An astute political party could easily start to nail Republicans to the wall on their atrocious national security policy simply by making a major issue of the GOP’s obsession with faith-based technologies and their assault on science education.
That same astute party could also point, in contrast, to an excellent science and tech policy and promise to halt the decline in American science perpetrated by the right and make genuine science a priority if they ever got elected.
Too hard to explain? Nonsense. The NRA’s opposition to an autmatic rifle ban. THAT’S hard to explain. But they they have. Making it clear that it’s a bad idea to fund a missile defense system armed with the power of prayer and nothing else is child’s play in comparison.
[UPDATE: It will take a lot more than this, duh, to reverse the perceptions. But, my God, you couldn’t ask for a more stark situation to get started.]
Matt Stoller nicely deconstructs this Red State post about the King funeral that is perfectly illustrative of right wing comportment vapors and thinly veiled racism. Here’s just one little bit to give you the flavor:
I also think I have a clearer understanding of why the culture of so many black Americans in this country is below what it should be and is capable of being.
One expects this kind of thing over in Freeperland. They pride themsleves on being crude and thuggish, after all. Via pandagon, here’s a sampling of their cute caption contest:
“I would like another roll with dinner please.”
“Two classy people sitting behind a pile of trash.”
Lowery: And yesim, we’s be black and we’s be proud. We’s for the gubmit but not Bush’s gubmit. Bush’s gubmit is against us black peoples…
W: “What’s that old saying, ‘Better to be thought a complete race baiting moron than open your mouth and remove all doubt.’”
“Psst…Laura, you sure that ain’t Looter Guy?”
47 posted on 02/07/2006 2:56:13 PM PST by Horatio Gates (Go Seah….uh…Mariners! Congrats to the Steelers. Well done.)
Ok. It’s Freeperland. But here we have Red State, commonly thought of as the “thoughtful” right wing community. They aren’t quite as crude, to be sure. But they share many of the same impulses:
You evidently did live during the civil right era. There was nothing peaceful about it.
If the truth be told, it was an extortion scam to enrich themselves. Mrs. King carried on this tradition. Anytime you wanted to use anything that was MLK, Jr. you had to pay Mrs. King.
Don’t forget who the pupils were of this scam; Jesse Jackson, Joesph Lowery, and Hosea Williams. They practiced this extortion of Corporations all of their lives and some are still doing it.
So lets be honest, praise Mrs. King for the loss of a husband and who had to raise her children by herself, but don’t latch on to a myth and try to make it true.
—-
Bush should take back New Orleans money and force these aholes to come begging for it.
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I don’t know the makeup of the King funeral attendees but you can bet a large portion were high profile Dems with an even higher concentration of race hustling poverty pimps. It was their show and if they want to defile the King legacy with no-class antics, why shouldn’t it be on TV?
Whether anyone in the audience walked out in protest or not, Bush #41 and #43 were class acts and that won’t be lost on reasonable viewers — including many black families watching at home.
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Anyone who didn’t find that, or the Wellstone funeral, offensive, lacks a sense of decorum. If the Afro-American community applauds this funeral, they will make a statement about no one but themselves. And that is just what that group did at the funeral.
——
Back during the Bush/NAACP speech flap, I thought Bush should have sent in a third-tier official to give a speech explaigning that Bush wasn’t going to cater specifically to them since he could win elections without their vote, and catering to them wouldn’t change their vote anyway.
Simple fact it, Dems must have the black vote to win, and even with it they loose more often than not. Yet the Dems are quite capable of taking the black vote for granted.
What is worse political messages at a funeral about a great civil rights leader or people trying to turn those messages as something that the late “Queen” would find offensive.
Not simply political messages but cheap shots. Perhaps she would have been fine with such cheap shots. But the proper way to pay respect in such a situation is to not take such cheap shots, and act with dignity–irrespective if the deceased would have demanded such dignity or not.
Frankly, it ain’t about her or blacks in general.
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He was Joseph Lowery, former head of the SCLC. One of the biggest extortinist organization in the country. They used the same tactics that Jesse Jackson uses to extrort money from Corporations. You pay or we picket.
Myth buster, these were pupils of MLK, Jr.
—
This is Al Sharpton to Howard Dean in 2004:
“Do you have a senior member of your cabinet that was black or brown?”
Dean did not, but apparently, we can take Sharpton’s cue and refer to all non-African dark-skinned people as “brown”…unless he meant Latinos only, in which case we must deploy “sienna” and “umber” in our earth-tone rainbow coalition.
It really is funny to watch you “progressives” jump all over itrytobenice for picking up the wrong crayon. Why don’t you throw in a lecture on the difference between “colored people” and “people of color”?
