March 27, 2004
Colmes the Barbarian
Just to riff off of Jesse's post noting Novak's accusation that Clarke is a racist, the GOP just doesn't get it. They don't get to use civil rights against us. I know they figure that it should be a transferrable issue and they should get to play the race card, but they're just wrong. They try it every so often and not only doesn't it work, it just makes them look whiny. I remember the Trent Lott scandal where some angry African-American appeared on Hannity and Colmes demanding the destruction of Senator Byrd because he was in the KKK 45 years ago.
Ever seen Colmes destroy someone? Yeah, I hadn't either. Until then. The guy just imploded on himself, it was painful to watch. It was straight carnage, even Hannity didn't try to help; he knew that battle was lost.
We've got civil rights. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and John Lewis are on our side. As soon as the right starts talking about how Clarke is racist, you get some of our guys on the stations actually talking about who is or isn't racist and that's just damaging for the GOP. I know they're running out of ideas, but this one is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. And if they try it, particularly with Novak's ridiculously convoluted case, they're gonna get one hell of a splinter.
And then Clarke will kick their asses. Again.
Posted by Ezra Klein at March 27, 2004 10:33 PM | TrackBackBush went to Bob Jones U and called Confederate flags "local issues" in 2000.
How does he plan to telegraph solidarity with the bigots in 2004?
Posted by: Koncerned Konfused Konservative at March 27, 2004 10:53 PMYeah! Bush supports our heritage!
Posted by: Kompassionate Karolina Konservative at March 27, 2004 10:57 PMWhile I have defended Robert Byrd from unfair attacks for things he did many decades ago, I must point out that the left's claim that it 'owns' the civil rights issue is merely conceit--one that it needs to get over if we're really going to make racial progress in this country.
Posted by: Dean Esmay at March 28, 2004 08:31 AMBut Dean, I'm not saying that we actually own it. I'm saying that the way the issue currently exists there is simply no effective way for the right to use it as a club against us, particularly not when their argument is so clearly contrived.
Posted by: Ezra at March 28, 2004 08:47 AMDamn, I really want to see Colmes destroy someone............if he did that more often he would replace Al Franken as the object of my hero-worship. I really do like Alan Colmes alot.
Posted by: Iain at March 28, 2004 10:07 AMWhen someone on the right accuses a "liberal" (aka someone who doesn't fall lockstep in line) of racism, as Coulter did of Clarke, you can pretty much hear the sarcasm and parody. In her particular instance, she is trying to throw what she thinks a liberal value is and accuse liberals of hypocrisy. However, contrary to what whiny conservatives may think, anti-racism doesn't mean that you believe all blacks are above criticism. It just means that you believe in equality. But someone like Coulter can't admit that, because then it would reveal the racism of her own philosophy.
Posted by: Amanda at March 28, 2004 10:31 AMThere are few things more putrid than to read liberals pat themselves on the head and beat their chest about how they are so pure when it comes to racial issues and Republicans are the only ones capable of racism. Go ask black activists in every city in this country if they think that white liberals should be immune from charges of racism. People who think that test score requirements for black and Latino college applicants should be lower than for white applicants - otherwise, only whites will get in - have no business saying that only they "get to" accuse others of racism.
Funny how some of these comments accuse conservatives who cry "racism" of cynically using that charge in order to gain political points, and yet here is Ezra - with no shame or irony at all - saying that only liberals "get to use civil rights" as a partisan weapon. To Ezra, nice white liberal, "civil rights" is a tool which he thinks he can monopolize to harm Republican politicians. That's what civil rights is it to him apparently.
Oh - and the idea that because Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are on your side, it must mean that you are immunized on "civil rights" issues - is so 1980s. Your mommy must not have told you this, Ezra, but there is something called Black Republicans. And those black people are just as black as Al Sharpton is, and the fact that there are Black Liberals doesn't entitle liberals like you to think that they have the monopoloy on "civil rights" issues any more than the existence of these Black Republicans entitles Republicans to think so.
This is definitely the most racially patronizing - and unintentionally revealing - post I have ever read!
Posted by: Jesse's Slave at March 28, 2004 10:57 AMThere are few things more putrid than to read liberals pat themselves on the head and beat their chest about how they are so pure when it comes to racial issues and Republicans are the only ones capable of racism.
You've got the straw man; you are the cowardly lion; now find a tin man, Dorothy and Toto and you're all set.
Ezra's point is straightforward: in strictly political terms, the right just can't make any traction by playing the race card. Doesn't work.
It's not denying that there are Black Republicans. It's that the Bush camp has to deal with a supersized 'tu quoque' when its minions throw around allegations of personal racism, in the light of Bob Jones and John McCain's so called 'n----- baby'.
People in glass houses, y'know?
Posted by: ahem at March 28, 2004 11:31 AM[T]here is something called Black Republicans. And those black people are just as black as Al Sharpton is, and the fact that there are Black Liberals doesn't entitle liberals like you to think that they have the monopoloy on "civil rights" issues any more than the existence of these Black Republicans entitles Republicans to think so.
