Sunday, April 28, 2013

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the rightbloggers who think the Boston bombings are a good reason to stop the immigration bill, or immigration in general. The whole thing reminds me of the Palmer Raids as performed by a clown troupe.

106 comments:

  1. Tudor Jennings10:19 PM

    Enoch Powell wasn't a "whackjob". A lot of what he said in his 'rivers of blood' speech turned out to be true - especially economically. The only problem (for him) was that it attracted a few nutters - from both liberal and far right wing - who gathered like moths to a flame.
    And so, of course, the actual intent and content of the speech is now lost to the trope. So, blah blah Enoch Powell, racist, whackjob, blah blah. Which is a shame.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard10:42 PM

    Legacies have a habit of escaping one's control. Just look at William Jennings Bryan, he had a distinguished career as a populist, but he had to blow his legacy by representing the cause of religious fundamentalism in an infamous miscarriage of justice.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Leeds man10:54 PM

    I've read the speech. What do you think the intent and content were?

    ReplyDelete
  4. montag211:07 PM

    Well, if anything, that proves that Mistah Kurtz, he still brain-dead, as well as that Sowell has been taking his stupidity medication regularly.

    And Coulter? This is just another opportunity for her to throw raw meat to the mouth-breathers. Of course, her list does not include such well-assimilated white people such as... Charles Whitman, or Charlie Starkweather, or Charles Manson--or that sterling example of raw will over whom Ayn Rand drooled, William Hickman.


    Maybe Coulter is backhandedly making the assertion that only white people are allowed to kill others. (That would certainly be in keeping with the government's view that anyone fighting back against our invaders is guilty of a war crime.)


    And yet, there are white people all over this country totally unaware of their special status. Someone inform the Tea Partiers, immediately! (On second thought, no, please don't.)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Fats Durston11:26 PM

    Recently, some supposedly persecuted Somalis were generously granted
    asylum to immigrate to Minnesota communities, only to later fly back to
    Somalia to wage jihad. Were they true refugees fleeing persecution, or
    extremists looking for a breather in the United States?


    As someone who worked one block from the "crack stacks"--the public housing projects that hundreds of Somalis ended up living in in Minneapolis--let's just say the "breather" imagined by S.T.D. Hanson is a bit overstated.

    And how about that bridge (a couple more blocks away) that the Jihadists took out across the Mississippi?! Oh, wait, you mean to say that it was cutbacks of governmental oversight under Republican administration that killed 13 and injured 145, not neighborhood Somali terrorists? Well, don't that beat all.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Fats Durston11:34 PM

    Cultural self-confidence is the true key to immigrant assimilation – and
    fully compatible with respect for a wide variety of ethnicities and
    religions, as Americans once knew.


    Yes, that respect for a wide variety of ethnicities ... as Americans once knew:

    ReplyDelete
  7. Malignant Bouffant12:25 AM

    Charles Whitman, or Charlie Starkweather, or Charles Manson
    I feel as if I'm not living (or killing) up to my legal first name.

    ReplyDelete
  8. petesh12:47 AM

    Did you ever see Powell? This is the man for whom the expression "wild, staring eyes" was coined. Brilliant in his youth — a classics scholar of the first rank — but, as became increasingly clear in his later years, a strophe short of the full ode.

    ReplyDelete
  9. AGoodQuestion1:29 AM

    "Exposure to our society and way of life for years did nothing to prevent [the Tsarnaevs] from falling under the spell of radical preachers at a terrorist-supporting mosque," reasoned Tim Dunkin at Renew America.

    The imam and others at the mosque Tamerlan Tsarnaev sometimes attended basically confirm that Tsarnaev was an asshole forever and they preferred not to deal with him. But when Dunkin paints he uses his broadest brush.

    ReplyDelete
  10. AGoodQuestion1:37 AM

    Someone inform the Tea Partiers, immediately!
    Believe it or not, I think they've got this one already.

    ReplyDelete
  11. montag21:37 AM

    Hey, you too can become the All-American boy next door with a gun and a grudge. (I didn't plan it that way, but those were the names that popped into my head. Just turned out to be suitably alliterative. I suppose if I'd fixated on the middle name of Wayne, the pickings would have been even better.)

