We have been following the controversy over people declaring “All Lives Matter,” which is now viewed as racially insensitive and a “micro aggression” against the black community. We recently discussed the heartfelt apology given by Kathleen McCartney, the president of prestigious Smith College after she said “all lives matters” rather than ‘Black lives matter.” Now Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley has followed suit with his own apology for saying that “all lives matter” in a speech, which he was interrupted by black audience members booing and protesting.
The protesters had been chanting that “Black lives matter!” and O’Malley simply responded: “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.” There was a time when that would have been viewed as a true and uplifting sentiment to express. It is now viewed as insensitive and audience members booed O’Malley.
O’Malley later made a public apology and said “I meant no disrespect. That was a mistake on my part and I meant no disrespect. I did not mean to be insensitive in any way or communicate that I did not understand the tremendous passion, commitment and feeling and depth of feeling that all of us should be attaching to this issue.”
Ironically, O’Malley’s opponent Hillary Clinton was also called out for saying “all lives matter.” Clinton used the phrase while telling a story from her grandmother: “I asked her, ‘What kept you going?’ Her answer was very simple. Kindness along the way from someone who believed she mattered. All lives matter.”
That produced an outcry with Renita Lamkin, a pastor at the St. John AME Church in St. Charles, stating “With her statement that all lives matter, that blew a lot of support that she may have been able to engender here.” The Clinton campaign rushed out a statement that Clinton used “All Black Lives Matter” the year before.
Source: CNN
Loyalty oaths matter.
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All lives matter. Some matter because they have done good things and improved the world. Others matter because they have harmed and degraded the world.
What you DO matters. Everything you do eventually has an effect on others. Just breathing is not an accomplishment that matters.
Fetishizing black is essential for maintaining the police state. Hillary Clinton’s campaign understands this and recently characterized Bernie Sanders as a racist for this reason.
All Irish Lives Matter!
I am getting a Tee shirt which says: All Lives Matter. Dog Life Is Better Than Human Life.
I already have one which reads: Four Legs Good! Two Legs Baaaad!
That phrase “all lives matter” is an attempt to reunify what has been divided by hatred and thoughtlessness. It’s not about black vs white vs every shade of tan in between. It’s about right and wrong.
Well, O’Malley is an idiot if he apologized for saying “all lives matter.” All lives do matter. That’s the entire point of our constitution and our justice system.
Do they make press-on backbones for people to stand straight, look directly into the camera, and say, “All lives matter equally, regardless of race, color, socioeconomic status, or creed. That’s what ‘justice is blind’ refers to, and I believe in Justice.”
I should add that I am sure some of those well informed non-veterans are right here on this board. Everyone has to be someplace and that is usually where they belong….wars are not won by soldiers alone. If anyone who has served thinks otherwise, tell me what sensation they felt as they burned through that last magazine in their bandolier and still had to go on? Resupply came from all the Joe & Jane Sixpacks who weren’t in uniform.
Neo ..I certainly agree on the spineless weasel part and then some. He was thinking of HIS personal career, not standing up for a very simple truth. Maybe he needs to go off to war to learn a lesson or two. That should not be necessary and I know many non-veterans who figured it out without the experience. O’Malley should stick to his banjo playing and shut up…since he has not the courage of his expressed convictions.
I did live for a while back in the 70’s in lilly white suburbia…alll fresh and squeeky clean far from the city core. Horrible experience. But shouldn’t have been so. Great pressure to make everyone agree on everything. It was boring, but worse, lacked fundamental morality. I watched grown men, with good to great incomes, steal lumber and bricks from a site, on weekends, near our street and then build themselves nice decks for their yards. When I called them on it, at an association meeting, when the builder came & pointed out the thefts, I was bluntly told to not believe my lying eyes. I left that lilly pond as soon as I could, before it corrupted me forever. In my divorce I even gave our house to my ex, even though it had tripled+ in value…I just had to be free from that place. She later moved out too, to the north woods and lives quite happily there. As a beautiful Korean woman she found far less discrimination in the boon docks…none in fact. Why is that? What have we lost in our cites and suburbs? My kid daughter moved to the city core (cited above) three years ago, also from a McManion in far suburbia, and loves it…a very mixed community around her…and she loves it. Is that us going full circle? She’s an example of why I still believe our future, if it is to be good, depends upon our youth…even the weird ones (like my cohorts from the 60’s)…they see what some of us cannot?
@ Darren
This man did nothing wrong.
*****************************************************
Sure he did!
He back away from his statement like a weasel without a spine. He’s just yellow through and through.
I apologize in advance to all the spineless weasels out there that may take offense to my statement.
I find it downright scary when saying “all lives matter” is offensive. What are we becoming? I’m no “virgin” in this experience living in and then very hear an area that is 85% black, so I have to suggest that in the majority black areas the danger is mostly from others of the same hue. That is NOT racist, and lately I’ve been seeing a reformation in that population. We should all be so enlightened. I’ve spoken many times of living among minorities of all colors and ethnicities, around the world, and that I enjoyed it….and still do. A life is a life, and we all should at least accept that. War informed me of that essense long ago. We all bled red and many of us, both sides, had picutres in our pockets of family at home….e.g. common values in the midst of horrors we individually did not create. At times I wonder if “evolution” has a peak, then declines…and perhaps we are on the downside now? Feels that way at times.
@Darren Smith
Doing nothing wrong doesn’t keep a person from being crucified. The Dems created a mob with all their race-baiting, and now the mob may be getting out of control. I hope so. Better if sooner, than later.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Did Anthony Hervey’s life matter?
This man did nothing wrong.
Hands up; don’t shoot.
“When, however, it is proposed to imbue the mind of a crowd with ideas and beliefs — with modern social theories, for instance — the leaders have recourse to different expedients. The principal of them are three in number and clearly defined — affirmation, repetition, and contagion….
“Affirmation pure and simple, kept free of all reasoning and all proof, is one of the surest means of making an idea enter the mind of crowds. The conciser an affirmation is, the more destitute of every appearance of proof and demonstration, the more weight it carries…. Statesmen called upon to defend a political cause, and commercial men pushing the sale of their products by means of advertising are acquainted with the value of affirmation. Affirmation, however, has no real influence unless it be constantly repeated, and so far as possible in the same terms. It was Napoleon, I believe, who said that there is only one figure in rhetoric of serious importance, namely, repetition….
“The influence of repetition on crowds… This power is due to the fact that the repeated statement is embedded in the long run in those profound regions of our unconscious selves in which the motives of our actions are forged. At the end of a certain time we have forgotten who is the author of the repeated assertion, and we finish by believing it. To this circumstance is due the astonishing power of advertisements. When we have read a hundred, a thousand, times that X’s chocolate is the best, we imagine we have heard it said in many quarters, and we end by acquiring the certitude that such is the fact….”
“When an affirmation has been sufficiently repeated and there is unanimity in this repetition — as has occurred in the case of certain famous financial undertakings rich enough to purchase every assistance — what is called a current of opinion is formed and the powerful mechanism of contagion intervenes. Ideas, sentiments, emotions, and beliefs possess in crowds a contagious power as intense as that of microbes.”
— “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind” by Gustave Le Bon, 1899.
“micro-aggression” is just another definition for zero-tolerance.
Do the hand wringers here think that poor, fat, white people living in trailer parks are treated equally? What about poor Hmong living in ghettoes? Do any of these peoples lives matter?