...[Victor-Levy Beaulieu] compares the fact that Obama didn't mention Abraham Lincoln in his acceptance speech on election night to Marois not mentioning René Lévesque in her first speech of the current provincial election campaign.
Lincoln's role in abolishing slavery in the U.S. was similar to Léveque's 1976 election win, described by Beaulieu as a triumph of "the white niggers of America," a reference to a book by Pierre Vallières, the ideological guru of the terrorist Front de Libération du Québec.
In May, Beaulieu, an author, journalist and playwright, caused a stir when he derided Governor-General Michaëlle Jean as a "negro queen" in his L'Aut'Journal column ...
Except that, objectively speaking, the non-francos, are the current niggers of Quebec, white or otherwise.
2 comments:
Some nations are notorious for seeing language as a battlefield of cultural wars, you know which ones I mean, the Russians, the Turks, the French. The Quebecquois are in good company.
English wins, and doesn't even try. Now how galling is that?
Sour grapes and petty revenge is all this is. Little victories in insignificant Quebec to compensate for the global defeat of French language imperialism.
Unbelievable. I voted for Barack Obama, but I don't think he is under any obligation to quote Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, or Martin Luther King, Jr. every time he speaks, any more than an elected Québec official should be obliged to quote René Levesque.
(BTW, am I the only one who finds it ironic that Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme is more likely to get a street named after him in Québec because his name is French than Quebecker William Shatner?)
But as it is, this guy is wrong. Not only has Obama frequently quoted Abraham Lincon, he DID quote him on election night in his victory speech:
"Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, We are not enemies, but friends...though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfHbw3n0EIM
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