Let me remind you by using a few of our favorite pundits. Take Michelle Malkin’s column this week:
Asked to explain the difference between Democrats and Republicans, Hillary’s response oozed with righteous flava (did Bill “Our first black president” Clinton help her practice?):
“For the last five years, we’ve had no. Power. At All. And that makes a big difference, because when you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation. And you know what I’m talkin’ about. It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary point of view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard. The Senate’s not that bad. But it’s been difficult. It’s been difficult.”
Yes, Hillary, we’re living in the antebellum South all over again. Forget the existence of the raucus Congressional Black Caucus. Pay no attention to the ubiquitous Rep. Charlie Rangel on cable television and radio airwaves. Look past the mainstream status bestowed on the fanatical black separatist Louis Farrakhan, most recently honored as Black Entertainment Television.com’s man of the year. And ignore the true ideological plantation mentality that punishes every prominent conservative minority dissenter who strays from leftist orthodoxy.
What racial demagogic stunt will Hillary sink to next? Cornrows and a cameo on Bush-bashing rapper Kanye West’s next album? Go on, girl. Go ahead. Get down.
Now I have my own issues with Hillary’s comments, but this response is just unreal. Malkin’s arguments that we’ve “come so far” from the antebellum South are the existence of Charles Rangel and the fact that Louis Farrakhan was honored by BET? Now it’s a sorry state of affairs when that’s the best she can do.
As for her snotty remarks about cornrows, rap and “get down, girl,” well, Malkin just reminded me as to one major reason I don’t vote Republican: The party and its mouthpieces exploit every negative minority stereotype that they can find in an effort to shame counter-culture movements and re-assert white male dominance. George Bush tells a room full of rich white men that they are his base, and no one bats an eye. Hillary Clinton speaks to a church full of black people in Harlem and the pundits are making bad jokes about cornrows and hip-hop videos, in which black culture is not only stereotyped, but held up as inherently lesser. Then Malkin wonders why some people on the left, like Steve Gillard, consider black Republicans to be race traitors.
Finally, as was just pointed out in the comments, Malkin wasn’t exactly screaming when Newt Gingrich called Congress a “plantation.” I guess her commitment to racial justice all depends on who’s doing the talking.
(And is that last line calling Hillary a gold digger?)
While Hillary wallowed in Farrakhan-esque rhetoric about Republican slavemasters oppressing black people’s right to be heard…
Ok, that takes it a step too far. Like I said, I’m troubled by Hillary’s remarks. I think that they denigrate the history of slavery by suggesting that a privileged group of people in the Senate are somehow oppressed in any way similar to that of blacks on southern plantations. I think she deserves to be questioned and even taken to task for what she said. But let’s take on what she actually said instead of simply screaming, “She loves the Farrakhan!” and claiming that she said Republicans are slavemasters.
These calculated moments of Democrat demagoguery illuminate liberalism’s three-decade-old moral bankruptcy on issues of race. From the party’s smearing of Clarence Thomas to the bigoted attacks on Condoleezza Rice and Maryland GOP Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, to its opposition to school choice for inner-city students and denigration of California businessman Ward Connerly’s campaign against government racial preferences, to its latest desperate attempts to blame racism for Hurricane Katrina and to portray Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito as a red-necked bigot, the Left has offered nothing but slime and obstructionism.
As opposed to the Republican moral bankruptcy on race, which extends far past three decades. When the Democrats lost the racist parts of the South, the Republicans swept in and picked them up. Yes, during Lincoln’s presidency, the Republicans were on the side of righteousness. But they’ve been wrong on the race issue for a long time now. Anyone who thinks that the horrendously botched Katrina relief effort had absolutely nothing to do with race or class just isn’t paying attention. And the left doesn’t need to slime Alito into looking like a red-necked bigot — he does that plenty well on his own.
Then we have the Independent Women’s Forum and their piece on how bad baby boomers suck. How old is Charlotte Allen, anyway?
The civil rights movement, which was a genuine and long-needed push for legal equality and opportunity for African-Americans, was over well before the Boom generation started college. The oldest Boomers were 8 when the Supreme Court ordered the end of segregated public schools, 17 when Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech, and barely 18 when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Boomers were around in full force, however, when black radicals and victimologists co-opted the civil rights movement during the late 1960s with the blessing of white liberals and started a round of riots, reverse racisim, and race-based extortion that hasn’t ended to this day.
Revisionist much? Allen is kidding herself if she thinks that the civil rights movement just needed desegregated schools, the I Have a Dream speech and the Civil Rights Act to be perfectly successful. Reverse racism? Please, show me how this boomer-generated “reverse racism” has accomplished the success of blacks at the detriment of whites. Show me how racism has been cured in this country. Of course, what Allen actually means is that life would have been better if those blacks hadn’t gone and gotten all uppity and demanded the privileges that have always been handed to whites. They should have accepted their legal concessions, and stopped there — ideally, we would all be legal on paper, while the white majority could retain easy supremacy.