There is also something call the Log Cabin Republicans. The fact that people sometimes vote against their best interests makes your point moot. Besides, Sharpton, Jackson, and Lewis, aren't important markers of the Democrats' committment to civil rights merely because they're black, they're important because they are part of the civil rights movement.
Posted by: QuickSauce at March 28, 2004 03:41 PMSo how many years before we can hear Bill O'Reilly shouting "No blood for oil"?
Posted by: mattstan at March 28, 2004 03:51 PMso... now they're trying to imply that a conservative reagan republican is a racist? this helps them how exactly?
"dick clarke claims to be a republican! that proves he's a racist! er.. i mean... uh"
Posted by: zeke L at March 28, 2004 03:59 PMThanks, Jesse's Slave, for illustrating my point so perfectly. There are, in fact, far more putrid versions of racism than white liberals suffering from liberal guilt while still harboring racist feelings. For instance, there is racism such as the conservative insistence that if racial minorities aren't represented well in college, etc. than it's because they aren't good enough to get in.
Anyway, if you are going to flog a handful of black Republicans (and boy do those black Republicans get so much camera time--if that's not affirmative action, I don't know what is), how can you be so sure everyone posting here is so very, very white?
For instance, there is racism such as the conservative insistence that if racial minorities aren't represented well in college, etc. than it's because they aren't good enough to get in.
Then why the lowered reliance on grades and board scores?
If some preferred minority groups (hello asian-americans--you need not apply for affirmative action) were just as qualified, then college admissions would be an EEOC matter, ensuring that the process is fair for all applicants.
That, of course, is not what's being advocated in Michigan, Texas, California, etc.
Call me racist for noting that the objective measurements are being downplayed...while you continue advocating the measures that highlight, separate, and decide based upon race.
Posted by: Joe Baby at March 28, 2004 04:41 PMEzra's point is straightforward: in strictly political terms, the right just can't make any traction by playing the race card. Doesn't work.
I responded to this point. Ezra sees "civil rights" as a political weapon which he thinks Democrats have a right to monopolize. Talk about "cynical" exploitation of the civil rights movement - it doesn't get any more exploitive than that.
And where's the proof that this assertion is true? I'd be willing to bet that a lot of people found Dick Clarke's bizarre accusation - that Condi Rice "looked as though" she never heard of Al Qaeda before - to be quite suspcious, to put it generously. Assume hypothetically that Clinton had a top-level national security advisor who was a black woman (that never happened, of course - his black appointees were relegated to HUD and Education - but assume it did). If a White Republican Male had suggested that Clinton's hypothetical black female national security advisor was ignorant of some well-known international terrorist group, can't you hear the screetching now of Democrats yelling "RACIST! Oh, she's a black woman, so she must be dumb."
Condi Rice can be criticized for lots of things, but being stupid and ignorant isn't one of them. I also wonder why Dick Clarke - new Liberal Hero but long-time White Male Bureaucrat - chose to see and depict her as such.
There is also something call the Log Cabin Republicans. The fact that people sometimes vote against their best interests makes your point moot.
Oh, look what we have here - someone purporting to tell all gay people, as a group, what: (a) their "interests" are (gay interests, of course, as defined by liberals, but no other competing, evne supreme, interests); and (b) what political party they have to support in order to advance those "interests." Sounds a lot like the preaching done to black citizens telling them that they are obligated due to their color to vote Democratic. There's nothing patronizing or bigoted about that at all, nope. How could there be? After all, it's liberals who do it, and as Ezra just announced, liberals aren't racist, because they have Al Sharpton on their side.
Besides, Sharpton, Jackson, and Lewis, aren't important markers of the Democrats' committment to civil rights merely because they're black, they're important because they are part of the civil rights movement.
That all depends on what you think "civil rights" are. A lot of people think that Ward Connelly and Clarence Thomas and J.C. Watts and Colin Powell are "part of the civil rights movement," since they believe in merit-based accomplishment without regard to race, and fight the liberal racist notion that blacks need help from white liberals. So lots of Republicans could say that since they're on the GOP side, liberals "don't get to play the race card." Same thing - same idiocy.
Anyway, if you are going to flog a handful of black Republicans (and boy do those black Republicans get so much camera time--if that's not affirmative action, I don't know what is), how can you be so sure everyone posting here is so very, very white?
I didn't say anyone here was white except for Ezra. He's the one who is proclaiming that "civil rights" is exclusively his political tool, and that Republicans - even black ones - don't "get to" use it, because it's all Ezra's. That's the only observation about anyone's race I made, and it's really quite enough.
Posted by: Jesse's Slave at March 28, 2004 04:42 PMCivil rights are not a "political tool" and the pathetic way that the Republicans brandish it as a "political tool" is the source of the humor. If I were you and I was going to mock everyone here for white liberalism, I would be prepared to demonstrate that we all live in glass castles where racial minorities don't enter.
