{"id":20425,"date":"2014-03-29T14:09:32","date_gmt":"2014-03-29T18:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=20425"},"modified":"2014-03-29T14:09:32","modified_gmt":"2014-03-29T18:09:32","slug":"the-obama-ryan-double-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/20425\/the-obama-ryan-double-standard\/","title":{"rendered":"The Obama-Ryan Double Standard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIs something less true if a white person says it about black people?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That was the question liberal comedian <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/tv\/maher-trips-up-panel-with-racist-paul-ryan-quote-except-michelle-obama-said-it\/ \" target=\"_blank\">Bill Maher<\/a> asked on his show in relation to Paul Ryan\u2019s recent comments about the link between poverty and culture.<\/p>\n<p>Just prior Maher read a quote which he attributed to Ryan \u201cabout how lazy kids are these days and how they need to aspire to be more than \u2018ballers\u2019 and \u2018rappers,\u2019\u201d reports Mediaite. But then Maher revealed he was quoting Michelle Obama \u2013 not Ryan.<\/p>\n<p>The point Maher made was that black political figures get a pass for speaking hard truths on certain issues while their white counterparts do not.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/magazine\/story\/2014\/03\/paul-ryan-not-a-racist-104833.html \" target=\"_blank\">Rich Lowry<\/a> gives even more examples of this double-standard by quoting then-Senator Barack Obama.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine the reaction from liberals if Ryan had said the following instead of the current president: \u201cWe know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households\u2026 We know the statistics \u2013 that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of school and twenty times more likely to end up in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who follows politics knows that had Ryan said this, the statement and the (completely unmerited) backlash that would greet it would likely define and limit the rest of his career. Aside from Barack Obama\u2019s speechwriter at the time, no one else probably remembered he ever made these remarks until Lowry unearthed them.<\/p>\n<p>The irony of the identity politics double-standard is that neither Barack Obama nor Paul Ryan has been able to speak truth to power and get results. Instead, Obama is ignored while <a href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/index.php\/commentary\/54-state-of-affairs\/2139-attacks-on-paul-ryan-show-liberals-true-character \" target=\"_blank\">Ryan gets flayed for motives he doesn\u2019t have<\/a>. The only way to break the logjam is for the president to defend Ryan\u2019s diagnosis, even if he doesn\u2019t agree with the House Budget chairman\u2019s remedy.<\/p>\n<p>Certainly then America would sit up and listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIs something less true if a white person says it about black people?\u201d That was the question liberal comedian Bill Maher asked on his show in relation to Paul Ryan\u2019s recent comments about the link between poverty and culture. Just prior Maher read a quote which he attributed to Ryan \u201cabout how lazy kids are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,1748,835,802,2098],"class_list":["post-20425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-culture","tag-michelle-obama","tag-paul-ryan","tag-poverty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20425"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20431,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20425\/revisions\/20431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}