As for “sexism,” even if you think Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem are the greatest thing since indoor electricity, they ain’t Boomers, for the same reason that Martin Luther King wasn’t a Boomer. And as with legal rights for blacks, women won theirs way back when the Boomers were still in high school, with the 1964 Civil Rights act and the 1963 Equal Pay Act.
Sure, they aren’t Boomers, but they influenced and inspired the Boomer generation. That’s the point. Because they were older than the Boomer college kids, they were able to help create progressive ideologies and mobilize the younger generation.
What the Boomersactually did, besides wear funny clothes, smoke a lot of the weed that Bill Clinton never inhaled, and attend antiwar demonstrations on their parents’ nickel, was this, as Kay Hymowitz lays it out in the latest issue of City Journal:
Which she follows with a long quote about the rise in divorce rates and out-of-wedlock pregnancies after the 1950s. And this makes me mad, partly for the reasons detailed by Lauren here, partly because I’m sick of progressives getting blamed for destroying everything that’s true and dear to America when some of the “true and dear” stuff was a big crock, and because the issue has particular resonance with me. My maternal grandmother was a divorced mother of five in the 1950s — imagine how easy that was. I love my grandfather, but the fact is that, given some of the stuff I’ve learned about their relationship, she probably stayed in the marriage longer than she should have. She got married young, had five babies, and was divorced when the youngest (my mother) was two. She received no child support, and constantly worked between two and three low-wage jobs to support her family. She was ostracized in her community for being divorced when no one else was. She didn’t have access to education, and retired with no pension and no financial plan other than her children and Social Security. Her children grew up in one of the only single-parent families in their South Chicago school. Allen has the nerve to write:
Yes, the Boomers can take credit for wrecking the American family. The sexual revolution, the divorce binge, the soaring increase in households with children headed by single women (which correlates near 1.0 with poverty, crime, and lack of educational opportunity)–for all those, we have the Baby Boomers and their endless quest for self-gratification to thank.
Sorry, Char, but my family isn’t “wrecked” and I don’t come from a “broken home.” Because of my grandmother’s experience, my mom quickly learned the value of supporting yourself, and she did — thing was, she went to community college and nursing school because her father would only pay for college for the boys (her oldest brother is a Notre Dame grad and a lawyer, on dad’s dime; the girls all had to struggle on their own). And so my mom taught my sister and I the same lesson: Be independent and self-sufficient, not necessarily to prepare for the worst, but because that’s just the way that mature, interesting adults should be. We were lucky that our parents paid for our undergraduate educations, putting me in a financial position where I can take out loans to go to law school and (ideally) embark on the career I actually want. Nothing is “wrecked” in my family. A lot of things were more difficult for my grandmother because of her divorce, and things were certainly more difficult than they were before for my mother, my sister and I after my parents got divorced. But we learned a lot. We’re happy. And we aren’t happy in a “when life gives you lemons…” kind of way, as if, sure, things are really shitty but look, we made the best! No, we’re happy because we’ve all had the opportunity to carve out our own identities and pursue our own passions. Since her divorce, my mom has traveled to Italy and France with a friend, climbed Macchu Picchu in Peru, gone back to school for her MBA, re-discovered her girlfriends, started walking every day and working out often, and has basically stopped taking shit from people (including my sister and I). The divorce had nothing to do for her desire for self-gratification (for the record, she was very against it), but afterwards she was able to discover that she actually existed — after years of putting herself behind my dad, me, my sister, and even the dog, it was like she woke up and realized that maybe it wasn’t fair that she was always the last one to sit down at the dinner table and the last one to go to bed at night. If she could rewrite history and make the divorce never happen, would she? I think so. But she isn’t the worse off because of it, at least not emotionally (financially, when she’s spent her life working part-time as a nurse so that she could be home for my sister and I, is a different story). But my (long-winded) point is that it really gets under my skin when I hear about the selfishness of divorcees, and how they’re ruining American families. I’d take divorce today over divorce in 1950 any day. I hate rhetoric like “broken homes” and “out-of-wedlock” pregnancies. Our homes aren’t broken; I think I’m doing ok. I think the rest of my family is, too. And our pregnancies aren’t “out” of anything — pregnancy doesn’t inherently have anything to do with being in wedlock, and it seems stupid to modify it as if a natural biological occurence is an anomoly if it doesn’t occur within a particular social structure.
