Southern Strategy 2008

Cross-posted at Daily Kos (just cuz I felt like it)

Mike Barnicle on MSNBC is dumbfounded today. He didn't see any of the racial subtext in the Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. Why, he asks, would John McCain want to woo crazy racist voters who would vote for him anyway? He should look in the mirror for his answer.

Let's just get one thing out there that anybody should be able to understand: There is no way -- none -- that the McCain campaign did not know that some people in America would see the racial/sexual subtext in that ad.

It doesn't matter if the ad "really" is racist. If, like Mike Barnicle, you didn't see the racism that I did, no, that doesn't make you an idiot.

However, if you think the McCain campaign was surprised that some people did see racism in an ad in which a handsome black candidate was coupled with a pair of young blondes who are famous for not wearing underwear, then, yes, you are an idiot.

These people get paid millions of dollars for their expertise in putting these ads together. They run everything by a series of focus groups. They have been exploiting racial divisions for decades. It's no secret: Former Republican Chairman Ken Melhman even apologized to the NAACP for it three years ago.

There is absolutely no way the McCain campaign put these ads on the air without expecting some people -- maybe not Mike Barnicle -- to gasp and point out the racial subtext. No way on earth they didn't know this would be the reaction from a good slice of the left. They knew it and they wanted it.

But why, Mike Barnicle asks? They already have the racist vote locked up! True, Mike, but there are millions of independent voters who, like you, didn't get the subliminal message. Millions of voters who might have liked Obama because he's not Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. John McCain wants these voters, independent white voters who don't hate black people, but hate when black people "play the race card."

John McCain, the honorable John McCain, couldn't possibly have known people would think these ads were racist. right? As concerned as the McCain campaign is that they'll be branded as racists, they had no idea that anybody would get the wrong idea from those images. Nobody could have predicted...

Of course they knew. They wanted the reaction and they got it, along with the media's obtuse confusion. Now, to a host of independent voters, Obama is just another Jackson or Sharpton.

UPDATE Josh Marshall flags this must-read article in New York Magazine, which makes my point precisely.

The Only Way

Former Republican Congressman (and original PNAC member) Vin Weber just told Andrea Mitchell that the McCain campaign is fighting back this week because the ad getting all the attention is really just about foreign oil. Weber explained that they don't want to end up in a situation where any talk about any issue would be off limits with John McCain being labeled a racist.

It's just so unfair. We all know the only way to discuss U.S. energy policy is to create a video montage of a black man and a pair of young blonde girls famous for not wearing underwear.

You can tell that the people who get paid millions of dollars for their expertise in shaping public opinion with these ads were simply unable to avoid these pitfalls, despite the serious concern in the McCain camp that they might be undeservedly branded as racists. They really tried so hard to create an ad that focuses on the issues. How could they know they were tapping into such a sensitive subtext?



Why are liberals everywhere trying to stop John McCain from talking about his super-awesome ideas?

Media de novo

When a case is appealed, it could be tried de novo, basically (but not exactly) meaning that it can be tried all over again as if for the first time.

Isn't it wonderful that we have media de novo -- campaign coverage that treats every election (if not every day of the campaign) as if there is simply no connection to the past.

It was an open secret for a long time that the GOP employed the "Southern Strategy" in order to win by exploiting racial divisions in America. But it's not even that anymore. Ken Mehlman, former RNC Chairman, went before the NAACP in 2005 and explicitly conceded that was the strategy and even admitted that it was wrong (read: immoral) for them to have done it.

But here we are in 2008 and it's a fresh start! A couple promiscuous blondes paired up with Obama in a McCain ad and how dare the Obama campaign play the race card? Everybody knows blond girls who don't wear underwear are the only way to make the point that Obama lacks experience.

On MSNBC today, they've made the point that the Harold Ford ad with the "call me" girl (and don't forget about the radio ad with jungle drums) was explicitly sexual and this McCain ad isn't.

In our media de novo, that's a fantastic point. But for anybody with a memory that goes back two years, it's nonsense. They no longer have to be explicitly sexual.

Digby nailed it yesterday with this Lee Atwater (awful) admission:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

Our media stars are so obtuse, they couldn't even conclude that the Bob Corker ads were out of line. Of course these McCain ads are beyond their capabilities. But it doesn't help that they're willing to completely ignore history.

By the way, it's not even ancient history they're ignoring.










How dare Obama inject race into the campaign!

You go, Alison

Atrios beat me to the punch and put up this part of a transcript from yesterday's Countdown on MSNBC:

ALISON STEWART: And then there‘s Senator John McCain and Bill O‘Reilly. Let‘s just say you know you‘re watching Fox News when Mr. O‘Reilly said immigrants would, quote, “break down the white Christian male power structure.”

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, “THE O‘REILLY FACTOR,” FOX NEWS CHANNEL)

BILL O‘REILLY, HOST: That would sink the Republican party, I believe, so we‘d have a one-party system, and change, pardon the pun, the whole complexion of America. Am I wrong?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No, you‘re right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEWART: Personally, I don‘t really pardon the pun.

I don't either.

Atrios notes how ridiculous it is that Howard Fineman "is practically in tears about how awful John McCain must feel about all the lies he has to tell."

I was waiting for Fineman to remind Stewart that she should find it "reassuring" to know that people are so valiantly defending the "white Christian male power structure."

Also, later in the show, Stewart got another shot in for women of color:

STEWART: Behind every candidate, there‘s usually a political spouse who tries hard to balance campaign fundraising with family, and sometimes even gives up a professional career. Michelle Obama is doing just that. And, you know, oddly, the mainstream media seems fascinated with the concept of a strong, well-educated black professional woman who speaks her mind.

