Charles M. Blow, Race-hustler and Professinal Whiner

I could post a commentary on Charles M. Blow's latest three articles which are even worse in the race-hustling and black victimhood department than normal. But it would actually just make everybody stupider to read them. So I'm going to post something much more intelligent and uplifting which my kids recently showed me.

Furthering the Police Brutality Narrative

This is a pretty pointless article, and this was the most ridiculous part:

A grand jury, meanwhile, is examining evidence to determine whether Darren Wilson should stand trial for shooting Michael Brown. The grand jury, originally impaneled until this month, has had its term extended to January—a date that not only falls after upcoming elections, but well into the winter, when cold weather might diminish the likelihood of rioting if there is not an indictment. Last week, the Missouri secretary of state’s office announced that more than three thousand people in Ferguson had registered to vote in the aftermath of the shooting. The next day, officials reversed themselves and said that they’d made an error: the actual number was a hundred twenty eight. The revision, in an already tense environment, inspired suspicions that the keepers of the status quo were somehow manipulating the numbers.

Italics mine. A little poking around shows the reason for the initial mistake in the original reported number of 3,287: this number included all name and address changes, marriages plus voters tagged in some kind of recent recount.

The part that cracks me up is the part about the manipulations of the evil "keepers of the status quo". This characterization would make sense if the status quo had under-reported the number and had to correct itself upward. But if their are any suspicions to be taken from the downward correction they would properly be that the agitators are doing the manipulation. And, to my mind, it was probably just a mistake.

However to people determined to create conspiracies and the perception of victimization from an unfortunate event, everything which happens plays into the grand narrative of police brutality and the attempt to cover it up. If there was any violence on the part of Officer Wilson the public has yet to see evidence of it.

Lighten Up, Race-baiters

It's worth sitting through the stupid ads, trust me. Then turn the volume up on the bottom bar.

Awesome. Love the bus scene.

Jonah Goldberg on the anti-Muslim myth

Jonah Goldberg discusses that oh-so-scary anti-Muslim backlash for which the media doth greatly jones, but which is as elusive as Sasquatch in an Albertan blizzard. Excerpt:

In 2001, there were twice as many anti-Jewish incidents as there were anti-Muslim, again according to the FBI. In 2002 and pretty much every year since, anti-Jewish incidents have outstripped anti-Muslim ones by at least 6 to 1. Why aren't we talking about the anti-Jewish climate in America?

Because there isn't one. And there isn't an anti-Muslim climate either. Yes, there's a lot of heated rhetoric on the Internet. Absolutely, some Americans don't like Muslims. But if you watch TV or movies or read, say, the op-ed page of the New York Times - never mind left-wing blogs - you'll hear much more open bigotry toward evangelical Christians (in blogspeak, the "Taliban wing of the Republican Party") than you will toward Muslims.

Italics mine. Does anyone not realize how much our society marginalizes people who really are racists or who are bigoted against people based on their religion? Well, yes, it does seem like you're allowed to be bigoted against conservative Catholics and Evangelicals as Jonah points out. But I'll axe you this question if you doubt my assertion about bigotry being frowned upon generally: do you know anyone who is anti-Semitic, racist against blacks and Hispanics or regularly uses words like "towel-head" or "rag-head"? Are they unemployed? If they are employed, how much money do they make? See.

The canard of gathering anti-Muslim mobs is the stuff of media fantasy.

NAACP: Civil Rights Abuser

Dennis Prager delivers devastating clarity on the continued race card playing by the left, especially the NAACP. Here's a taste:

One year and eight months after the president's election, one can say with certitude that the election of a black has done nothing to change the dominant story (because the Left dominates our stories) about American racism. It is as central to the liberal/Left depiction of America now as it has been since the civil rights era.

But there is one very big difference. The vast majority of non-blacks no longer cower before the charge of racism. You can see it in the anger and ferocity of various tea parties' responses to the false accusation of the NAACP. Before the election of Obama, an NAACP attack on one's anti-racist credentials might have been debilitating. No more.