That said, I will thank the Boomers for the sexual revolution. And the right to divorce. And the ability for more single women to head their own households. That isn’t wrecking the American family, it’s putting women in a position where they aren’t completely beholden to it.
And one more thing: Remember, Baby Boomers, that you wouldn’t be around to pat yourselves on the back if it hadn’t been for your parents, who belonged to a different generation called the Greatest Generation. They were the folks who, filled with self-confidence and confidence in America’s future after winning a war in which they themselves had fought, worked hard, bought homes in the brand-new suburbs, and produced gazillions of little yous, raising and educating all of you in an era of unprecedented prosperity and opportunity–just so you could grow those ponytails, rattle those love-beads, and diss everyone over the age of 30.
Buying homes in the suburbs and having tons of children in an era of prosperity and opportunity is a pretty whitewashed version of what life was actually like. Yes, home ownership increased, and there was a major flood of people out of cities and into suburban communities. But many of those communities had strict rules about who was allowed to live there — and if you were black, you weren’t. If you were one of the minority of divorced women, you probably could never afford to live there, since the economic structure of the time was to pay men a “family wage” and women a paltry sum because it was assumed that their hsubands would bring home the bacon. The creation of suburbs for white folks involved massive funding from the federal government — middle-class white welfare, if you will. Which is fine when it’s given to middle-class whites, apparently, though Charlotte Allen is quick to complain about increases in government spending when Boomers want them, and when they benefit, say, school children or the poor (her examples, not mine). Which is interesting, considering that the Greatest Generation really loved to spend government money on social welfare programs (hello, New Deal!). But no projects even resembling federal funding for suburban development have ever been taken on to improve urban areas, where there are a disproportionate number of people of color. Home ownership isn’t as much of a reality for the lower middle class in New York City as it is for people with the same income in, say, Shoreline, Washington. And its easier for families of white folks who have been able to accumulate assets through home ownership since the 1950s. Blacks did not have this opportunity, and are still behind. Heck, I know of a lot of suburban communities that didn’t allow blacks until the mid 1970s — and you can thank the Boomers for agitating enough to get those rules changed.
Part of that quote you left out:
We call that shotgun marriage. Ain’t they grand?
I guess Michelle forgot that in 1994 Newt Gingrich called the Democrat-controlled Congress a “plantation“.
Those poor Republican “slaves”. Malkin needs to do her homework before ranting and raving.
[...] eft, like Steve Gillard, consider black Republicans to be race traitors. Finally, as was just pointed out i [...]
Man, people really need to get over the 60s.
And I love the shock-horror from the right over HRC’s comments. She threw all those “Democratic plantation” comments right back in their faces, and now they’re trying to claim that it’s the Democrats who are racist. Somehow I think the black churchmembers she was speaking in front of might have had something to say about it if they thought it was racist.
Steve Gilliard has a good post on this, citing to Americablog’s compilation of right-wingers’ “Democratic plantation” canards.
Dude.
Not that I’m Michelle Malkin’s biggest fan, but some of this post just cries out for a response…
Perhaps that’s because it was made as a joke at a charity fund-raising event which Al Gore also attended.
Actually, not quite. I know we’ve agreed to disagree on this issue, but as I have in the past, I’ll just link to this article which makes clear that voting patterns in the South don’t conform as neatly to the “racist GOP” hypothesis as some folks would have us believe.
Damn that racist, classist hurricane! Oh wait, except not.
Certainly you’re not suggesting, Jill, that black or minority Republicans are in fact race traitors?
Hippies smell. There, I said it. I don’t really know what that has to do with “reasserting white male dominance”, but as a conservative I guess I’m assumed to have a secret Klan hood anyway, so I might as well as have some fun at the expense of hippies.
That line (many lines in this post) was a joke, right? A joke? Please tell me it was a joke. A joke?
Let’s even table whether or not Malkin says things that can be reasonably interpreted as racist (I happen to think that her posts regarding Islam are culturally triumphalist to a very off-putting degree, to violate the tabling). Michelle Malkin is not:
A. A spokesman for the Republican Party, in fact publicly declares herself independent from the candy-ass GOP. This is an important distinction. A shade of Right wing? Yes. Spokesman for the GOP? No.
B. A white male. She’s, uh, Asian-American. And a woman. A professional working woman. She has no vested interest in “white male dominance.” Is she interested in the assertion of traditional socially conservative culture as a reflection of what you’d call a “white male legacy?” Maybe you could make that argument, which would fulfill your requisite for tying everything back to the fantastical romantic struggle against oppression that you’ve woven around every facet of your ideology. But this “white male dominance” fantasy, well that’s just silly. Wild overstatement, really. College kiddie talk. Milk snorted out my nose when I read that line.
2% milk. The milk of white male dominance.