    ReplyDelete
  12. DocAmazing1:39 AM

    The National Review: standing athwart demography, shouting "Waiter!"

    ReplyDelete
  13. AGoodQuestion1:40 AM

    Defending the Klan at the '24 Democratic Convention didn't do wonders for his legacy either.

    ReplyDelete
  14. DocAmazing1:42 AM

    Walter Russell Mead, who has a reputation as an intellectual for some reason


    It's the three-names thing. Victor Davis Hanson has been gliding on it for years. Expect to see "Jonah Leviticus Goldberg" any day now.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard1:48 AM

    Americans had respect for a wide variety of ethnicities, ranging all the way from Angle to Saxon.


    No Jutes need apply!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard1:50 AM

    Were Donald Kagan and Victor Davis Hanson ever considered classics scholars of the first rank, or were they just rank?

    ReplyDelete
  17. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard1:53 AM

    You know, I seem to recall a Jutish conspiracy to take over the world by manipulating financial institutions. I read about it in a pamphlet titled The Protocols of the Elders of Zealand.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard2:04 AM

    The conspiracy was thwarted when the Jutes were given enough rope to hang themselves.


    It's after 2 AM. Now that I've gotten in way more than my fair share of puns, I will bid you all adieut.

    ReplyDelete
  19. DocAmazing2:06 AM

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html


    There's the text of Powell's speech. I'm not sure what speech you read.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard2:30 AM

    Leviticus? No way would Jonah put up with so many dietary restrictions!

    ReplyDelete
  21. Derelict7:44 AM

    In ConservativeLand (TM), any event provides the justification for doing what you wanted to do originally. In this particular case, it's two lunatic brothers set off homemade bombs and it's the perfect excuse to jam it to would-be immigrants. The Tsarneaev Brothers have already been made into poster-children for welfare slashing. Next up, they'll be proof that tax cuts for the wealthy really do bring prosperity.


    Many disparate events, one set of goals: The Conservative mind at work!

    ReplyDelete
  22. satch7:45 AM

    "For example, last week Soren Dayton explained to readers of the Daily Caller
    that he'd met an anti-immigration zealot who "wanted to stop
    immigration reform because he believed that human beings were destroying
    the planet and that an increase in the U.S. population would exacerbate
    the environmental injustices he perceived to be occurring already."

    Hmm... Soren Dayton dug up some "anti-immigration zealot" hippie, whereas our side can point to three quarters of the "conservative intelligentsia" and an equal percentage of Republican members of Congress. Jeezus... these guys don't REALLY want to go head to head in a battle of anecdotal whackazoid stereotypes, do they?

    ReplyDelete
  23. Having read the speech at the link provided by DocAmazing, Powell seems like your basic racist anti-immigrant nativist. His arguments are pretty much the same as those of Pat Buchanan, or someone like that.

    ReplyDelete
  24. reallyaimai7:57 AM

    I'm eager for how they will serve to bolster the anti abortion cause. And I'd like to squeeze thdm into gays in scouting. As it wre.

    ReplyDelete
  25. I thought this only applied to first names and serial killers.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Eaten by a Grue, will be replaced by eaten by a Gorn.

    ReplyDelete
  27. They called us Zealand? Seriously? (It's Sjælland, actually.) And, yeah, Jutes need only apply for speech-training. They're the jews of danish mainlandery.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Alieut, would have been better.

    ReplyDelete
  29. HOW DID YOU KNOW I'M THE ORIGINALK AUTHOR.

    ReplyDelete
  30. smut clyde8:24 AM

    Powell was going on about "wide-grinning piccaninnies" and complaining about the special treatment and privileges afforded to new immigrants, and raising the spectre that "the black man will have the whip hand over the white man."
    I'm happy to call him a racist swine.

    The most revealing part of the speech is where an anonymous informant tells Powell that he's encouraging his own kids to emigrate to elsewhere in the Empire -- "I shan't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas". He takes it for granted that other parts of the world are fair game for British resettlement, and can be relied upon as havens of white-skin domination... the wishes of the original inhabitants (or indeed the current inhabitants) are irrelevant. The British are allowed to move where they like, but movement in the opposite direction is ABOMINATION.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Helmut Monotreme9:02 AM

    A few years ago, nativists tried to take over the Sierra Club, arguing that immigration was a threat to the environment.