—–
Those who follow leaders like Dr, Lowry deserve to be marginalized.
Funny, but I recall that African-Americans are losing political clout in America, as the Hispanic population increases in size.
So, explain to me again why the NAACP and other “mainstream” African-American organizations should be accorded respect, if they refuse to be respectful– or even polite themselves?
—
That crowd looked to be heavily Afro-American, and with their response and their applause, they showed themselves to be the same–no class! Just like the Paul Wellstone funeral–the memories of many are going to be long.
Insulting the sitting President of the US, when he has the respect to come to a funeral to honor the deceased and the causes they/she fought for–this is going to stick with me, a long, long time.
This is a crowd that as Karl Rove said, is pre–9/11. Protect the country, forget it. Every chance they get they’ll just want their political ox gored, and their handouts increased.
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blah … blah .. blah blah It’s doubtful that either Coretta or MLK will be standing up for any reason … not anymore.
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And The Winner Of the Most Idiotic Moonbat Meme of the Year, for the FIFTH year running is. . .?
“You can’t tell us how to mourn!”
Gee, if those Muslims burning down embassies claimed to be mourning someone (Mohammed, presumably, since Cindy Sheehan demonstrates that there’s no time limit on this principle, either), I guess they’d have an airtight justification among our friends on the left.
—–
Actually, I can’t wait for the unsealing of the secret FBI King files in 2027 to reveal the truth about MLK and his less than honorable life and legacy (thanks to a liberal judge and the King family they have bought time preventing their release under FOIA… hmm, you think they have something to hide?). In the mean time, the country remains held hostage to the unbalanced and intellectually dishonest legacy of this man and his family. Pardon me if I choose not to worship at their phony altar.
Also, I can see clearly why blacks just love the Democratic party for all its done for them in perpetuating their continued pride in their own sense of victimhood. Bravo!
Got racial hostility much?
I have written a lot about race on this blog over the last three years. It’s a topic that I feel strongly about and work hard to understand. Everytime I write about it, I’m told by more than a few people that racism isn’t really a problem anymore, it’s a class issue.
With the amount of energy expended in that Red State thread deriding blacks for having “no class” perhaps in one respect that is true. But in the sociological sense, it is not. Class is an issue in this country, to be sure. But it is not the same as or the cause of racism. Racism lurks just beneath the surface of our culture. Lurking beneath the surface is an improvement over the blatant violence and legal segregation of the Jim Crow era of 40 years ago, but racism has not disappeared.
The comments and the disgusting picture above are indicative of the racist strain that has been a presence in both political parties but which settled on the Republican side after the civil rights movement. Over the last quarter century this impulse was regulated with coded race speech and marginalization of the worst purveyors of racist sentiment to the fringes of political life. But something seems to be changing. I’m seeing this more often all of a sudden and not just in wingnut sinkholes like Free Republic, but in mainstream blogs like Red State, the constantly recurring discussion of “The Bell Curve” and the pages of the Wall Street Journal where James Taranto writes things like this:
The truth about race that Katrina illuminates, then, is that, at least when it comes to matters involving race, black Americans are extreme political outliers. This is why attempts to play the race card are politically futile: They have to appeal not just to blacks, but to a substantial minority of whites. The Gallup poll results makes clear that the current racial appeals are not resonating with whites.
Fuck the blacks. They don’t vote for us anyway.
But then, there’s always some good reason to fuck the blacks isn’t there? I wrote a comment about the continuing problem with hiring patterns some years back on Kevin Drum’s old blog:
Hiring minorities is a problem because:
1955 – They are an inferior race 1965 – They aren’t good workers 1975 – They make old white customers uncomfortable 1985 – Affirmative action means their diplomas are bogus 1995 – They are a litigation risk for discrimination
When it comes to equal rights it’s always something, isn’t it?
Did anyone catch Wolfie getting all nervous and twitchy when he thought that Cafferty hadn’t been “fair and balanced” in reporting the response to his question aabout Boehner renting his apartment from a lobbyist? He was very agitated that Cafferty didn’t report any emails that said it was ok if Boehner “paid fair market value and the apartment wasn’t luxurious.” The fact was that Cafferty did read an email that said exactly that (how odd) but Wolfe apparently didn’t hear it. Unfortunately for Wolfie, his little fit made Cafferty mad and when pressed on the matter, Cafferty said that out of 700 or so emails he had received only half a dozen or so supporting Boehner. Oops. Wolfie’s in the doghouse now. His masters pay him big money to manage these situations and they expect him to do it better than that. (I certainly got the feeling that somebody’s been leaning on Cafferty about “balance” and he’s not happy about it.)