I supported the GOP in 2004, and to varying degrees and in various cases do so today. Do I count as a GOP “mouthpiece” too?
And if so, do I shame counter-culture and try to reassert white male dominance as well? And if so, can you point out where I’ve done it? Because really, I’m offended. Do we all do it? All the party mouthpieces?
Or are the GOP “mouthpieces” only the extreme right-wing pundits that you can cherry-pick as de facto representatives of mainstream Republican thought?
Please.
[...] a superior way of handling racism. Malkin is a big fan of this theory, as is evidenced by the post that Jill criticizes today [...]
Some minorities stump for white male dominance because they want to be seen as the special minority in that system. If you’re better than someone else, to some people, that’s better than real equality. Note how she draws on the model minority myth- which positions Asian Americans as over blacks on the racial hierarchy by using ‘oh noes, those horrible blacks and their rap’ imagery. Being able to analyze articles is an important skill. Often it is taught in colleges, but reading a lot of analytical articles can cause people to improve their skills in analysis. There are many good books about the racial reality in America as well. Reviewing them can greatly improve one’s understanding of racial issues.
Bill O’Reilly also declared himself an independent. He talked about his choice for the 2004 election the way Ross and Rachel talked about getting back together. That’s not an honest description of their loyalties or the extent to which their values mesh with either party’s platform. It’s a lie designed to make themselves seem reasonable and middle-ground. A transparent one. And sure, she’s a shade of right-wing, but that shade of right-wing is conspicuously similar in hue to the philosophy of the current administration, avowedly independent though she may be. “More, harder, faster!” doesn’t count as dissent.
Oh, my God, are you kidding me? Of course she has a vested interest in maintaining those aspects of the status quo. Sexism, racism, xenophobia, and all the other reactionary values pay her bills. Sure, “white male dominance” might be bad for women, working women, and women of color in general, but shilling for it has served Malkin pretty well. Look at la O’Beirne for a great example of, “Civil rights? Who needs ‘em?” fuck-you-Jill sister punishing, and why it can be very, very lucrative to rent out one’s soul.
I don’t know. Have you been on television? Are you a Fox news regular? Do you publish books with hysterical donkeys on them?
As someone who is actually white, and male, I wish I could get sexism, racism, and xenophobia to pay my bills. Sometimes-if I’m lucky- xenophobia will get the rent check in on time. Sexism and racism sent a couple payments to Con Ed. for me, but I haven’t heard from those deadbeats for months, and it’s starting to get cold in the old apartment.
This is exactly what I was thinking when I heard it on the news the other day. Then I just got more irritated about the “do as I say, not as I do” attitude of both parties these days.
Malkin is also married to a white male, who may or may not ghostwrite a lot of her stuff.
“As someone who is actually white, and male, I wish I could get sexism, racism, and xenophobia to pay my bills. Sometimes-if I’m lucky- xenophobia will get the rent check in on time. Sexism and racism sent a couple payments to Con Ed. for me, but I haven’t heard from those deadbeats for months, and it’s starting to get cold in the old apartment.”
Oh cute humor that’s it. If you aren’t comfortable and making a good living and are a white male of functional intelligence then truly you have failed and no one can help you.
“As for “sexism,” even if you think Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem are the greatest thing since indoor electricity, they ain’t Boomers, for the same reason that Martin Luther King wasn’t a Boomer. And as with legal rights for blacks, women won theirs way back when the Boomers were still in high school, with the 1964 Civil Rights act and the 1963 Equal Pay Act.”
And Johnson came along with his War and Poverty and really screwed things up, with such programs as Head Start, etc., etc. which Nixon tidily defunded the teeth out of as soon as he had the chance. (fact that when the right beats its chest about Head Start, it never has been fully funded since Nixon and even with poor funding still has shown to make a huge difference in the lives of impoverished and hungry preschool children).
And don’t forget, befoe that the Big Commie himself FDR put forward the Social Security Act and the WPA and mandated funded governmental agencies that the right can’t wait to let the executive have total control of (see Alito and the Unity Theory). Joe McCarthy rode in on the wings of hatred against all them commie democrats that hepped the po’ and nearly turned us all over to the Kremlin.
Oh and then we have all those pesky labor movements in the 1920′s, free love and flappers, anarchists, communists, labor parties. My gawd.
Then there’s those sufferagettes, making a scene by putting on a hunger strike, poor Wilson had to demand they be forcefed, them uppity women just wouldn’t quit because they thought they should have a say in politics.
And if you really squint you can almost see how congress passed laws for the black man to have a vote in the Reconstruction South and how the KKK started to grow and how quickly that whole effort went to the wayside.
