:
Hey, did you hear the one about the disappearing “Nigerian email scammers”? They’ve “become a lot less active lately” because they’ve “all been hired to run the Obamacare website.” That’s Sen. Ted Cruz, folks, on his Reactionary Real America Victory Tour Monday night, and he’ll be here all week, maybe all decade. Tip your waiter!
Declaring that our first black president’s signature policy achievement is being run by “Nigerian email scammers” is GOP dog-whistle politics at its finest. Of course, Cruz wasn’t just going for cheap laughs at the expense of the Affordable Care Act. He knows it’s a short hop from Nigeria to Kenya for his Obama-hating Houston audience.
Are these people really this clueless, or is intellectual honesty a bygone attribute in today's liberal media?
Nigerian scams have been around for decades in this country well before we mortals had access to the internet.
I was made aware of such scams - done through snail mail at the time - when I first became a bank manager in the late '80s.
Late night comedians have been making jokes about them for years.
The FBI even has a warning about such scams at its website:
Nigerian letter frauds combine the threat of impersonation fraud with a variation of an advance fee scheme in which a letter mailed from Nigeria offers the recipient the “opportunity” to share in a percentage of millions of dollars that the author—a self-proclaimed government official—is trying to transfer illegally out of Nigeria. The recipient is encouraged to send information to the author, such as blank letterhead stationery, bank name and account numbers, and other identifying information using a fax number provided in the letter. Some of these letters have also been received via e-mail through the Internet. The scheme relies on convincing a willing victim, who has demonstrated a “propensity for larceny” by responding to the invitation, to send money to the author of the letter in Nigeria in several installments of increasing amounts for a variety of reasons.
Notice the warning first refers to "letter" prior to mentioning "e-mail."
Why? Because these scams have been around since the '80s and have been the target of comedians since before many Americans were born.
But let a conservative Tea Party member make such a joke? RACISM!
Who thinks this nonsense is REALLY getting old?
As a final thought, since Cruz was Texas's Solicitor General from 2003 to 2008, it's conceivable he's been involved in cases surrounding such frauds.
But the liberal media shouldn't concern themselves with that.
There's a Tea Partier on the loose, and he must be stopped.