This is reminiscent of Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post being forced to add a “Democratic scandal” to a story on recent scandals even though the Democrat in question was out of congress when the scandal happened. “Balance it out, by God, even if you have to make something up.”
Man, the media are really petrified of Karl Rove, aren’t they?
That liberal media strikes again. Now we find out that one of MSNBC’s senior employees, a man who has produced Chris Matthews in the past and now produces Banjo Boy, gives paid lectures on “How to Reach Masses of Conservative Voters with Your Cause, Policy or Political Message.”
We thought that Chris Matthews and the other right wing shills on MSNBC were promoting Republicans out of their own personal beliefs. But it would appear now that this is a much more systemic problem. The Republicans have people throughout the organization who are actively working as partisans and getting paid for it.
If you haven’t visited the Open Letter To Chris Matthews page lately, check it out. It has all the required links to contact MSNBC and it’s advertisers. It appears tha the entire DC media establishment is in bed with the Republican Party these days. And getting paid handsomely to do it. Of course, that’s why we call them mediawhores.
I received more right wing links to the post below than any post I’ve ever done. I also got more right wing hate mail than ever before wherein I was called “sick,” “hateful” and “fat.”
Apparently we ruined their Ladies Swooning League funeral etiquette seminar. What a shame.
Yesterday, Dr. Hansen said that the questions about Mr. Deutsch’s credentials were important, but were a distraction from the broader issue of political control of scientific information.
“He’s only a bit player,” Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Deutsch. ” The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That’s what I’m really concerned about.”
“On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed,” he said. “The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That’s the big issue here.”
Indeed it is. And let’s be quite clear what that issue is. It’s not partisanship, although Bush has far exceeded any other president in politicizing science policy. It’s mis-informing and dis-informing the public that’s the problem. And the odious Deutsch is just an irritating mosquito. I’m glad he’s been swatted, but the scientific agencies are crawling with these pests, not only in pr but in positions that require serious decision making.
Let’s be clear about this. This is the kind of incompetent behavior that right wing ideologues, obsessed with ideology and appearance over reality, repeat again and again and again. And it has consequences.
Bush’s wholesale trashing of US science policy -climate change research is just one area- has the potential to lead to serious threats to our national security.
Note to Rightwingers: I suppose you noticed that the last two paragraphs were pretty partisan. But I am not to blame. It’s simply not my fault that the facts and their consequences favor reality over Bushism. That’s just the way it is, kids.
Reality-based science equals real national security. Bush’s faith-based science is an angel wing and a prayer. Your choice.
That dessicated waste of space Kate O’Beirne is on Hardball right now screeching for the laudenenum because “liberals don’t know how to act at funerals!” Oh lawdy, lawdy, lawdy Miss Mellie, I do decleah these Democrats are so ungenteel! Why, they were talkin’ politics and singin’ and dancin’ and actin’ all Negro and everything!
I personally find it absolutely outrageous, OUTRAGEOUS! that Republicans are attacking Coretta Scott King and her family this way. Why, she is an American icon! How dare they! Do they really think that African Americans don’t know how to behave at a funeral for one of their own? How very white of them.
Kate O’Beirne isn’t fit to wipe Coretta Scott King’s shoes and criticizing her on the day of her memorial service is disgusting. What kind of unfeeling ghouls have Republicans become??
Update: Oh and I think they need to apologize to the Reverend Lowry. He is a man of the cloth and a friend of the deceased. Are they saying that leaders of the African American church are less worthy of respect than the white churches they are so proud of representing? It sure sounds like it. Republicans, it seems, only respect the church when its leaders “behave” the way they deem appropriate.
If you haven’t read about it elsewhere, President Bush apparently looked a bit sheepish at Coretta Scott King’s funeral service today. Why? Because two speakers had the gall to talk about the values the Kings stood for: fighting poverty, fighting racial division, standing up for working Americans.
Yes, it had to be unpleasant for poor little President Bubble Boy having to deal with something other than his hand-picked sycophants. He’s probably never even heard this stuff before.
Typically, his supporters’ knee jerk response is to rhetorically lynch African Americans.
Update III: Check out Americablog if you would like to know a little bit about the man who Kate O’Beirne and her fellow funeral etiquette harpies are taking to task for being inappropriate at King’s funeral.
ReddHedd has the full deconstrution of John Dickerson’s juicy new memoir of his role in the Plame case today, so I will just give you the link to follow if you haven’t already been there. I just want to make a couple of observations.
