This is an encouraging sign. Rick Santorum has been openly stupid, intractable and racist for many years. The first two qualities apparently won’t get you canned, but enough of the last one will. In any event, good riddance to bad Rick S.
Santorum made waves last month when he said there was “nothing” to Native American culture. Umm….like growing corn, cotton, tobacco is nothing? Raising turkeys, bees, is nothing? Know what’s nothing, Rick? The scope of your knowledge. It is so narrow as to be nonexistent. Huffington Post:
“We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here,” Santorum told students during remarks at a Young America’s Foundation event. “I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but candidly, there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”
Prominent Indigenous-led organizations including the National Congress of American Indians and Illuminative have spent weeks demanding that CNN fire Santorum over his remarks. National civil rights groups have also called for his firing. CNN has stayed silent on the matter.
But on Saturday, a CNN senior executive told HuffPost that the network quietly ended its contract with Santorum this week. This executive, who requested anonymity to speak openly, said the decision to cut ties with Santorum came after he went on one of the network’s shows, “Cuomo Prime Time,” to explain himself shortly after he made his racist comments. He blew it, said this executive, and after that, nobody at the network wanted to keep him around.
Leadership wasn’t particularly satisfied with that appearance. None of the anchors wanted to book him,” said the executive. “So he was essentially benched anyway.”
Santorum was originally hired, I suspect, to play devil’s advocate and bring a different viewpoint to bear. He got in the habit of saying unwise things, but it was a different political climate. Nowadays, the open racism just doesn’t fly as well as it did.
And leaving out the racism, it is just plain ignorant that Santorum said what he said. Take a glance at a few of the things that we got from Indian culture and you’ll see how unconscionably stupid Santorum is.
DID YOU KNOW THAT ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF
NATIVE AMERICAN LIFE IS ECOLOGY?People of today have just begun to think
about this. The Native Americans have always had a deep respect for the land. There
was a love of every form of life. The Native Americans did not kill anything they could
not use. They never killed an animal or a fish for the sport of it. Fishing and hunting
were a way to survive. The Native Americans lived in harmony with nature and did not
abuse the natural world. Native Americans were ecologists long before they were ever
used. The Anishinaabe people do not have a word for “Conservation”, because it is an
assumed way of life, it did not have to have a special word.DID YOU KNOW THAT MANY OF THE FOODS WE EAT TODAY WERE FIRST
GROWN BY NATIVE AMERICANS?Native Americans learned to grow and use many
different kinds of food that many people eat today, never considering that they first
came from Native Americans: potatoes, beans, corn, peanuts, pumpkins, tomatoes,
squash, peppers, nuts, melons, and sunflower seeds. They also helped the European
settlers survive in the New World by sharing their farming methods with them.DID YOU KNOW THAT MANY OF THE GAMES YOU PLAY TODAY CAME
FROM NATIVE AMERICANS?Canoeing, snowshoeing, tobogganing, lacrosse, relay
races, tug-of-wars, and ball games are just a few of the games early Native Americans
played and still enjoy today. Many youth groups such as Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts,
Campfire and YMCA Guides have programs based largely on Native American crafts
and lore.DID YOU KNOW THAT THE IDEA FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT WAS
ADOPTED FROM THE NATIVE AMERICANS? Benjamin Franklin said that the idea of
the federal government, in which certain powers are given to a central government and
all other powers are reserved for the states, was borrowed from the system of
government used by the Iroquoian League of Nations.DID YOU KNOW THAT MANY WORDS WE USE EVERY DAY CAME FROM
NATIVE AMERICANS?Countless Native American words and inventions have become
an everyday part of our language and use. Some of these include: barbecue, caribou,
chipmunk, woodchuck, hammock, toboggan, skunk, mahogany, hurricane, and
moccasin. Many towns, cities and rivers have names of Native American origin. Just a
few of these include: Seattle, Spokane, Yakima, Pocatello, Chinook, Flathead Lake,
Milwaukee, Ottawa, Miami, Wichita, and Kalispell.DID YOU KNOW THAT NATIVE AMERICANS DEVELOPED AND
COMMUNICATED WITH SIGN LANGUAGE?A system of hand signals was developed
to facilitate trade and communicate between different tribal groups and later between
Native Americas and trappers and traders. The same idea is used today for
communicating with those who are deaf and unable to speak. The signs are different,
but the idea is the same.
Hopefully broadcast journalism will rid itself of some of the people who are strictly talking heads and stick with people who are actually informed in a field. Santorum’s racist remark came easily to him because all he knows about native Indians is that he watched them scalp and kill people in John Wayne movies, until the cavalry came over the hill. It was an insensitive remark based on total lack of information and then he just tried to weasel out of it. It’s good that he got axed.
Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up on Newsmax talking about cancel culture. I’m about ready to make a bet on that. I’d say the odds are better than 50%. Anybody else think so?
Not to mention the attempted genocide of Native Americans by the white people and stealing their land. He is attempting to remove them from our collective history, or as he says “cancel them”.
Idiot white supremacist’s failure to understand that Europeans came to this continent and massacred and stole the land and its resources from a whole civilization that had been here for eons is pathetic and . People of color, people of principle and people who revered the natural elements were cheated, lied to, forced off their lands and onto reservations and even those were stolen for their natural resources. If this is a “white” nation, it’s because of genocide and theft.
Sayonara, sucker. Santorum once again racks up another failure in a life of full of them. And eff the disrespect to the rightful owners of this land.
Read: I Buried My Heart At Wounded Knee, & no white person can claim our ‘wealth’ was not based on genocide & conquest. Throw in slavery, & there you have the foundation of America’s wealth.
As a Native American, I live in Broken Arrow Oklahoma
I’m used to it, Rick is a hand out panhandler in a suit. He has no real redeeming message. Look I grew up watching John Wayne shoot my role models in the back. Because stealing is the American way, this historical conversation is way overdue, by the way, Broken Arrow is a suburb of Tulsa,, white privilege anyone?
Too right on the stealing part, though I’d add the bit about changing to legitimize the crimes after the fact in the tradition of Queen Dido.