I've been saying for years that black "conservatives" are not conservative at all, but are nothing more than Republican flunkies. As in GOP lackeys. Now it turns out that they are not even Republicans.
We learn from the once consummate Republican Armstrong Williams that, after all these years of supporting just about every Republican scheme that came down the pike, he is contemplating the possibility of voting for the Colored Man, just because he is the Colored Man. Although Williams is quoted in an Associated Press article (6/14/08) by Frederic Frommer saying that he does not like Barack Obama's policies or much of anything Obama advocates, here is Williams straddling the fence, as he proves that race trumps principles.
Wasn't it those Republicans, in fact, the black ones especially, who preached so vociferously against race-based fervor? Is this yet another rule that applies only to whites? Frommer writes, "Just as Obama has touched black Democratic voters, he has engendered conflicting emotions among black Republicans. They revel over the possibility of a black president but wrestle with the thought that the Illinois senator doesn't sit beside them ideologically. "
Even the vacuous J.C. Watts, former Oklahoma Congressman, who was a political invention of a clique of white Republican operatives, and who one would expect to be ever-so-grateful for the years of undeserved sustenance, admits that he, too, is "thinking of voting for Obama." Is there no gratitude?
As millions of whites bend over backwards in an attempt to demonstrate their colorblindness and to prove their "goodness of heart," blacks are rapidly closing ranks around The Brother. On the black Republican blog, A Political Season, a blogger, Aaron, identifying himself as a "social conservative, Christian and Republican," claims that he supported Obama's primary run and plans to vote for him in November. This, despite Obama's pro-choice position on abortion. Aaron claims to be a dedicated pro-lifer. In the past, even black conservatives considered the pro-choice position a deal-breaker with any politician, but not today, and not when it comes to the Colored Man.
Whatever the differences in political commitment among these leftwing and rightwing black Obama-ites, they all share the same rhetoric – each talks about a "watershed" moment in history and the Symbolic Importance of a black man in the White House. Identity politics rule.
In truth, so many of these blacks whom the white Republicans had to settle for, in order to display some color in their ranks (e.g., Colin Powell), never moved beyond the tenets espoused by the mainstream civil rights establishment. They can be looked upon as opportunists of the moment, who are neither Left nor Right in their ideology, and are as much caught up in identity politics as the opponents they scorn.
Obama's black detractors
There is a contingent of blacks in the country, however, who are strongly opposed to Obama, but they are found on the left side of the political spectrum. Among the most dogmatic is Glen Ford, editor of Black Agenda Report, for whom Obama is not politically left enough. In stinging commentaries about Obama, Ford writes, "The candidate has been imposed on the African American polity by corporate forces in the Democratic Party, of which he is a loyal, Harvard-vetted operative," and, "He's getting help from panicked and unprincipled Black Left misleaders who contort their former politics beyond recognition in order to attach themselves, mostly uninvited, to a corporate campaign that tries to masquerade in movement clothing."
After Obama's Father's Day speech, in which he joined the vast chorus of those denouncing absentee fathers, Ford wrote, "Obama goes race-specific-negative on Black people whenever it is useful in attracting white electoral support. Otherwise, he is studiously 'race neutral.'" He called this tactic a "cynical device."
Ford claims that "African-Americans are expected to circle the wagons at the merest hint of racist threats to the candidate," and he finds blacks' attachment to Obama unreasonable. "At the commonsensical level, the entire Obama-Black folks relationship is so bizarre as to seem insane." He believes that the black leadership "has shamefully packaged Obama as a progressive, knowing full well he is not."
Obama is no man of peace, according to Ford, as he has shown in his speech before AIPAC and in his "expressed willingness to violate the sovereignty of Pakistan." In fact, he is a hawk who engages in "peace-savaging" as he "bows to imperial power and its endless expansion."
And then there's the stone-cold, unregenerate radical Larry Pinkney, former Black Panther, who, on his Black Commentator website argues against support for the candidate and the Democrats. Calling Obama "a Trojan Horse candidate for corporate America," Pinkney is unforgiving in his castigation of the current Wonder Boy, who is simply out to "bamboozle and negate Black America."
So what if he's the offspring of a Kenyan father and a white mother, Pinkney queries, ". . . as if that somehow, in and of itself, is significant or is a qualification for the U.S. Presidency." He reminds us that Obama "was raised essentially by whites," so why is he "better qualified than a politically conscious and time-tested Black American of Black parentage raised inside Black America?"
As a radical, Pinkney has little patience for the Democratic party or any other establishment party. Citing Obama's "doublespeak," he calls the candidate a "cynical opportunist," and references Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell as examples of blacks who provided political cover for wicked government policies. "Equating genuine and much needed economic, social and political change with skin color," writes Pinkney, "is absurd, cynical and enormously dangerous."
Pinkney wonders how anyone can mistake Obama for a "peace" candidate, when his positions on current and potential military engagements appear to be substantially similar to the current Bush administration. He asserts, "Obama has repeatedly stated his support for 'unilateral' U.S. military actions in other nations. He has indicated that he opposes how the U.S. is waging the war in Iraq, not the U.S. waging of this bloody, illegal, and amoral war itself."
To Pinkney, it is clear that Obama would only continue this country's "military adventurism," where "vast amounts of people in America and on this planet" are reduced to "nothing more than expendable cannon fodder." He warns black Americans not to "accept the superficial rhetoric of any candidate," including Barack Obama. "The proof of the pudding is in its taste," he contends, "not in its outward appearance."
Also writing for the Black Agenda Report is Margaret Kimberley, who charges Obama with "making a 180-degree turn because he is now the only Democratic game in town." According to Kimberley, the "change agent" is now showing his true colors and has thrown off the "thin veneer of a progressive politician." She cites Obama's flip-flop positions on legislation that legalized domestic spying and gives immunity to companies that conduct illegal telephone surveillance. She, too, is appalled by the black community's almost total support for Obama, and writes, "The level of loyalty directed towards Obama defies logic."
Read more!
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Keeping the pressure on Hollywood
I suspect that by the time this is posted, actor-director Clint Eastwood probably will have fallen on his knees and begged the pardon of actor-director Spike Lee. If he's true to the code of white men these days, he might also beg forgiveness from all the blacks in the land and, perhaps, even in the world. He just might follow in the tracks of the many others who have bitten the dust after an altercation with a "person of color," for fear of being smeared with the dreaded label "racist."
But could it be that Eastwood will stand his ground and prove to be bigger than Senator Trent Lott, Senator Joe Biden, radio personality Doug Tracht, and the infamous, groveling Don Imus? There probably is not enough bandwidth on the Internet to list all the whites who have fallen on their swords in contrition, after a fearful "race" encounter.
As you know, the Eastwood-Lee fracas began when Lee made what is a customary charge against white film and television producers – that Eastwood had purposely ignored historical "facts," by not including any black faces in his two WWII films about Iwo Jima, "Flags of Our Fathers," and "Letters From Iwo Jima." Eastwood then countered with the angry retort that Lee should "shut his face."
More important than the specifics in this particular acrimony between Eastwood and Lee are the presumptions it raises. The dust-up is a reflection of broader issues that have festered over decades, as black elites strive to acquire greater influence over those responsible for Hollywood's productions – film as well as television.
The demand by blacks to have a say in what comes out of Hollywood began with the production of D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" in 1915. Since then the NAACP has been on the backs of Hollywood studios, threatening companies with boycotts, for the poor images of blacks reflected in film. Over the years, demands for less negative imagery evolved into demands for more positive depictions, and then for more numerous depictions.
By the 1980s, the NAACP was boldly threatening actions against Hollywood producers, if they did not create more places for blacks in front of and behind the camera. The organization literally played the muscle man for a constituency of black entertainers, who hoped to leapfrog over white entertainers who cannot count on the advocacy of a civil rights lobby. Many producers and studio heads were ready to make concessions and came up with "diversity casting committees," the results of which we see daily in films and on television. See here. A little intimidation goes a long way.
The general public, of course, goes along with whatever demands emanate from black elites, without protest, in a desire to keep the peace. Who cares about owners of private businesses and their right to make private choices, especially when those owners are Hollywood fat cats? And, besides, whites seem to enjoy coercing others to make noble gestures when it comes to the coloreds. It never occurs to the typical white that blacks should take financial responsibility for the production of more of that entertainment they spend so much money on consuming, instead of expecting others to comply with their demands.
In the 1960s, in his book, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, Harold Cruse wrote of "the failure of the black bourgeoisie as a class, to play any social role as patron or sponsor of the arts." Instead, these "cultural aspirants" make "vocal and specified demands for integration in cultural fields where the black bourgeoisie has never paid the piper, and therefore can call no tunes." Cruse was partly wrong, as it turned out, since this clique of non-patrons and non-sponsors get to call lots of tunes.
In Spike Lee's favor, it can be said that he puts his money where his mouth is. He is one of the few blacks who goes about raising capital for his productions, while taking risks with his own resources. Apparently, he figured out long ago that this is the way to insure control over the direction and content and of one's enterprises. However, as indicated by this flare-up with Eastwood, Lee cannot break the age-old habit of the victim, who believes he has some inherent right, by dint of his "exceptional history," to place qualifications on the output of others, whether artistic or otherwise.
The NAACP and other "civil rights" monitors have never let up on their attempts to extend their influence into Hollywood's domain. Fortified by the success of open-ended and seemingly limitless affirmative action policies in other spheres of society, these watch keepers have become ever more arrogant in applying their coercive tactics. Hollywood producers have more than complied with a great many unofficial mandates, as we see from the black faces that fill the daily and nightly TV screens. Although blacks are about 12%-13% of the country's population, they are considered a necessary presence in multitudes of dramatizations produced for public consumption. As with most innovations, the first guy starts it, the next guy does him one better, and soon everybody wants to join the bandwagon. One black character will not do; he gets called a "token." So, the numbers of blacks must be increased to show genuine dedication to the cause.
After yet more harassment from black notables, in 1999, the pragmatic president of NBC, Bob Wright, issued a press release with the following statement: "Working with the NAACP and a coalition of other minority organizations, we have come up with a series of aggressive initiatives to widen the pipeline of diverse talent and raise awareness in our community on these issues."
Blacks have long been featured in TV sitcoms, those that star black actors, as well as those whose principal characters are white. They are well represented in variety shows and in commercials. They are regular faces on talk shows, are pseudo "judges," are featured in reality shows, soap operas, and are news anchors.
In various television series, blacks are the friends of choice to numberless white protagonists. In the sitcom "Malcolm in the Middle," for instance, the main character's "best friend" is a wheel chair bound black boy, and the only apparent friends of Malcolm's parents are four black men.
In the sitcom, "The King of Queens," we have a similar situation. The two main characters, a white married couple, have as their "best friends" a black couple. The four are so cozy that, in one episode, the white male "lends" his wife to his black friend.
Several times I had bumped across the program "House," a series about a medical clinic. Each time that I stopped for a few minutes to watch, the central person in the drama was a black doctor, whom I assumed was the lead character of the title. Since the story lines never looked especially unique, in fact, resembled the typical pandering to showcase black characters, I never stuck around for more than a few minutes. After being informed by a friend that a white actor was actually the main character of this show, I became curious enough to watch an entire episode.
In this episode, the black doctor, in some previous segment, apparently, had quit the medical team headed by House. The doctor is now job hunting, and is told by his former colleague, a white woman, how superior he is, and so on. In the next scene, a white male interviewer, after learning of the job-hunting doctor's "courageous diagnosis" of a patient, tells him, "You have bigger stones than I have." Get it? The entire drift was that the black doctor was an indispensable Superman.
A couple of weeks later, I decided to see if I might catch an episode of this show in which the title character played more than just a bit role. In this episode, yet another black doctor had been added to the cast. He was supposedly a Mormon, and comes up with the brilliant diagnosis needed to treat and cure a delusionary patient.
From today's TV programming, it is clear that Stepan Fetchit and Jack Benny's butler Rochester have been transformed into brilliant scientists, computer geeks, math geniuses, military strategists, and intellectual wizards of all kinds. They are four-star Generals, heads of the FBI, police commissioners, chiefs of the Pentagon, and sometimes even saviors of the world.
In addition, popping up almost everywhere are dramatizations which offer heavy-duty propaganda directed to whites – drumming in the theme of obligation to rescue Africans, even from their own black-on-black tribal atrocities. A subtext of this theme is interracial adoption.
I am no longer surprised by this persistent, heavy-handed and often clumsy promotion of black characters, or what my friend Hal calls "the heroizing of blacks for the edification of whites." Several themes seem to prevail in these story lines that are such obvious attempts to alter American sensibilities. There's the "getting even" theme, where black men get to boss white men around and sometimes even humiliate them. There's the theme that depicts black men as sex partners to white women. And there is a theme that might almost be called a crusade, that is, the drive to normalize the black male as an authority figure. In many, if not most of these productions, surly and bitter sermons are delivered about the sufferings experienced due to racism, past cruelties, white "negligence," ad nauseum.
In the 1970s detective series, "Kojak," which starred Telly Savalas, there were two episodes featuring former football player Roosevelt Grier as a bounty hunter. In neither of these episodes was there a sense of an overbred falseness or an effort to meet obligatory affirmative action mandates. Grier's presence fit the story line, as was true of the other black actors in the series, who were regulars or featured in single episodes. The dialogue between Savalas and Grier was witty, natural, and good-natured, instead of surly -- and relevant to the story's theme. There were no digressions to remind viewers of the sufferings of Rosey Grier's black ancestors.
Having intimidated feckless white producers into adapting, even if self-consciously, "positive" images of blacks, the NAACP attempts to rule on the percentage of employed black entertainers, as well as to pass judgment on the very nature of programming, i.e., the story content. In the fall of 1998, the NAACP and its minions protested the television sitcom, "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer," because of its irreverent take on slavery. After the show was canceled by the UPN television network, black columnist Tony Norman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had this to say: "I've had my Negro membership card withdrawn too many times to relish saying the obvious when black folks are in a self-righteous huff over nothing. But last week, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed a motion that condemned a show most of the members admitted they hadn't seen. The Beverly Hills/Hollywood division of the NAACP prevailed in its campaign to demonize a sitcom set in the 1860s Lincoln White House as 'destined to fan the flames of racial discord.' ... Are we so pathetic that we can't turn off a sitcom that insults everyone's intelligence without marching orders from the Beverly Hills office of the NAACP?"
In 2006, the president of the NAACP called the state of TV "unconscionable." Why? Because none of the networks' top sitcoms featured a black actor in a leading role. This echoed charges made several years earlier against the sitcoms "Seinfeld" and "Friends." Change your story line to suit us, or else.
As a matter of course, in the current climate, where everything is monitored, all-white casts in films and on TV are taken to task. Even the children's film "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," re-made in 2005 by director Tim Burton, was excoriated for failing to include an "interracial" cast. Burton's explanations about the integrity of the story line did not satisfy the monitors of multicultural correctness. The point of this harassment, of course, is to send signals to studios and independent producers of what they should keep in mind when preparing future projects. Apparently, producers are getting the message.
It was amusing to learn that the black actor Lawrence Fishburne complained about acting roles that could have gone to him, but were usurped by black "rappers." Thanks to the civil rights race monitors, there's no doubt that Fishburne himself, and other blacks like him, are the real usurpers of roles most certainly written by white authors with white characters in mind. It is the relentless campaign to create roles especially for blacks that has made possible the employment of Fishburne in the first place.
And then there's the indignant black actress (pardon me, "actor") Victoria Rowell, who was upset by choices made by producers to cast well-known white actresses in two films based on true stories about black female characters. Attempts to explain financial realities and star power seem to be of no avail. Would one have to explain why Angelina Jolie would be more marketable at the box office than, say, Thandie Newton, or Rowell herself?
Whoever said that Hollywood is dedicated to making true-life documentaries, or is faithful to an original book or script? What's a more ironic cliché than the line, "Based on a true story . . .?" In "Is Hollywood Whitewashing Ethnic Roles?" (ABC News, 6/4/08), casting director David Vaccari tries to explain why his studio decided to cast white characters instead of Asians for a story about the MIT whiz kid who broke the bank in Las Vegas: "We can make this movie with four unknowns or we can try to take a little license with the script." Hollywood is notorious for taking a lot of license with almost everything it produces. Just ask Theodore Dreiser.
About the fact that there is not an abundance of acting roles for coloreds, Rowell had this to say, "Unless African-American actors, Hispanic actors, Middle Eastern actors and Asian actors say no more, it's going to continue." What exactly is going to continue? The right of studio owners, directors and producers to use their judgment in how best to develop their private properties? "Civil rights" has now come to include the obligation for whites to provide venues in which the coloreds can show off their acting skills.
Throughout Hollywood history, unless he or she was lucky enough to be transformed into a Cary Grant or a John Wayne or a Bette Davis, the cry of every actor has been -- I want more roles! Where is there a more competitive profession? "It's hard for all actors," says Vaccari, "everyone wants more parts."