In my family, we call that normal.

Amen.

Debates: On Women and Race

Overall notes: Ten middle-aged, White men talking about things that concern middle-aged, White men. Nothing significant about women's issues (other than near unanimity in overturning Roe), nothing about AIDS, nothing about Katrina.

On race: Practically nothing.

MR. VANDEHEI: Governor Thompson, is racism still a problem in our society? And can a president do anything about it?

MR. THOMPSON: A president can do a lot of things. A president can -- can set a vision that's going to abrogate as much as possible racism in our society. A president's got to be able to get out and speak and be able to unite. And the great thing about Ronald Reagan was he was a uniter, and that's exactly what I tried to do as governor of the state of Wisconsin. I tried to bring people together. And if you do that, you can reduce and abrogate racism to a very great degree, and the president of the United States has got to be the number-one person in doing that.

Uh, so is racism still a problem? Answer: Ronald Reagan was terrific.

There was also this unreal exchange:

MR. VANDEHEI: Mayor Giuliani, Bradley Winters of New York would like to know if there's anything you learned or regret during your time as mayor in your dealings with the African-American community.

MR. GIULIANI: There's a great deal that I learned and a great deal that I regret during the time I was mayor, and a great deal I was very, very satisfied with.

I tried very, very hard to treat everyone in New York City the same. We reduced crime by 67 percent. Some of the biggest beneficiaries of that would have been in the poorer neighborhoods of New York City, not necessarily the African-American community, but a lot of the communities of New York City. And I worked very, very hard to try to move hundreds of thousands of people out of welfare. I think -- we actually followed Tommy Thompson's program, and we had the most successful welfare-to-work program in the country. We moved 600 and -- 60,000 people off welfare. And I think one of the reasons that crime is still down in New York today --

Good job, Rudy. You were asked about the African-American community and all you could think to talk about was crime and welfare.

On women: Practically nothing (other than the fact that they are practically unanimous in opposing abortion). There were two questions about women's issues. Beyond that and abortion, John McCain mentioned "women" three times, as in "young men and women in Iraq." That was it.

Here's how the candidates dealt with the two questions relating to women. First, Jim Gilmore:

MR. VANDEHEI: Governor Gilmore, this question comes from Malika in Washington, DC. Women are the fastest growing prison population. Most are mothers who are non-violent, first-time offenders. What will you do to address the issue of mothers behind bars and the children left behind?

MR. GILMORE: You know, when I was governor of Virginia I had to deal with a great number of these issues, and I think that we have to insist upon the obedience to the law. And that means that we have to let the courts and the juries make decisions based upon all of those matters.

When I was a prosecutor, I was an elected prosecutor, I had to address these issues all the time, and the fact is that we just simply have to have the law apply in an appropriate way.

Shorter Gilmore: What will I do? Nothing.

Next up, Tom Tancredo, courting the ladies:

MR. VANDEHEI: Congressman Tancredo, this reader requests a yes or no answer. Will you work to protect women's rights, as in fair wages and reproductive choice?

REP. TANCREDO: I will work to product -- to protect women's rights. The reproductive choice part of that, if I heard you correctly, is a reference to abortion. The right to kill another person is not a right that I would agree with and support.

Shorter Tancredo (if that's possible): Women's rights? Uh, yeah... no.

Every other mention of women had to do with abortion and the fact that everybody would be glad to see Roe overturned. Gilmore and Giuliani support limited abortion rights. Brownback said the end of Roe would be "glorious."

But I suppose I should be "reassured" by this display. Or, at least, I "need to understand" that it is "reassuring."

HOWARD FINEMAN: Keith, if you look at that picture and took away all of the writing and all of the words, and just had the image, could the American people tell that those were Republicans? I think the answer is yes. There is a hierarchical, there is, dare I say it, male, there is an old-line quality to them that some voters, indeed a lot of voters, find reassuring. And this is something that the Democrats need to understand. The Democrats are the “we are family” party, which is great, but this is the other side of the conversation and this is their home here. We really are in Reagan country.

Can't we all just get along?

It was 15 years ago today that Rodney King asked that question. DB was at a friend's house.

The first night of the riots, the local news was showing maps of Los Angeles with little fire icons slowly moving towards my location. I called my future roommate to ask what was happening at the apartment in Koreatown where I would soon be living. Buildings were blazing out the window. I ended up staying with a friend in Highland Park for a few nights. Between the carnage and the curfew, where you were was where you ended up.

Eventually, we had to get used to seeing tanks parked at the 7/11 instead of cops. Store owners walking on their roofs with rifles. Strange days.

I went down to Florence and Normandie a couple years ago and it looked alright. I don't have much occasion to go there, but I had a work assignment that brought me nearby. It was hard to picture so much violence in that neighborhood at that point. I guess Los Angeles has come a ways, if not a long way.

I hadn't been in Los Angeles for very long when the riots happened. I had been living someplace where you knew just about everybody. The riots were an eye-opener for me in a lot of ways. The complete breakdown of order, now all too familiar, had previously been beyond my imagination.

Looking back, other than the heroes who saved Reginald Denny and whatever other acts of bravery took place over those insane days, nobody at all came out looking good.

President George H.W. Bush looked clueless, especially when he insensitively stated flatly that the system worked.