    ReplyDelete
  32. reallyaimai9:03 AM

    What I particularly like about Powells speech is the apparent ignorance of, say, the Norman conquest. He also plaintively evokes the spectre of a depopulated England as whites flee to...Kenya? Hong Kong? South Africa? Jamaica? Sing, muse, of the far lands where a white man can roam free and proud! We can call the whole process "colonialism" maybe, and if it doesn't pan out we can let the descendants of our empire come back later and reinstate themselves as citizens. We can call the old places of exile "commonwealth countries" and maybe we can work something about citizenship for "members" of the "empire." I'm just spitballing here, of course.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Provider_UNE9:14 AM

    When Kaity Jean of the lowly pez discusses immigration I wonder if she gves consideration to her surname,
    ,,,

    ReplyDelete
  34. glennisw9:38 AM

    Once upon a time, kids knew who Thomas Jefferson and Horatio Alger were...



    Yes, that's what's wrong with the world today - kids these days don't read 19th century popular fiction. They've also stopped dancing the Charleston, and no one's holding quilting bees anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  35. glennisw9:38 AM

    He shared a ride from the airport with him in Tom Friedman's cab.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Anonymous9:48 AM

    You will find the most updated news being uploaded or published in blogs
    and celeb news sites. Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan had
    a rough battle, when the movies related to them were
    released at the same time. instantly and cannot wait for magazines then celebritynewsapp is the best available source which keeps on updating instantly.


    my webpage :: latest celeb news

    ReplyDelete
  37. tigrismus9:48 AM

    Were they true refugees fleeing persecution, or
    extremists looking for a breather in the United States


    His opinion of anti-communist or anti-dictator types going back to fight after fleeing persecution would no doubt be the same, right?

    ReplyDelete
  38. Halloween_Jack9:58 AM

    But she's one of the Good Ones, dontcha know.

    ReplyDelete
  39. "We can call the old places of exile "commonwealth countries" and maybe we can work something about citizenship for "members" of the "empire".


    Maybe we could call them "Oklahoma", or "Alabama", or "Montana". Of course, the new arrivals would have to learn a whole new language, but that's not beyond the intellectual capabilities of the more advanced White race, is it?

    ReplyDelete
  40. Halloween_Jack10:10 AM

    I have just discovered that Frito-Lay has two separate lists of kosher certified products (first link is triangle-K, the second is Orthodox Union), but the majority of the Cheetos family is not on there, so...

    ReplyDelete
  41. Halloween_Jack10:11 AM

    You're knot getting off that easily, mister!

    ReplyDelete
  42. The Dark Avenger10:11 AM

    Things have gone downhill ever since barn-raisings went out of fasion.

    ReplyDelete
  43. The Dark Avenger10:12 AM

    It was originally a Portuguese name, don't you know?

    ReplyDelete
  44. Halloween_Jack10:13 AM

    Well, not his mouth, necessarily.

    ReplyDelete
  45. And kids with their fashions these days! It's all about the pants that entrance, with the drape shape and the reet pleat. It's true, Suzy Q!

    ReplyDelete
  46. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard10:31 AM

    It's the way your chin jutes out.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard10:33 AM

    Don't complain to me, tell it to all those Kæwæs living in the Antipodæs.

    ReplyDelete
  48. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard10:35 AM

    I'm thinking "Pantagruel" is more his style, but for the fact that gruel isn't rich enough for him. "Pantaload" is more his style, but that's not a real name.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard10:38 AM

    Nah, barn raisings reek of collectivism. Better to die a free man than to give in to the lure of combined effort.


    "Better dead than fed!"

    ReplyDelete
  50. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard10:39 AM

    23 skidoo!

    ReplyDelete
  51. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard10:43 AM

    May I call you "Bird" Bouffant?

    ReplyDelete
  52. Halloween_Jack10:47 AM

    "Exposure to our society and way of life for years did nothing to prevent [Timothy McVeigh]" reasoned [Bizarro] Tim Dunkin at [Bizarro] Renew America. "As a result, we should seriously consider, as a society, whether we should allow [gunshows in] our nation."