Guess how actors can have greater access to more roles. By becoming investors in properties of their own creation. It's a hard reality and, for some, an impossible quest. But in a world bereft of the old studio system, even the most prominent white actors can no longer attach themselves to an MGM or Paramount or Warner Brothers, and confidently wait as a battery of writers are set up to create scripts that become roles for them.
In his Guardian interview with Jeff Dawson, Clint Eastwood reflects on his next film, which is set in predominantly white Los Angeles during the 1930s Depression, and asks rhetorically, as if to himself, "What are you going to do ... Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player?" Well, yes, that's exactly what you're expected to do. So, will Eastwood eventually get with the program, as Don Imus has learned to do? Or will this contrary, cantankerous aging white man continue in his routine of disdaining that which he is quoted as calling "politically correct crap?"
Stay tuned. Read more!
But could it be that Eastwood will stand his ground and prove to be bigger than Senator Trent Lott, Senator Joe Biden, radio personality Doug Tracht, and the infamous, groveling Don Imus? There probably is not enough bandwidth on the Internet to list all the whites who have fallen on their swords in contrition, after a fearful "race" encounter.
As you know, the Eastwood-Lee fracas began when Lee made what is a customary charge against white film and television producers – that Eastwood had purposely ignored historical "facts," by not including any black faces in his two WWII films about Iwo Jima, "Flags of Our Fathers," and "Letters From Iwo Jima." Eastwood then countered with the angry retort that Lee should "shut his face."
More important than the specifics in this particular acrimony between Eastwood and Lee are the presumptions it raises. The dust-up is a reflection of broader issues that have festered over decades, as black elites strive to acquire greater influence over those responsible for Hollywood's productions – film as well as television.
The demand by blacks to have a say in what comes out of Hollywood began with the production of D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" in 1915. Since then the NAACP has been on the backs of Hollywood studios, threatening companies with boycotts, for the poor images of blacks reflected in film. Over the years, demands for less negative imagery evolved into demands for more positive depictions, and then for more numerous depictions.
By the 1980s, the NAACP was boldly threatening actions against Hollywood producers, if they did not create more places for blacks in front of and behind the camera. The organization literally played the muscle man for a constituency of black entertainers, who hoped to leapfrog over white entertainers who cannot count on the advocacy of a civil rights lobby. Many producers and studio heads were ready to make concessions and came up with "diversity casting committees," the results of which we see daily in films and on television. See here. A little intimidation goes a long way.
The general public, of course, goes along with whatever demands emanate from black elites, without protest, in a desire to keep the peace. Who cares about owners of private businesses and their right to make private choices, especially when those owners are Hollywood fat cats? And, besides, whites seem to enjoy coercing others to make noble gestures when it comes to the coloreds. It never occurs to the typical white that blacks should take financial responsibility for the production of more of that entertainment they spend so much money on consuming, instead of expecting others to comply with their demands.
In the 1960s, in his book, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, Harold Cruse wrote of "the failure of the black bourgeoisie as a class, to play any social role as patron or sponsor of the arts." Instead, these "cultural aspirants" make "vocal and specified demands for integration in cultural fields where the black bourgeoisie has never paid the piper, and therefore can call no tunes." Cruse was partly wrong, as it turned out, since this clique of non-patrons and non-sponsors get to call lots of tunes.
In Spike Lee's favor, it can be said that he puts his money where his mouth is. He is one of the few blacks who goes about raising capital for his productions, while taking risks with his own resources. Apparently, he figured out long ago that this is the way to insure control over the direction and content and of one's enterprises. However, as indicated by this flare-up with Eastwood, Lee cannot break the age-old habit of the victim, who believes he has some inherent right, by dint of his "exceptional history," to place qualifications on the output of others, whether artistic or otherwise.
The NAACP and other "civil rights" monitors have never let up on their attempts to extend their influence into Hollywood's domain. Fortified by the success of open-ended and seemingly limitless affirmative action policies in other spheres of society, these watch keepers have become ever more arrogant in applying their coercive tactics. Hollywood producers have more than complied with a great many unofficial mandates, as we see from the black faces that fill the daily and nightly TV screens. Although blacks are about 12%-13% of the country's population, they are considered a necessary presence in multitudes of dramatizations produced for public consumption. As with most innovations, the first guy starts it, the next guy does him one better, and soon everybody wants to join the bandwagon. One black character will not do; he gets called a "token." So, the numbers of blacks must be increased to show genuine dedication to the cause.
After yet more harassment from black notables, in 1999, the pragmatic president of NBC, Bob Wright, issued a press release with the following statement: "Working with the NAACP and a coalition of other minority organizations, we have come up with a series of aggressive initiatives to widen the pipeline of diverse talent and raise awareness in our community on these issues."
Blacks have long been featured in TV sitcoms, those that star black actors, as well as those whose principal characters are white. They are well represented in variety shows and in commercials. They are regular faces on talk shows, are pseudo "judges," are featured in reality shows, soap operas, and are news anchors.
In various television series, blacks are the friends of choice to numberless white protagonists. In the sitcom "Malcolm in the Middle," for instance, the main character's "best friend" is a wheel chair bound black boy, and the only apparent friends of Malcolm's parents are four black men.
In the sitcom, "The King of Queens," we have a similar situation. The two main characters, a white married couple, have as their "best friends" a black couple. The four are so cozy that, in one episode, the white male "lends" his wife to his black friend.
Several times I had bumped across the program "House," a series about a medical clinic. Each time that I stopped for a few minutes to watch, the central person in the drama was a black doctor, whom I assumed was the lead character of the title. Since the story lines never looked especially unique, in fact, resembled the typical pandering to showcase black characters, I never stuck around for more than a few minutes. After being informed by a friend that a white actor was actually the main character of this show, I became curious enough to watch an entire episode.
In this episode, the black doctor, in some previous segment, apparently, had quit the medical team headed by House. The doctor is now job hunting, and is told by his former colleague, a white woman, how superior he is, and so on. In the next scene, a white male interviewer, after learning of the job-hunting doctor's "courageous diagnosis" of a patient, tells him, "You have bigger stones than I have." Get it? The entire drift was that the black doctor was an indispensable Superman.
A couple of weeks later, I decided to see if I might catch an episode of this show in which the title character played more than just a bit role. In this episode, yet another black doctor had been added to the cast. He was supposedly a Mormon, and comes up with the brilliant diagnosis needed to treat and cure a delusionary patient.
From today's TV programming, it is clear that Stepan Fetchit and Jack Benny's butler Rochester have been transformed into brilliant scientists, computer geeks, math geniuses, military strategists, and intellectual wizards of all kinds. They are four-star Generals, heads of the FBI, police commissioners, chiefs of the Pentagon, and sometimes even saviors of the world.
In addition, popping up almost everywhere are dramatizations which offer heavy-duty propaganda directed to whites – drumming in the theme of obligation to rescue Africans, even from their own black-on-black tribal atrocities. A subtext of this theme is interracial adoption.
I am no longer surprised by this persistent, heavy-handed and often clumsy promotion of black characters, or what my friend Hal calls "the heroizing of blacks for the edification of whites." Several themes seem to prevail in these story lines that are such obvious attempts to alter American sensibilities. There's the "getting even" theme, where black men get to boss white men around and sometimes even humiliate them. There's the theme that depicts black men as sex partners to white women. And there is a theme that might almost be called a crusade, that is, the drive to normalize the black male as an authority figure. In many, if not most of these productions, surly and bitter sermons are delivered about the sufferings experienced due to racism, past cruelties, white "negligence," ad nauseum.
In the 1970s detective series, "Kojak," which starred Telly Savalas, there were two episodes featuring former football player Roosevelt Grier as a bounty hunter. In neither of these episodes was there a sense of an overbred falseness or an effort to meet obligatory affirmative action mandates. Grier's presence fit the story line, as was true of the other black actors in the series, who were regulars or featured in single episodes. The dialogue between Savalas and Grier was witty, natural, and good-natured, instead of surly -- and relevant to the story's theme. There were no digressions to remind viewers of the sufferings of Rosey Grier's black ancestors.
Having intimidated feckless white producers into adapting, even if self-consciously, "positive" images of blacks, the NAACP attempts to rule on the percentage of employed black entertainers, as well as to pass judgment on the very nature of programming, i.e., the story content. In the fall of 1998, the NAACP and its minions protested the television sitcom, "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer," because of its irreverent take on slavery. After the show was canceled by the UPN television network, black columnist Tony Norman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had this to say: "I've had my Negro membership card withdrawn too many times to relish saying the obvious when black folks are in a self-righteous huff over nothing. But last week, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed a motion that condemned a show most of the members admitted they hadn't seen. The Beverly Hills/Hollywood division of the NAACP prevailed in its campaign to demonize a sitcom set in the 1860s Lincoln White House as 'destined to fan the flames of racial discord.' ... Are we so pathetic that we can't turn off a sitcom that insults everyone's intelligence without marching orders from the Beverly Hills office of the NAACP?"
In 2006, the president of the NAACP called the state of TV "unconscionable." Why? Because none of the networks' top sitcoms featured a black actor in a leading role. This echoed charges made several years earlier against the sitcoms "Seinfeld" and "Friends." Change your story line to suit us, or else.
As a matter of course, in the current climate, where everything is monitored, all-white casts in films and on TV are taken to task. Even the children's film "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," re-made in 2005 by director Tim Burton, was excoriated for failing to include an "interracial" cast. Burton's explanations about the integrity of the story line did not satisfy the monitors of multicultural correctness. The point of this harassment, of course, is to send signals to studios and independent producers of what they should keep in mind when preparing future projects. Apparently, producers are getting the message.
It was amusing to learn that the black actor Lawrence Fishburne complained about acting roles that could have gone to him, but were usurped by black "rappers." Thanks to the civil rights race monitors, there's no doubt that Fishburne himself, and other blacks like him, are the real usurpers of roles most certainly written by white authors with white characters in mind. It is the relentless campaign to create roles especially for blacks that has made possible the employment of Fishburne in the first place.
And then there's the indignant black actress (pardon me, "actor") Victoria Rowell, who was upset by choices made by producers to cast well-known white actresses in two films based on true stories about black female characters. Attempts to explain financial realities and star power seem to be of no avail. Would one have to explain why Angelina Jolie would be more marketable at the box office than, say, Thandie Newton, or Rowell herself?
Whoever said that Hollywood is dedicated to making true-life documentaries, or is faithful to an original book or script? What's a more ironic cliché than the line, "Based on a true story . . .?" In "Is Hollywood Whitewashing Ethnic Roles?" (ABC News, 6/4/08), casting director David Vaccari tries to explain why his studio decided to cast white characters instead of Asians for a story about the MIT whiz kid who broke the bank in Las Vegas: "We can make this movie with four unknowns or we can try to take a little license with the script." Hollywood is notorious for taking a lot of license with almost everything it produces. Just ask Theodore Dreiser.
About the fact that there is not an abundance of acting roles for coloreds, Rowell had this to say, "Unless African-American actors, Hispanic actors, Middle Eastern actors and Asian actors say no more, it's going to continue." What exactly is going to continue? The right of studio owners, directors and producers to use their judgment in how best to develop their private properties? "Civil rights" has now come to include the obligation for whites to provide venues in which the coloreds can show off their acting skills.
Throughout Hollywood history, unless he or she was lucky enough to be transformed into a Cary Grant or a John Wayne or a Bette Davis, the cry of every actor has been -- I want more roles! Where is there a more competitive profession? "It's hard for all actors," says Vaccari, "everyone wants more parts."
Guess how actors can have greater access to more roles. By becoming investors in properties of their own creation. It's a hard reality and, for some, an impossible quest. But in a world bereft of the old studio system, even the most prominent white actors can no longer attach themselves to an MGM or Paramount or Warner Brothers, and confidently wait as a battery of writers are set up to create scripts that become roles for them.
In his Guardian interview with Jeff Dawson, Clint Eastwood reflects on his next film, which is set in predominantly white Los Angeles during the 1930s Depression, and asks rhetorically, as if to himself, "What are you going to do ... Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player?" Well, yes, that's exactly what you're expected to do. So, will Eastwood eventually get with the program, as Don Imus has learned to do? Or will this contrary, cantankerous aging white man continue in his routine of disdaining that which he is quoted as calling "politically correct crap?"
Stay tuned. Read more!
Obama passes his AIPAC test
Well, Barack Obama passed his AIPAC test. But, then again, we knew he would, didn't we?
The man who very sensibly refused to be intimidated into wearing an American flag pin on his lapel as a show of "patriotism," quickly scurried about finding a pin that combined Old Glory with the Star of David to sport in his lapel, before facing scrutiny at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. You must admit, the man knows whose intimidation really counts. (Could it be that, besides the political expediency, observations about his hypocrisy in wearing a foreign country's symbol on his suit influenced Obama's recent flip-flop decision to now wear an American flag pin, after all?)
In "It's a Mitzvah" (Washington Post, 6/5/08), Dana Milbank writes that the crowd loved Obama, giving him 13 standing ovations. In reassuring the audience that he is a "true friend of Israel" and proclaiming, "I understand the Zionist idea," Milbank claims that Obama "almost sounded as if he were Jewish." In fact, he states, "The winner of the nomination was sounding like Bibi Netanyahu as he spoke about preserving Israel's 'qualitative military advantage.' . . . As a pandering performance, it was the full Monty."
Uri Avnery, former member of the Israeli Knesset and founder
of Gush Shalom, chided Obama for what he calls "a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning." He reports that "7,000 Jewish functionaries from all over the United States came together to accept the obeisance of the entire Washington elite, which came to kowtow at their feet." And further, "The fear of AIPAC is so terrible, that even this candidate, who promises change in all matters, does not dare. In this matter he accepts the worst old-style Washington routine."
In "What should have been said to AIPAC" (Chicago Tribune, 6/11/08), Michael Desch argues that the candidates, including Obama, refuse to be truthful about Israel's situation in the Middle East. Friends tell friends the truth, he claims. "A real friend would tell Israel the hard truth that Arab intransigence is not the only obstacle to peace in the region. You would never know it from the candidates' remarks, but Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which continue to grow, make it impossible for the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own." And, "Someone who really cares about Israel would say to AIPAC, as James Baker once did, 'now is the time to lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel.'"
Desch explains, "Seventy percent of Israelis are willing to trade land for peace, but they have been thwarted by an uncompromising minority. The majority does not need reflexive, unthinking support from their friends in America for everything Israel does; rather, it needs backing against the extremists on both sides of the conflict."
As the AIPAC conference ended, and the closing music played, which "could have been for a Superman movie soundtrack," writes Dana Milbank, ". . . the man with the Star of David on his lapel left the dais in a shower of hugs and kisses from the AIPAC officers."
Mission accomplished. Read more!
The man who very sensibly refused to be intimidated into wearing an American flag pin on his lapel as a show of "patriotism," quickly scurried about finding a pin that combined Old Glory with the Star of David to sport in his lapel, before facing scrutiny at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. You must admit, the man knows whose intimidation really counts. (Could it be that, besides the political expediency, observations about his hypocrisy in wearing a foreign country's symbol on his suit influenced Obama's recent flip-flop decision to now wear an American flag pin, after all?)
In "It's a Mitzvah" (Washington Post, 6/5/08), Dana Milbank writes that the crowd loved Obama, giving him 13 standing ovations. In reassuring the audience that he is a "true friend of Israel" and proclaiming, "I understand the Zionist idea," Milbank claims that Obama "almost sounded as if he were Jewish." In fact, he states, "The winner of the nomination was sounding like Bibi Netanyahu as he spoke about preserving Israel's 'qualitative military advantage.' . . . As a pandering performance, it was the full Monty."
Uri Avnery, former member of the Israeli Knesset and founder
of Gush Shalom, chided Obama for what he calls "a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning." He reports that "7,000 Jewish functionaries from all over the United States came together to accept the obeisance of the entire Washington elite, which came to kowtow at their feet." And further, "The fear of AIPAC is so terrible, that even this candidate, who promises change in all matters, does not dare. In this matter he accepts the worst old-style Washington routine."
In "What should have been said to AIPAC" (Chicago Tribune, 6/11/08), Michael Desch argues that the candidates, including Obama, refuse to be truthful about Israel's situation in the Middle East. Friends tell friends the truth, he claims. "A real friend would tell Israel the hard truth that Arab intransigence is not the only obstacle to peace in the region. You would never know it from the candidates' remarks, but Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which continue to grow, make it impossible for the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own." And, "Someone who really cares about Israel would say to AIPAC, as James Baker once did, 'now is the time to lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel.'"
Desch explains, "Seventy percent of Israelis are willing to trade land for peace, but they have been thwarted by an uncompromising minority. The majority does not need reflexive, unthinking support from their friends in America for everything Israel does; rather, it needs backing against the extremists on both sides of the conflict."
As the AIPAC conference ended, and the closing music played, which "could have been for a Superman movie soundtrack," writes Dana Milbank, ". . . the man with the Star of David on his lapel left the dais in a shower of hugs and kisses from the AIPAC officers."
Mission accomplished. Read more!
