Friday, August 30, 2013

If Republicans Are Becoming the Party of the Stupid – Here is a Full Fledged Member

Colorado Republican State Senator Vicki Marble Insults a Whole Group of People - And Embarrasses Everyone Except Republicans With Her Ignorance

[Editor's note:  With the 50th anniversary of the MLK, Jr. Speech in Washington this seems particularly appropriate.]

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is both a rising and falling star in Republican circles warned against the party becoming the “Party of the Stupid”.  He must have had Colorado State Senator Vicki Marble in mind.

The comments came during a meeting of the Economic Opportunity Poverty Reduction Task Force Wednesday at the Capitol as lawmakers on the committee were presented with a number of statistics highlighting racial disparities in the poverty rate.

“When you look at life expectancy, there are problems in the black race: sickle-cell anemia is something that comes up, diabetes is something that’s prevalent in the genetic makeup and you just can’t help it,” Marble said. “Although I’ve got to say, I’ve never had better BBQ and better chicken and ate better in my life than when you go down south and you — I love it.”

Marble went on to mention how Mexicans eat vegetables in Mexico but stop eating healthily when they immigrate to the United States.

“These things aren’t good for you,” she continued. “There’s so many attributing factors as to why these graphs look the way they do.”

Fortunately in this instance there was an intelligent and articulate person ready to respond.

Moments later, Rep. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, responded to Marble on the record — and she didn’t pull any punches.

“The title for this committee is the Economic Opportunity Poverty Reduction Task Force; and one of the things I will not tolerate is racist and insensitive comments about African Americans, the color of their skin. You mentioned what we eat — I was highly offended by your remarks,” Fields said, addressing Marble directly.

“I will not engage in a dialogue where I’m in the company where you are using the stereotype references about African Americans and chicken and food and all kinds of things. I will just not tolerate that,” Fields continued.

“This is not what this committee is all about. So I will ask that you suspend your perceptions and judgments about African Americans, about poverty — what we’re trying to do is come up with solutions and it’s not about chicken.

As far as Ms. Marble is concerned, she is now the epitome of a comedian whose watch phrase is “You can’t fix stupid”. 

No, you cannot, you can only vote it out of office.

4 comments:

  1. Buried in Marble's comments is a salient point about the unavailability of nutritious diets for the poor. What poor people eat - or don't eat - is an extremely important issue, as the DPE's post on food deserts explained.

    Marble's confusion of the unavailability of nutritious food with race-based preferences for eating unhealthy food makes her statements even more damaging. By approaching a serious issue in an insensitive and ignorant way, she makes it more difficult for the issue to be approached intelligently.

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  2. It's even worse than that, as studies like this

    http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5001

    are finding that fruit juice, which we all thought was healthy and helpful is now being identified as a major problem.

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  3. Sugary drinks, including juice, are a blight. The ready availability of sugary drinks in large quantities is one of the leading causes of the obesity epidemic.

    Juice carries the additional problem of seeming healthy when it really isn't. Juice contains the sugar found in fruit but not the fiber, which balances out the detrimental effects of sugar.

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  4. Absolutely true. And yet there is a big push to substitute juice for cola in schools. So low income children that get school breakfast and lunches . . .

    ReplyDelete