Mayor Tom Bradley was outraged at the verdict. But when the choke hold was banned, the police ended up with those steel batons and Bradley saw the injury rates steadily increasing during his tenure. He didn't act when he could have (and he was asked to).

Chief Gates presided over a department that allowed the officer seen flailing over King to remain on duty even though he failed a baton test only two hours earlier. And his department's relationship to its community was obviously beyond substandard.

Unless that community was someplace like Simi Valley, which brings us to the justice system. As bad as it was for the jury to let the cops off completely, it was the mindboggling decision of a couple judges to move the trial to an extremely cop-friendly town with an all-White jury. They almost couldn't have put the trial in a place more likely to return an acquittal.

The way the media edited the footage of the beating also set up false expectations in the minds of the jury.

And then there were the people of Los Angeles. As I wrote above, some were heroes. But many were not. Fifty-four were killed. Hundreds of buildings burned to the ground.

A decade later a friend called me from another state. He had been my next door neighbor and we were actually together when we saw the verdict handed down. I hadn't spoken to him in years. What he told me was shocking to me.

He said that he moved out of California because during the riots, while I was asleep in Highland Park, he was out breaking curfew. He was walking around looking to contribute to the carnage. He was a college graduate, out of steady work (the first Bush presidency was not friendly to the L.A. economy) and ready to explode. The riots pushed him to act out.

He didn't tell me what, if anything, he did while roaming. But when the fever finally broke, it left him wondering what kind of person he was and what living in Los Angeles had done to him. I can tell you what kind of person he was; he was good. It was all just too much for him and soon he was back in his home state, living at his parents' house.

The riots changed my world views as well. They certainly changed my life. The career path I had laid out for myself was shattered by the lack of faith I suddenly had in all these institutions.

Sometimes you look back and say "I can't believe it's been 15 years..." but this time, it seems like a lifetime ago for me. I remember thinking that the Bush presidency was a disaster. I had no idea that his offspring would eventually reach new depths.

UPDATE: Just found this excellent look at key figures in the riots and where they are today at TIME Magazine.

Department of Injustice

One of these days, the complete record of what the Bush administration has done to minorities will be revealed and the GOP will be broken. Of course, the racists among us will find another vehicle for their warped agenda. But the damage that has been done to the Department of Justice will take a long time to repair.

Here's one thing that the Bush political appointees insisted didn't raise any red flags. The sponsor of the bill, Georgia state Rep. Sue Burmeister told voting section staff that "if there are fewer black voters because of this bill, it will only be because there is less opportunity for fraud," and that "when black voters in her black precincts are not paid to vote, they do not go to the polls."

Once again, Josh Marshall and his staff are taking the lead on this issue. Please join DB in awarding him the honorary title Chief Justice of the Internet.

CHIEF JUSTICE JOSH MARSHALL

Before Jon Stewart earned DB's permanent respect for killing Crossfire, that show was on TV here all the time. One of the moments that made it watchable was this:

JAMES CARVILLE: I'll tell you what, that is the best money the government spent in all of 2002.

Trent Lott isn't the only Republican that wants to turn the clock back to the years of segregation. The embattled senator from Mississippi wants to take us back to 1948. Attorney General John Ashcroft, though, would rather return to 1848. Four years ago, Ashcroft gave an interview to "Southern Partisan Magazine," in which he described the importance of "defending southern patriots like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis."

(UNINTELLIGIBLE) to say not only segregation, but (UNINTELLIGIBLE). So tonight, I want to announce the formation of Liberals for Lott. Libs for Lott is dedicated to the American principle of equal justice for all. Leadership based on character and full accountability to those who seek to govern. Libs for Lott demands equality. If Senator Lott stays, so can Ashcroft. But if Lott goes, we insist that the Republican Party send Ashcroft with him.

(APPLAUSE)

Our group...

TUCKER CARLSON: Your group.

CARVILLE: Because I don't know what we're going to tell the children. Because when the little children come home and they say, mommy, why did Senator Lott lose his job? He was just for segregation.

CARLSON: But Senator Byrd...

(CROSSTALK)

CARVILLE: ... Ashcroft, who spoke out nostalgically about slavery keeps his. I don't understand. We have to be willing to have the courage to teach the little cowboys and cowgirls out there in America the lesson that everybody is responsible for their actions, even the attorney general.

CARLSON: Well, good luck, James. And in the absence of any real ideas, that would probably make a good platform for you. And I hope you do a great job with it.

CARVILLE: Please join Libs for Lott, because we're standing with Trent. Because we say equal justice for all. If it's good for the majority leader, it's good for the attorney general.

CARLSON: If the idea that the attorney general is a racist or a supporter of slavery, someone...

CARVILLE: Well why keep giving interviews to "Southern Partisan Magazine," a magazine that regularly praises the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? Do you think that was a good idea that Lincoln was assassinated? Speak out against it.

CARLSON: This is so insane, that I can't continue this conversation.

(CROSSTALK)

CARVILLE: ... wrong to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

CARLSON: We're going to have to take a commercial break. Insanity demands it.

Do you think that was a good idea that Lincoln was assassinated, Tucker? Comedy gold.

DB is writing this post today for several reasons. First, it is timely. President Lincoln was killed 142 years ago today (and I'm a sucker for anniversaries).

Today is also Jackie Robinson Day at stadiums across America. The same TV stations that have spent the last two weeks hosting debates about racist comments directed at some fantastic young athletes and scholars will spend the afternoon celebrating, quite rightly, an American hero who heard the same and worse when he broke the color barrier in baseball 60 years ago.