I'm not sure what your problem is with Al Sharpton, anyway. Can you explain it?
Jesse's Slave:
I'd welcome an argument on how Bush's endorsement of the FMA can be interpreted as anything but an abrogation of gay rights, and thus their self-interest.
A lot of people think that Ward Connelly and Clarence Thomas and J.C. Watts and Colin Powell are "part of the civil rights movement...
A lot of people could think that Sammy Davis, Jr., was "part of the civil rights movement," but that doesn't make it necessarily so. Besides, Powell, at the Republican convention in 2000 said:
"We must understand the cynicism that exists in the black community ... created when, for example, some in our party miss no opportunity to roundly and loudly condemn affirmative action that helped a few thousand black kids get an education, but hardly a whimper is heard from them over affirmative action for lobbyists who load our federal tax codes with preferences for special interests."Perhaps he should not have been included in your list of anti-affirmative action Republican African-Americans. Posted by: QuickSauce at March 28, 2004 06:21 PM
I meant: at the Republican convention in 2000 said
Posted by: QuickSauce at March 28, 2004 06:24 PMCivil rights do get used as a political weapon. Welcome to reality. In this case, Republicans are trying to use the race card as a political weapon to assassinate the character of an opponent posing a political danger. I'm just pointing out that their ability to use race as a political club asymptotically approaches zero as the Republican party uses ever more contrived and transparentally false situations to trot out the term racist. Trent Lott was what, two years ago?
And this makes me a racist. Sure buddy.
Posted by: Ezra at March 28, 2004 08:07 PMA black woman critical of Rice. Is she playing the race card. Or is it that only black women and conservatives can have issues with black conservatives.
referring to Rice, "She's a BAP – a bona fide Black American Princess – who exhibits all the telltale qualities of the category: a razor-sharp proficiency, cool manner and a good daughter's devotion to carrying out orders. Believe me, I ought to know."
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14651
Liberals have not made Rice's race, in the current Whitehouse scandals an issue, conservatives have used it to try and undermine criticism of her policies and lies. That is playing the race card, its dishonest, it unethical, its another day and the same old shit.
I'm not sure what your problem is with Al Sharpton, anyway. Can you explain it?
The Des Moines Register, on 10/19/2003, reports on some of the past conduct of this "civil rights leader":
"But in some cases, Sharpton has been accused of fueling racial tensions.
Following the 1991 Crown Heights riots, a violent episode in Brooklyn between blacks and ultra-Orthodox Jews, Sharpton was accused of making anti-Semitic comments in a funeral eulogy when he referred to Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish population as "diamond merchants."
Sharpton also urged the boycott of a Jewish-owned Harlem clothing store in August 1995, calling the business owner a "white interloper." Four months later, someone set fire to the store, killing eight people.
"He certainly made comments that many people found offensive," Greenberg said.
The 1987 Tawana Brawley case thrust Sharpton into the national spotlight. Brawley, a 15-year-old black girl from Wappingers Falls, N.Y., said she was kidnapped and raped by a group of white men after she was found in a sack, her body covered with racist graffiti and dog feces.
Sharpton defended Brawley and accused several men of the crime, including an assistant district attorney, a state trooper, a part-time policeman and a utility worker.
But a seven-month grand jury investigation found Brawley's accusations were fabricated. Former county prosecutor Steven Pagones, one of the accused, sued for defamation.
"You cannot let people like Al Sharpton get away with saying things and doing things without holding him accountable," Pagones said. "I wanted to clear my name."
It took more than 10 years, but a jury in 1998 ordered Sharpton to pay $65,000 for defamation. Pagones said the false allegations caused him a decade of stress. He received death threats, his marriage was strained, and he eventually got divorced. He ended his career as an attorney. To this day, Pagones said, Sharpton has refused to apologize, saying he did what he believed was right."
Posted by: Jesse's Slave at March 28, 2004 10:39 PMFair enough, and I'm absolutely certain that you thought he was a swell guy until you found out some unfortunate things he's said.
Posted by: Amanda at March 29, 2004 07:56 AMOh, look what we have here - someone purporting to tell all gay people, as a group, what: (a) their "interests" are (gay interests, of course, as defined by liberals, but no other competing, evne supreme, interests); and (b) what political party they have to support in order to advance those "interests."
Wait a minute. Conservatives have absolutely no problem telling the poor what their "interests" are, too. And isn't telling people "what political party they have to support in order to advance those 'interests'" just politics?
Posted by: QuickSauce at March 29, 2004 08:22 AMThe funny thing about this form of critiquing liberals for "telling" blacks, gays, whatever, what their interests are is the presumption that to be a "liberal" you must be white, rich, college-educated, straight and live in a glass tower. There is no acknowledgement that perhaps, just perhaps, the Democrats serve the interests of those constituencies because actual blacks, gays, women, whatever, joined the party and raised those issues themselves.
Nope, it must be that white glass tower liberals sit around making shit up like civil rights to win political points.