    ReplyDelete
  53. geraldfnord10:52 AM

    If, back in the day, anyone had known who Horatio Alger was, he would have lost his ministry all the sooner.

    ReplyDelete
  54. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard10:57 AM

    It's the typical racist fear that the tables will be turned. Fear not, Mr Powell, I'm sure the current minorities will treat you with the same respect with which you treat them.

    ReplyDelete
  55. Tudor Jennings11:12 AM

    Yeah, I'll give you that - the peculiar Anglo-American spin on manifest destiny and colonization. Get out the way! No, I'm not going to learn to integrate, go find somewhere else to live!
    Oh, hey.. wait! You can't go live in my old house!

    ReplyDelete
  56. The Dark Avenger11:16 AM

    You may make it a laughing matter these days, but I heard this story from a friend from Oklahoma: During the depths of the Depression, one of his grandfathers was willing to let himself and his family starve rather than take any government assistance. I don't know how they avoided compromising with the insidious FDR Administration, but somehow they did.

    ReplyDelete
  57. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard12:07 PM

    Here in the States, in the 1920s, there was an entire sub-genre of pulp fiction concerning the "Danish Danger"- lurid tales of smiling, bicycle-riding blond men trying to corrupt the morals of God-fearing Americans with charming fairytales and offers of butter cookies. There were serials about sinister Sjængalis luring innocent girls from the Heartland into servitude as pleasure-slaves in underground Akvavit dens.

    Even now, Republican politicians in the South occasionally warn against attempts to institute "Danelaw" in the States.

    ReplyDelete
  58. Considering that Oklahoma was founded on land given away by the federal gummint to whoever showed up "sooner" to claim it (once the Native Americans had politely been shown the door), and the help the Feds provided during the Dust Bowl years in buying up the starving cattle that could not be cared for, studying new methods of plowing that would not result in topsoil being blown into Missouri, and buying up farms to facilitate the re-establishment of grasslands, among other things (thanks, Ken Burns, for your "Dust Bowl series), you'd think the Okies would be more freaking grateful.

    ReplyDelete
  59. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard12:09 PM

    I don't know if it would be illegal to eat kiwis, but if the kiwi population falls below a critical threshold, the resultant ecological imbalance would expose the world to the horrors of the tuatara menace.

    ReplyDelete
  60. Provider_UNE12:26 PM

    Jeezus... these guys don't REALLY want to go head to head in a battle of anecdotal whackazoid stereotypes, do they?

    Rhetorical? Right?

    If not, these bastard enjoy pushing boundaries like toddlers . What part of shitting the bed, blaming the other, with a backpack or suitcase full of projection do they not understand?
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  61. And right they were to tremble! The forcefeedings of frikadeller was beyond all gooselivered take-in-ability! The sheer ear-molesting of "Sejle op ad åen".. .

    ReplyDelete
  62. I thought those were dodos? Who gave me the wrong script?

    ReplyDelete
  63. A to the men. (and even more to the women).

    ReplyDelete
  64. Yeah, but what has Big Gubmint done for them lately? Besides ceaselessly prop up their otherwise-unsustainable existence, I mean?

    ReplyDelete
  65. Tudor? Are you sure? I mean, are you sure you won't have to reach further back into history to feel at home in your own slime? I've always thought a person's comfort should be paramount. Is there an abberrrant timeline we can help you get back to?

    ReplyDelete
  66. redoubt2:07 PM

    I'm thinking "Pantograph" because he's been copying from others' success since.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Leeds man2:50 PM

    I come from a long line of Ä‹eorles.

    ReplyDelete
  68. reallyaimai3:11 PM

    I think that partisan board remark is, to put it bluntly, crap. I didn't arrive at my considered opinion about Enoch Powell and his speech because I jumped to conclusions--I just looked and conclusions were there. Sorry, Buffy reference. My pint here isn't that I think Powells statement was racist because I have some preconceived, ill informed, in nuanced opinion of the right wing racist movement in Britain. It goes the other way--I (speaking only for myself) know plenty about the history if racism in England and its former colonies. It makes more sense to say that we arrive st our dismissive attitude toward Powell and our partisanship BECAUSE we know what we are talking about.