The humorless Imus escapes another mess
"No white man with a radio program has talked about race more than I have over these last few months," said the whimpering Don Imus, the day after his latest faux pas concerning the black athlete Adam "Pacman" Jones. And he's right. No one has been foolish enough to think that the way to put to rest a controversy concerning race is to emphasize and hype the subject throughout entire shows. And, the foolish man proudly added, "We talk about it all the time!" And, indeed, he does. When he and his new employers, ABC Radio, sat down to plot out the new show's format, how did they come up with the idea to turn it into an excessive veneration of blacks?
When Imus returned to radio last December, after his eight-month hiatus, he came armed with two black monitors, a man and a woman, at his side, obviously, to help keep him on the correct track. These two watch keepers, respectfully called "co-hosts" (Imus has never had a co-host), are known in some benighted circles as "comedians," a designation either has yet to prove on this morning show. In fact, in its new incarnation, it's hard to listen to any more than a 5- or 10-minute segment of any part of the show. Imus has gone so overboard on the subject of race, and blacks especially, that his once playful satire has turned into nauseating pandering. He now provokes mockery and ridicule among many who once made up his faithful listener base.
In his recent "explanation" of his Pacman comments, he recited a list of blacks (whom he incessantly calls "African-Americans"), who appear on his new show as guests, on a frequent or irregular basis. Among these is Professor Debra Dickerson, whose dialogues with Imus border on the innocuous and trite. If you have ever read or listened to Cornel West, you will have an idea of what semi-coherent, hackneyed commentary sounds like. In this case, it's noisy chattering, designed to tell happy stories about blacks and their outstanding accomplishments. It's like listening to Farrakhan-lite, that is, minus the claims of flying machines buzzing around pharaonic Egypt. It is b-o-r-i-n-g!
Imus's effusive and exaggerated flattery of the comedian Dick Gregory, another recently invited guest of the show, has reached the level of the absurd. Eager to court this man whom he obviously thinks of as some sort of black icon with influence, Imus raves on endlessly about how "brilliant" Gregory is, what a "genius" he is, what a"credit to America." He plays clips of Gregory's senseless verbal meanderings, and actually interrupts conversations with other guests, in order to sing the praises of Gregory.
Gregory, who is still caught up in a 1960s time warp of rants designed to make him a Preacher and Scold to white folks, and whose shtick was already outdated by the early 1980s, comes off as a remnant of a thankfully bygone era. If he was ever funny, you certainly would not know it from the verbal flim flam he engages in today.
In his terror of making a misstep, Imus has rendered the show humorless. Worst of all, his fear is palpable. The restraints that he has placed upon himself, in order to conform to the correctness to which whites like him are now consigned, jump right through the radio. You can almost see the short leash to which he is tied.
His recent dumb comments make it clear that he's not quick-witted enough to hear what he's saying and to understand the possible implications and misinterpretations. When one lives in his terror zone, one needs to be quick on the draw at every minute, and then capable of backtracking immediately, in order to stave off charges of "racism" from the usual suspects. But his overweening desire to please makes him so hyper that he goes from inadvertently making a crypto-stereotypical remark unfavorable to blacks, to claiming that all black men are unjustly arrested and set upon by the system. Thus, the six-time arrested Pacman becomes a "lovely kid" -- on the basis of no reasoning given.
This year, on January 21, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Imus turned the show into a predictably sappy, sentimental homage. Predictable, not because he had ever devoted any time in the past to King, predictable due to Imus's current state of mind and his determination to absolve himself of his past racial sins. This was surely the day on which to do it.
The fact that he did not take this day off was most unusual. In all the years I listened to Imus, I never remember him broadcasting on a holiday. He always seemed eager to take the time off, and "The best of . . ." replays were common. But, in his present state, he could not miss this opportunity to demonstrate his reverence for the Great Reverend. It hardly did him any good, however, since the Pacman remarks set off another firestorm, with calls, once again, for his firing. Al Sharpton wasted no time in expressing doubts about the sincerity of Imus's earlier apologies and seemed poised to dive bomb into action, if necessary. Deja vu.
You might sometimes feel embarrassed for Imus's two black sidekicks, until you remember that the station is paying them big bucks to act as a kind of cover for the Crazy, Old White Man. These two have lucked out and are the end result of the NAACP's most successful campaigns – i.e., blacks being paid just for being black – a form of Reparations.
One might ask, What will some white men do to hold onto a job? Well, it's not just Imus's job that's at stake. At about the time of his first debacle last year, his wife Deirdre had just launched her very worthy line of "green" products, and had published a book on the subject. She was poised to do all the conventional talk shows, public appearances, etc. And then Imus dropped the "Nappy-headed" bomb. I don't think we want to know what went on in that household once the public uproar took hold. No doubt his abject groveling is as much an attempt to restore Deirdre's credibility, which was tainted by his intemperate remarks, as to save his own neck.
I once accused Senator Trent Lott of being the ultimate exemplar of those who engage in the White Man's Crawl, with radio personality Doug Tracht as a close second, but this baton has got to be passed to Don Imus. You just can't get any more prostrate at the feet of Political Correctness than this guy. Read more!
When Imus returned to radio last December, after his eight-month hiatus, he came armed with two black monitors, a man and a woman, at his side, obviously, to help keep him on the correct track. These two watch keepers, respectfully called "co-hosts" (Imus has never had a co-host), are known in some benighted circles as "comedians," a designation either has yet to prove on this morning show. In fact, in its new incarnation, it's hard to listen to any more than a 5- or 10-minute segment of any part of the show. Imus has gone so overboard on the subject of race, and blacks especially, that his once playful satire has turned into nauseating pandering. He now provokes mockery and ridicule among many who once made up his faithful listener base.
In his recent "explanation" of his Pacman comments, he recited a list of blacks (whom he incessantly calls "African-Americans"), who appear on his new show as guests, on a frequent or irregular basis. Among these is Professor Debra Dickerson, whose dialogues with Imus border on the innocuous and trite. If you have ever read or listened to Cornel West, you will have an idea of what semi-coherent, hackneyed commentary sounds like. In this case, it's noisy chattering, designed to tell happy stories about blacks and their outstanding accomplishments. It's like listening to Farrakhan-lite, that is, minus the claims of flying machines buzzing around pharaonic Egypt. It is b-o-r-i-n-g!
Imus's effusive and exaggerated flattery of the comedian Dick Gregory, another recently invited guest of the show, has reached the level of the absurd. Eager to court this man whom he obviously thinks of as some sort of black icon with influence, Imus raves on endlessly about how "brilliant" Gregory is, what a "genius" he is, what a"credit to America." He plays clips of Gregory's senseless verbal meanderings, and actually interrupts conversations with other guests, in order to sing the praises of Gregory.
Gregory, who is still caught up in a 1960s time warp of rants designed to make him a Preacher and Scold to white folks, and whose shtick was already outdated by the early 1980s, comes off as a remnant of a thankfully bygone era. If he was ever funny, you certainly would not know it from the verbal flim flam he engages in today.
In his terror of making a misstep, Imus has rendered the show humorless. Worst of all, his fear is palpable. The restraints that he has placed upon himself, in order to conform to the correctness to which whites like him are now consigned, jump right through the radio. You can almost see the short leash to which he is tied.
His recent dumb comments make it clear that he's not quick-witted enough to hear what he's saying and to understand the possible implications and misinterpretations. When one lives in his terror zone, one needs to be quick on the draw at every minute, and then capable of backtracking immediately, in order to stave off charges of "racism" from the usual suspects. But his overweening desire to please makes him so hyper that he goes from inadvertently making a crypto-stereotypical remark unfavorable to blacks, to claiming that all black men are unjustly arrested and set upon by the system. Thus, the six-time arrested Pacman becomes a "lovely kid" -- on the basis of no reasoning given.
This year, on January 21, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Imus turned the show into a predictably sappy, sentimental homage. Predictable, not because he had ever devoted any time in the past to King, predictable due to Imus's current state of mind and his determination to absolve himself of his past racial sins. This was surely the day on which to do it.
The fact that he did not take this day off was most unusual. In all the years I listened to Imus, I never remember him broadcasting on a holiday. He always seemed eager to take the time off, and "The best of . . ." replays were common. But, in his present state, he could not miss this opportunity to demonstrate his reverence for the Great Reverend. It hardly did him any good, however, since the Pacman remarks set off another firestorm, with calls, once again, for his firing. Al Sharpton wasted no time in expressing doubts about the sincerity of Imus's earlier apologies and seemed poised to dive bomb into action, if necessary. Deja vu.
You might sometimes feel embarrassed for Imus's two black sidekicks, until you remember that the station is paying them big bucks to act as a kind of cover for the Crazy, Old White Man. These two have lucked out and are the end result of the NAACP's most successful campaigns – i.e., blacks being paid just for being black – a form of Reparations.
One might ask, What will some white men do to hold onto a job? Well, it's not just Imus's job that's at stake. At about the time of his first debacle last year, his wife Deirdre had just launched her very worthy line of "green" products, and had published a book on the subject. She was poised to do all the conventional talk shows, public appearances, etc. And then Imus dropped the "Nappy-headed" bomb. I don't think we want to know what went on in that household once the public uproar took hold. No doubt his abject groveling is as much an attempt to restore Deirdre's credibility, which was tainted by his intemperate remarks, as to save his own neck.
I once accused Senator Trent Lott of being the ultimate exemplar of those who engage in the White Man's Crawl, with radio personality Doug Tracht as a close second, but this baton has got to be passed to Don Imus. You just can't get any more prostrate at the feet of Political Correctness than this guy. Read more!
Russert and the messengers of the state
It goes without saying that the death of a man as young and active as journalist Tim Russert is a tragedy and should bring no joy to anyone. But it is puzzling to see his career re-packaged in a way that makes the real man almost unrecognizable.
I did not watch the televised memorial service, but I did see clips of it on the nightly news, and observed what appeared to be hundreds of representatives of the establishment mainstream media (referred to by some as the "Drive-by Media") along with countless politicians filing in, to offer their final respects. This all seemed in order to me, since I always considered "Meet The Press" the epitome of the uncritical media whose purpose was and is to offer venues to the high and mighty political bureaucracy, so they might disseminate their biased propaganda.
Years ago, when I learned that General Electric, the massive defense contractor, owned NBC, the network that owned Tim Russert and "Meet The Press," I felt I was in on a joke. Was I really supposed to believe, during all those months of yapping that took place on that program in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, that the lack of direct, relentless probing of all those Bush administration toadies was simply inadvertent?
In "The Messenger Is the Message" (LewRockwell.com, 6/16/08), Butler Shaffer offers some observations about the owners of the "message machines": "If, as McLuhan observed, 'the medium is the message,' who are the scriptwriters of the message? There is a hierarchy of interests at work within the mainstream media that parallels the state apparatus itself. Atop this pyramid of power rest the corporate interests who own not only the political system, but the message machines."
Shaffer charges: "The message machine owners – subdivided into various radio/television networks and print media who, nonetheless have a shared interest in the message content – hire the 'journalists,' commentators, and others, to write and deliver the agreed-upon script. It is into this class of people that Tim Russert – along with other members of the fraternity who now lament his passing – was accepted by the owners. He was safe for their purposes, not the sort of person to ask unsettling questions."
Chris Hedges, in "The Hedonists of Power" (Truthdig, 6/23/08), had this to say:
•
The past week was a good one if you were a courtier. We were instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year and who gave a platform to the powerful and the famous so they could spin, equivocate and lie to the nation. We were repeatedly told by these television courtiers, people like Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer, that this talk show host was one of our nation’s greatest journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with journalism.
No journalist makes $5 million a year. No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that acting as a conduit, or a stenographer, for the powerful is a primary part of his or her calling. Those in power fear and dislike real journalists.
• • •
And Justin Raimondo, in "Enough Already!" (antiwar.com, 6/18/08), describes how Russert, "an enabler of neocons," allowed his influential TV program "to function as the War Party's sounding board." He writes:
•
It wasn't just his sycophancy in the presence of power that motivates my little exercise in Russert revisionism – it's what was clearly his vehement hostility to anyone who challenged the status quo in any way and sought to provide an antidote to the Dick Cheneys of this world. Example number one: his disgraceful interview with GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who made opposition to the war and our foreign policy of "preemptive" imperialism the linchpin of his remarkable campaign.
In what has got to be one of the worst examples of high-handed hectoring and attempted intellectual intimidation I've seen in my lifetime, Russert tore into Paul the way he should have lit into Cheney, impugning his integrity, spending half the interview on the arcane subject of the Civil War – which Paul had never made a speech about, and obviously wasn't even a minor issue in the campaign. . . .
Oh yes, Russert did his research, all right, but he only utilized it to the War Party's advantage. He sucked up to power and was little more than a stenographer for high government officials whose confidence he coveted. He was, in short, a great journalist, at least by today's standards, and that's why the media blowhards are turning his death into a celebration of… themselves. Because they're virtually all the same – shameless, sycophantic suck-ups who will do anything to advance their careers and could care less about where it takes the country.
• • •
To return to Butler Shaffer, he reflects on the same old hacks being interviewed on news programs, and requests readers to let him know "the next time you see any of these persons interviewed on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN or Fox News."
• Becky Akers
• Jim Bovard
• Alexander Cockburn
• Robert Fisk
• Amy Goodman
• Glenn Greenwald
• Chris Hedges
• Seymour Hersh
• Bob Higgs
• Chalmers Johnson
• Karen Kwiatkowski
• John Pilger
• Justin Raimondo
• Paul Craig Roberts
• Lew Rockwell
How about some real "diversity" for a change among TV's talking heads? Read more!
I did not watch the televised memorial service, but I did see clips of it on the nightly news, and observed what appeared to be hundreds of representatives of the establishment mainstream media (referred to by some as the "Drive-by Media") along with countless politicians filing in, to offer their final respects. This all seemed in order to me, since I always considered "Meet The Press" the epitome of the uncritical media whose purpose was and is to offer venues to the high and mighty political bureaucracy, so they might disseminate their biased propaganda.
Years ago, when I learned that General Electric, the massive defense contractor, owned NBC, the network that owned Tim Russert and "Meet The Press," I felt I was in on a joke. Was I really supposed to believe, during all those months of yapping that took place on that program in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, that the lack of direct, relentless probing of all those Bush administration toadies was simply inadvertent?
In "The Messenger Is the Message" (LewRockwell.com, 6/16/08), Butler Shaffer offers some observations about the owners of the "message machines": "If, as McLuhan observed, 'the medium is the message,' who are the scriptwriters of the message? There is a hierarchy of interests at work within the mainstream media that parallels the state apparatus itself. Atop this pyramid of power rest the corporate interests who own not only the political system, but the message machines."
Shaffer charges: "The message machine owners – subdivided into various radio/television networks and print media who, nonetheless have a shared interest in the message content – hire the 'journalists,' commentators, and others, to write and deliver the agreed-upon script. It is into this class of people that Tim Russert – along with other members of the fraternity who now lament his passing – was accepted by the owners. He was safe for their purposes, not the sort of person to ask unsettling questions."
Chris Hedges, in "The Hedonists of Power" (Truthdig, 6/23/08), had this to say:
The past week was a good one if you were a courtier. We were instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year and who gave a platform to the powerful and the famous so they could spin, equivocate and lie to the nation. We were repeatedly told by these television courtiers, people like Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer, that this talk show host was one of our nation’s greatest journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with journalism.
No journalist makes $5 million a year. No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that acting as a conduit, or a stenographer, for the powerful is a primary part of his or her calling. Those in power fear and dislike real journalists.
And Justin Raimondo, in "Enough Already!" (antiwar.com, 6/18/08), describes how Russert, "an enabler of neocons," allowed his influential TV program "to function as the War Party's sounding board." He writes:
It wasn't just his sycophancy in the presence of power that motivates my little exercise in Russert revisionism – it's what was clearly his vehement hostility to anyone who challenged the status quo in any way and sought to provide an antidote to the Dick Cheneys of this world. Example number one: his disgraceful interview with GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who made opposition to the war and our foreign policy of "preemptive" imperialism the linchpin of his remarkable campaign.
In what has got to be one of the worst examples of high-handed hectoring and attempted intellectual intimidation I've seen in my lifetime, Russert tore into Paul the way he should have lit into Cheney, impugning his integrity, spending half the interview on the arcane subject of the Civil War – which Paul had never made a speech about, and obviously wasn't even a minor issue in the campaign. . . .
Oh yes, Russert did his research, all right, but he only utilized it to the War Party's advantage. He sucked up to power and was little more than a stenographer for high government officials whose confidence he coveted. He was, in short, a great journalist, at least by today's standards, and that's why the media blowhards are turning his death into a celebration of… themselves. Because they're virtually all the same – shameless, sycophantic suck-ups who will do anything to advance their careers and could care less about where it takes the country.
To return to Butler Shaffer, he reflects on the same old hacks being interviewed on news programs, and requests readers to let him know "the next time you see any of these persons interviewed on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN or Fox News."
• Becky Akers
• Jim Bovard
• Alexander Cockburn
• Robert Fisk
• Amy Goodman
• Glenn Greenwald
• Chris Hedges
• Seymour Hersh
• Bob Higgs
• Chalmers Johnson
• Karen Kwiatkowski
• John Pilger
• Justin Raimondo
• Paul Craig Roberts
• Lew Rockwell
How about some real "diversity" for a change among TV's talking heads? Read more!