Dickerson says that this push-back by administration officials was highly unusual:
What struck me was how hard both officials were working to knock down Wilson. Discrediting your opposition is a standard tactic in Washington, but the Bush team usually played the game differently. At that stage in the first term, Bush aides usually blew off their critics. Or, they continued to assert their set of facts in the hope of overcoming criticism by force of repetition.
[…]
At this point the information about Valerie Plame was not the radioactive material it is today. No one knew she might have been a protected agent—and for whatever reason, the possibility didn’t occur to us or anyone else at the time. But it was still newsworthy that the White House was using her to make its case. That Scooter Libby and Karl Rove mentioned Plame to Matt was an example of how they were attempting to undermine Wilson. They were trying to make his trip look like a special family side deal not officially sanctioned by the agency. No one at a high level in the government was worried enough about the veracity of the uranium claim to send a “real” special envoy. And no one at a high level ever saw Wilson’s report when he returned. Later we would learn that Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley had been warned by the CIA that the uranium claims were shaky and that Wilson’s wife was one of many people involved in the decision to send her husband.
I’ve always thought there was something quite unusual about the fact that they copped to the 16 words. This is a group that never admits to doing anything wrong ever. yet, they did it this time in an apparent effort to contain this story. According to Dickerson’s recital, they were close to panic.
What was it about Wilson that had them so spooked that they would break with their highly successful methods? It’s true that it was an escalating battle between the CIA and the White House over who was oging to get blamed for the WMD failure. Why didn’t they just blow off their critics, get Tenent to take the fall, repeat their mantra like robots and move on?
I suspect that it has to do with Niger forgeries, but that’s a guess. The IAEA had long before debunked them, but considering the infighting, Wilson’s connection to the CIA may have made them very nervous. (Still no word on that, hmmmm?)
And maybe it’s just the fact that there were no WMD. If I had hyped the danger as much as they did, I might have been spooked too. But they got over it. They quickly pulled themselves together and developed a better strategy. Just before the Special Prosecutor was appointed, the Financial Times reported:
The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration’s unauthorized wiretapping.
Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.
“It’s hardball all the way,” a senior GOP congressional aide said.
The sources said the administration has been alarmed over the damage that could result from the Senate hearings, which began on Monday, Feb. 6. They said the defection of even a handful of Republican committee members could result in a determination that the president violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such a determination could lead to impeachment proceedings.
Over the last few weeks, Mr. Rove has been calling in virtually every Republican on the Senate committee as well as the leadership in Congress. The sources said Mr. Rove’s message has been that a vote against Mr. Bush would destroy GOP prospects in congressional elections.
“He’s [Rove] lining them up one by one,” another congressional source said.
Mr. Rove is leading the White House campaign to help the GOP in November’s congressional elections. The sources said the White House has offered to help loyalists with money and free publicity, such as appearances and photo-ops with the president.
Those deemed disloyal to Mr. Rove would appear on his blacklist. The sources said dozens of GOP members in the House and Senate are on that list.
I guess we are supposed to believe that an administration that will strong-arm its own caucus on a fundamental constitutional question of the separation of powers would never spy on its political rivals.
A very interesting discussion about the previous post on the cartoon riots. Just a few quickies and then I hope the cartoon riots quickly become history for all of us.
Today, the Wall Street Journal has a very interesting article on the history of the protests. As one would expect, the story is far more complicated than the Wag the Camel scenario. In fact, the protests were encouraged first of all not by Saudis, but by secularists in Egypt who wished to shore up their pro-Islam cred as secularists have come under pressure from radical Islamists. These protests then got out of hand. One more example of how impossible it is to tame a maelstrom. And of not recognizing that you’re dealing with a maelstrom.
In comments, Michael said that I have no idea what art is for. That is absolutely true, and I’ve been thinking passionately about art, and studying it, for as long as I can remember. More to the point, however, is whether that is a question worth answering, except perhaps provisionally, through specific examples. I don’t think so.
Mona, and some others, were unequivocal in defense of the paper, in advocating that the West teach the Muslims a lesson about free speech, and in rejecting of any argument that rioters have a claim to the moral high ground. To say the least, I strongly disagree with most of this, I’m sure I’m not alone in my disagreement, and I see no reason to repeat the arguments I’ve already made. That said, Mona’s argument, combined with those who considered the cartoons “satire,” spurred an interesting angle I hadn’t considered before.
If I think of nasty satire, I think of Voltaire flaying Spinoza’s Leibniz’s optimism or of Philip Roth’s Tricky Dixon in “Our Gang.” But it’s striking: The objects of satire are often – always? – respected authority figures or ideas within the culture of the satirist. WITHIN the culture, not OUTSIDE the culture. Even in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, the object of satire is not really the third world country to which Bill Boot has been booted by an editor who confused two Boots. It’s the British press’s hopeless, corrupt reporting from such countries. The satire was directed directly at institutions that were part and parcel of Waugh’s upper class British Twitworld.