    ReplyDelete
  69. smut clyde5:15 PM

    a depopulated England as whites flee to...Kenya? Hong Kong? South Africa? Jamaica?

    He's talking about Australia and New Zealand -- they were the preferred whites-only bolt-holes at the time.

    the apparent ignorance of, say, the Norman conquest

    The separate arrival of Celts, pre-Celts, Angles and Saxons, Vikings, Huegenots, Normans and what-have-you were irrelevant to Powell's image of a monocultural England; for some reason the differences among them were invisible to him.

    ReplyDelete
  70. smut clyde5:19 PM

    He had also encouraged immigration to help staff the NHS.

    That's not true. Read the speech. He specifically states that it's a good thing for Commonwealth medical staff to come over as gastarbeiten to work and pay taxes and go back home afterwards because "They are not, and never have been, immigrants".

    ReplyDelete
  71. smut clyde5:24 PM

    It's got the complaint of being gagged by Political Correctness; immigrants are taking our jobs and our hospital beds; disadvantaged by Affirmative Action;* the works.

    * In particular, Powell reports that employers like to hire new arrivals because they are less competent and less reliable and have less work ethic. No, really: "employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of
    discipline and competence required of the native-born worker".

    ReplyDelete
  72. smut clyde5:29 PM

    sinister Sjængalis
    I see what you do there.

    ReplyDelete
  73. reallyaimai5:48 PM

    I know what he was talking about but the notion that those were white man's paradises was itself an expensive fiction. And only as long as he maintains an elaborate forgetting of the actual history of colonial settlement can he manage to imply that white flight to the colonies has not always been the preferred solution to the economic collapse of white worker prospects. Hell the way they white populated Australia in the first place was by sweeping up criminals znd vagrants who couldn't make an economic success of Britain. In Powells remembered utopian past once sturdy english men got the best jobs but in fact the overpopulation of vagrants and criminals and unemployed were a problem solved by forcible relocation st the bottom, employment opportunities at the top.

    ReplyDelete
  74. TomParmenter6:00 PM

    He was a quiet guy, never caused any trouble that I know. I used to see him with his dog.

    ReplyDelete
  75. TomParmenter6:04 PM

    Hanson knows quite a bit of ancient military history, I believe.

    ReplyDelete
  76. montag26:43 PM

    Alger is an odd icon to conjure up as a necessary stalwart of the American Dream, especially in these, ahem, still uncertain days.

    It's not as if he's been on the tip of everyone's tongue for decades--he's largely been regarded as a literary curiosity and his books were predictably (and excruciatingly) formulaic. His last book was finished after death in 1899 by a friend, and his publisher gave up on reprints in 1926.

    Beyond that, his almost chirpy dependency in every book upon the wealthy lifting up the poor but morally upright and brave boy probably would not play very well today, when the wealthy are not only shitting on the poor at every opportunity, but turning much of the middle class into the poor, seemingly in order to have that many more people to shit on.


    Maybe our friendly right-wing correspondent is unaware that
    Horatio Alger looked like a useful idiot of the rich once James T. Farrell came along.





    Hora

    ReplyDelete
  77. Is your middle name Wayne?

    ReplyDelete
  78. gocart mozart6:56 PM

    Obviously, the solution is to keep toy cars out of the hands of the Muslims.
    http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-boston-bombing-remote-control-device-20130424,0,3887956.story

    ReplyDelete
  79. gocart mozart6:59 PM

    His dog's name was Sam.

    ReplyDelete
  80. Maybe they just went to school in Texas.

    ReplyDelete
  81. gocart mozart7:03 PM

    This Horatio Alger?!

    http://www.academia.edu/241416/Horatio_Alger_and_the_Closeting_of_the_Self-Made_Man

    ReplyDelete
  82. gocart mozart7:05 PM

    Most serial killers have the middle name "Wayne". True fact

    ReplyDelete
  83. gocart mozart7:16 PM

    I had to look it up because I didn't believe it. From wiki "These statements were allegedly made on stage by a heavily drunk Clapton
    during a concert in Birmingham, UK, in 1976. Clapton is referring to
    British anti-immigration Conservative MP Enoch Powell.
    Clapton later made similar further comments to the audience later in
    the evening. Clapton has never denied making these statements and has
    refused to apologise for his remarks or distance himself from them,
    although he denies that his views are racist and states that he is
    merely an opponent of mass immigration. This incident was the main
    inspiration for the formation of Rock Against Racism."