Robinson was named Rookie of the Year in September 1947, just five months before President Truman delivered his civil rights agenda to Congress, which led to the segregationist 1948 presidential candidacy of Strom Thurmond. The candidacy that Lott romanticized above.

We've come a long way in America, but obviously not far enough. Over at Josh Marshall's TPMmuckraker, we saw this report by Paul Kiel last week:

During the first five years of the Bush administration, the Justice Department's voting section only filed a single case alleging voting discrimination on behalf of African American voters. That's despite the fact that the section, part of the Civil Rights Division, was created mainly to protect African American voters from discrimination.

But during that same time period, the section managed to file the first ever "reverse" discrimination case under the Voting Rights Act.

[...]

A similar shift has occurred in the division's employment litigation section, which is tasked with preventing discrimination in employment. That section has managed to file two "reverse" discrimination cases alleging discrimination against whites under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, while filing only one alleging discrimination against African Americans in the past six years.

Shameless.

All of this is of course compounded by the examples of misconduct emerging from the U.S. Attorneys scandal, which is breaking open in large part because of the persistence of Marshall and TPM.

Which brings DB to the main point of this post and also to the reason this it begins with that ridiculous exchange on Crossfire.

While Marshall and TPM have been appropriately receiving accolades for their work in "PurgeGate," the truth is that Marshall has been an online hero for justice for a long time. Here's Ashcroft praising that racist southern magazine:

"Your magazine helps set the record straight," said Ashcroft. "You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and [Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."

Who do you think broke that story for Slate in 2000? That's right, Josh Marshall. And here's what he humbly wrote at TPM:

And finally, why hasn't more been said about Ashcroft's interview with the Southern Partisan magazine? I'd like to take heaps of credit for being the first to mention this story late on the evening of December 22nd. But, honestly, a few Nexis searches are all that's required to get all the details. But a quick search on the self-same Nexis reveals that only one article (that by Tom Edsall in the Washington Post) has even mentioned the Southern Partisan interview since Ashcroft's nomination (and even then only in passing).

Isn't this sort of a big deal? Is it really too much to ask that nominees for Attorney General not give interviews to crypto- (or not-so-crypto) racist publications like the Southern Partisan?

The media did, finally, begin to notice and Marshall kept the questions rolling:

More on point is the fact, reported in the AP story, that George Bush, Sr. appointed Ashcroft to his commission on race and minorities in America. And Ashcroft was one of only two of the forty commission members who refused to sign the final report. Ashcroft said the report's "generalizations about setbacks in progress are overly broad and counterproductive."

Hmmm.

Talking Points hasn't seen the report. But he imagines that since it was sponsored by President Bush it probably wasn't a particularly afro-centric document, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, the point isn't that Ashcroft's a racist. But then that's not the standard, is it? Given all the evidence, let's just say that civil rights enforcement just doesn't really seem like John Ashcroft's cup of tea.

And since the AG is the head civil rights enforcer. Maybe he just ain't the right guy for the job.

So here we are, seven years later, and the results are in. The Department of Justice has not just abandoned its Civil Rights responsibilities. It has deceptively and deliberately worked to undermine its own mission.

Josh Marshall saw it coming and rang the alarm bell. Too bad it's taken seven years for him to make it to prime time cable news shows and to get some notice in the "Paper of Record."

DB thinks America is a better country when people are paying attention to Josh Marshall and I'd like to keep him in the spotlight.

Therefore, I nominate JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE INTERNET

Who's with me?

Here's why, Joe

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Hold on a second. Hold on. Craig, Don Imus—and this is the thing—there are a lot of things about this that bother me. One of the main things is the fact that Don Imus has attacked Irishmen. He‘s attacked Catholics. You look at the skits that they do, hugely offensive to a lot of Catholics. He‘s attacked Jews. I mean, this is what they do! They skate on thin ice every day!

CRAIG CRAWFORD: Well, I—I just...

SCARBOROUGH: The question is this, though, Craig. Why is it that he says “nappy-headed ho‘s,” and suddenly a volcano erupts in mid-town Manhattan?

It was wrong.

Those women didn't do anything to deserve that.

It was wrong.

Enough is enough.

It was wrong.

If more people heard his show, it would've happened a long time ago.

It was wrong.

It was wrong.

It was wrong.

100 Miles and Running

What the hell is wrong with people lately? Why is it so hard to figure out that nothing that comes out of a rapper's mouth has anything to do with Don Imus' behavior?

If Imus pulled out a gun and shot at those young women, would anybody say he was just trying to get his street cred? Would anybody say he should only be held accountable when the murder rate drops in South Central Los Angeles? (Not called that anymore)

Seriously, shouldn't the fact that people object to that language in rap be even more of a reason to condemn Imus for stooping to that level?

Again, Imus' defenders are all talking about "context" and how his show is comedy. If context is so damned important, why is it so hard to notice that nobody asked Rudy if he'll continue to appear with Snoop after his arrest?

Is this that freaking hard to understand??

And by the way, the last time I saw Public Enemy, practically everybody in the audience was white. A lot of white people paid to listen to these NWA lyrics, too:

Runnin' like a nigga I hate to lose.
Show me on the news but I hate to be abused.
I know it was a set-up.
So now I'm gonna get up.
Even if the FBI wants me to shut up.
But I've got 10,000 niggas strong.
They got everybody singin' my "Fuck Tha Police" song.
And while they treat my group like dirt,
Their whole fuckin' family is wearin' our T-shirts.