Militarism has always led to war
Who knew that Senator Robert Taft ("Mr. Republican") had such strong views on the military, in general, and conscription, in particular? Taft, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1939 to 1953, gave the following speech at the Gettysburg National Cemetery on May 30, 1945. Here are excerpts:
•
This afternoon I wish to speak particularly about one step now proposed and supported by Government propaganda, which seems to me to strike at the very basis of freedom, for which our boys are fighting. It is the proposal that we establish at once compulsory conscription for military training in time of peace. The proposal is that we establish in this country a twelve months' continuous military training for every boy, the same military set-up which we have gone to war to abolish in Germany and Japan. Whether we become a militaristic and totalitarian country depends more on this measure than any other. It does not relate to any limited class or group. It reaches every family and every boy. It subjects boys completely to the domination of the Government for a year during their most formative period. It keeps them under constant supervision as reserves for years thereafter. The power to take a boy from his home and subject him to complete Government discipline is the most serious limitation on freedom that can be imagined. Many who have accepted the idea favor a similar Government-controlled training for all girls.
There is no doubt that the Government, and particularly the War and Navy Departments, are straining every nerve to secure the enactment of this legislation before the war ends. Secret meetings are being held in the Pentagon Building and elsewhere. On April 26 the chief executive officers of some forty or more women's organizations were invited there, and it is said they were addressed by the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, the Under Secretary of State, General Marshall, Admiral King, and other high-ranking officers. The ladies were requested not to disclose the substance of the speeches made or to identify the War Department or its officials with the sponsorship plan. . . .
We have fought this war to preserve our institutions, not to change them. We have fought it to permit us to work out our problems here at home on a peaceful foundation, not on a foundation dominated by military preparations for another war. The question of the best form of military organization should not be loaded with emotion. It should be dealt with by argument and not by propaganda. But the methods being used threaten the freedom of this country, for if they are successful they can be used to fasten upon us every kind of regulation, price control for business, wage control for labor, production control for farmers. . . .
The other arguments for conscription seem to me almost too trivial to discuss. It is said it will teach the boys discipline and that they need it. My own opinion is that we need more initiative and original thinking and less discipline rather than more. Our present Army is not the most disciplined Army in the world, but there isn't any better Army for the simple reason that the boys do some thinking for themselves. . . .
The argument that it would improve the morals of our boys has almost been dropped because of its foolishness. If there is one place where morals will not be improved, it is in the vicinity of Army camps.
It is true that there are some boys who are benefited by Army control, but to improve the few, let us not change the whole character of the American life which I believe has been the cause of success in this war. . . .
By handing boys over for twelve months to the arbitrary and complete domination of the Government, we put it in the power of the Government to indoctrinate them with the political doctrines then popular with the Government. It has all the dangers of Federal education and none of its advantages. Attempts along this line have been made with the present Army, and a large amount of propaganda sent out to be taught to the soldiers. In wartime it is bad enough; in peace-time, it would be intolerable. . . .
Military conscription is essentially totalitarian. It has been established for the most part in totalitarian countries and their dictators led by Napoleon and Bismarck. It has heretofore been established by aggressor countries. It is said it would insure peace by emphasizing the tremendous military potential of this country. Surely we have emphasized that enough in this war. No one can doubt it. On the contrary, if we establish conscription every other nation in the world will feel obliged to do the same. It would set up militarism on a high pedestal throughout the world as the goal of all the world. Militarism has always led to war and not peace. Conscription was no insurance of victory in France, in Germany, or in Italy. The countries with military conscription found that it was only an incident and not the determining factor in defense or in victory. . . .
Military conscription will be more the test of our whole philosophy than any other policy. Some say it is unconstitutional. It makes very little difference whether it actually violates the terms of the Constitution. It is against the fundamental policy of America and the American Nation. If adopted, it will color our whole future. We shall have fought to abolish totalitarianism in the world, only to set it up in the United States.
• • •
And here is Robert Taft on what "liberty" meant to him. These excerpts are from his speech to the American Medical Association on December 5, 1951:
•
What do I mean by liberty?
I don't like the term "free enterprise" because it seems to mean only the liberty of business, which is a small element. Liberty means your right and the right of every man to live your own life and think your own thoughts; to have those thoughts taught by others if you can find men who believe in them. Liberty is your right to spend the proceeds of your labor in such a way as you want to spend them with only a reasonable deduction for the necessary costs of Government.
It means the liberty of local self-government: the right of every community to decide on its local institutions, how its children shall be educated, what local services shall be rendered and how, the form of local Governments, all without direction by some Federal bureau in Washington; the rights of States to run their own affairs. . . .
The results of liberty in the United States, where it has had a longer sway than in any other nation, has been a constant improvement in ideas and research and methods in every field of intellectual activity, in science, in welfare, and in knowledge. It has trained people to think for themselves and cultivate self-reliance. . . . The American system, by offering incentive and reward and liberty, has steadily increased the productivity of the American workman and the American farmer, and, because of more goods produced per person, the more there is to divide, thus raising his standards of living – your standards of living.
It is not so much that you and I are free and enjoy being free. It is that millions of Americans are free, and the competition of their ideas causes the best ideas to rise to the surface and finally prevail.
• • •
These excerpts are reprinted from Robert Taft's speeches in A Man of Courage: Robert A. Taft, by Caroline Thomas Harnsberger, published by Wilcox and Follett Company (Chicago), 1952. Read more!
This afternoon I wish to speak particularly about one step now proposed and supported by Government propaganda, which seems to me to strike at the very basis of freedom, for which our boys are fighting. It is the proposal that we establish at once compulsory conscription for military training in time of peace. The proposal is that we establish in this country a twelve months' continuous military training for every boy, the same military set-up which we have gone to war to abolish in Germany and Japan. Whether we become a militaristic and totalitarian country depends more on this measure than any other. It does not relate to any limited class or group. It reaches every family and every boy. It subjects boys completely to the domination of the Government for a year during their most formative period. It keeps them under constant supervision as reserves for years thereafter. The power to take a boy from his home and subject him to complete Government discipline is the most serious limitation on freedom that can be imagined. Many who have accepted the idea favor a similar Government-controlled training for all girls.
There is no doubt that the Government, and particularly the War and Navy Departments, are straining every nerve to secure the enactment of this legislation before the war ends. Secret meetings are being held in the Pentagon Building and elsewhere. On April 26 the chief executive officers of some forty or more women's organizations were invited there, and it is said they were addressed by the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, the Under Secretary of State, General Marshall, Admiral King, and other high-ranking officers. The ladies were requested not to disclose the substance of the speeches made or to identify the War Department or its officials with the sponsorship plan. . . .
We have fought this war to preserve our institutions, not to change them. We have fought it to permit us to work out our problems here at home on a peaceful foundation, not on a foundation dominated by military preparations for another war. The question of the best form of military organization should not be loaded with emotion. It should be dealt with by argument and not by propaganda. But the methods being used threaten the freedom of this country, for if they are successful they can be used to fasten upon us every kind of regulation, price control for business, wage control for labor, production control for farmers. . . .
The other arguments for conscription seem to me almost too trivial to discuss. It is said it will teach the boys discipline and that they need it. My own opinion is that we need more initiative and original thinking and less discipline rather than more. Our present Army is not the most disciplined Army in the world, but there isn't any better Army for the simple reason that the boys do some thinking for themselves. . . .
The argument that it would improve the morals of our boys has almost been dropped because of its foolishness. If there is one place where morals will not be improved, it is in the vicinity of Army camps.
It is true that there are some boys who are benefited by Army control, but to improve the few, let us not change the whole character of the American life which I believe has been the cause of success in this war. . . .
By handing boys over for twelve months to the arbitrary and complete domination of the Government, we put it in the power of the Government to indoctrinate them with the political doctrines then popular with the Government. It has all the dangers of Federal education and none of its advantages. Attempts along this line have been made with the present Army, and a large amount of propaganda sent out to be taught to the soldiers. In wartime it is bad enough; in peace-time, it would be intolerable. . . .
Military conscription is essentially totalitarian. It has been established for the most part in totalitarian countries and their dictators led by Napoleon and Bismarck. It has heretofore been established by aggressor countries. It is said it would insure peace by emphasizing the tremendous military potential of this country. Surely we have emphasized that enough in this war. No one can doubt it. On the contrary, if we establish conscription every other nation in the world will feel obliged to do the same. It would set up militarism on a high pedestal throughout the world as the goal of all the world. Militarism has always led to war and not peace. Conscription was no insurance of victory in France, in Germany, or in Italy. The countries with military conscription found that it was only an incident and not the determining factor in defense or in victory. . . .
Military conscription will be more the test of our whole philosophy than any other policy. Some say it is unconstitutional. It makes very little difference whether it actually violates the terms of the Constitution. It is against the fundamental policy of America and the American Nation. If adopted, it will color our whole future. We shall have fought to abolish totalitarianism in the world, only to set it up in the United States.
And here is Robert Taft on what "liberty" meant to him. These excerpts are from his speech to the American Medical Association on December 5, 1951:
What do I mean by liberty?
I don't like the term "free enterprise" because it seems to mean only the liberty of business, which is a small element. Liberty means your right and the right of every man to live your own life and think your own thoughts; to have those thoughts taught by others if you can find men who believe in them. Liberty is your right to spend the proceeds of your labor in such a way as you want to spend them with only a reasonable deduction for the necessary costs of Government.
It means the liberty of local self-government: the right of every community to decide on its local institutions, how its children shall be educated, what local services shall be rendered and how, the form of local Governments, all without direction by some Federal bureau in Washington; the rights of States to run their own affairs. . . .
The results of liberty in the United States, where it has had a longer sway than in any other nation, has been a constant improvement in ideas and research and methods in every field of intellectual activity, in science, in welfare, and in knowledge. It has trained people to think for themselves and cultivate self-reliance. . . . The American system, by offering incentive and reward and liberty, has steadily increased the productivity of the American workman and the American farmer, and, because of more goods produced per person, the more there is to divide, thus raising his standards of living – your standards of living.
It is not so much that you and I are free and enjoy being free. It is that millions of Americans are free, and the competition of their ideas causes the best ideas to rise to the surface and finally prevail.
These excerpts are reprinted from Robert Taft's speeches in A Man of Courage: Robert A. Taft, by Caroline Thomas Harnsberger, published by Wilcox and Follett Company (Chicago), 1952. Read more!
Sunday, June 01, 2008
The turning point
A reader left a note in the Comments section of Stung by the word "white." She wrote: "It's difficult to separate out a prior influence: the long-time affinity of black Americans for the Democratic Party. I have no strong explanation for that affinity, but since it predates the existing campaign, it probably has a large place in the voting decisions of black Americans . . . . "
Following is an excerpt from an article on the Issues & Views website. It is essentially the results of an interview with the late Vincent Baker, who ran for public office and was a long-time political activist in Harlem. As a conservative, he tried to fight the good fight, and had an excellent grasp of history -- especially the history he had lived first-hand.
In answer to the questions, Why did the Democrats' New Deal overturn so much of what blacks had learned in the past, and why did so many blacks, even those who knew better, turn away from entrepreneurial endeavors, Baker shared his views.
• • •
The Depression as turning point
The consequences of the Depression made it harder for the proponents of self-help to make their case. What chance did they now stand against those who were urging blacks to cease initiating their own ventures and work for further integration into white institutions? In an interview, the late writer Vincent Baker, who had actively participated in the civil rights movement, reflected on the Depression as a turning point.
He claimed that, as New Deal policies were put into effect to cope with the devastation caused by the Depression, this increased the role of government in the life of the average person. Gradually the American mindset began to adapt to this growing presence in their lives. The new circumstances proved especially injurious to blacks, since there were now no leaders to signal an alarm and warn of the inevitable increased dependence on whites. If anything, said Baker, the projected agendas and policies being drawn up in Washington fit right in with the preachments of the leaders who began to emerge in the 1940s.
One legacy of the 1930s catastrophe was a defeatism which grew among the most influential blacks. This defeatist spirit was augmented by a growing band of black "intellectuals," who publicly disparaged self-help efforts. In the pages of their academic publications, they made fun of the small black businesses that once dotted the landscape of every black community, and found no virtue in them. "Puny" was a favorite term these elites liked to apply, when comparing black efforts to the mammoth Sears Roebuck or Ford Motor Company. The leading black sociologist of the time, E. Franklin Frazier, led the assault on the entrepreneurial past, and downplayed the importance of black business, because, as he claimed, "the profits of these enterprises did not compare to those of large-scale corporations in America."
It now became fashionable to deride the teachings of people like Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee elders. In fact, such teachings were soon wiped clear from the history textbooks. This educated, intellectual class of blacks now taught that "the poor have no bootstraps," thus reinforcing notions that leaders in an earlier age vigorously fought against. David Tucker captured the truth when he wrote in 1969, "Black capitalism suffered a drastic loss of prestige in the 1930s when the economic depression led the race intellectuals to initiate an anti-business tradition which has continued into the present."
Issues that once were debated among blacks were no longer open for debate. Now the advocates of economic independence were downgraded and ostracized, while integrationist forces, subsidized by wealthy whites, grew stronger. The era of the NAACP had begun. Read more!
Following is an excerpt from an article on the Issues & Views website. It is essentially the results of an interview with the late Vincent Baker, who ran for public office and was a long-time political activist in Harlem. As a conservative, he tried to fight the good fight, and had an excellent grasp of history -- especially the history he had lived first-hand.
In answer to the questions, Why did the Democrats' New Deal overturn so much of what blacks had learned in the past, and why did so many blacks, even those who knew better, turn away from entrepreneurial endeavors, Baker shared his views.
The Depression as turning point
The consequences of the Depression made it harder for the proponents of self-help to make their case. What chance did they now stand against those who were urging blacks to cease initiating their own ventures and work for further integration into white institutions? In an interview, the late writer Vincent Baker, who had actively participated in the civil rights movement, reflected on the Depression as a turning point.
He claimed that, as New Deal policies were put into effect to cope with the devastation caused by the Depression, this increased the role of government in the life of the average person. Gradually the American mindset began to adapt to this growing presence in their lives. The new circumstances proved especially injurious to blacks, since there were now no leaders to signal an alarm and warn of the inevitable increased dependence on whites. If anything, said Baker, the projected agendas and policies being drawn up in Washington fit right in with the preachments of the leaders who began to emerge in the 1940s.
One legacy of the 1930s catastrophe was a defeatism which grew among the most influential blacks. This defeatist spirit was augmented by a growing band of black "intellectuals," who publicly disparaged self-help efforts. In the pages of their academic publications, they made fun of the small black businesses that once dotted the landscape of every black community, and found no virtue in them. "Puny" was a favorite term these elites liked to apply, when comparing black efforts to the mammoth Sears Roebuck or Ford Motor Company. The leading black sociologist of the time, E. Franklin Frazier, led the assault on the entrepreneurial past, and downplayed the importance of black business, because, as he claimed, "the profits of these enterprises did not compare to those of large-scale corporations in America."
It now became fashionable to deride the teachings of people like Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee elders. In fact, such teachings were soon wiped clear from the history textbooks. This educated, intellectual class of blacks now taught that "the poor have no bootstraps," thus reinforcing notions that leaders in an earlier age vigorously fought against. David Tucker captured the truth when he wrote in 1969, "Black capitalism suffered a drastic loss of prestige in the 1930s when the economic depression led the race intellectuals to initiate an anti-business tradition which has continued into the present."
Issues that once were debated among blacks were no longer open for debate. Now the advocates of economic independence were downgraded and ostracized, while integrationist forces, subsidized by wealthy whites, grew stronger. The era of the NAACP had begun. Read more!
Friday, May 30, 2008
The majority rules, when we say so
Speaking of American citizens voting by race, in 2006, in New York City, all hell broke loose when black Congressman Major Owens announced he would not run for another term in the House of Representatives. Owens had represented Brooklyn's 11th District for two decades. His unexpected retirement sent the black political machine into a frenzy, as meetings were quickly called to plan strategies that would insure another black's ascendance to Owens' seat. And when white City Councilman David Yassky declared his candidacy for the post, calls for ethnic solidarity began in earnest.
Prominent blacks worked to galvanize support for the black candidates who had stepped into the ring, and made no bones about the fact that they were determined to prevent a white from obtaining Owens' seat. Blacks, of course, were allowed to be outright in their disdain for the white Yassky, as the New York Times' headlines matter-of-factly blared, "Black Leaders Fear the Loss of a House Seat." (In today's Times, is it likely that we might see the headline: White Leaders Fear the Loss of the Presidency?)
In Brooklyn, black apologists justified their blatant bias on the basis of the 58% majority of blacks in the 11th district, compared to 21% white. One wonders if, in today's voting climate, votes for the U.S. Presidency also can be justified on this basis, with the country's majority population still around 72% white. Majority rules?