In contrast, as I see it, Islam is not part of mainstream Danish culture. Mohammed has no genuine cultural authority the way, say, the royal family might. To call the cartoons satire, therefore, seems to me inaccurate. It’s simply ridicule, and ridicule of a figure from a culture that, from within Denmark – the satirizing culture – is Other. Danes are heeping scorn and humiliation on someone’s religion, someone who is not Us. Someone who doesn’t look like us, doesn’t act like us, doesn’t think like us, isn’t as rich as us. And just can’t be us.
Mona and those who believe the cartoons really are satirical probably don’t see it this way, I suspect. To them, it’s pretty simple: Muslims should act like everyone else and take their knocks like everyone else. If anyone’s excluding them, making them peculiar and Other, it is Muslims themselves, by acting like jerks and failing to understand the importance of free speech. No excuses: Muslims are just like everyone else and if they don’t behave decently, we need to be teach them some lessons.
My objection to this argument starts with the firm belief that there is a utopian, mistakenly optimistic premise behind this kind of argument of equality. The playing field for Muslims is not equal in Denmark. Even if they behaved exactly the same way as their non-Muslim neighbors, they’d still be judged non-Danish. Right now, Denmark, like other Scandinavian countries, is grappling with the rapidly changing nature of Danish identity. The children of Muslim immigrants are far from being thought equally “Danish” as the children of those who can trace their ancestry back to some 12th century ancestor. Muslims in Denmark, and in the Western world in general, are not often in positions of authority, the religion is not dominant in the West, nor are Muslim citizens in many positions of power. So, if satire is an assault on authority within the satirist’s culture, as I think it traditionally has been, there’s nothing [or little] for the Danish cartoonists to satirize in Islam and Muslims. But there are some – many – who will find much to scorn and ridicule in those who they think can never be part of Danish culture. And those folks will find much to hate in the Other. (You might object: What about Satanic Verses? What about it? Yes, it satirized Muslims and the Qu’ran, but Rushdie was raised Indian and Muslim. The satire was within his own cultural milieu.)
So let me revise an earlier sentence. As I see it, Islam is not part of mainstream Danish culture yet. It will be some day. given current trends. And when it is, the ethnocentrism, the racism, that is so egregious is these cartoons (and, yes, I’ve seen them) will be muted. That’s because Danish cartoons that will actually satirize Islam will be different in kind than these cartoons. They will make less use of ethnic stereotyping, for one thing. But right now, the paper that published the cartoons was up to a lot more than simply dispensing the indisputed (to the West) moral lesson that free speech is good. The paper was also teaching a lesson – “We” know better than the Muslims. AND the paper was holding up to ridicule not authority figures within its culture, but the beliefs and authorities of the most abject members of its culture.
It’s may be laudable to imagine a time when Islam can be treated satirically and with the full viciousness Tim Robbins lavished on the rightwing in “Bob Roberts”. But it’s a serious mistake to think now is the time.
Let me add some boilerplate caveats, which should be obvious, but apparently aren’t to some folks. I do not advocate banning any kind of speech and nothing above can be construed as doing so without twisting the obvious meaning of what I wrote. I deplore what the paper did, not the publishing per se, but the whole shebang. But they had the right to do it and I wouldn’t restrict them from doing so. Being friends with the editor, now that’s a different story.
Simply because the cartoons are blatantly offensive, and intended to be, in no way excuses the utterly insane reaction in which people have senselessly died. Those deaths lie at the feet of the cynical bastards within the Muslim communities that incited people to riot (and with some, not all, of the rioters), not the paper or the cartoonists.
While many details can and should change – yeah, the art argument was off topic in post 1 – I still think my first post on this crazy mess got it right. What’s behind the cartoon riots are very deep, very troubling notions that cause perfectly sensible people to think it is the West’s job to teach the non-West lessons in how to behave, or to think that when the West behaves like a first year medical intern with no social skills, the appropriate response is a bullet or a bomb. To get out of this insane murderous dance, the first tiny step must be to put away all those gut reactions and do some serious thinking about what is going on and why.
That is why we need a far freer press than we have, or Denmark has. We simply have to know what is going on. All of it, even the ugly bits. That is why before we can even begin to understand how sensibly to deal with the any of the disparate Muslim communities in the world, we sure as hell need to find out a lot more about them and stop pretending they are an equal part of the Western world or so repellent or backwards they need us to teach them how to behave.
That’s it. No more posts on these damn cartoons, I swear!
