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Sunday, February 28, 2010

Unfortunate choice of words, or Freudian slip?
Posted by Jill | 7:19 PM
For some reason, with hundreds of thousands of people losing their unemployment benefits here at home, and the second catastrophic earthquake in our hemisphere since the year started, the gasbags on This Weak With Some Idiot Or Another unsurprisingly felt that the most important thing to talk about was Desirée Rogers' resignation as White House Social Secretary. Be appalled at the utter blather and marvel about how these nimrods get paid to talk like this. But note in particular Sam Donaldson's choice of words towards the end:
VARGAS: And then, of course, this weekend, we have a brand-new White House social secretary appointed to replace Desiree Rogers, a close friend of the Obamas who is exiting after a bumpy tenure, I would say. Cokie, you spoke with her. She -- she was highly criticized after the Obamas' first state dinner in which she arrived, looking absolutely gorgeous, but in what some people later said was far too fancy a dress, but most importantly, that was the state dinner that was crashed by the Salahis, who walked in without an invitation when the social secretary's office didn't have people manning the security sites.

ROBERTS: Well, I talked to -- I did talk to her, Desiree, yesterday at length. She is from my home city of New Orleans and fellow Sacred Heart girl.

DONALDSON: What's the name of the city? ROBERTS: New Orleans.

DONALDSON: I love to hear her say it.

(CROSSTALK)

ROBERTS: But -- and she has lots of good explanations about that dinner. And basically, the bottom line is, it's the Secret Service. But she -- but her -- her major point is -- and I -- and I completely take this -- is that she -- she put on 330 events at the White House last year and did open the building to all kinds of people who had not been there before. And they had wonderful music days of all kinds of music, where you had during the day, the musicians would work with kids in Washington and teach them things before coming on at night.

DONALDSON: Cokie, that's irrelevant.

ROBERTS: Well, I don't think it's irrelevant.

DONALDSON: I mean, it's irrelevant. People who work for the president understand or should understand their place, which is to be spear-carriers. There are two stars in anyone's White House, the president and the president's spouse. After that, this passion for anonymity that once was a hallmark of people who worked for a president, has been lost. She wanted to be a star herself...

ROBERTS: And it's been lost. Look at all the people who work for presidents and then go out and write books about them.

DONALDSON: I think you're right.

VARGAS: Do you think she was -- did she quit, or was she asked to leave?

DONALDSON: She was asked to.

ROBERTS: She says she quit.

DONALDSON: Oh, well...

Is it just me, or did Sam Donaldson call Desirée Rogers, who is black, a spear-chucker? Isn't the expression "water carriers"? Why did Donaldson think of "spears" in context of a black White House staffer and a black president?

(h/t)

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2 Comments:
Anonymous Steven Schultz said...
You may be unfamiliar with Donaldson's (somewhat snobbish) reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear_carrier. I'm sure he consciously chose the phrase, not to make a subtle racial slur, but because he's speaking to The Villagers. Who else really cares about this kind of crap?
3/1/10, 12:19 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Why? "A spear carrier is a nickname for a minor acting part"...
3/1/10, 4:39 AM  
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