Geez, if the boomers can’t claim credit for change because MLK and others were working for the same things prior to their generation, then how can MLK and others claim their work since others were working on the same issues before them? Are they also now illegitimate?
Malkin is also married to a white male, who may or may not ghostwrite a lot of her stuff.
Zuzu may or may not be an al-Qaeda implant who poisons wells and kills Christian babies in between planting dirty bombs in orphanages.
And this has exactly what to do with Malkin as a GOP spokesman? I’d think the first rule of being an official spokesman is to embrace the role. For the record, O’Reilly isn’t even close to a GOP spokesman either. He’s an idiot, and a “pandering reactionary populist” more than he’s even a “conservative,” much less a “Republican” associated with consistent GOP policy positions.
This is a bullshit association. You morph “white male domination” with the overall “status quo” and all “reactionary issues.” Ridiculously sweeping and binary. Nevermind that Malkin makes money off of a certain brand of ideology. This ideology does not equate with “white male domination.”
Been invited on CNN and ABC, declined. No, never appeared on Fox, much less regularly. Been on radio perhaps 4 dozen times, more than half of those, evil, right-wing programs. Had my own radio show on a right-wing network. Actually happen to have photos published in the book with the hysterical donkeys, among contributions to other political books you’d recognize. Etc.
Yet here I am, criticizing Malkin at the same time I’ve associated with her, and often arguing positions in direct contravention with her politics, her vision of the status quo.
Does this qualify me for GOP “mouthpiece?” And if it does, does this post about the racist nature of the GOP speak accurately to my politics, form and character? Or the fundamental racist nature of the GOP? No.
The larger point is, making sweeping, unqualified generalizations about “all the Republicans” or “all the Democrats” is a silly and intellectually lazy technique. And it’s ironic that you decry the book with the screaming donkey on the cover – a book with a thesis that I don’t agree with – yet approve of Jill’s post. Which let’s be honest, is the exact same ice cream, just a different flavor.
“I’m sick of progressives …. ”
GO JILL GO!!!
GO JILL GO!! Say it girl!
Oh god. My kids grew up on welfare for the most part. but prior to that during my wonderful marriage, we lived in 15 different places, homeless in 5 of them. I was young and had no education, no driver’s license, never held a job. And yes dumb-ass I came from a GOOD home. A good home where every good girl is obedient and does what she’s told and takes her punishment, even when it really isn’t her fault, and doesn’t speak up and strives to please. A good home with money and education and everything but any clue about teaching a girl how to survive on her own, how to say no to someone, how to protect herself from being hurt, how to value herself and her body. No, good ‘traditional’ families don’t teach those values.
Those values helped me to find a man who would use me for all he could, make babies and promise to support them, guilt me about being a ‘good mother’ and good woman and basically suck on me and anyone else he could.
I left to give myself and my children some semblance of a normal life. The wingnuts would have had me stay in that misery forever.
We lived and survied with no child support on $350.00 a month plus $250 in food stamps for five people. No child support. Child support office has (at that time it has grown since) 800 cases and two case workers workgin the phones and one lone enforcement officer who won’t even knock on a door if the man’s name isn’t spelled perfectly on the mailbox. “Oops, missing a key vowel, guess its not the place. Go back and write a report.”
Oh yes, Jill poor women are still hated. My kids were chased down the street, rocks thrown at them. I stopped sending my son to school when they refused to do anything about kids throwing rocks and cigarette butts at him and calling him “welfare scum”. My kids came crying home when another kid said, “President Clinton is gonna take you away and put you in a foster home and put your moma in jail.” I wrote a seven page bitch-cut-your-throat letter to a school counselor who held my children out of class and asked such questions as, “Do you know your father? Did he go to prison? Does you mother do drugs? Has your mother been to jail? Where’s your brother? (I placed him out of the district) What does your mother do all day? Does she work?
Oh yeah, those leftie public schools are coddling poor kids all over.
All this because they were 10 minutes late to school everyday because I had to leave earlier and leave them at home to make it to work by 7:30 exactly or get fired and I couldn’t afford to pay anyone to watch them. And I told them that, but ah, how easy it is to forget those messy facts.
When my youngest daughter was exhibiting trouble with doing her school work and asserting herself in class, I called a teacher’s meeting to which they agreed. We sat in the Asst. principals office in little kindergarten chairs and when I started off about my daughter’s poor grades, they said, “We’d rather talk about why A– doesn’t have mittens in the morning and why you drop her off so early the poor little thing.”
Because she pulls them off and I have to drop her to get to work you moron because you told me working fulltime was more impotant than being at home.
