Randi Rhodes is being an ass today

Randi get a grip. You are being a xenophobic moron today. There are other ways to teach hate than saying "arabs are all evil".

I love these. :eyes:

She is pretending that there is no racism taught in schools. She is being confrontational and refusing to let people make a point.

I'm unlikely to agree or disagree with you.

but the detail is this...she is shouting anyone down who is disagreeing with her statement that in Saudi Arabia they teach hate and we do not.

I mean, literally, teach students to hate America and the West. I've been saying for two years that if Bush wanted to destroy the source of terror in the Middle East, he invaded the wrong country.

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and I speak from personal experience. I've attended several religious schools, and nearly all of their curriculums were devoid of hate.

It's been (more or less) official Saudi policy for a generation or more to direct the anger of their lower classes towards the US and Israel. The reason that the princes are in a panic now is that their people are finally realizing that the leaders are aligned with the two great evils of the world.

Saudi Arabia is the ideological incubator in the Arab World.

(On edit, I am replying to the wrong post, I think. I thought you were replying to me. My mistake).

""""If "The Christian Menace" gets their way and destroys our public schools they'll do the exact same thing. We need to invent a new God. The one we got now is a sadistic asshole.""""

I truly mean no offence, but please tell us my dear, when exactly did our ""current"" God pee on your pancakes??

because he doesn't exist :shrug:

While there is hatred and racism taught in our schools, it's not the US govt's official policy on education to do that. In SA, it is.

Unfortunately, you'll never hear Bush* talk about this because he likes the Saudi terrorists, and he hates public education in the US.

And as far as her being rude, again THANK GOD FOR RANDI!!! There's at least one liberal who knows how talk radio works

People are trying to say that hatred is taught in our schools....

Well it's nothing like what is taught in religious schools in Saudi Arabia...

Go Randi....

sticking up for teachers shouldn't include being closed minded. That is the meaning of oxymoron.

I'm glad she's sticking up for them - there is no directed curriculum of hate taught in our public schools....that is her point

and since you are from a family of teacher as am I, you can go to your family and ask them.

that it is her show and she runs it and if that woman wants to run it she should get her own show.

LOL

and this is true. Randi has worked hard. It is her show. As much as Franken likes to hog the show,and people think that is "cute" because of his obvious inability to stay on target but he is a celebrity so he is adored because of that, even though he is often incoherent and wanders all over the show

. RAndi is right.

It is her show. It is right on. There is no obligation on the part of Randi to be "nice" to people who call her and disagree. Her intuition has been her reliable helper.

She maintains control over her own show . Because she is a woman does not make for different rules. Traditionally women have to work harder than men and Randi deserves every bit of accolade for her show, her staff and her ability to face the issues without apology.

Cheers for RAndi

:eyes:

She's afraid of genii?

You're absolutely right. I don't know why she's being so narrow-minded today.

Perhaps the hatred/xenophobia taught in U.S. schools is not overt, but it's definitely there. There is such a thing as underlying racism and I can't believe that she is just completely unable to acknowledge it.

I went to a public school in a conservative county in a red state....

There's hatred everywhere...it's in our nature as humans...but it's a directed hatred is no injected into the curriculumm in public schools to be spread by our teachers...

Teachers are not all noble and brilliant. I know teachers who are bigots and spout nonsense quite often.

In SA, it is. Teachers in SA are PUNISHED if they don't teach hate.

100% correct.

But, as you said, that doesn't take individual teachers' personal views into account. Does that mean that teachers are teaching hate? Not as a whole, no. But think about it...if a teacher in a community that is already narrow-minded makes a comment that is hateful or ignorant, no one will make a big deal out of it and it will go unnoticed--except by the children.

When I was in grade school, I distinctly remember that a teacher was talking about Martin Luther King, Jr. and dismissively said that he was "a troublemaker."
Guess what? No one batted an eye. All the students were white and the community was primarily conservative Catholic.

Is that teaching hate? I think it is. When you make a comment like that around children, you only have to say it once to make an impression.

Teachers are not teaching hate, but they're human and there are people out there who slip in their personal beliefs.

And that doesn't even address the problem of underlying racism in textbooks.

. . . that the US is Satan.

Perspective has never been big deal on this site, but this is really pushing things.

for Christ's sake...

The original argument was that "hate is not taught in U.S. schools."
The discussion about official policy was not what Randi's callers were taking issue with.

Hate is not taught in U.S. public schools as a policy. Agreed.

I was not trying to say that one ignorant teacher in my past constitutes racism on the part of the entire U.S. public school system. All I'm saying is that hatred slips in here and there at schools, just as it does in the rest of society...if you think children are not getting any racist or hateful ideas at all from their schools, you're kidding yourself.

And it's moral relativism of the worse kind. Do we have bad teachers in the US? Yes. We also have institutions in place to deal with them.

The entire Saudi culture is corrupt on this issue and they have no institutions in place to deal with this, which is why their society is facing a very dangerous moment.

I simply don't understand the "Yes, but we do bad stuff too . . . " arguments that so many make when dealing with these countries.

The main point is the hatred being taught in the Saudi Schools is an extreme danger to you, me, and pretty much everyone living in the West. And - as unpopular as an idea as this is - it's not George W. Bush's fault. It was taught in those schools when Clinton was President and when Reagan was President and when Carter was President.

It's Bush's fault that we are allegedly in a war on terror and are not dealing with the source of the problem. It's like he declared a war on breast cancer and amputated a leg.