African-Americans didn't invent -- and don't deserve to be credited with -- being an asshole to a bunch of hardworking young women. Imus isn't a victim, he's a dick. Stop making excuses for him.

Racism vs. Hate

I like Craig Crawford. I bought and enjoyed his book. I appreciate the perspective he brings to the shows he's on. But he's dead wrong on the issue of Don Imus and his offensive remarks.

At the end of his segment today on "Hardball," Crawford repeated a claim made earlier on MSNBC by Pat Buchanan: In order for something to be racist, it has to be hateful.

Absurd. Just absurd. So absurd, that I will respond with an outrageous analogy:

I have a cat. I love my cat. But I wouldn't hire my cat. I wouldn't recommend my cat for a job. I wouldn't sue a landlord or restaurant for discriminating against pets. But I do love my cat.

(OK. OK. I said it was an outrageous analogy.) But my point is simple. You don't have to hate someone to believe he or she is inferior or, at least, incapable of doing something you or people like you can do.

You don't have to hate people of color in order to think they aren't as capable as whites. In fact, it probably makes it easier to get away with having those kinds of thoughts. "Sure, I've never hired an African-American... but I don't hate them."

I don't know whether Imus "hates" anybody. I don't really care. What he said was racist. Period.

And no matter how many rappers say ugly things, unless Crawford has been on a crusade to end that, there's no reason in the world for him to start talking about that right now. Sure, it's an "opportunity." But the wonderful thing about America is that every day presents us with opportunities to do great things. He's had more opportunities to make an issue out of that or anything else than 99 percent of the country. He said he's been on Imus' show over 70 times. That's a pretty good platform right there. Has he ever used that microphone to raise awareness on this issue?

And the last time I checked, senators, members of congress, top-tier journalists and presidential candidates aren't hanging out talking policy with Fifty Cent every weekday. For these Imus defenders to all talk about how much "context" matters and then go on to compare his show to the lyrics on a 2 Live Crew CD is a reach of epic magnitude.

And if the president is going to invite radio hosts to his office, when they have called Congresswomen "ghetto trash," among other things, when the vice president is going to give interviews to a radio host who told an African-American caller to "get the bone out of your nose," and nobody in the national media seems to think that's inappropriate, then these people have some serious nerve whining about hip-hop.

UPDATE: No, I am not comparing people of color to cats. I am pointing out that you don't have to hate something in order to think you are superior to it. I chose my cat because there's no ethnic group I feel is inferior. And for what it's worth, my cat is probably cooler than I am. He definitely makes friends faster.

UPDATE II: The exact quote from Crawford was "To be a racist, you have to hate black people."

UPDATE III: What the hell is wrong with Paul Begala? Seriously.

UPDATE IV: CASE CLOSED ON IMUS. In addition to the luxury of being represented by Congressman Waxman, I can count among my West Coast blessings that Imus' show airs when even a night owl like myself shuts it down.

Brute Existents Revisted

DB has written previously about the tendency, clearly visible in "conservatives," to define themselves not by what they are, but by what they are not:

[Pat] Buchanan, when not boasting about having debated at Oxford, makes the assertion that "a campaign's purpose was to divide the country." But a liberal believes that a divided country is merely a consequence of an election. The purpose of the campaign is to attract people to a set of values and ideas.

It was a long post (with a reference to John Gardner's fantastic book, "Grendel") and the purpose was to assert that "the debate over wedge issues as a tactic is a loser for Democrats." But the thesis also fits the purpose of this post, which is simply to respond to a comment left in this blog by Phoenix Woman.

Gardner writes:

The dragon tipped up his great tusked head, stretched his neck, sighed fire. "Ah, Grendel!" he said. He seemed that instant almost to rise to pity. "You improve them, my boy! Can't you see that yourself? You stimulate them! You make them think and scheme. You drive them to poetry, science, religion, all that makes them what they are for as long as they last. You are, so to speak, the brute existent by which they learn to define themselves. The exile, captivity, death they shrink from - the blunt facts of their mortality, their abandonment - that's what you make them recognize, embrace! You are mankind, or man's condition: inseparable as the mountain-climber and the mountain. If you withdraw, you'll instantly be replaced. Brute existents, you know, are a dime a dozen.

The racist, homophobic, misogynistic and repressive tendencies of the modern GOP are certainly tied to their "base" organizations, highlighted with yesterday's draconian anti-gay vote at the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

But it goes even further than that. John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience describes, much more effectively than this post or blog ever will, the frightening world of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and how it manifests itself in the GOP and Republican policies and campaigns.

The lesson Grendel learns from a dragon is that humans need enemies, will find them easily and replace them when necessary. They are "brute existents." It sums up the second principle RWA attitudinal cluster:

1. Authoritarian submission - a high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives. "It is good to have a strong authoritarian leader."

2. Authoritarian aggression - a general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, that is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities. "It is acceptable to be cruel to those who do not follow the rules."

3. Conventionalism - a high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities. "Traditional ways are best."

The first and third are easy to see in the context of the church. For example, Bush's approval rating is 62 percent this week in Utah, while 61 percent of the nation thinks he's doing a lousy job. There's your authoritarian submission. And there's nothing more traditional than the oldest book on earth.

This doofus in California who mailed white powder to his enemies hasn't been reported to be a Southern Baptist, but he apparently has an acute case of RWA. 1) He admittedly worships leading right-wing personalities. 2) He clearly acted aggressively towards "various persons ... perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities." 3) He pined for fiction about a future that hasn't progressed to be more inclusive and multicultural than more traditional established orders of the pre-political-correctness world he yearns to reclaim.