So I quit working and the previous screeds were what I got. Then I was the Bitch-Whore consumate. Never mind I immediately started an internship of my own making at the local shelter to make up for time before starting school at the next available semester. Never mind that I was in school and studying with goals of obtaining a degree which would get me into a higher paying wage bracket…
The tenants upstairs from me, a Quacker-Practer and his young “I think I’ll just stay at home for now.” no kids, no life fiance harrassed me, “You should go move to the other side of town where you belong!”
The kids down the street played with my daughter until the ‘secret’ that I was on welfare got out. My daughter came home crying one day to announce that the kids’ mother had told her, “You need to leave here and not come back, you’re just here because you are using us.”
Using them? For what? Twinkies and bounces on the trampoline?
I’ll stop now. You hit a vein Jill and I am bleeding all over.
Um, my screed about the “I’ll stay at home” bitch who lived above me really was that.
Women can do what they want. But when a twenty-something girl lays around and does abso-fucking-lutely nothing with herself all day accept pretend to be Judith Cleaver without the kids and then yip at my heels about my kids, well I’m sorry. She’s fair game.
“4 dozen times” in my comment above should read “2 dozen times.”
kate: If you aren’t comfortable and making a good living and are a white male of functional intelligence then truly you have failed and no one can help you.
Is this a serious remark, or am I reading something wrong under the influence of cold meds?
Are we really in denial that poverty exists across racial lines, and that white men can be as uneducated as anyone else, have trouble getting hired, and get laid off? Do you honestly, truly believe every white male is rich and comfortable? If so, you seriously need a taste of the real world.
Also, does this mean that minority failure is to be expected, while white male failure is nonexistent?
The larger point is, making sweeping, unqualified generalizations about “all the Republicans” or “all the Democrats” is a silly and intellectually lazy technique. And it’s ironic that you decry the book with the screaming donkey on the cover – a book with a thesis that I don’t agree with – yet approve of Jill’s post. Which let’s be honest, is the exact same ice cream, just a different flavor.
Also, we need to remember that the Democratic and Republican parties have both changed a lot over history. The Republicans have not always been “Christian-right.” They used to be more classically liberal. It was the Democratic party that supported slavery; the Southern Democrats who overwhelmingly opposed the civil rights movement. I have a politically neutral (supposed to be) book on slavery at home, written not for liberals or conservatives, but for folks interested in the history of slavery and its abolition.
According to this book, many “liberals” at the time supported slavery as a “protection” for Blacks who had been “liberated” from their lives in Africa, which they considered much worse. Republicans, such as Lincoln, saw the individual and not the group, and opposed enslaving an entire group of people (although in those days, many “abolitionists” were still okay with racism and Blacks having fewer rights than Whites).
This isn’t to say that Democrats of today are pro-slavery. I’m aware of the Southern Strategy, and how the Pat Robertsons of today became conservatives instead of Southern Democrats. but just pointing out that racism does not exclusively have its history in Republicans and conservatism. It was alive in everybody.
Marian, ever single comment you have submitted lately has been thrown into moderation. Are you hiding secret links to Viagra and p0rn in your comments?!
I also don’t think of Malkin as a straight-up GOP mouthpiece. She’s sometimes a mouthpiece of the Kristol wing that funded her early foray into “journalism.” Mostly, she’s just a clown.
Lauren–I’ve noticed that too!! Does it go by keyword? Or perhaps there is a pr0n site out there named “marian” or “conservative realist” that I don’t know about. ;-)
And there is goes again!!
The conservatives hear only what their enemy speaks, they never hear the words of their own people, nor do they notice the hypocricy that they wallow in like pigs.
Marian, I don’t wish to discredit your point about the various realignments of our two political parties over the past century and a half, but I worry that in having ended your post with
“It was alive in everybody.” You leave too much room for the idea that racism is no longer much of a force to be reckoned with.
Of course no political party today is pro-slavery, but there’s plenty of contemporary bad ideas that punish people of color, and heck, that’s what the whole dispute is all about. Historical perspective is great up until the point that someone (and no, I’m not accusing you of doing this, tho Allen above is indubitably guilty) starts arguing that it’s all a thing of the past and that the emancipation proclamation or the slavery amendments or the civil rights act or whatever benchmark you want obviates further discussion.
Tex:
“It was alive in everybody.” You leave too much room for the idea that racism is no longer much of a force to be reckoned with.
Sorry, probably should not have used past tense. Thanks for pointing that out!
I TOLD you to keep that quiet!
More on Malkin’s strange ability to post when she’s doing something else here. Do note that nobody’s saying she doesn’t write at least some of her own stuff, just that she’s suspiciously prolific, especially since her husband started staying at home.
Malkin is just pissed that Crooks & Liars has surpassed her on the Technorati Top Ten blogs list.