David Yassky, who had maintained a decent record as a fair legislator, was vilified as being fueled by "ambition and opportunism." Because Shirley Chisholm had first won the seat in 1969, the district was viewed as having "historical" significance to blacks and, therefore, should be held only by blacks. The pandering Times actually spoke of the "emotional importance" of keeping blacks at the helm.
It was more than inferred that somehow the Voting Rights Act itself was under attack by the very candidacy of the white Yassky. It was kind of amusing to hear people like Rev. Karim Camara suggest that Yassky should not run himself, but should consider how he might earn "a place of higher esteem," if he agreed to support a black candidate. Oh, have the decency to quit, Yassky!
Yassky kept his cool and ran an issues-based campaign, ultimately losing to black City Councilwoman Yvette Clarke. Read more!
Prominent blacks worked to galvanize support for the black candidates who had stepped into the ring, and made no bones about the fact that they were determined to prevent a white from obtaining Owens' seat. Blacks, of course, were allowed to be outright in their disdain for the white Yassky, as the New York Times' headlines matter-of-factly blared, "Black Leaders Fear the Loss of a House Seat." (In today's Times, is it likely that we might see the headline: White Leaders Fear the Loss of the Presidency?)
In Brooklyn, black apologists justified their blatant bias on the basis of the 58% majority of blacks in the 11th district, compared to 21% white. One wonders if, in today's voting climate, votes for the U.S. Presidency also can be justified on this basis, with the country's majority population still around 72% white. Majority rules?
David Yassky, who had maintained a decent record as a fair legislator, was vilified as being fueled by "ambition and opportunism." Because Shirley Chisholm had first won the seat in 1969, the district was viewed as having "historical" significance to blacks and, therefore, should be held only by blacks. The pandering Times actually spoke of the "emotional importance" of keeping blacks at the helm.
It was more than inferred that somehow the Voting Rights Act itself was under attack by the very candidacy of the white Yassky. It was kind of amusing to hear people like Rev. Karim Camara suggest that Yassky should not run himself, but should consider how he might earn "a place of higher esteem," if he agreed to support a black candidate. Oh, have the decency to quit, Yassky!
Yassky kept his cool and ran an issues-based campaign, ultimately losing to black City Councilwoman Yvette Clarke. Read more!
Rejection of a celebration, No place for morals, and the Persevering Professor Finkelstein
In May, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel was celebrated. Although many Jewish organizations joined in the celebration, there were individual Jews who found little to commemorate. In a letter, on April 30, to the Guardian newspaper in England, 104 such individuals wrote, "It is now time to acknowledge the price paid by another people for European anti-semitism and Hitler's genocidal policies." Jews have the Holocaust, the writers continued, while the Palestinian people memorialize what they call Naqba, the invasion and takeover of their homes and territory in 1948.
In the U.S., the names of David Garfinkel, Tanya Bronstein, Heinz Grunewald, Michael Kalmanovitz or Yehudit Keshet may ring no bells, but these prominent Britons should be commended for what should not be, but is a courageous act -- just for writing a letter and signing their names.
Read the letter here.
• • •
And then cold reality is restored by Yehezkel Dror in The Forward (5/15/08), a man who tells it like it is – as if we haven't observed for decades the very behavior he describes. In his text below, try substituting "Jewish people," "Jewish nature," "Jewish state," with the name of any other ethnic group, and see how it works for you. How about substitutes like "Euro-white" or "caucasian" or "gentile?"
When Survival of the Jewish People Is at Stake, There’s No Place for Morals
By Yehezkel Dror
There is little disagreement that every Jewish leader, organization, community and individual has a duty to help ensure the continuity of the Jewish people. But in a world where the long-term existence of the Jewish state is far from certain, the imperative to exist inevitably gives rise to difficult questions, foremost among them this: When the survival of the Jewish people conflicts with the morals of the Jewish people, is existence worthwhile, or even possible? ...
Clear external and internal dangers threaten the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state. It is very likely that the collapse of Israel or the loss of its Jewish nature would undermine the existence of the Jewish people as a whole. ... Regrettably, human history refutes the idealistic claim that in order to exist for long, a state, society or people has to be moral. Given the foreseeable realities of the 21st century and beyond, harsh choices are unavoidable, with requirements of existence often contradicting other important values. ...
In short, the imperatives of existence should be given priority over other concerns -- however important they may be -- including liberal and humanitarian values, support for human rights and democratization. This tragic but compelling conclusion is not easy to swallow, but it is essential for the future of the Jewish people. Once our existence is assured, including basic security for Israel, much can and should be sacrificed for tikkun olam. But given present and foreseeable realities, assuring existence must come first.
Read complete article here.
• • •
And then there is the persevering Norman Finkelstein. Where does this man get his energy, spirit, and downright bravado? Talk about nerve and gall, the man has testosterone to spare. From the day he blew the whistle on the Holocaust reparations racketeers in his book The Holocaust Industry, to his exposure of the fabrications and outright lies of Israel's apologists in Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, it's been a non-stop ride for him.
As reward for his outspoken truthtelling, Princeton University tried to deny Finkelstein his well-earned doctorate, smear campaigns made it almost impossible for him to get teaching posts, publishers have been pressured by his opponents from publishing his books, and he was denied tenure at DePaul University. Yet he relentlessly journeys onward.
There have been Finkelstein types among blacks – those who blew whistles on the hustlers and charlatans among us. You might say that, among blacks, Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, were the original whistleblowers – as the two fiercest challengers of the NAACP and other cabals, whose clever, sophisticated black elites used the historical suffering of their own people to rise to prominence.
And there have been modern day whistleblowers against the likes of Jesse Jackson, whose disgraceful shakedowns of companies he and his cronies managed to pull off, in the name of "racial justice." Washington and Garvey fought to dispel the poisonous propaganda lapped up by eager whites, whose only concern was (and is) to be on the "correct" side of the race issue. As they say so boldly in Canada, "Truth is no defense."
In the case of Norman Finkelstein, the late Professor Raul Hilberg, who was considered the ultimate authority on Holocaust studies (a field he co-founded), endorsed Finkelstein's book about reparations abuses, and declared, "I was saying the same thing, and I had published my results in that three-volume work [his final edition of The Destruction of the European Jews], published in 2003 by Yale University Press, and I did not hear from anybody a critical word about what I said, even though it was the same substantive conclusion that Finkelstein had offered." It matters not.
Professor Avi Shlaim of Oxford University, a leading authority on Arab-Israeli conflicts, says of Finkelstein, "I consider him to be a very impressive and a very learned and careful scholar." It matters not.
To follow news of the indefatigable Norman Finkelstein's writings and latest misadventure, i.e., his deportation from Israel, visit his website here, and also see here. Read more!
In the U.S., the names of David Garfinkel, Tanya Bronstein, Heinz Grunewald, Michael Kalmanovitz or Yehudit Keshet may ring no bells, but these prominent Britons should be commended for what should not be, but is a courageous act -- just for writing a letter and signing their names.
Read the letter here.
And then cold reality is restored by Yehezkel Dror in The Forward (5/15/08), a man who tells it like it is – as if we haven't observed for decades the very behavior he describes. In his text below, try substituting "Jewish people," "Jewish nature," "Jewish state," with the name of any other ethnic group, and see how it works for you. How about substitutes like "Euro-white" or "caucasian" or "gentile?"
When Survival of the Jewish People Is at Stake, There’s No Place for Morals
By Yehezkel Dror
There is little disagreement that every Jewish leader, organization, community and individual has a duty to help ensure the continuity of the Jewish people. But in a world where the long-term existence of the Jewish state is far from certain, the imperative to exist inevitably gives rise to difficult questions, foremost among them this: When the survival of the Jewish people conflicts with the morals of the Jewish people, is existence worthwhile, or even possible? ...
Clear external and internal dangers threaten the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state. It is very likely that the collapse of Israel or the loss of its Jewish nature would undermine the existence of the Jewish people as a whole. ... Regrettably, human history refutes the idealistic claim that in order to exist for long, a state, society or people has to be moral. Given the foreseeable realities of the 21st century and beyond, harsh choices are unavoidable, with requirements of existence often contradicting other important values. ...
In short, the imperatives of existence should be given priority over other concerns -- however important they may be -- including liberal and humanitarian values, support for human rights and democratization. This tragic but compelling conclusion is not easy to swallow, but it is essential for the future of the Jewish people. Once our existence is assured, including basic security for Israel, much can and should be sacrificed for tikkun olam. But given present and foreseeable realities, assuring existence must come first.
Read complete article here.
And then there is the persevering Norman Finkelstein. Where does this man get his energy, spirit, and downright bravado? Talk about nerve and gall, the man has testosterone to spare. From the day he blew the whistle on the Holocaust reparations racketeers in his book The Holocaust Industry, to his exposure of the fabrications and outright lies of Israel's apologists in Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, it's been a non-stop ride for him.
As reward for his outspoken truthtelling, Princeton University tried to deny Finkelstein his well-earned doctorate, smear campaigns made it almost impossible for him to get teaching posts, publishers have been pressured by his opponents from publishing his books, and he was denied tenure at DePaul University. Yet he relentlessly journeys onward.
There have been Finkelstein types among blacks – those who blew whistles on the hustlers and charlatans among us. You might say that, among blacks, Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, were the original whistleblowers – as the two fiercest challengers of the NAACP and other cabals, whose clever, sophisticated black elites used the historical suffering of their own people to rise to prominence.
And there have been modern day whistleblowers against the likes of Jesse Jackson, whose disgraceful shakedowns of companies he and his cronies managed to pull off, in the name of "racial justice." Washington and Garvey fought to dispel the poisonous propaganda lapped up by eager whites, whose only concern was (and is) to be on the "correct" side of the race issue. As they say so boldly in Canada, "Truth is no defense."
In the case of Norman Finkelstein, the late Professor Raul Hilberg, who was considered the ultimate authority on Holocaust studies (a field he co-founded), endorsed Finkelstein's book about reparations abuses, and declared, "I was saying the same thing, and I had published my results in that three-volume work [his final edition of The Destruction of the European Jews], published in 2003 by Yale University Press, and I did not hear from anybody a critical word about what I said, even though it was the same substantive conclusion that Finkelstein had offered." It matters not.
Professor Avi Shlaim of Oxford University, a leading authority on Arab-Israeli conflicts, says of Finkelstein, "I consider him to be a very impressive and a very learned and careful scholar." It matters not.
To follow news of the indefatigable Norman Finkelstein's writings and latest misadventure, i.e., his deportation from Israel, visit his website here, and also see here. Read more!
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Or send your donation directly to:
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All donors receive two Issues & Views bookmarks. Read more!
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Playing the intimidation card
It takes Pat Buchanan to nail what is going on in this primary election period. "The Clintons are today," he writes, "victims of a double standard that has long been employed against conservatives." Just pointing out a racial reality, whether cultural or statistical, is "playing the race card," if you're not in the Obama camp.
In his column, "Race Cards and Speech Codes," Buchanan asserts that Hillary Clinton cannot even make the simple observation, "I can win – and my opponent can't." In almost every election campaign, which candidate has not said something similar, or those very words, about his/her opponent? Buchanan claims, "The argument was made against Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan." Against the tender feelings of a black man, however, the mere statement, "I'm better than he is," is now a taunt.
And which candidates have not assessed the racial/ethnic/economic backgrounds of particular constituencies? How could a candidate resist measuring such data? Why would any candidate ignore it? White college educated vs. white working class vs. poor black vs. black middle class – whatever. Buchanan asks how Hillary can describe her Ohio-Pennsylvania coalition without using the dread word "white."
Then he gets to the real force that has made the Obama candidacy feasible and now works to protect him, that is, the media, whose efforts he correctly calls "sinister." It's not the Clintons who are playing the race card, says Buchanan, rather the media "and some black journalists with sentimental, emotional or ideological investments in Obama are playing the intimidation card." As I have written before, members of the media insist on proving what whores they are. They spent eight years as unquestioning purveyors of George W. Bush's propaganda, from the White House to the public, thereby condoning his horrific and inhumane foreign policies. As power slips away from the Republicans, these media elites now want, once again, to be on the winning side. To them, that means the bandwagon of Barack Obama. Indeed, why not create the bandwagon, and then ride it?
Buchanan persists in referring to the "liberal media," a term coined by disgruntled rightwingers. He is wrong to believe that there is an ideological foundation to the antics engaged in by most mainstream media types. There is, no doubt, a small cadre of die hard believers in progressive politics, some of whom, in an earlier life, were attached to political campaigns. But, on the whole, these "journalists" strive only to belong to those inner circles where they can seek out the powerful, to assure the aggrandizement of careers. Members of the White House press corps have been disdained as Bush's "stenographers," a depiction that fits them perfectly.
Buchanan says of the media, "They are setting limits around what may and may not be said about Obama. They are seeking to censor robust adversarial speech where Barack is concerned, by branding as racists 'playing the race card' any who make Barack run the same paces as anyone else." Mustn't put the black man through the same paces as any normal white candidate. You can't expect him to be subjected to the rude, rough give-and-take of national politics.
Not only is it dangerous for whites to reject the Obama glow, Buchanan quotes Washington Post reporter Darryl Fears, who claims that standing in the path of Obama's campaign is also dangerous for prominent blacks. With such intimidation in the air, what else can a future voter do when being polled, except to lie or dissemble, while claiming to support the country's hottest Rock Star? Read more!
In his column, "Race Cards and Speech Codes," Buchanan asserts that Hillary Clinton cannot even make the simple observation, "I can win – and my opponent can't." In almost every election campaign, which candidate has not said something similar, or those very words, about his/her opponent? Buchanan claims, "The argument was made against Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan." Against the tender feelings of a black man, however, the mere statement, "I'm better than he is," is now a taunt.
And which candidates have not assessed the racial/ethnic/economic backgrounds of particular constituencies? How could a candidate resist measuring such data? Why would any candidate ignore it? White college educated vs. white working class vs. poor black vs. black middle class – whatever. Buchanan asks how Hillary can describe her Ohio-Pennsylvania coalition without using the dread word "white."
Then he gets to the real force that has made the Obama candidacy feasible and now works to protect him, that is, the media, whose efforts he correctly calls "sinister." It's not the Clintons who are playing the race card, says Buchanan, rather the media "and some black journalists with sentimental, emotional or ideological investments in Obama are playing the intimidation card." As I have written before, members of the media insist on proving what whores they are. They spent eight years as unquestioning purveyors of George W. Bush's propaganda, from the White House to the public, thereby condoning his horrific and inhumane foreign policies. As power slips away from the Republicans, these media elites now want, once again, to be on the winning side. To them, that means the bandwagon of Barack Obama. Indeed, why not create the bandwagon, and then ride it?
Buchanan persists in referring to the "liberal media," a term coined by disgruntled rightwingers. He is wrong to believe that there is an ideological foundation to the antics engaged in by most mainstream media types. There is, no doubt, a small cadre of die hard believers in progressive politics, some of whom, in an earlier life, were attached to political campaigns. But, on the whole, these "journalists" strive only to belong to those inner circles where they can seek out the powerful, to assure the aggrandizement of careers. Members of the White House press corps have been disdained as Bush's "stenographers," a depiction that fits them perfectly.
Buchanan says of the media, "They are setting limits around what may and may not be said about Obama. They are seeking to censor robust adversarial speech where Barack is concerned, by branding as racists 'playing the race card' any who make Barack run the same paces as anyone else." Mustn't put the black man through the same paces as any normal white candidate. You can't expect him to be subjected to the rude, rough give-and-take of national politics.
Not only is it dangerous for whites to reject the Obama glow, Buchanan quotes Washington Post reporter Darryl Fears, who claims that standing in the path of Obama's campaign is also dangerous for prominent blacks. With such intimidation in the air, what else can a future voter do when being polled, except to lie or dissemble, while claiming to support the country's hottest Rock Star? Read more!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Stung by the word "white"
To observe that blacks are voting in mass for a black man, only because he is black, is considered acceptable conduct and even praiseworthy. Yet, to bring up the reality of race, when it's clear that many whites prefer to vote for white candidates, is a sign of "racism" and unmitigated bigotry. How could anything except outright racial bias account for Barack Obama getting 91% to 98% of the vote of a single ethnic bloc?
How have so many whites allowed themselves to be supportive of double standards that mock them, and represent nothing more than a strategy on the part of those who are determined to usurp power from those already in power? On the liberal Ed Schultz's radio show, a male caller, identifying himself as white and an "employee of the Pentagon," claimed that he supports Barack Obama for President. You could hear in his voice his pride in declaring Hillary Clinton wrong for her comments about the preferences of particular white voters for a white candidate. By golly, he isn't that kind of white bigot!
Similarly, a white woman caller to Bill O'Reilly's radio show expressed her indignation over Hillary Clinton's reference to whites. The very word "white," the caller confessed, "stung" her. In typical fashion, she seemed eager to show her intolerance of any sign of bigotry against minorities. As a good, card-carrying non-racist, she probably has no problem with speculations on the voting patterns of blacks or other colored ethnic groups. I suspect had Hillary used "white" in a pejorative manner, that is, to bash whites as a group, this good, white lady would have joined in the bashing.
