I know, I know, fish in a barrel, cheap shot, giving him attention he doesn't deserve, yadda yadda. Don't care. For reasons passing understanding, while flipping through the channels last night, I left it on MSNBC long enough to catch Olbergruppenfuhrer's Special Comment, all about how anyone and everyone who has any affinity for the Tea Party movement is merely a Klansman in drag.
That means you, honky.
I will not post his entire rambling screed, as there's very little about it that hasn't reared its ugly head before, ever since that balanced and thoughtful political thinker, Janean Garafalo, first came up with the canard last April, on Olbermann's show. But an excerpt or two is worth noting, as an explanation of why I choose this particular moment to flip Olbermann the bird:
I think, having now been one for 51 years, I am permitted to say I believe prejudice and discrimination still sit, defeated, dormant, or virulent, somewhere in the soul of each white man in this country.
See how that works? Olbermann is an authority on the Souls of White Folks for no other reason than his being white, because all us ofays have Double Secret Decoder Rings of White Knowledge that other people don't get. In other words, it's a white thing, you wouldn't understand. Two paragraphs in, and Captain Integrity resorts to racist reasoning to accuse others of racism.
Thus it has become fashionable —sometimes psychologically necessary — that when some of us express it we have to put it in code, or dress it up, or provide a rationalization to ourselves for it that this has nothing to do with race or prejudice, the man's a Socialist and he's bent on destroying the country and he was only elected by people who can't speak English.
This is the crux of the argument, and it is as old as the hills: "Code." You see, what Whitey says can never be taken at face value, because the one thing we all know about Whitey is that he's a racist. Therefore, whatever Whitey says, however irrelevant to the subject of race it is, it's really about race, because Whitey is always racist. So if Whitey wants to cut taxes, it's because he's racist. If Whitey wants small government, it's because he's racist. If Whitey is afraid of terrorists, it's because those terrorists are brown.
This is not scary at all. Nothing to see here, move along.
He continues:
The whole of the "anger at government" movement is predicated on this. Times are tough, the future is confusing, the threat from those who would dismantle our way of life is real (as if we weren't to some extent doing it for them). And the president is black. But you can't come out and say that's why you are scared.
Let's just leave aside, for the moment, the Oh-the-world-is-just-so-big-and-scary nanny tone that aggrieved lefties peddle whenever dealing with popular discontent that doesn't conform to their expectations. Look at the list of problems he offers. We've got:
- Tough Times
- Confusing Future
- Threat from those who would dismantle our way of life
- Black President
Because, you see, if there were a White President elected in tough economic times following a war in the Middle East, a brash young fellow born of Hope who promised to focus on America's true problems and end the cycle of politics-as-usual, he would have had no trouble with conservatives.
Republicans loved me. I felt their pain.
I know 12 years is a long section of Olbergeneral's 51 years of shameful whiteness, but surely he can recall the frustrations this particular good ol' boy had whilst carousing in the Oval Office. Surely he remembers when we psycho wingnuts opened a can of crazy on his hillbilly ass, accusing him of everything from selling industrial secrets to China to sexually harassing his staff and then lying about it under oath. Are we now to believe that we did all these things because our Decoder Rings of White Knowledge told us that Bill Clinton was secretly anything other than the cracker made good that he appeared to be?
And now, the rhetorical coup de grace:
But let me ask all of you who attend these things: How many black faces do you see at these events? How many Hispanics? Asians? Gays? Where are these people? Surely there must be blacks who think they're being bled by taxation. Surely there must be Hispanics who think the government should've let the auto industry fail. Surely there must be people of all colors and creeds who believe in cultural literacy tests and speaking English.
For you see, Honky, if you don't see any people of color, that means you are at a racist event. Your whiteness is so vile and so horrid that it takes the magical, numinous power of the Sun People to redeem your lily ass. So if you haven't genuflected in the direction of one of the sainted victims of past prejudice, then you sir, are the Worst Person in the World.
There is something inherently disgusting about digging through pictures of Tea Party rallies to find pictures of non-white people, but since he brought it up, try here. And here. And here, here, and here. I found these by doing an image search of "tea parties minorities" on Google. I know Grampa Keef might not be hip to Google yet, but surely one or two brash young gunslingers still employed at MSNBC might have helped him out.
I suppose I could have let this one slide. To be a conservative in America is to be accused of racism as soon as one encounters a leftie sufficiently torqued about politics. It's really, really, not the first time for me. And Olbermann is at best a sideshow attraction of the American Left. He serves largely to function as bandleader of a nightly Two Minutes Hate for the nutroots crowd. If he's still on the air this time next year, I will be surprised.
However, there is a certain tendency among lefties to treat the basis of his argument as essentially valid, that all white conservatives are basically responding to some reptilian instinct. You'll hear the more reasonable versions of this as "Well, maybe you aren't a racist, but you can't deny that it's there." So permit me to make a few things absolutely chrystal-clear.
To accuse someone of racism in America is to accuse someone of being un-American. It is to charge them with the guilt of our nation's original sin, and all the wretched acts of shameful cruelty necessary to maintain that sin, from Fort Sumter on down. It is not a word to be thrown around lightly. To cast it in the face of one's political opponents, without even the pretense of evidence, indeed, on the basis of the lack of such evidence, as Olbermann does, is the act of a poltical coward, a naked attempt to delegitimize opposition.
I shall make it personal. I made no bones about attending the first Tea Party rally in my hometown this past April. I made a sign that made fun of Obama, accusing him of Caeserism and having big ears. I did so because I believe, without question, that he is a tyrant at heart, that his policies are tyrannical and un-American, and that big ears are funny.. Anyone who supports him may argue with me freely about these matters. What you may not do, and what I will not accept, is feebly attempting to avoid these matters by maligning my motives. I shall take any such accusation as admission of the fact that you have no argument.
And spare me the guilt-by-association, the tedious "you can't deny" argument. Have the courage of your convictions. If you really, really think that the only reason anyone could fail to support President Obama is their fear of his (half-) blackness, then state so plainly, to my face. If, on the other hand, you can get your mind around the proposition that reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of certain public policies, then take the next logical step of admitting that where the lunatic fringe of actual honest racists land on any public issue is a matter of total irrelevance.
In any case, don't waste my time with your race-obsessed inquisitions unless you're prepared to be told exactly what orifice to shove them in.
Just...don't.
No comments:
Post a Comment