I guess the point is I don't feel the need to reflexively point out every sin the US commits when talking about the problems of other countries. Saudi Arabia is not our friend, it is not our ally, and someone needs to point out the danger that regime poses to the region and the world at large. And it does not need to be qualified in any way.

They are two different arguments. My point in posting was not to cry and wail about the evils of the U.S., but rather to point out what the callers were trying to say.

I don't disagree with anything you have said in your posts. My only gripe was that in the midst of her ranting, Randi wouldn't even acknowledge her callers.

Saudi Arabia's school curriculum is evil. I wasn't trying to be a Saudi apologist.

Certainly, there is some truth in what she says, but it is extremely unidimensional. As one who has actually worked in SA and had an opportunity to work with both Saudi (and Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese) men AND women, I just hate the sterotypical, shallow understanding that the media advances. Given that I was a western woman, I actually had access (beneath the veil) to Saudi women's attitudes. One day, maybe I'll take the time to post details or write a longer piece, but let it suffice that I rarely hear any western journalist (much less a "talking head") depict the range of views that women hold there. Christiane Armanpore comes closest, but rarely gets to present Arab (and Persian) views in depth.

On edit, I often wonder how many people she cuts off who may actually have uique expertise on the subject, since her tendency to jump to conclusions rarely gives time to determine.... As I've posted before I really wanted to like her, given the accolades she has gotten here on DU. To that end, I've listened regularly for about 3 weeks. On occcasion, I have been impressed, but I've also found her to be often needlessly unpleasant and too frequently ill prepared on the topic of the day....

misguided callers to confuse it with official curriculum-spread hate.

A very, very poor choice for a fledgling network ,imo. Rhodes is the lefts equivalent of O'Reilly and I wish to heaven Randi would crawl back under a rock!

Like Limbaugh , Hannity and O'Reilly Rhodes refuses to do the mental legwork and simply screams and insults. Compared to Al Franken Randi Rhodes is a misfit who does the progressive cause a disservice.

"arabs are all evil"

Where did I say she said that?

but you weren't quoting Randi. It's in your OP, and it's not clear if it was an actual quote

You are always complaining about her shows. (eom)

between her and Rush is that she is not lying.

She is a narrow minded jerk, that is not interested in actually working through our problems, she thinks that name calling and refusing to debate are the answer.

I wish someone like Mike Malloy could take her place.

A - FREAKING - MEN....

People don't want to hear this but "hates works". I just want to win. I don't care about fair anymore. I never intend to get along with any Repigs again the rest of my life anyway. Go Randi Go.

I have never once complained about her show before. Please show me a post where I have.

:) I know, you can handle yourself... :)

She sure knows how to get people worked up. THAT I'll hand to her!

:cry: I just think she is being an ass today.

not a journalist. all these t.v. and radio personalities are.

I'm pretty turned off by her too. I can't hear anything she says anymore. :thumbsdown:

she is missing the point of some of the callers that hatred doesn't have to be in the curriculum to be taught in schools and I am quite sure that hatred is taught in schools in this country...now is it in the curriculum as in Saudi Arabia - no probably not - but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I think Randi is very smart but I am listening to her less and less because I can not stand how full she is of herself. She seems to think she is the only one who knows the stuff she knows and she even often said I'm the only one that knows such and such and she wasn't because almost 100% of the time she says this I had known what she was talking about....she talks down to her listeners and yesterday she told Howard Dean she was all over black box voting like she discovered it - she is the only one who understands what happened in FL blah blah blah - she is good but not that good. Randi get over yourself.

When she starts treating her own fans like morons she's gonna start losing them...I can't listen too long when she gets on these diatribes.

.

and agree with 95 percent of what she says....BUT, she needs to quit using the mute button so much and stop screaming over people. I want to hear what they are trying to say. I was curious what the "supercilious woman" had to say. Would make much more sense and be more enjoyable to hear Randi put down a comment by the woman rather than just hear Randi scream at her without knowing what her point was.

re: her similar approach to O'Liely to those who disagree with her. Cutting mikes is soooo Hanity, Limbaugh, & O'Reilly

She is making the same lame argument that so many people make about why Israelis are more worthy than Palestinians. "At least the Israelis are not teaching hate in their schools". (well in actuallity there has also been hate and prejudice in some Israeli schools text books) In this case she is applying that argument to America and Saudi Arabia. The fact is that they don't have secular schools in Saudi Arabia as far as I know, so they do just what many of our religious schools do, they teach that people who do not follow their religion are "less worthy". Is that teaching hate...well yes I do believe it is.

In addition to that, public schools are teaching hate in subtle ways that I am amazed some of you do not recognise. When kids go to school and some person has been beheaded in Iraq the teacher is likely to say in response to the students, "those people are animals" and leave it at that. No one would argue with him/her or get angry.

If the teacher were to say: "Yes that is horrible, but what about people who are having their homes bombed and their families killed by our soldiers, do you think they might look at us as the bad guys? I just want you guys to understand that who is good and who is bad is in the eye of the beholder and not always easy for people to agree on." You know in that case the shit would hit the fan. I know it because it happened to me a few weeks ago.

Forget that the students were angry and suggesting we nuke Iraq. Forget that they were talking about "towel heads" and how Muslims hate us all even though we are only trying to help them. Forget that it is my job to teach them to think. What I said was "unamerican" and other teachers were up in arms. Believe me those teachers do not need to be defended by Randi Rhodes or anyone else. Being a teacher does not automatically make you good, smart or right.

I am a fan of Randi's but she blew it today.

I dissagree about Randi though . :hi: