"12 Years a Slave" Oscar Win: Get Ready For Inevitable Whining By the Rush/Drudge/Fox Crowd

By MARC McDONALD

12 Years a Slave is a great film that deserved its Best Picture Oscar on Sunday night. And already, I can just see the inevitable backlash from the racist Right-Wing Propaganda Noise Machine of Limbaugh/Drudge/Fox.
Here's their twisted little version of U.S. history:

The Civil War ended slavery in America.
And after the Civil War ended in 1865, no black person was mistreated in America ever again.
And all Americans lived happily ever after.
The end.

(Oh, and if any black people are still struggling with poverty and other hardships, well, it's all their own damn fault. Slavery happened a long time ago, and black people have had since 1865 to get their act together).

Oh, and all the following never happened:

• The lynching era.
  
• The torture/murder of Sam Hose.
  
• The Jim Crow era.
  
• The 1921 Tulsa race riot that destroyed the "Black Wall Street" (killing as many as 300 African-Americans).
  
• The terrorism of the KKK.
  
• The Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
  
• The murder of Medgar Evers.
  
• The murder of MLK.
  
• The deadly police attack on MOVE.
  
• The shooting of Amadou Diallo.
  
• Ronald Reagan's 1980 "States' Rights" speech.
  
• Willie Horton.
  
• The murder of James Byrd, Jr.
  
• George W. Bush praises officials at Bob Jones University.
  
• The "birther" controversy.
  
• President Obama is a "subhuman mongrel" remark by GOP hero, Ted Nugent.
  
• The ongoing harsh incarceration of hundreds of thousands of young black men in U.S. prisons for small-time, non-violent, petty drug possession offenses ("crimes" that wouldn't even merit jail time in most of Europe and the rest of the First World).
  

Etc. Note: Limbaugh/Drudge/Fox News fans: I can hear your complaints already, "But we white males are the REAL persecuted victims in today's America!" Yeah, if Rush says it, it must be true. Get ready to hear a lot of right-wing bullsh*t about how "Liberal" Hollywood tries to make white people feel guilty about slavery and the historical mistreatment of African-Americans. Yes, the "Liberal" Hollywood that brought us, Birth of a Nation.