THE RIGHT ATTACKS HEALTH CARE REFORM AS "REPARATIONS" -- AGAIN

Steve Benen is understandably appalled by this -- but if he thinks it's some sort of new low for the right, well, it really isn't:

... On his radio show yesterday, [Rush Limbaugh] condemned health care reform as "a civil rights bill" and "reparations." Seriously.

Limbaugh has spent plenty of time talking about President Obama and "reparations," and has also had plenty to say about health care reform, but as far as I can tell, yesterday was one of those rare instances in which the host combined the two.

I'm going to go on a limb here and describe this as about the most racist thing a major American media personality has said in quite a while....

It's bad -- but it's not particularly original, even for the "mainstream" right. Here was the Fox Nation front page on July 28, 2009:



This led to an editorial from the ultra-right Investor's Business Daily that read, in part, as follows:

Reparations By Way Of Health Care Reform

Still believe in post-racial politics? Read the health care bill. It's affirmative action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color....

This may be a goal of Obama's health care plan: the redress of health care disparities on the basis of race....

The racial grievance industry under health care reform could be calling the shots in the emergency room, the operating room, the medical room, even medical school....

(The direct link to this editorial is here, but it seems to have been hijacked by another site, so proceed with caution. You can read the full text, if you must, here.)

And for what it's worth, Newsmax on Sunday called the settlement of a long-standing complaint by black farmers against the Agriculture Department "$1.25B in Reparations." In fact, it was definitively determined in 1999 that the Agriculture Department had discriminated against black farmers (go here and here for some background); many claims were paid, but this was a settlement of claims by those who were unable to obtain restitution during the Bush years, because of a lack of cooperation on the part of the Civil Rights Office. But what right-winger needs to hear the details? Just toss out the word "reparations" and a winger knows all he needs to know....