Blogging and Pseudonymity
Today I learned that The Chronicles of Dr. Crazy have ended, but the author has started a new blog, also pseudonymous, here. She explains here that while her “Dr. Crazy” pseudonymity allowed her to a sense of freedom to talk about her personal life, …
Do note that nobody’s saying she doesn’t write at least some of her own stuff, just that she’s suspiciously prolific, especially since her husband started staying at home.
I don’t know what software she uses, but being able to “post” while on the road or what have you demonstrates nothing. I use Blogger – I can very easily make it appear as though I’ve posted fifty times in a three second period. With more powerful software, streaming publication over time (which you want to do for a successful blog, to acclimate your readers to returning several times a day – cf. Instapundit) is cake. Even without software, you can do it with help – just draft the posts on Monday and have hubby publish them on a schedule.
If my wife quit her self-employment and started doing child care and homemaking 24/7, my productivity would increase dramatically. It would explode if she were also acting as my factotum, research monkey, errand girl and general assistant. Hers would do the same thing if I were to quit my employment and become her loyal flunky. Not sure why you think stay-at-home dad wouldn’t boost working mom.
I would urge you to examine the sexism implicit in your hypothesis. A woman is successful and prolific and popular, and it must be because of a man?
Sexism is bad, orphanage bomber.
Robert, read the link. It’s all laid out there. And she admits that her husband does heavy editing of her stuff.
Sure, it’s laid out. With no evidence, poor internal logic, and raging inconsistencies. If she “admits that her husband does heavy editing of her stuff”, then the entire case for the huge hide-Jesse’s-involvement conspiracy disintegrates.
If a 4th grader turned this hypothesis in for a class on logic, I’d applaud her creativity and thinking outside the box. If an 8th grader did it, they’d get a C. From an adult, this is a joke.
I would urge you to examine the sexism implicit in your hypothesis. A woman is successful and prolific and popular, and it must be because of a man?
I wonder about the contradiction here too, and the implication that only white, liberal women can truly think for themselves.
I would urge you to examine the sexism implicit in your hypothesis. A woman is successful and prolific and popular, and it must be because of a man?
I wonder about the contradiction here too, and the implication that only white, liberal women can truly think for themselves.
Has anyone actually read the entire series of ghost blogging posts?
Yes, Auguste. I read it. You present little or no evidence, have internal inconsistencies, and jump to frankly absurd conclusions. You also appear to be ignorant of the basics of blogging technology. As I said – from a little kid, this would be outside the box and clever. From an adult, it’s not. You prove nothing in one post, and then use that post as “evidence” to continue your chain of idle speculation.
I haven’t read everything on your site, but it seems to be an echo chamber. Have you convinced anyone not on the political left that you’re correct?
Robert,
Seriously, you’re wasting your time. You commenting here on the fact that you don’t think Jesse writes under Michelle’s name doesn’t matter.
The Malkins have admitted as much that they are a blogging team. I personally feel that Michelle does almost all of the writing under her name (when she isn’t plagiarizing, that is), but allowing her husband to publish his personal thoughts under his famous wife’s name is fraud.
I wouldn’t expect any less from an American Conservative. All of you tend to be apologists for fraudsters, anyway. But when this particular fraudster believes that blogging is the way towards a “New Media”, she should expect her lack of transparency to be criticized and ridiculed. The bizarre part of her “mea culpa” where she briefly mentions her husband “helping her out on a handful of posts” (or something to that effect) she seems to be addressing the charge that she is a bad parent, something I’ve never seen anyone make this claim.
You write off Auguste’s argument as juvenile, but you spare us your own justification for Malkin’s inability to politely address the accusation. There is absolutely no sexist or racist component to the charge. Believe me, I’d much rather it be Charles Johnson or Glenn Reynolds.
Again, nothing you write here will change the fact that Malkin defrauds her readers. Auguste, out of sheer decency, won’t release the evidence he has that proves his case more fully. Stop defending the indefensible.
Auguste–In this world, anything is possible, and since I don’t live with the Malkins, I have no proof either way.
And personally, I read one chapter of her Defense of Internment book and put it down, finding it beyond offensive. She’s not one of my favorite pundits.
But just to throw another thing out there: hasn’t anyone considered that maybe she brought a laptop on the road with her? Say she had dinner before her speech, and was typing and eating (I’ve done it). Or she was backstage doing some writing prior to or just after her speech. Wireless internet, portable PC’s, and blackberries all make blogging on the road possible. As well, some people thrive on very little sleep. So what if she was posting at 2 a.m.. and speaking at 9? Have you never gone a day on 4 hours of sleep?
Again. Not defending Malkin , just saying why I don’t necessarily see that link as *proof* of anything either way. And what bugs me is what appears to be a kneejerk assumption that “No, a minority female couldn’t possibly think that way, so let’s think of ways to prove that a white male did it.” If that’s not what folks here are thinking, then I apologize, but it just seemed that way.