It was surprising yesterday to hear Keith Olbermann talk about his own personal terrorist without explicitly connecting all these dots and relating this loser's behavior to the patterns that Dean has illuminated in his book and on Countdown.

DB has a particular fascination with that second characteristic, though... the need for brute existents. Nothing seems to foster a need for them more than defeat. Take, for example, the scapegoating that doomed and followed the Weimar Republic after Germany's defeat in World War I.

This week, Public Radio International's Studio 360 featured a discussion of the film "Gone With The Wind." Novelist and Southerner Nancy Lemann made the following observation:

"The Civil War is something that's deeply ingrained in our nation, especially if you're the defeated party. Defeat hangs longer in the mind. You'll always find that Yankees don't think about it that much because they were the winners and you just go on. You don't just sit around thinking 'Wow, I'm a winner.'

But you do sit around thinking 'Wow, I'm a loser.'"

The program also quoted William Faulkner on the South: "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

And it never will be. The South will always define itself by what it is not and Right-Wing Authoritarianism will always have a home there. That's why George Felix Allen could put a Confederate flag on the wall of his Senate office, while the GOP blew a gasket over the national anthem being sung in Spanish. That's why it will either be immigrants or blacks or gays or black, gay immigrants... whatever. There will always be a brute existent to act as a foil for them.

As Phoenix Woman points out in the question that inspired this post, the Southern Baptist Convention was established largely in defense of slavery. How it is that the South ended up with it while the North didn't and why it was so different than South American slavery? How did Bacon's Rebellion change the South forever? Was it just an unhappy accident that the South ended up with a particularly brutal system of subjugation?

That's all too much for this blog to tackle. DB will have to settle for generalizations about the South with a little armchair psychology sprinkled in.

Take it away, Kitty

With today's revelations about Senator George Allen's association with the racist Council of Conservative Citizens, DB wonders how grateful Lou Dobbs is to be on vacation this week.

The wrong way to fight

Now that the news has been dominated by the plot to blow up all those airplanes, some of the talking heads have revived the idea of treating Muslims like criminals.

TUCKER CARLSON: This question we were talking about just a minute ago, it's obviously great news that 24 suspects were caught, but it seems to me bad news that 24 westernized Muslims would be willing to die in order to hurt Americans. Are we in the United States government thinking deeply about why these people are willing to kill themselves to hurt us? And what are we doing about that?

FRANCES TOWNSEND, HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISER: Absolutely. We have been reaching out, and we have allies around the Muslim world, around the world, but we work with our allies, like Saudi Arabia, like Pakistan, to understand how we can do a better job at denying them the pool of people they seem to be recruiting from.

I was listening to your earlier dialogue, and I'll say to you, I don't think that you can target a particular population. We know from what we've learned in intelligence channels that, as soon as we focus on a particular population of people that we believe are going to be used as suicide bombers, they'll shift. They may go from young Arab men to people of Southeast Asian descent. And so you have to—you can't—the minute you...

CARLSON: Well, wait a sec. I mean, with all due respect, Ms. Townsend, and I definitely have respect for you, we know that they're all observant Muslims. I mean, there is one population that remains constant. Sure, they may be different colors, different ethnicities, but they share a religion. And so once we know that, why not focus on people we know are observant Muslims?

TOWNSEND: But how do you know that, Tucker? I mean...

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: Well, you don't know, but once you know that, you know, observant Methodists, or Presbyterians, or orthodox Jews probably aren't going to be members of Al Qaeda, so, I mean, you can ignore them and save a lot of time.

TOWNSEND: Well, that's right, but, I mean, I guess my question to you is, how would people feel if, when people came up to screening, we were asking them, "What is your religious belief? Are you Catholic? Are you Jewish? Are you Muslim?" We find that offensive.

CARLSON: Oh, it is offensive. On the other hand, so is waiting in line for three hours or destroying the American economy. I mean, at some point, you know, there are tradeoffs. We keep talking about, "We're all going to be inconvenienced." Well, why exactly is that? Why aren't we smarter about it, since we know that only a very small percentage of the population is likely to do anything like this?

What a shock to learn that Tucker Carlson is willing to alienate an entire segment of the population as part of a "tradeoff" in a grand compromise in the generational struggle against long lines.

Let's just get started with the obvious. The 9/11 hijackers lied their way into America, lied their way into flight school, lied their way into normal lives here, and lied their way onto the airplanes. We're supposed to believe that these people would cave once they got to the airport? That they wouldn't say "I'm a Methodist" at the TSA checkpoint?

Ah, but Tucker asks "why not focus on people we know are observant Muslims?" And I suppose we know this because we're making lists with everybody's religion now? We're sending spies into places of worship? Is there a column to indicate just how observant we all are? Will we have agents at the entrance to all churches to know who's OK? Or to make sure that Muslims aren't trying to get into them on Sundays just to throw us off?

But aside from the practical reasons this idea is insane, there is a much larger picture which apparently eludes people like Tucker.

The foiled terrorists in Britain were home grown. Now, Tucker called them "24 westernized Muslims," but they were British. British. Again, this isn't a practical complication. It's part of the big picture.

There's a reason why there were riots in France's Muslim community. There's a reason why British-born citizens would be plotting against their own country, while America does not face the same threat.

It's because we don't treat the millions of Muslims in America the way they do in Europe. And if we start acting like Europeans, not only is that, by definition, un-American, it will tear millions of people out of our national fabric. We have a "with us or against us" position in the war on terror. Treating any Muslim like a potential terrorist tells them that we believe they are no longer with us. So where does that leave them?