These callers are typical of whites who are so happy to publicly remove themselves from the taint or even suspicion of bias for their own kind, while asserting their acceptance and even devotion to the coloreds. How, in one breath, can anyone declare how wonderful it would be to elect the "First!" BLACK President, yet in another breath proclaim as racists those who wish for a white President? Once race has been made the focus of intention by any side, it has to be accepted as a major factor on both sides. If you can say, I prefer black, why can't you say, I prefer white?
Political analyst Paul Begala is right in his observation that his Democratic party cannot win the presidency "with just eggheads and African-Americans." However, in this uniquely American race circus, such indisputably true insights are forbidden. In this country, in every election, demographics are scrutinized, with emphasis often being placed on the importance of the "ethnic" vote. Politicians brazenly fall all over one another to reach out to blacks and Hispanics for support. To reach out in a similar way for white support, however, is to engage in the evil "southern strategy," for which Ronald Reagan has never been forgiven.
[It cannot be lost on anyone that it is Begala's party, with its emphasis on racial-multicultural politics, that is now causing grief for the left. Watching liberals eat their own is becoming common these days. For me, the first demonstration of this phenomenon has been occurring over the last half-dozen years on the leftwing Pacifica Network's New York radio station WBAI, where a cabal of blacks has usurped the reins of power from the white rad-libs – the very people who opened the doors to them in the first place. But that ongoing saga is for another post.] Read more!
How have so many whites allowed themselves to be supportive of double standards that mock them, and represent nothing more than a strategy on the part of those who are determined to usurp power from those already in power? On the liberal Ed Schultz's radio show, a male caller, identifying himself as white and an "employee of the Pentagon," claimed that he supports Barack Obama for President. You could hear in his voice his pride in declaring Hillary Clinton wrong for her comments about the preferences of particular white voters for a white candidate. By golly, he isn't that kind of white bigot!
Similarly, a white woman caller to Bill O'Reilly's radio show expressed her indignation over Hillary Clinton's reference to whites. The very word "white," the caller confessed, "stung" her. In typical fashion, she seemed eager to show her intolerance of any sign of bigotry against minorities. As a good, card-carrying non-racist, she probably has no problem with speculations on the voting patterns of blacks or other colored ethnic groups. I suspect had Hillary used "white" in a pejorative manner, that is, to bash whites as a group, this good, white lady would have joined in the bashing.
These callers are typical of whites who are so happy to publicly remove themselves from the taint or even suspicion of bias for their own kind, while asserting their acceptance and even devotion to the coloreds. How, in one breath, can anyone declare how wonderful it would be to elect the "First!" BLACK President, yet in another breath proclaim as racists those who wish for a white President? Once race has been made the focus of intention by any side, it has to be accepted as a major factor on both sides. If you can say, I prefer black, why can't you say, I prefer white?
Political analyst Paul Begala is right in his observation that his Democratic party cannot win the presidency "with just eggheads and African-Americans." However, in this uniquely American race circus, such indisputably true insights are forbidden. In this country, in every election, demographics are scrutinized, with emphasis often being placed on the importance of the "ethnic" vote. Politicians brazenly fall all over one another to reach out to blacks and Hispanics for support. To reach out in a similar way for white support, however, is to engage in the evil "southern strategy," for which Ronald Reagan has never been forgiven.
[It cannot be lost on anyone that it is Begala's party, with its emphasis on racial-multicultural politics, that is now causing grief for the left. Watching liberals eat their own is becoming common these days. For me, the first demonstration of this phenomenon has been occurring over the last half-dozen years on the leftwing Pacifica Network's New York radio station WBAI, where a cabal of blacks has usurped the reins of power from the white rad-libs – the very people who opened the doors to them in the first place. But that ongoing saga is for another post.] Read more!
Moving on up to the White House
Not only are Americans expected to cautiously toe the line when approaching the dangerous subject of race, here is yet another concern to keep in mind in the ongoing quest of finding ways to keep blacks content.
An editorialist on BlackPolicy.org worries over "disillusioned" blacks, who must daily face the "saddening possibility" that there might never be a black who serves as the country's President. One wonders how the nation's Chinese-American citizens make it through each day, living with the possibility of never seeing one of their own as President. Is it a painful condition? And how has the country's Jewish population managed to live with the "saddening possibility" that a Jew might never serve as President? Do they exist in a "disillusioned" state of mind?
Some apologists even blame the slow progress of the black masses on the lack of a black President as "role model." Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who has been known to write sensible treatises [he has the right handle on "hate crime" laws], in the case of Barack Obama, becomes yet another enamored journalist. Citing crime among blacks as an "urgent" problem, in one of his weirdest columns to date ("Taking the Call on Black Men"), Cohen claims that Obama would be best suited to answer that proverbial 3:00 AM phone call to the White House -- if it pertained to the inordinate numbers of homicides committed by black men.
His reasoning, if such it can be called, goes like this: Because Obama could be a role model to young black men, he is "uniquely qualified" to meet the challenge posed by their criminal behavior. Cohen does not explain, however, why black criminal behavior has failed to be modified by those role models who are closer to the citizenry than the distant President, that is, all those Mayors of cities – from Harold Washington to David Dinkins to Sharpe James to Marion Barry to Kwame Kilpatrick, and many more too numerous to mention. Cohen also does not explain why he skips over the most important and influential role models in young people's lives, like the adults who live within their own homes. Are blacks the only group whose good behavior is dependent on the indulgences of politicians?
It's one thing for devious black elites to try to make entry into the White House yet one more necessary step in the black journey of "moving on up." It's quite another to watch as foolish whites buy into this disingenuous sentiment – as though blacks are on some kind of inevitable sojourn that ultimately must lead to the Oval Office. It's about power, and nothing else. Read more!
An editorialist on BlackPolicy.org worries over "disillusioned" blacks, who must daily face the "saddening possibility" that there might never be a black who serves as the country's President. One wonders how the nation's Chinese-American citizens make it through each day, living with the possibility of never seeing one of their own as President. Is it a painful condition? And how has the country's Jewish population managed to live with the "saddening possibility" that a Jew might never serve as President? Do they exist in a "disillusioned" state of mind?
Some apologists even blame the slow progress of the black masses on the lack of a black President as "role model." Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who has been known to write sensible treatises [he has the right handle on "hate crime" laws], in the case of Barack Obama, becomes yet another enamored journalist. Citing crime among blacks as an "urgent" problem, in one of his weirdest columns to date ("Taking the Call on Black Men"), Cohen claims that Obama would be best suited to answer that proverbial 3:00 AM phone call to the White House -- if it pertained to the inordinate numbers of homicides committed by black men.
His reasoning, if such it can be called, goes like this: Because Obama could be a role model to young black men, he is "uniquely qualified" to meet the challenge posed by their criminal behavior. Cohen does not explain, however, why black criminal behavior has failed to be modified by those role models who are closer to the citizenry than the distant President, that is, all those Mayors of cities – from Harold Washington to David Dinkins to Sharpe James to Marion Barry to Kwame Kilpatrick, and many more too numerous to mention. Cohen also does not explain why he skips over the most important and influential role models in young people's lives, like the adults who live within their own homes. Are blacks the only group whose good behavior is dependent on the indulgences of politicians?
It's one thing for devious black elites to try to make entry into the White House yet one more necessary step in the black journey of "moving on up." It's quite another to watch as foolish whites buy into this disingenuous sentiment – as though blacks are on some kind of inevitable sojourn that ultimately must lead to the Oval Office. It's about power, and nothing else. Read more!
Why isn't John Edwards the candidate?
I never understood just what the problem was between the liberals who control the Democratic party and John Edwards and his populist message. Why was he not their ideal candidate?
Michael Brendan Dougherty offers his take on what went wrong with the Edwards candidacy in "Progressively Irrelevant" (The American Conservative, 2/11/08). He tells of dead coalitions that cannot be revived and of an altered social and political world. "The problem for Edwards was that progressives and only progressives embraced him," writes Dougherty.
In 2004, when Edwards first ran for the presidential nomination, he won the South Carolina primary. He got half the white vote and over a third of the black vote. But this time around, in South Carolina, he won only 2% of the black vote and did not do well among the working whites who earn under $30,000, a major target of his campaign. Edwards' populist appeal failed spectacularly, claims Dougherty, because "the Democratic coalition he sought to capture has changed dramatically from the time of the New Deal and cannot be reconstituted."
That liberal alliance, which once consisted of rural whites, trade unionists, European immigrants, and recently enfranchised blacks, no longer exists. Dougherty explains: "Today, where the party is white, it is less working class. Where it is working class, it is less organized and more divided into competing racial categories. Where it is unionized, it is not private-sector and is thus less insecure about its economic future."
It's been obvious for some time that it's a new day in the story of unions and organized labor. In 1960, 37% of private-sector workers were unionized, but by 2003, this figure had dropped to just over 8%. Dougherty reports that public-sector unions now make up half of organized labor. These people are teachers, policemen, firemen, and government bureaucrats, who have guaranteed pensions and other perks. "Whereas the old power of organized labor appealed to an American sense of fairness in sharing wealth, the new public-sector dominated unions seek only to expand their benefits and insulate themselves from private competition."
Not to be overlooked is the decline in Democratic allegiance among white men, a pattern that has been going on since the days of John F. Kennedy. In 2004, only 36% of this demographic voted for John Kerry. Dougherty observes: "As Thomas Edsall has pointed out, since 1960, the Democratic share of voters employed in the professions 'has doubled from 18% to 35%, whereas the share of the Democratic vote made up of lower-income skilled and non-skilled workers has dropped from 50% to 35%.'"
And then there are those "values" voters, who don't easily fit into economic categories. These are liberals who are committed to particular social ideals and a host of beliefs and behaviors that are the result of the sexual revolution. Dougherty suggests that Edwards lost out among this group, because he demonstrated reticence about such issues as gay rights, which "makes him an oddity in elite Democratic circles."
Without the old alliances and coalitions to help him, "Edwards found out the hard way that the past is useless to a Democratic nominee." Both political parties have been transformed by what Dougherty calls "the long re-alignment of the South and the Northeast and the migration of the working class to the GOP." Describing Edwards' campaign as "funereal," Dougherty writes, "His defeat in the primaries signals the end of a long-held progressive hope: that the social and racial politics that began tearing apart the FDR coalition could be overcome and a left-liberal majority could again be built out of the white working class, together with blacks, immigrants, and women."
Ancient allegiances have faded away, along with formerly durable political bonds and, as the country's demographics continue to change, there is no chance that old alliances will ever again be reinvigorated. John Edwards and his supporters either could not recognize or could not accept the evidence that an era has come to an end.
Read more!
Michael Brendan Dougherty offers his take on what went wrong with the Edwards candidacy in "Progressively Irrelevant" (The American Conservative, 2/11/08). He tells of dead coalitions that cannot be revived and of an altered social and political world. "The problem for Edwards was that progressives and only progressives embraced him," writes Dougherty.
In 2004, when Edwards first ran for the presidential nomination, he won the South Carolina primary. He got half the white vote and over a third of the black vote. But this time around, in South Carolina, he won only 2% of the black vote and did not do well among the working whites who earn under $30,000, a major target of his campaign. Edwards' populist appeal failed spectacularly, claims Dougherty, because "the Democratic coalition he sought to capture has changed dramatically from the time of the New Deal and cannot be reconstituted."
That liberal alliance, which once consisted of rural whites, trade unionists, European immigrants, and recently enfranchised blacks, no longer exists. Dougherty explains: "Today, where the party is white, it is less working class. Where it is working class, it is less organized and more divided into competing racial categories. Where it is unionized, it is not private-sector and is thus less insecure about its economic future."
It's been obvious for some time that it's a new day in the story of unions and organized labor. In 1960, 37% of private-sector workers were unionized, but by 2003, this figure had dropped to just over 8%. Dougherty reports that public-sector unions now make up half of organized labor. These people are teachers, policemen, firemen, and government bureaucrats, who have guaranteed pensions and other perks. "Whereas the old power of organized labor appealed to an American sense of fairness in sharing wealth, the new public-sector dominated unions seek only to expand their benefits and insulate themselves from private competition."
Not to be overlooked is the decline in Democratic allegiance among white men, a pattern that has been going on since the days of John F. Kennedy. In 2004, only 36% of this demographic voted for John Kerry. Dougherty observes: "As Thomas Edsall has pointed out, since 1960, the Democratic share of voters employed in the professions 'has doubled from 18% to 35%, whereas the share of the Democratic vote made up of lower-income skilled and non-skilled workers has dropped from 50% to 35%.'"
And then there are those "values" voters, who don't easily fit into economic categories. These are liberals who are committed to particular social ideals and a host of beliefs and behaviors that are the result of the sexual revolution. Dougherty suggests that Edwards lost out among this group, because he demonstrated reticence about such issues as gay rights, which "makes him an oddity in elite Democratic circles."
Without the old alliances and coalitions to help him, "Edwards found out the hard way that the past is useless to a Democratic nominee." Both political parties have been transformed by what Dougherty calls "the long re-alignment of the South and the Northeast and the migration of the working class to the GOP." Describing Edwards' campaign as "funereal," Dougherty writes, "His defeat in the primaries signals the end of a long-held progressive hope: that the social and racial politics that began tearing apart the FDR coalition could be overcome and a left-liberal majority could again be built out of the white working class, together with blacks, immigrants, and women."
Ancient allegiances have faded away, along with formerly durable political bonds and, as the country's demographics continue to change, there is no chance that old alliances will ever again be reinvigorated. John Edwards and his supporters either could not recognize or could not accept the evidence that an era has come to an end.
Read more!
Bill Clinton as warmonger
Author William Blum claims that Americans who feel outrage at the "Bush crime syndicate's foreign policy" should not lose sight of his predecessor's criminal dealings abroad. In "Don't Look Back: Who Said Clinton Didn't Kill Anybody?" (CounterPunch), Blum outlines the Clinton administration's interventions around the world that would warm the heart of any lover of George W. Bush. Here are thumbnail sketches of just a few described by Blum:
Yugoslavia – Contrary to the administration's lies, the great exodus of the people of Kosovo resulted from Clinton's bombing, not Serbian "ethnic cleansing."
Somalia – Presented as a mission to help feed the starving, the Clinton administration not only took sides in this clan-based civil war, but tried to eliminate particular warlords. Attempts by the Americans to kidnap clan leaders resulted in the loss of thousands of Somali lives.
Sudan – The Clinton administration unnecessarily destroyed an important pharmaceutical plant that produced 90% of the drugs used to treat Africa's most deadly illnesses – all due to a rumor that the plant manufactured chemical weapons. (Today's pernicious excuse for destroying property and possessions in other people's lands.)
Sierra Leone – Clinton sent Jesse Jackson to act as his envoy to give greater power to the corrupt Liberian president Charles Taylor, well known for his human rights atrocities against his opponents and for supporting the Revolutionary United Front, a band of government-sponsored cut throats.
Iraq – And, of course, Clinton continued the horrendous economic sanctions against the Iraqi people, devastating almost every aspect of their lives, resulting in the deaths of thousands.
These are just five of the countries described by Blum as negatively impacted by the foreign policy of Bill Clinton. After citing several more of the President's destructive exploits, he reminds us of another horrendous Clinton intervention right here at home, that never had to happen. "And let's not forget the massacre at Waco, Texas," where a blundering, incompetent federal government caused the deaths of over 80 innocent people.
Thank you, Mr. President. Read more!
Yugoslavia – Contrary to the administration's lies, the great exodus of the people of Kosovo resulted from Clinton's bombing, not Serbian "ethnic cleansing."
Somalia – Presented as a mission to help feed the starving, the Clinton administration not only took sides in this clan-based civil war, but tried to eliminate particular warlords. Attempts by the Americans to kidnap clan leaders resulted in the loss of thousands of Somali lives.
Sudan – The Clinton administration unnecessarily destroyed an important pharmaceutical plant that produced 90% of the drugs used to treat Africa's most deadly illnesses – all due to a rumor that the plant manufactured chemical weapons. (Today's pernicious excuse for destroying property and possessions in other people's lands.)
Sierra Leone – Clinton sent Jesse Jackson to act as his envoy to give greater power to the corrupt Liberian president Charles Taylor, well known for his human rights atrocities against his opponents and for supporting the Revolutionary United Front, a band of government-sponsored cut throats.
Iraq – And, of course, Clinton continued the horrendous economic sanctions against the Iraqi people, devastating almost every aspect of their lives, resulting in the deaths of thousands.
These are just five of the countries described by Blum as negatively impacted by the foreign policy of Bill Clinton. After citing several more of the President's destructive exploits, he reminds us of another horrendous Clinton intervention right here at home, that never had to happen. "And let's not forget the massacre at Waco, Texas," where a blundering, incompetent federal government caused the deaths of over 80 innocent people.
Thank you, Mr. President. Read more!