It seems quite possible that the NAACP has now lost whatever moral clout it had among Americans. It is now seen by more and more Americans as what in fact it became some time ago―an abuser of its civil rights moral cachet.

Please read the entire article to experience the full effect of a well-reasoned Prager argument. Every paragraph of it is powerful, backed by evidence and common sense, and contributes to the conclusion:

Therefore, if the NAACP's preoccupation with white racism reflects the thinking of most or even many blacks, it means that there is nothing white America can do to undo the ongoing perception of endemic racism in this country―a perception that is now considerably more destructive to blacks than to American society as a whole.

"Something between France and Greece"

Please bear with the advertising at the beginning, this is worth watching.

Source.

I See Blind People

Letterman's jibe to Obama, "How long have you been a black man?" humorously highlights a conundrum I was pondering yesterday. If Obama's recent drop in the polls is due to race then it's obvious that those supporters now deserting him did not realize he was black previously. Now they've opened their eyes and are horrified—"My God... he's black!!"

This is possible, I suppose, because we've been told many times by the left that skin color isn't enough to be a true member of the black race, ideology is also a key component. If you doubt this, just google sharpton kinfolk skinfolk. So following this line of thinking, maybe people knew that Obama had black skin, but they thought he wouldn't be as "black" in his ideas. The following video may help clarify this, or maybe not.

Of course, this is all very, very silly. Tolerating a diversity of opinion should surely be a greater goal than the admiration of diverse skin colors in any society. This is precisely why Obama has distanced himself from the race card playing—at least officially.

Vox Nova: "...we are all racists"

Sam Rocha from Vox Nova seems to be attempting to confuse the current race card situation further. If so, he succeeds. I'll attempt to provide some corrections in my response below.

We all know the drill: X calls Y a ‘racist,’ then, Y calls X ‘racist’ for calling Y a ‘racist.’ Then, others enter the fray and repeat the accusations. And this is a major part of what passes as “politics” these days.

Uh, no. The Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Jimmy Carter (X) call those who oppose Obama's recent domestic proposals (Y) "racists", then camp Y accuses camp X of being a bunch of asinine political hacks, which is how those in camp Y perceive them. It's too bad this is what the Democrats seem to desire to have pass for politics, since they were the first to play the race card in this latest episode, and can hardly expect those whom they attacked not to defend themselves.

It seems too easy to forget that racism is not just a term, it is a real experience that happens to human persons.

This is possibly the stupidest line in the article. For normal people, especially those engaged in the argument, it is not "easy to forget" that any given word isn't "just a term", unless you are some sort of advertising copy writer, pop song writer or political sloganeer like Pelosi. It does seem easy for some to hurl the accusation out there, like tossing spaghetti against the wall, that some people in the Y group don't realize racism actually exists in the world.

Then Rocha goes on to posit a difference between a discriminatory racism which he claims everyone possesses and a capitalized Racism which includes supremacy in addition to discrimination.

In another sense, we all Racists but differ in relations and degrees of Racism and ought to try to eradicate the spirit of Racism from the human condition.

I like how he dropped into street slang there—"we all Racists"—to emphasize his point. It's cool; the bro is keepin' it real—don't fault my man fo' that, dog.

Attempting to sanely discern the difference between the two is what it would take to elevate political discourse on race from hand-wringing to an authentic consideration of what it means to be a racist in a folk sense of the term—a sensibility that doesn’t suffer from the need for these tortured categories.

I won't take further advantage of this embarrassment by quoting any more from it. My main point is that this is what passes for logic and thoughtfulness in the leftist mind. At least he admits that his categories are tortured; I question any need of them whatsoever. I've posted already on a few of the many successful attempts to provide sanity and discernment to correct the silly talk, and by them one can see that the political discourse has already been elevated on this issue by people like Toby Harnden, Michael Steele and Brit Hume. And since President Obama has spoken definitively on the issue stating that his opponents are not racist, the case would appear to be closed at this point. To behave as if no one has spoken with clarity, sensibility and persuasiveness in what Mr. Rocha calls the "Y group" on this matter is extremely misleading.

Some sanity from across the pond

H/T Medved, (again). Had to post this great Telegraph piece by Toby Harnden.