And unless Tucker thinks someone like him is going to go Donnie Brascoe on al-Qaeda, then we need all the help we can get. Treating an entire religious segment of American like crap in order to get from the limo to the plane faster is the kind of small thinking that makes us more despised and less secure. It's exactly what the terrorists want.

UPDATE: Juliette Kayyem at TPM Cafe gets it.

1965: When Things Got Bad For Blacks

George Will's latest column, a heap of praise for Shelby Steele's "White Guilt" is as close to absolute proof of parallel dimensions as we could ever hope to find. Quite frankly, there is no way Will or Steele occupy the same universe as DB.

In what fragment of time and space could somebody possibly dwell for this statement to be even close to accurate?

The dehumanizing denial that blacks have sovereignty over their lives became national policy in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson said: "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line in a race and then say, 'You are free to compete with all the others'." This, Steele writes, enunciated a new social morality: No black problem could be defined as largely a black responsibility. If you were black, you could not be expected to carry responsibilities equal to others'.

Perhaps every history book DB ever cracked open was wrong when they suggested that "the dehumanizing denial that blacks have sovereignty over their lives" was a national policy prior to 1965. DB didn't realize that everything was just swell for centuries before 1965 and that Blacks in America were always in control of their destinies. Sure there were hundreds of years when Blacks were considered property, but there wasn't anything dehumanizing about it apparently.

We'll get back to that. First, a point about Will and Steele (let's call them "Swill"): DB doesn't care what dislodged them from this joint in time. Speculation about Steele could include a theory that he was "born on third and thought he hit a triple," that he overcame so much with no help and thinks everybody else should too, or any number of other possibilities that would explain how he became so divorced from reality. But in the end it doesn't matter that it is Will writing about Steele. The message is the matter and the message is absurd and dangerous.

Also, a few words about Affirmative Action: DB has had debates with respected friends and family members who have put forth the idea that because of Affirmative Action, there are clouds of suspicion over African-American students... like those students are only there because of a hand out. DB's response? Who gives a crap?

It's the most bogus argument you could make... Sure, you grew up in a crappy neighborhood in a overcrowded school with no budget and no library. Sure, we could help you by giving you the opportunity to go to college... but it would be too unfair to make you deal with the scorn of some of your classmates. You'd be better off without an education.

Some people go to college, work hard and succeed in life. Others go there, drink a lot and drop out. The bottom line is this: Anybody who goes to college and makes something out of themselves deserved the opportunity to go there. So some losers point at a kid and say he doesn't deserve to be there. So what? Would that kid be better off with no college education? Is that better than having a bunch of 20-year-olds think less of him for a few years?

And it's not the purpose of Affirmative Action to get Joe Schmoe into college where he can have a great time. The purpose is for Joe Schmoe's children to grow up in a more enlightened household, with books on the shelves. The purpose is that Joe Schmoe's children will not be the first in their family to get a full education. The purpose is for Joe Schmoe's children to see firsthand that all they need is an opportunity, the rest is up to them.

The cloud of suspicion evaporates when people see hard work and positive results. There will always be some jackasses who will say they don't deserve to be there. Screw 'em.

Which brings us back to Swill: "If you were black, you could not be expected to carry responsibilities equal to others'." Puh-lease. That's one way of interpreting what Johnson was saying. It's just wrong. The correct interpretation is "If you were black, you could not expect to have as many opportunities to carry responsibilities."

But this interpretation only makes sense if you are unwilling to deny that problems existed before 1965. Clearly Swill is satisfied living in this dream world. How else do you explain the next two paragraphs?

So, being black conferred "an almost reckless moral authority," a "power of racial privilege." The "power to shame, silence and muscle concessions from the larger society" was black power. The demand for equal rights became a demand for "the redistribution of responsibility for black advancement from black to white America, from the 'victims' to the 'guilty'."

Hence the black militancy's proclaiming "black power" was really an exercise in the power of helplessness. It was an assertion of white power—white society's power to "take" (LBJ's telling word) blacks to social equality. Hence "black power" was actually a denial of the power of blacks to manage their own escape from an intractable inferiority.

Riiiiiight. That some were calling for "black power" had nothing to do with the fact in 1965 that there were no Blacks in the Senate and only five in Congress (none in the South). Clearly Blacks wielded significant power in America. It was entirely a denial of their own abilities to overcome adversity to call for advancement.

Also, forget about the fact that "black power" was the opposite of Affirmative Action. It doesn't matter to Swill that people like Malcolm X and Huey Newton were calling for political and economic independence for their own communities. To Swill, this is just another example of looking for a handout.

The theory of "structural" or "institutional" racism postulates a social determinism that makes all whites and American institutions complicit in a vicious cultural pattern. The theory makes the absence of identifiable adverse events in the lives of individual blacks irrelevant to blacks' claims to victimhood. Victim status is a source of endless, sometimes lucrative and always guilt-free leverage over a guilt-ridden society.

"The absence of identifiable adverse events in the lives of individual blacks?" So first Swill denies all history prior to 1965, and now there's no evidence of obstacles since then either, other than imaginary ones of their own making, of course. DB leaves it to the reader to spend the eight seconds of thought or research needed to find an example to disprove this ridiculous assertion.