The integration fixation
Booker Rising, a popular black website, recently published a chunk of copy from a post on this blog, entitled, "The downside of integration." A spirited discussion ensued in the forum concerning blacks and integration, including the following comment, which I think is noteworthy:
Posted by Al From Bay Shore (4/21/08):
I think integration was a disaster. I often wonder what would have happened if we had taken a more nationalistic approach to seeking liberation rather than equality. I'd much rather have people calling for a salary cap in baseball, because of the out of control spending of the Homestead Grays, rather than to celebrate Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. For me, integration has resulted in black existence playing second fiddle to the larger society. I often wonder what would have happened if black athletes made black colleges their first choice or if John Hope Franklin had stayed at Morgan State.
There was so much wealth within our community in terms of human capital and we squandered it by running to be a part of white institutions. If we had actually gotten past our emotional reaction to Booker T. Washington's use of the term "accommodate" and, as a whole, applied all his ideas and approaches, we would be where integration was supposed to take us.
The integration mindset has burdened us with a crop of approaches (i.e., civil rights and its leadership) that seek to find solutions outside of our communities AND each time an attempt is made to self-critique, the dialogue is often railroaded towards a discussion on what other entities have done to us. We've even gotten to a point where we question the blackness of people who try to have these dialogues. If anything, one can argue that the insistence upon integration is a fixation on white people and a belief that black folks are incapable of individual success. Read more!
Posted by Al From Bay Shore (4/21/08):
I think integration was a disaster. I often wonder what would have happened if we had taken a more nationalistic approach to seeking liberation rather than equality. I'd much rather have people calling for a salary cap in baseball, because of the out of control spending of the Homestead Grays, rather than to celebrate Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. For me, integration has resulted in black existence playing second fiddle to the larger society. I often wonder what would have happened if black athletes made black colleges their first choice or if John Hope Franklin had stayed at Morgan State.
There was so much wealth within our community in terms of human capital and we squandered it by running to be a part of white institutions. If we had actually gotten past our emotional reaction to Booker T. Washington's use of the term "accommodate" and, as a whole, applied all his ideas and approaches, we would be where integration was supposed to take us.
The integration mindset has burdened us with a crop of approaches (i.e., civil rights and its leadership) that seek to find solutions outside of our communities AND each time an attempt is made to self-critique, the dialogue is often railroaded towards a discussion on what other entities have done to us. We've even gotten to a point where we question the blackness of people who try to have these dialogues. If anything, one can argue that the insistence upon integration is a fixation on white people and a belief that black folks are incapable of individual success. Read more!
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Africa's vampire elites
Every so often, an African comes along and tells us once again what we know so well about the many countries on that continent. Here is economist George Ayittey sounding the alarm for the umpteenth time. (See here and here.) In "Soiled African Continent Needs Purging," on the African Executive website, he writes:
Africa's creaky statist interventionist behemoth needs to be de-wormed, de-tribalized, and thoroughly cleansed. Bloated bureaucracies, packed with cronies and tribesmen, reek of graft, venality and inefficiency. The state sector or "government" has become the arena of self-enrichment. Everybody who wants to be rich heads straight into government. The richest people in Africa are heads of state and government ministers. Quite often, the chief bandit is the head of state himself.
These ruling vampire elites suck the economic life-blood out of the country to deposit in overseas accounts. Because they benefit enormously from the rotten status-quo, they are not interested in reform, PERIOD. If you exert pressure on them to reform, they would perform the "Babangida boogie" -- one step forward, three steps back, a flip and a side-kick to land on a fat Swiss bank account. Much ado about nothing. . . .
They care less about reliable supply of electricity, clean water and medical care for the people as long as they (the politicians) have access to them. When they need medical care, they go abroad. Their food is imported. They send their children abroad for education. As for the people, they can eat grass. . . .
The chicanery of these ruling vampire elites knows no bounds. As a result, the reform process across Africa has been stalled by strong-arm tactics, vaunted acrobatics, vexatious chicanery and willful deception. But without reform, more African countries will implode or remain stuck in the mud.
Okay, so now that we're informed again of the perfidy and greed of African elites, do you think there's a chance for a semblance of reform -- this year, next decade, or in a hundred years? Won't enlightened Africans, five decades from today, be writing the same critical commentaries as the indomitable George Ayittey? Read more!
Africa's creaky statist interventionist behemoth needs to be de-wormed, de-tribalized, and thoroughly cleansed. Bloated bureaucracies, packed with cronies and tribesmen, reek of graft, venality and inefficiency. The state sector or "government" has become the arena of self-enrichment. Everybody who wants to be rich heads straight into government. The richest people in Africa are heads of state and government ministers. Quite often, the chief bandit is the head of state himself.
These ruling vampire elites suck the economic life-blood out of the country to deposit in overseas accounts. Because they benefit enormously from the rotten status-quo, they are not interested in reform, PERIOD. If you exert pressure on them to reform, they would perform the "Babangida boogie" -- one step forward, three steps back, a flip and a side-kick to land on a fat Swiss bank account. Much ado about nothing. . . .
They care less about reliable supply of electricity, clean water and medical care for the people as long as they (the politicians) have access to them. When they need medical care, they go abroad. Their food is imported. They send their children abroad for education. As for the people, they can eat grass. . . .
The chicanery of these ruling vampire elites knows no bounds. As a result, the reform process across Africa has been stalled by strong-arm tactics, vaunted acrobatics, vexatious chicanery and willful deception. But without reform, more African countries will implode or remain stuck in the mud.
Okay, so now that we're informed again of the perfidy and greed of African elites, do you think there's a chance for a semblance of reform -- this year, next decade, or in a hundred years? Won't enlightened Africans, five decades from today, be writing the same critical commentaries as the indomitable George Ayittey? Read more!
Whites not allowed
In a column in the New Pittsburgh Courier, black columnist William Reaves once asked, "Can any progress be made without settling the concerns of white people who want to insure a future for their white posterity?" Reaves asked his question back in 1998, emphasizing those blacks and whites who were "uncomfortable" about sorting out the actual reasons for what he called "the true motivation for white supremacy."
He then described events from one of the conferences sponsored that year by Bill Clinton's President's Advisory Board on Race, where the white Robert Hoy, an audience observer, took the initiative, from a floor microphone, to point out that no one on the discussion panels were speaking for white people. This conference, billed as an "honest discussion on race" and part of a year-long symposium, turned out to be just another assembly for the airing of minority grievances, and was completely controlled by activist blacks and their white partisans.
Reaves claimed that the whole year-long forum was "conspicuously lacking one thing, the opinions of white people." Since Hoy had followed the formal rules of the meeting, and was perfectly polite in his presentation, Reaves asked, "Why did Hoy get escorted out of the President's forum on race, given that the Constitution is generally interpreted to allow for free speech?" He called the ouster of Hoy "sadly predictable."
Do you think that those blacks who today are calling for an "open discussion on race" have any more intention to allow for honesty on all sides than they did ten years ago? If Reaves did not know it before, he learned that day that whites are not allowed in on the dialogue. They're just expected to be window dressing – listen and make nice. And, most of all, be ready to go along with whatever demands emanate from the camp of the coloreds – from more quota-driven policies, to more intrusions into other people's lives, to another Federal holiday for a black hero.
Read more!
He then described events from one of the conferences sponsored that year by Bill Clinton's President's Advisory Board on Race, where the white Robert Hoy, an audience observer, took the initiative, from a floor microphone, to point out that no one on the discussion panels were speaking for white people. This conference, billed as an "honest discussion on race" and part of a year-long symposium, turned out to be just another assembly for the airing of minority grievances, and was completely controlled by activist blacks and their white partisans.
Reaves claimed that the whole year-long forum was "conspicuously lacking one thing, the opinions of white people." Since Hoy had followed the formal rules of the meeting, and was perfectly polite in his presentation, Reaves asked, "Why did Hoy get escorted out of the President's forum on race, given that the Constitution is generally interpreted to allow for free speech?" He called the ouster of Hoy "sadly predictable."
Do you think that those blacks who today are calling for an "open discussion on race" have any more intention to allow for honesty on all sides than they did ten years ago? If Reaves did not know it before, he learned that day that whites are not allowed in on the dialogue. They're just expected to be window dressing – listen and make nice. And, most of all, be ready to go along with whatever demands emanate from the camp of the coloreds – from more quota-driven policies, to more intrusions into other people's lives, to another Federal holiday for a black hero.
Read more!
Stuff and white folks
By now, most people have caught up with one of the funniest blogs on the Internet – Stuff White People Like. Although designed to be pointedly satirical, some of the responses to the blogger's posts can be quite serious -- like this comment in response to post #20 - "Being an expert on YOUR culture." The responder deals with Europeans' past history of colonization, and the pretentiousness of many whites to counter their guilty feelings about this history, by trying to become "experts" on other people's cultures. The writer also suggests some of the inner drives that keep whites from standing up for themselves as European-Americans.
• • •
Comment posted by: About as White as it gets (2/15/08)
This is [the] most obnoxious part about being white. But it's important to understand that this “expertise” is based on white people's own self-hatred.
White people are so ignorant of history they actually believe that they’re the only people in history ever to have "oppressed" other people. They are also totally convinced that no people have ever "oppressed" white people. The invasions and untold slaughters into Europe by the Mongols, Moors, Arabs, Turks, Huns, and other assorted Asian or North African peoples is one big blank of history. Even more comical is the idea that places like "the New World" were like great big Grateful Dead concerts, before Europeans arrived. Never mind the Aztecs wiping out the Incas or sacrificing over 20,000 babies so the sun would rise in the morning, white people don’t want to hear it.
Don’t tell a white person that the Arab slave trade consumed 10 times more black Africans compared to their own slave trade, as the white will explain that the Arabs treated their slaves much better. And NEVER bring up the fact to a white person that the Muslims also enslaved an untold number of white slaves out of Europe during the “Dark Ages.”
This is a form of White supremacism that is very misunderstood. It's basically telling the world "Well, we expect you to slaughter, invade, colonize people but we’re white, so its very bad if we do it, and not so much if you do." It's basically telling the world that they're a bunch of animals, who, of course, act like animals, but only whites should be held accountable because they’re white (read: Human).
The reason whites become "experts" in other cultures is to suppress the hate they feel towards their own feelings of superiority. It sounds confusing but it's kind of like letting your little niece win in checkers to make her feel good and afterwards feeling bad about it. A white person must never show any positive feelings towards anything accomplished by a white person, but must always point out that when a non-white accomplishes something that they were the "first" fill-in-the-blank, to do so. At the same time, if a white person accomplishes something, it's for "humanity" or for "mankind." To you non-whites reading this, I know this must sound confusing as hell, but we’re a very strange people. Read more!
Comment posted by: About as White as it gets (2/15/08)
This is [the] most obnoxious part about being white. But it's important to understand that this “expertise” is based on white people's own self-hatred.
White people are so ignorant of history they actually believe that they’re the only people in history ever to have "oppressed" other people. They are also totally convinced that no people have ever "oppressed" white people. The invasions and untold slaughters into Europe by the Mongols, Moors, Arabs, Turks, Huns, and other assorted Asian or North African peoples is one big blank of history. Even more comical is the idea that places like "the New World" were like great big Grateful Dead concerts, before Europeans arrived. Never mind the Aztecs wiping out the Incas or sacrificing over 20,000 babies so the sun would rise in the morning, white people don’t want to hear it.
Don’t tell a white person that the Arab slave trade consumed 10 times more black Africans compared to their own slave trade, as the white will explain that the Arabs treated their slaves much better. And NEVER bring up the fact to a white person that the Muslims also enslaved an untold number of white slaves out of Europe during the “Dark Ages.”
This is a form of White supremacism that is very misunderstood. It's basically telling the world "Well, we expect you to slaughter, invade, colonize people but we’re white, so its very bad if we do it, and not so much if you do." It's basically telling the world that they're a bunch of animals, who, of course, act like animals, but only whites should be held accountable because they’re white (read: Human).
The reason whites become "experts" in other cultures is to suppress the hate they feel towards their own feelings of superiority. It sounds confusing but it's kind of like letting your little niece win in checkers to make her feel good and afterwards feeling bad about it. A white person must never show any positive feelings towards anything accomplished by a white person, but must always point out that when a non-white accomplishes something that they were the "first" fill-in-the-blank, to do so. At the same time, if a white person accomplishes something, it's for "humanity" or for "mankind." To you non-whites reading this, I know this must sound confusing as hell, but we’re a very strange people. Read more!
Still the third rail in politics
Imagine, writes Leonard Fein, that the U.S. candidates for the presidential nomination were asked for their views on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and, instead of coming up with the usual formulaic answers, one of them replied that, "Israel’s occupation of the West Bank must end, that the illegal outposts must be removed, that all settlement expansion must end, that Israel should help rather than hinder the modernization of the Palestinian security apparatus, that the status quo is simply not acceptable."
In "Better Safe Than Sorry for Candidates on Israel" (The Forward, 1/16/08) Fein claims that if you can imagine such a scenario ever taking place, then "employment awaits you at the Fantasy Channel." He explains that candidates, whether Congressional or otherwise, must stay put "within the walls of pro-Israel orthodoxy. Open a door to the outside of that house, and you’ll find yourself in never-never land, and not the fun kind either. Open just a window, and you will spend weeks, months, explaining, apologizing, repairing the damage. The Israeli-Arab conflict is to foreign policy what Social Security is to domestic policy -- a third rail."
Read his complete, candid article here.
And to the same subject, Taki adds his voice on Takimag.com. Claiming to be no fan of former President Jimmy Carter, Taki nevertheless defends him against the attack of the neocons, who express outrage over Carter's discussions with Palestinian leaders. Taki accuses all three current presidential candidates of a "crippling and chronic reluctance to let Israel feel the rough edge of their tongue."
He writes, "Utter a word against Likud policy and retire to your farm for the duration. This applies to all politicians in the United States – remember Charles Percy and William Scranton, two long ago politicos who dared to criticize and retired to their farms in turn." Read more!
In "Better Safe Than Sorry for Candidates on Israel" (The Forward, 1/16/08) Fein claims that if you can imagine such a scenario ever taking place, then "employment awaits you at the Fantasy Channel." He explains that candidates, whether Congressional or otherwise, must stay put "within the walls of pro-Israel orthodoxy. Open a door to the outside of that house, and you’ll find yourself in never-never land, and not the fun kind either. Open just a window, and you will spend weeks, months, explaining, apologizing, repairing the damage. The Israeli-Arab conflict is to foreign policy what Social Security is to domestic policy -- a third rail."
Read his complete, candid article here.
And to the same subject, Taki adds his voice on Takimag.com. Claiming to be no fan of former President Jimmy Carter, Taki nevertheless defends him against the attack of the neocons, who express outrage over Carter's discussions with Palestinian leaders. Taki accuses all three current presidential candidates of a "crippling and chronic reluctance to let Israel feel the rough edge of their tongue."
He writes, "Utter a word against Likud policy and retire to your farm for the duration. This applies to all politicians in the United States – remember Charles Percy and William Scranton, two long ago politicos who dared to criticize and retired to their farms in turn." Read more!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Still castigating whites
"So it’s not surprising then," said Mr. Obama, "that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Oops! Careful, Barack, or your own bitterness might begin to show. And how would that look coming from a "post-racial" man, a brother who has risen above bitterness? You just might yet expose the typical black notion that only people who look like you (more or less) should be moved to express grievances – be they social or political.
No matter how hard these benighted American whites have tried to make amends, for at least the last 40-odd years, they still bump into the castigation of old Zeke clinging to his guns and religion, as a display of his antipathy to the Other.
It has long been determined by people like you, Barack, that whites have no legitimate self-interests. Apparently, whites cannot have real gripes, like not wanting to live in high-risk neighborhoods; or having their country overrun with aliens; or being stuck with the consequences of free trade or the outsourcing of the country's industries. No, these are not real grievances, so whites obviously must be suffering from something else – their own personal frustrations, which, needless to say, are unreasonable. Therefore, they must be racists against "people who aren't like them."
Barack, you implied such sentiments in your recent Great Speech. The dreamers just weren't listening closely, or did not want to hear. You then claimed that whites should not mistake "distractions" for real grievances. Although you won't come out and say it, you know you think as typical blacks do that, given all the evil things done by their ancestors, whites should look only to solve the problems of the coloreds, i.e., those folks with the "real" grievances.
It could be, Barack, that your recent diatribe will be smoothed over, and you will continue to be feted by most whites, who believe they deserve any disparagement that comes from a black. Author Tom Wolfe, in his devastating satires, describes scenes in 1960s New York of white audiences voluntarily coming to events, where they were denounced and literally cursed by black nationalist rhetoricians, who became celebrities for their "eloquent" rantings. The whites ate it up and couldn't get enough.
Rightwing pundits claim that your off-the-cuff remarks reflect "elitist contempt." But we blacks know that's only the half of it. Read more!
Oops! Careful, Barack, or your own bitterness might begin to show. And how would that look coming from a "post-racial" man, a brother who has risen above bitterness? You just might yet expose the typical black notion that only people who look like you (more or less) should be moved to express grievances – be they social or political.
No matter how hard these benighted American whites have tried to make amends, for at least the last 40-odd years, they still bump into the castigation of old Zeke clinging to his guns and religion, as a display of his antipathy to the Other.