Lauren/Jill, is there anything I can do to avoid this moderation business? I know you’re not doing it, but wordpress must be picking something up.
Marian, I think you’re on the wrong issue here. If the Malkins were white lesbians, I think we’d still think taking credit for someone else’s work was bad.
There’s no one who would deny that Michelle Malkin actually holds those offensive beliefs. The controversy is about the exploitation of domestic labor. That’s about as bedrock as feminist principles go.
But just to throw another thing out there: hasn’t anyone considered that maybe she brought a laptop on the road with her? Say she had dinner before her speech, and was typing and eating (I’ve done it). Or she was backstage doing some writing prior to or just after her speech. Wireless internet, portable PC’s, and blackberries all make blogging on the road possible. As well, some people thrive on very little sleep. So what if she was posting at 2 a.m.. and speaking at 9? Have you never gone a day on 4 hours of sleep?
Again. Not defending Malkin , just saying why I don’t necessarily see that link as *proof* of anything either way. And what bugs me is what appears to be a kneejerk assumption that “No, a minority female couldn’t possibly think that way, so let’s think of ways to prove that a white male did it.” If that’s not what folks here are thinking, then I apologize, but it just seemed that way.
marian,
I think you’re making a big jump from “the evidence as presented doesn’t convince me” to “the motive of the blogger is assuming a minority woman didn’t write it.”
It’s not a valid jump, if you’re interested in taking my word for it. If not, just read my blog for awhile and see if you see any evidence of me making those types of assumptions.
I double-checked our end and I have no idea why it isn’t letting you go through automatically. But if it makes you feel better, I get moderated all the damn time, as in, nearly every comment.
“Take my word for it”? Why? Have you established a track record of credibility in other arenas that would translate into a reason for folks – this one time – to assume that you really do have evidence for your thesis?
To repeat the question – has the case you’ve made persuaded anyone who isn’t already a leftist, and predisposed to believe the worst of Malkin?
Auguste, out of sheer decency, won’t release the evidence he has that proves his case more fully.
No. That’s not sheer decency. That’s a contemptible smear tactic. “I have in my pocket a list of 76 communists in the State Department…”
Sheer decency is “hmm, I have evidence of this fraud, but for whatever reason, I cannot print it. Therefore, I will refrain from making the allegation – or if I make the allegation, I will refrain from alluding to my secret evidence.”
Secret evidence isn’t.
Lauren,
But if it makes you feel better, I get moderated all the damn time, as in, nearly every comment.
Wow. My comments often get sent to moderation but now that I know that it’s a programming “feature” rather than a blacklist, I just patiently wait and you and Jill are pretty timely in checking the moderation que.
I think you’re making a big jump from “the evidence as presented doesn’t convince me” to “the motive of the blogger is assuming a minority woman didn’t write it.”
It’s not a valid jump, if you’re interested in taking my word for it. If not, just read my blog for awhile and see if you see any evidence of me making those types of assumptions.
It’s cool…as I said, just throwing it out there. If that wasn’t your line of thinking, then I take it back. I do agree that if writing is being published in someone else’s name, then it is unethical.
Marian, I think you’re on the wrong issue here. If the Malkins were white lesbians, I think we’d still think taking credit for someone else’s work was bad.
It was just the comment above emphasizing that she is married to a white man who may ghost write for her. I thought focusing on the race of the husband was significant. If not, then maybe I was the one assuming. No worries.
Sorry Robert, I’m going to have to take a national security exemption on releasing that evidence. Trust me like you trust Bush, Comrade. (I.e. your comments here still don’t matter and Malkin is still a fraud.)
I raised that because someone else had said that she couldn’t possibly be upholding white male privilege because she’s an Asian woman.
If her white male husband is using her name and image to get his own ideas out there — ideas which uphold the patriarchy, at the top of which sit rich white males — then it’s quite significant.
Your lack of faith betrays you as an infidel, Robert. Repent or be damned.
I kind of resent the baby boomers, but for quite the opposite reason. They pretended to be into their grand ideals, but they turned out to just be the ‘me generation’ that they were accused of being. Boomers were the ones that gave us the damn Reagan Revolution and two terms of Bush. They were the ones that demanded more government spending AND less taxes for the upper class. They are the ones that turned Gen X into gen fucked. And they damn well should have known better.
After all, The Greatest Generation, at its height elected FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson–even Nixon was really an old school Republican. The right wing reactionary crap came when the boomers took over. Why does noone realize this?
I think next she should move on to excoriating Generation X because we’re all a bunch of slackers even though we’re about to turn 40. That would be of-the-moment.