Don't you hate when people assume the worst of the motivations of others? Especially people who shouldn't be making any social commentary, like Sarah Silverman, comedian and author of "The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee."
In her book, Silverman attacks the Tea Party movement and "right-wing Americans," suggesting their efforts aren't for the sake of fiscal responsibility and the fear the country is headed toward an entitlement state, but instead - veiled racism. Silverman, who had her own run-in with Guy Aoki, president of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, for using the word "chink" in a joke, said his cause, to combat racism against Asians, is more difficult today because of this so-called camouflage.
"The bad news for guys like Aoki is that, not only are the progressive messages out there today more refined and sense-of-irony dependent, but racist messages are more oblique, too," Silverman wrote on page 164 of her book. "Right-wing Americans who appear in mainstream media are not out there calling black people ‘niggers,' or saying, ‘The Klan has good ideas.' Instead, they're questioning the legitimacy of the Obama presidency by accusing him of being born in Africa and calling Obama a ‘communist' and a ‘Nazi.'"
But Silverman took it a step further and named the Fox News Channel and former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs as instigators of this viewpoint.
"The entire Fox News Channel is a twenty-four-hour-a-day racism engine, but it's all coded, all implied," she continued. "Lou Dobbs used to scream on CNN about ‘immigration,' not ‘filthy Mexicans.' I suspect the racist messages about Asians that permeate the media are subtler, and therefore more difficult to combat."
Silverman's book is currently hovering in top 20s of The New York Time "Hard Cover Nonfiction" best sellers list.