But wait a minute. Mr Obama convincingly prevailed over John McCain in last November's election, an event that many American liberals argued could never happen in "racist" America. He has, moreover, not been shot by a redneck, giving the lie to an almost routine pre-election assertion in Europe that a black man could never be elected President, and if he was, he would be assassinated.

I was told to my face by a Canadian idiot that Obama was going to be shot because he was black. Those racist Americans, eh.

The election was a little over 10 months ago. Has America really turned around and stumbled back into the sulphurous swamps of racial hatred?

The short answer is no. Mr Obama is becoming a much less popular figure than he was when he entered office, partly because of the usual laws of political gravity, but also because of the unrealistic expectations he encouraged and the number of mistakes he has made.

My emphasis. He goes on:

Mr Obama was as different as it was possible to be from the likes of the Rev Jesse Jackson and the Rev Al Sharpton, black politicians who had built their careers on exploiting racial grievances. He was not the Rev Reginald Bacon, the Harlem racial agitator in Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, the 1987 blockbuster novel that centred on racial tensions in the Big Apple; instead, he was Bishop Warren Bottomley.

The churchman, Wolfe wrote, was "one of those well-educated, urbane black people who immediately create the Halo Effect in the eyes of white people....He was handsome, slender, about forty-five, athletic in build. He had a ready smile, a glittering eye, a firm handshake..."

It was a remarkably prescient description of Mr Obama. As now Vice President Joe Biden put it in a characteristic stream of consciousness that condemned him to the ranks of also-ran presidential candidates: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Nice work. It's good to see that these Brits aren't afraid to point out the stupidities of the Democratic Party like the American media is. He goes on to point out Obama's race-card mistakes including the Henry Louis Gates affair. All this race card stuff is going to backfire; people voted for Obama because he wasn't Jackson or Sharpton or the fictional Reverend Bacon.

Steele: "I know what racism is and that is not racism"

Michael Steele states it eloquently.

This summer, Americans had an opportunity to witness the miracle of our political system. All over the country ordinary American men and women, concerned about the Democrats’ policies coming out of Washington, took a stand and expressed their opposition. It was grassroots American political activism at its finest. Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike voiced their opinions in public forums to public officials. It was a shining example of how our Republic was designed to function. This activism has not faded with the summer sun. Last week Americans from all walks of life flooded Washington D.C. and continued their public opposition to President Obama’s government-run experiments.

As an African American, I know what racism is and that is not racism. Just like the millions of African Americans in this country who have fought and overcome on their way to the American dream, I have experienced racism firsthand. It is something you never forget. The civil rights movement helped to elevate the nation’s conscience on matters of race. Proud Americans, black and white, fought for too long and too hard to have the claim of racism be used in such a cavalier fashion. Blind charges of racism, where none exist, not only are an affront to those who have suffered the effects of racism, but it weakens our efforts to address true acts of racism and makes them more difficult to overcome.

President Obama Says Criticism Not Based On Race; Jimmy Carter is Wrong

President Obama is rightfully correcting the "racers", via Robert Gibbs, his honky cracker Press Secretary.

Amid mounting claims that the hostility toward the president has an undercurrent of racial animus, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on Wednesday that President Obama disagrees.

"The president does not believe that the criticism comes based on the color of his skin," Gibbs said.

Jimmy Carter holds an opposing view, it would seem, and obviously doesn't realize how damaging projecting ancestral viewpoints on all of America can be. Of course, Carter still hasn't learned how damaging it is to play footsie with Hamas, even after they try to blow him up. Rush Limbaugh shows great disrespect to swollen veins of all nationalities when he refers to Carter as the National Hemorrhoid.

Brit Hume on the Race Card and Cheapening the Charge of Racism

Brit is damn right that the knee-jerk of calling anyone a racist who opposes Obama "cheapens the charge." I've met real racists—white and black—and they're almost all Democrats or so far to the right as to be in fever-swamp territory. Words do indeed mean things, let's apply them appropriately. I'll admit I've used words inappropriately in the past. But the sustained chorus of allegations of racism can be heard from the left alone.