Black "militants" are actually preaching militant dependency. They have defined justice as making whites feel so guilty that they will take responsibility for black advancement. One casualty of this, Steele says, has been education: "We got remedies pitched at injustices rather than at black academic excellence—school busing, black role models as teachers, black history courses, 'diverse' reading lists, 'Ebonics,' multiculturalism, culturally 'inclusive' classes, standardized tests corrected for racial bias, and so on." Reading, writing and arithmetic? Later. Maybe.

Maybe not. Not if classrooms are suffused with "a foggy academic relativism in which scholastic excellence is associated with elitism, and rote development with repression." Steele, a former professor of English, notes that "inner-city black English diverges more from standard English today than it did in the fifties."

Again, completely divorced from reality. Take the following statement: "I ripped a CD to my iMac and downloaded the MP3's to my iPod." Sounds just like something any White kid might have said in the fifties, right Daddy-O?

In Swill's world, the codification of language only happens to victims. White kids today would all be talking like the Founding Fathers if it hadn't been for that little-reported White self-victimization. When students are taught Black History it is only in lieu of math or reading. Teachers go out of their way to avoid using words and numbers when discussing Black History.

And all of this is happening because of the snowball that LBJ pushed down a hill in 1965. Before then, everything was working perfectly.

UPDATE: In case it didn't come through in DB's late-night rant, Swill's early assertion that proponents of the path LBJ chose for America are like George Wallace is laughable. People of Wallace's ilk believed Blacks to be inferior, which is infuriating and offensively wrong.

The purpose of LBJ's and ensuing Civil Rights legislation was to compensate for the loss of opportunites created by the fact that Wallace wasn't just some nut-job, but the Governor of a state. In other words, LBJ tried to mitigate the problems caused not by any shortcomings in Blacks, but by people in power who had created a playing field entirely unfair to them and for an immoral reason.

And here's Swill, represented by a party whose chairman, Ken Mehlman, even apologized last year for a national strategy that benefited from the marginalization of Blacks in America. And Swill has the audacity to pretend that the problems that exist today have nothing to do with the fact that his party has been in power the majority of the time since LBJ pushed that legislation, and they've been undermining it since that day.

Furthermore, it's just as much of a lie to claim that LBJ proponents have removed personal responsibility from the equation. That's just a strawman tactic. Is every individual going to be a responsible citizen? Of course not. But everybody deserves an opportunity.

Fair is fair

This may be hard for some to swallow, but there's no denying that it's true: The American government and American employers have tacitly encouraged illegal immigration.

Employers have hired illegals and taken advantage of their status, while the government has sporadically and arbitrarily enforced the law. How could anyone deny that the people coming here did so without the federal government looking the other way?

Why is it important to face this fact? Because although it is entirely appropriate for the United States to decide that, as of this minute, the laws and borders will be enforced fervently, it is absurd and immoral to pretend that this seriousness of purpose began in the distant past and that people who came here to establish families and to work for the American Dream did so without any complicity from those who would punish them today.

If we recognize the contributions of the undocumented workers who have been here for some time, does that tell the world that it's OK to break the law? Lou Dobbs and others will say it does, but the truth is that this country already told them that. It is absolutely delusional to think that we can focus all the burden of this policy transformation on to a hard-working minority and somehow communicate to the world that we are the shining emblem of justice.

This government isn't suddenly telling people they can no longer jaywalk. These immigrants have established lives here. Anybody claiming to have respect for life, for families, for work... for the American Dream should have enough room in his or her heart to accept the people who are already here.

If we don't want to tell the world that it's OK to break the law, we should ask our Senators and Congressmen to stop figuring out how to change the laws so that the president isn't breaking them anymore.

UPDATE: Following up, DB would like to add that it is not hard to understand why people in Bay Buchanan's "deport them all" camp would feel no hypocrisy in taking a position that people in the U.S. illegally deserve no "reward" for being here. People like her and Dobbs aren't individually culpable for the lax enforcement of the immigration laws. To the contrary, they've been demanding tougher enforcement for years.

But they, more than anyone, should recognize that collectively, our nation has not respected its own laws. Dobbs' show would not even have its primary focus had the federal government been enforcing the laws and had American employers been hiring legal workers exclusively. It should be more clear to the people who don't feel personally responsible for the problem and who have been critical of the federal government that it is in no position to act with any legitimacy as though it believes its laws are sacrosanct.

The point is that the message, "You get rewarded for breaking the law," isn't going to be sent out by anything the government does at this point. That message has been sent for decades and the people who came here to work are here because they received it.

The only message we should be worried about sending to the rest of the world at this point is "The people with power and money in our democracy will sell out their own citizens by hiring cheap foreign labor until it becomes politically untenable, at which point they will tell the minorities working for peanuts to get the hell out."

Tougher border security and consistent enforcement of the laws is not only appropriate, but DB demands it. Treating working people with families, already in our communities, like garbage to be dragged to the curb, however...

Baghdad, Alabama

But when impatient patriots in this country finally demanded their freedom and their rights, what once seemed impossible suddenly became inevitable. So it was in America. So it was in much of the world. And so it will be in the Middle East. -- Condolezza Rice, Oct. 22, 2005

Yes, Condi, Iraq today is just like Alabama back when you were a kid. Saddam Hussein was just like George Wallace... except for the born-again Christian part.

Who could forget when Martin Luther King Jr. used "shock and awe" to pound the South into submission?

Remember when the NAACP made all those klan members form a naked pyramid?

How about when the U.S. dropped JDAM bombs on a Birmingham restaurant and scraped flesh off the walls to see if any of the diners happened to be Wallace? (Oops, not him!)

Is there any tragedy this administration won't use to sell their horrible foreign policy?