It has long been determined by people like you, Barack, that whites have no legitimate self-interests. Apparently, whites cannot have real gripes, like not wanting to live in high-risk neighborhoods; or having their country overrun with aliens; or being stuck with the consequences of free trade or the outsourcing of the country's industries. No, these are not real grievances, so whites obviously must be suffering from something else – their own personal frustrations, which, needless to say, are unreasonable. Therefore, they must be racists against "people who aren't like them."
Barack, you implied such sentiments in your recent Great Speech. The dreamers just weren't listening closely, or did not want to hear. You then claimed that whites should not mistake "distractions" for real grievances. Although you won't come out and say it, you know you think as typical blacks do that, given all the evil things done by their ancestors, whites should look only to solve the problems of the coloreds, i.e., those folks with the "real" grievances.
It could be, Barack, that your recent diatribe will be smoothed over, and you will continue to be feted by most whites, who believe they deserve any disparagement that comes from a black. Author Tom Wolfe, in his devastating satires, describes scenes in 1960s New York of white audiences voluntarily coming to events, where they were denounced and literally cursed by black nationalist rhetoricians, who became celebrities for their "eloquent" rantings. The whites ate it up and couldn't get enough.
Rightwing pundits claim that your off-the-cuff remarks reflect "elitist contempt." But we blacks know that's only the half of it. Read more!
The Democrats' cul-de-sac
Some stark observations from the American Thinker website. Contrary to what we are urged to believe, is Obama really the most overtly racial candidate?
The Democrats' cul-de-sac
By James Edmund Pennington
The current agony of the Democratic Party, which grows more acute every day, is laden with an unspoken truth. As the unending Clinton-Obama struggle drags on, the core unutterable reality for Democrats is simply this: because of the composition of the Party's domestic coalition, its continued electoral viability makes absolutely necessary perpetual capture of 90+% of the black vote.
Because of this grim fact -- of the Party's own making -- the Clinton/Obama fight is over. Obama has won, and every leading Democrat knows it. In short, because of his race, Obama must be awarded the Democratic nomination. So much for the myth of America's first major post-racial candidate.
Read complete article here. Read more!
The Democrats' cul-de-sac
By James Edmund Pennington
The current agony of the Democratic Party, which grows more acute every day, is laden with an unspoken truth. As the unending Clinton-Obama struggle drags on, the core unutterable reality for Democrats is simply this: because of the composition of the Party's domestic coalition, its continued electoral viability makes absolutely necessary perpetual capture of 90+% of the black vote.
Because of this grim fact -- of the Party's own making -- the Clinton/Obama fight is over. Obama has won, and every leading Democrat knows it. In short, because of his race, Obama must be awarded the Democratic nomination. So much for the myth of America's first major post-racial candidate.
Read complete article here. Read more!
How quickly "conservatives" changed their tunes
Following is a compelling excerpt from "The Reality of Red-State Fascism," by Lew Rockwell. It sure didn't take long to learn to love the state.
In 1994, the central state was seen by the bourgeoisie as the main threat to the family; in 2004 it is seen as the main tool for keeping the family together and ensuring its ascendancy. In 1994, the state was seen as the enemy of education; today, the same people view the state as the means of raising standards and purging education of its left-wing influences. In 1994, Christians widely saw that Leviathan was the main enemy of the faith; today, they see Leviathan as the tool by which they will guarantee that their faith will have an impact on the country and the world.
Paul Craig Roberts is right: "In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush." Again: "Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy."
In short, what we have alive in the US is an updated and Americanized fascism. Why fascist? Because it is not leftist in the sense of egalitarian or redistributionist. It has no real beef with business. It doesn't sympathize with the downtrodden, labor, or the poor. It is for all the core institutions of bourgeois life in America: family, faith, and flag. But it sees the state as the central organizing principle of society, views public institutions as the most essential means by which all these institutions are protected and advanced, and adores the head of state as a godlike figure who knows better than anyone else what the country and world needs, and has a special connection to the Creator that permits him to discern the best means to bring it about. Read more!
In 1994, the central state was seen by the bourgeoisie as the main threat to the family; in 2004 it is seen as the main tool for keeping the family together and ensuring its ascendancy. In 1994, the state was seen as the enemy of education; today, the same people view the state as the means of raising standards and purging education of its left-wing influences. In 1994, Christians widely saw that Leviathan was the main enemy of the faith; today, they see Leviathan as the tool by which they will guarantee that their faith will have an impact on the country and the world.
Paul Craig Roberts is right: "In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush." Again: "Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy."
In short, what we have alive in the US is an updated and Americanized fascism. Why fascist? Because it is not leftist in the sense of egalitarian or redistributionist. It has no real beef with business. It doesn't sympathize with the downtrodden, labor, or the poor. It is for all the core institutions of bourgeois life in America: family, faith, and flag. But it sees the state as the central organizing principle of society, views public institutions as the most essential means by which all these institutions are protected and advanced, and adores the head of state as a godlike figure who knows better than anyone else what the country and world needs, and has a special connection to the Creator that permits him to discern the best means to bring it about. Read more!
It's about power
It's not about "social justice," it's about power. It's not about doing what's morally right for the underdog, it's about power.
Wherever two or more groups live in proximity to one another, the men are going to jockey and compete for power. The bunch on the bottom of the social-economic ladder will seek ways to usurp power from those at the top. The prevailing conditions will be unique in every instance, but it's still the same old story.
The less powerful men will work at devising whatever tools or methods they can, to defeat the dominant men, who usually are the ones with greater weaponry and manpower. For the black man in this country, it was unrealistic to think he could succeed against his opponents' armaments, so other means had to be found. Beginning with a little help from his white Abolitionist friends, continuing onward with the help of his white Communist friends, and carried forward with the help of his white liberal friends, race, and the endless ramifications that could be derived from his degraded past history, became the weapon of choice.
The pose of anger and indignation over past humiliations must be nurtured, since this has proven to be the most effective club in the black man's arsenal. Whites, who have all but given away the store to blacks, in terms of the abandonment of constitutional principles, required nothing more than the threat of public disorder and mayhem. That blacks should be appeased, by granting the never-ending demands of their elites, was hardly questioned by the establishment whites.
Once appeasement became the norm (a Federal holiday for a preacher?), the die was cast for the future. Those whites and blacks who protested many of the strategies of the civil rights movement, because they understood where it was leading, were marginalized, and are still exiled to the fringes of decent society.
The initial reaction of blacks to Barack Obama, who seemed to come from nowhere, was a sense that power was being taken from the hands of "real" American blacks, those who could count many generations of black grandfathers and great grandfathers born here in the States. How could they bring themselves to support a semi-foreigner of dubious antecedents?
This visceral objection did not last long, however, as black men quickly realized the benefits that can accrue from the presence of a black in the White House, who owes his very station in life primarily to his racial group. It dawned on them that no matter which black man got there first, it will not only mean power over Whitey, but ownership of the most prestigious base from which to expand that power. How can it get any better than that?
Deborah Mathis, writing on BlackAmericaWeb, speaks for many blacks, when she obliquely references those "eyes on the prize." She can hardly control her exuberance at the prospect of a black becoming "the most powerful being on the entire planet," and declares, "This is the prize."
Obama's "Great Speech" makes it clear that if he wins the Presidency, he will encourage blacks to continue wielding the same weapon of power that has served them so well, that is, the victim's call for "social justice" and an "end to racism." Because the nation's institutions, for decades, have complied with the race game as established by blacks and their political compatriots, white men have nowhere to go -- except to continue the pretense that the conflict with black men is a moral issue, not one of power. It's embarrassing to admit that you've been complicit in your own dispossession. Read more!
Wherever two or more groups live in proximity to one another, the men are going to jockey and compete for power. The bunch on the bottom of the social-economic ladder will seek ways to usurp power from those at the top. The prevailing conditions will be unique in every instance, but it's still the same old story.
The less powerful men will work at devising whatever tools or methods they can, to defeat the dominant men, who usually are the ones with greater weaponry and manpower. For the black man in this country, it was unrealistic to think he could succeed against his opponents' armaments, so other means had to be found. Beginning with a little help from his white Abolitionist friends, continuing onward with the help of his white Communist friends, and carried forward with the help of his white liberal friends, race, and the endless ramifications that could be derived from his degraded past history, became the weapon of choice.
The pose of anger and indignation over past humiliations must be nurtured, since this has proven to be the most effective club in the black man's arsenal. Whites, who have all but given away the store to blacks, in terms of the abandonment of constitutional principles, required nothing more than the threat of public disorder and mayhem. That blacks should be appeased, by granting the never-ending demands of their elites, was hardly questioned by the establishment whites.
Once appeasement became the norm (a Federal holiday for a preacher?), the die was cast for the future. Those whites and blacks who protested many of the strategies of the civil rights movement, because they understood where it was leading, were marginalized, and are still exiled to the fringes of decent society.
The initial reaction of blacks to Barack Obama, who seemed to come from nowhere, was a sense that power was being taken from the hands of "real" American blacks, those who could count many generations of black grandfathers and great grandfathers born here in the States. How could they bring themselves to support a semi-foreigner of dubious antecedents?
This visceral objection did not last long, however, as black men quickly realized the benefits that can accrue from the presence of a black in the White House, who owes his very station in life primarily to his racial group. It dawned on them that no matter which black man got there first, it will not only mean power over Whitey, but ownership of the most prestigious base from which to expand that power. How can it get any better than that?
Deborah Mathis, writing on BlackAmericaWeb, speaks for many blacks, when she obliquely references those "eyes on the prize." She can hardly control her exuberance at the prospect of a black becoming "the most powerful being on the entire planet," and declares, "This is the prize."
Obama's "Great Speech" makes it clear that if he wins the Presidency, he will encourage blacks to continue wielding the same weapon of power that has served them so well, that is, the victim's call for "social justice" and an "end to racism." Because the nation's institutions, for decades, have complied with the race game as established by blacks and their political compatriots, white men have nowhere to go -- except to continue the pretense that the conflict with black men is a moral issue, not one of power. It's embarrassing to admit that you've been complicit in your own dispossession. Read more!
Fantasy has taken over
A dissection of today's American journalism doesn't get any better than Sean Wilentz's thoughtful column, "The Delusional Style in American Punditry" (The New Republic, 12/19/07). He zeroes in on the inanity of editorialists and pundits, as demonstrated by their gentle, even romantic treatment of Barack Obama's candidacy. Here is an excerpt:
• • •
The Boston Globe, in an ideal specimen of the delusional style, ran an editorial that endorsed Obama because he is biracial and grew up in "multi-ethnic cultures"--adequate substitutes, by the editorial's lights, for serious background and expertise in foreign affairs. Obama, according to the Globe, has engaged in "a search for identity" and taken "a roots pilgrimage to Kenya," all of which supposedly displays a "level of introspection, honesty, and maturity" that the newspaper longs for in a president. "Obama's story is America's story," the Globe intoned--a sentence that comes as close as any distinguished newspaper ever has to perfect emptiness. Let us hold aside that the book the Globe relied on in discovering these singular Obamaesque virtues, Dreams From My Father, contains composite characters and other fictionalized elements--not exactly a portrait of sterling honesty or authenticity. What is especially delusional is the Globe's confidence that its own projections about Obama's character and personality, as well as the mystical conclusions it draws from his ethnicity, are serious grounds for endorsing any candidate for any office, much less the presidency. . . .
There are many possible explanations for this latest outbreak of the delusional style. An ever-intensifying cult of celebrity personality-worship, the more sentimental the better, may finally have overwhelmed precincts of political commentary. (Obama's sidekick, Oprah Winfrey, is, after all, the reigning master of that cult.) Democrats may simply be so battered after what the Globe calls "seven desolating years" that they are looking for a man on a white horse to deliver them from despair--and so they have invented one.
Complete article here.
• • •
EW Note: Not until I read the dozens of responses to Wilentz's article in The New Republic did I learn the depths of adoration for this man Obama. The angry retorts to Wilentz's very sensible description of the irrational acceptance of Obama's bidding to trust his "intuition" were ludicrous. Where do such loopy people come from? Below is one of the rare, sensible insights offering agreement with Wilentz's thesis:
• • •
Posted by jpwink -- I think that the responses to Prof. Wilentz's post seem to have missed his point. I started to listen to Obama's speech at Oprah's Iowa rally last weekend, and I decided to try an experiment. I shut off my TV and listened to the speech without the video. It would have been better if I had read a transcript.
What I heard was a series of rather tired Democratic Party platitudes, delivered in a religious-revivalist style. Most effective, but when you read or listen to it cold, you know that he is clearly adept at selling the sizzle, not the steak. Prof. Wilentz cuts through the multi-racial, multi-cultural blather that has so infatuated the pundits, all while missing the ultimate irony.
At the end of the day, whatever his "multi-cultural" inner self, we know that Obama was raised by three white midwesterners. As far as I am concerned, he can find his "identity" on his own time.
The pundits need to understand that the next President will come with instincts, knowledge, experience and character, and he/she will undoubtedly be lacking in any or all of them. The pundits do not know them well, and Prof. Wilentz simply points out that they should not fawn all over the candidates when the pundit's track record in this area is clearly lacking.
• • •
If you want to experience genuine sentimentalism, read author Scott Turow's love poem to his friend Obama, where he injects excuses and rationalizations, even for the senior Obama's abandonment of his family. Oh, the pressures of living in an age when miscegenation was still frowned upon! We are to remove from memory what we have learned about Senior's own personal ambitions, which did not include the families he left behind.
Turow, who held fundraisers in his Illinois home for Obama, when he ran for the Senate, speculates over Obama's prospect to become a "pivotal American leader," compares him to "a walking Statue of Liberty, holding up the torch 24 hours a day," and sees him as "the embodiment of one of America's most enduring dreams." Turow writes like Obama talks.
See his complete article here on Salon.com. Read more!
The Boston Globe, in an ideal specimen of the delusional style, ran an editorial that endorsed Obama because he is biracial and grew up in "multi-ethnic cultures"--adequate substitutes, by the editorial's lights, for serious background and expertise in foreign affairs. Obama, according to the Globe, has engaged in "a search for identity" and taken "a roots pilgrimage to Kenya," all of which supposedly displays a "level of introspection, honesty, and maturity" that the newspaper longs for in a president. "Obama's story is America's story," the Globe intoned--a sentence that comes as close as any distinguished newspaper ever has to perfect emptiness. Let us hold aside that the book the Globe relied on in discovering these singular Obamaesque virtues, Dreams From My Father, contains composite characters and other fictionalized elements--not exactly a portrait of sterling honesty or authenticity. What is especially delusional is the Globe's confidence that its own projections about Obama's character and personality, as well as the mystical conclusions it draws from his ethnicity, are serious grounds for endorsing any candidate for any office, much less the presidency. . . .
There are many possible explanations for this latest outbreak of the delusional style. An ever-intensifying cult of celebrity personality-worship, the more sentimental the better, may finally have overwhelmed precincts of political commentary. (Obama's sidekick, Oprah Winfrey, is, after all, the reigning master of that cult.) Democrats may simply be so battered after what the Globe calls "seven desolating years" that they are looking for a man on a white horse to deliver them from despair--and so they have invented one.
Complete article here.
EW Note: Not until I read the dozens of responses to Wilentz's article in The New Republic did I learn the depths of adoration for this man Obama. The angry retorts to Wilentz's very sensible description of the irrational acceptance of Obama's bidding to trust his "intuition" were ludicrous. Where do such loopy people come from? Below is one of the rare, sensible insights offering agreement with Wilentz's thesis:
Posted by jpwink -- I think that the responses to Prof. Wilentz's post seem to have missed his point. I started to listen to Obama's speech at Oprah's Iowa rally last weekend, and I decided to try an experiment. I shut off my TV and listened to the speech without the video. It would have been better if I had read a transcript.
What I heard was a series of rather tired Democratic Party platitudes, delivered in a religious-revivalist style. Most effective, but when you read or listen to it cold, you know that he is clearly adept at selling the sizzle, not the steak. Prof. Wilentz cuts through the multi-racial, multi-cultural blather that has so infatuated the pundits, all while missing the ultimate irony.
At the end of the day, whatever his "multi-cultural" inner self, we know that Obama was raised by three white midwesterners. As far as I am concerned, he can find his "identity" on his own time.
The pundits need to understand that the next President will come with instincts, knowledge, experience and character, and he/she will undoubtedly be lacking in any or all of them. The pundits do not know them well, and Prof. Wilentz simply points out that they should not fawn all over the candidates when the pundit's track record in this area is clearly lacking.
If you want to experience genuine sentimentalism, read author Scott Turow's love poem to his friend Obama, where he injects excuses and rationalizations, even for the senior Obama's abandonment of his family. Oh, the pressures of living in an age when miscegenation was still frowned upon! We are to remove from memory what we have learned about Senior's own personal ambitions, which did not include the families he left behind.
Turow, who held fundraisers in his Illinois home for Obama, when he ran for the Senate, speculates over Obama's prospect to become a "pivotal American leader," compares him to "a walking Statue of Liberty, holding up the torch 24 hours a day," and sees him as "the embodiment of one of America's most enduring dreams." Turow writes like Obama talks.
See his complete article here on Salon.com. Read more!
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