Copy of fax sent to Senator Leland Yee.
From the Office of Senator Leland Yee
January 26, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO – After condemning offensive comments by Rush Limbaugh, Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) today was sent a racist death threat via fax to his San Francisco and Capitol offices. The faxes have been turned over to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms to investigate.
The expletive-laden faxes contain graphics and language similar to messages Yee receive in April 2010 after he called for Sarah Palin’s speaking fee at California State University to be disclosed. Recently, the Pima County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona contacted Yee regarding the April faxes and a possible connection to faxes found during the investigation surrounding the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
The faxes received by Yee include a graphic of an American flag adorned pickup truck dragging a noose.
The faxes that were sent to Yee’s office today also state (with misspellings):
FIGHTING The Marxist Nigger Thug Hussein Obama & Fish Head Leeland Yee
To: JoBama Rectum Sniffing Moron LEELAND LEE
Achtung! [German word meaning “watch out”] Fish Head Leeland Lee. Rush Limbaugh will kick your Chink ass and expose you for the fool you are.
Without exceptions, Marxists are enemies of the United States Constitution! Death to all Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!
“It is quite disturbing that such racist sentiment still exists in our country,” said Yee. “As I have said in the past, it is unfortunate acts like these that demonstrate why we must continue to be vigilant against hate and intolerance. Such vitriol has no place within our political discourse or anywhere in our society.”
Today’s hate messages follow Yee calling on Limbaugh to apologize for mocking the Chinese language and culture during his radio program last week. Yee and several civil rights groups have since asked Limbaugh’s sponsors to pull their advertisements from his program.
The Hunger Site
February 1, 2011 at 9:36 pm
@Argosy2: Are you seriously questioning the link between the fax writer and Limbaugh? The assumption that the author of the fax is a Limbaugh fan might be based on the fact that he or she wrote “Rush Limbaugh will kick your Chink ass…”
For some people, it may be difficult to catch such a subtle reference.
In your defense of Limbaugh, you dug up a quote that has not been independently verified. However,
the following Limbaugh quotes have been verified:
[To an African American female caller]: “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”
“Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”
“Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
(sources: http://www.fair.org, cbssports.com, newsone.com, politicalhumor.about.com, wikiquote.org)
Why being clear on Limbaugh is important:
When the FBI reported that hate crimes against Hispanics had increased by 40 percent between 2003 and 2007 (source: FBI: Hate Crime Statistics, 2003 and 2007), UCLA professor Chon Noriega began to ask “whether the media plays a role in the persistence of hate speech and hate crimes.” In a pilot study that attempts to quantify hate speech in commercial radio, Noriega tracked language on the Lou Dobbs Show, Savage Nation, Rush Limbaugh and the John & Ken Show (Latino Policy and Issues Brief, 2/09).
On these programs he found “systematic and extensive use of false facts, flawed argumentation, divisive language, and dehumanizing metaphors that are directed toward specific vulnerable groups”—which results, Noriega argued, in marginalized populations being “characterized as a direct threat to the listeners’ way of life.”
In his research Noriega noted that Rush Limbaugh (Rush Limbaugh Show, 3/27/06) cast all Mexicans as a “renegade, potentially criminal element.”
Argosy, it is important to understand that there is a link between hate speech and hate crimes. Defending one defends the other, no? Is that where you want to be?
February 1, 2011 at 8:29 am
So they have caught the culprit of this act and they know it is a Limbaugh fan?
Was it not a year or so ago when Rush was trying to buy an NFL football team, some things he supposedly said were dragged out like saying “James Earl Ray should have been given a medal for shooting Martin Luther King”, yet, this was shown to be totally false, he did not say that or the other things, it was a smear.
And this just as easily could be smear, so I hope they catch the person, they should be able to catch someone sending a fax. Also for the record, Yee said he received similar when he said the fee for Sarah Palin speaking at some University in California should be disclosed, so LOL, you should have written “Racist Limbaugh Fan, Possible Sarah Palin fan threatens Yee via Fax” or maybe you should just say “ACORN/Democratic/Left Wing dirty tricks threaten Yee,” it could be just as possible.
The author of the fax basically is saying “Hey, look at me, racist White Trailer Trash” even has a pickup truck doing this.
So underlying all this, we don’t know who did this. Your headline is misleading and the only one around that reads this way.
January 28, 2011 at 8:01 pm
Ralph, circumstances now are relatively unique in most of our lifetimes. The US military is now stretched to the bones for the first time since Vietnam being effectively tied down by a numerically inferior and weaker enemy. Deployments are being extended, stop loss and such. This is new.
The longer the wars rage on, the more damaged soldiers are always returning home, into families, into communities. Is there ever enough care for PTSD?
That said, America has always been a violent place. I think that it speaks to the complete wussification of the American people over the past 30 years that so many have an existential fear of firearms.
Any other empire worth its salt would have shrugged off 9/11 as part of the cost of doing business and moved on. What can you say about the country that invented “play dates?”
The typical Democrat Party suicide canard now is to shift the debate to gun control. They will do this, will ratify the liberals’ existential fears, thoroughly antagonize a good chunk of the country and run smack dab against a Supreme Court that has other ideas.
Maybe we should direct our nonviolence interventions to when the Democrat Party insists on running themselves and us all off of a cliff? That’s much more consequential in scale than any firearm violence.
-marc
January 28, 2011 at 7:42 am
Marc, basically I agree with your premise that all violence is indefensible. However, the U.S. has been involved in wars since the founding of this country. Yet, I believe the escalation of violence and threats of violence in this country against public officials is a relatively new phenomenon. And the recent violence against public officials does not seem to be generated by our misguided “war against terrorism.” It is about Obama. Of course, the right of all Americans to “pack heat” doesn’t help.
January 27, 2011 at 10:29 pm
@marc. You know. dig this, when you keep it short and simple, so that even ole codgers like me can grock it, sometimes you just simply nail it,.
January 27, 2011 at 8:09 pm
The racist crap against Leland Yee is not acceptable.
@Ralph: Why are threats of violence against federal elected officials so wrong when those federal elected officials vote to visit real military violence against civilians living in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Palestine?
I mean, given the two weeks that news coverage stopped after the tragic Tucson shootings, I don’t think that each of the names of civilians killed in those countries due to US military and foreign policy could have been read aloud.
We will never know their names, yet whenever a federal elected official is targeted by or attacked by a yahoo, that stops the show?
Violence in all contexts is wrong, but don’t you think that it is dangerous to democracy and the espoused principles of nonviolence if we don’t acknowledge the violence enabled by those officers of the United States Government against civilians as we mourn the dead, care for the wounded and condemn the threats?
It is my contention that the culture of violence abroad that the Congress finances and the President prosecutes enables the culture of violence at home. Those who participate in enabling that violence abroad, in this analysis, are most responsible for the culture of violence at home.
-marc
January 26, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Given the proliferation of hate-filled speech, I would expect violence against public officials to escalate as it has in many other countries. Most recently, we have the murder of Judge John M. Roll and the attempted murder of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Previously, Senator Patty Murray received violent threats by two men, one of whom is now serving a sentence in federal prison. Rep. Jim McDermott received death threats earlier this month. Last year, a man was arrested for making threatening and harassing phone calls to Rep. Nancy Pelosi over health care reform. And politicians in the crosshairs of Sarah Palin’s published map of the United States on her Facebook page received death threats. Their offices and homes and the homes of their family members have been vandalized. Each has been forced to ramp up security measures for themselves and those who are close to them. I am sure there are more incidents that have not been publicly reported. Unless the rhetoric is toned down, I expect the threats and even violence to our public officials will continue.