    In his defense as a fan, I can only say, cocaine/alcohol is a heel of a drug

    ReplyDelete
  84. gocart mozart7:19 PM

    Sorry, 'bout the formatting, heel is a typo but I like it.

    ReplyDelete
  85. gocart mozart7:22 PM

    Also, we should limit immigration solely to Caucasians. Wait, What?

    ReplyDelete
  86. Provider_UNE7:26 PM

    Mars, Birches!!!!
    ....

    ReplyDelete
  87. redoubt7:32 PM

    Oh, like Dinesh D'Souza? Whose own comments on immigration broke his own brain?

    ReplyDelete
  88. redoubt7:35 PM

    America Runs Away Screaming From Tim Dunkin

    ReplyDelete
  89. Tudor Jennings7:36 PM

    Stole an NBA team from Seattle and given it to them?

    ReplyDelete
  90. Provider_UNE7:45 PM

    within the last 50 hours I have learned and taken up knitting. last night I was showed how to pearl or perl (not quite on top of the nomenclature, yet.) I know from Jefferson and
    Alger, though the latter was among the most popular fellaters of power in his day.
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  91. Tudor Jennings7:48 PM

    Ah, right. So comments about "being at home in my own slime", the old thumbs down, blah blah, every time I make a comment on alicublog that doesn't fit neatly into a narrow definition of liberal thought... but when I make a comment that _is_ in broad agreement with liberal thought, I get thumbs up galore.... seems pretty much a partisan board to me.
    Glad to see a couple of people on here are willing to grasp what I was saying - especially the dissonance between the "obviously" insane froth-mouthed Powell and the lovable, slightly misunderstood/drunk troubadour Clapton, who never stood for election ever, so who cares what he says on stage, in front of an audience.
    But okay, today, I am a terrible person, until I agree with the worldview on this little corner of the internet tomorrow (probably) and then everything will be cool beans once more :)

    ReplyDelete
  92. tigrismus7:48 PM

    Purl :-)

    ReplyDelete
  93. The Dark Avenger8:15 PM

    The former head of The Kings College, NY, NYC? The one with the million $ salary until he couldn't fool the rubes conservatives any more?

    ReplyDelete
  94. The Dark Avenger8:17 PM

    And the threat of a kakapo resurgence.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY

    ReplyDelete
  95. The Dark Avenger8:21 PM

    It's funny you should say that, as we have a local woman who married a US serviceman and came over here after WWII. She's Danish and she's always ridden a bike around town.



    The real threat, if you ask me, is from the Dutch.

    I was first made aware of the insidious Dutch conspiricy to weaken the morals of good American men, turning them into miserly, chocolate eating, wooden shoe wearing, tree hating hippies
    in the April 1973 issue of THIS fine magazine of investigative journalism.

    http://studdblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/1973-dutchthreat-or-menace.html

    ReplyDelete
  96. Occam's Razor would indicate that the reaction you draw has a lot more to do with you being a jackass than with any kind of partisanship.

    ReplyDelete
  97. parsec8:49 PM

    Ah, the Jutes weren't so bad. Those Kallikaks on the other hand ....

    ReplyDelete
  98. Haystack8:57 PM

    That's some sanctimonious BS right there, TJ. You're the one who started this by defending a prominent racist and then lecturing the rest of us for our blinkered "partisan" vision. The word partisan suggests the promotion of an agenda; that is, politics first and human considerations second. But do you honestly see that happening here? Ever?

    I can't speak for the crowd, of course, but I believe people gather here as part of a necessary response to the daily horror show that is the Republican right's propaganda machine - a worldview, that, however unhinged, has a baneful lock on the nation's affairs. However one picks through right-wing crap, all one finds are the worst traits our species has to offer: greed, spite, xenophobia, dishonesty, & willful ignorance.

    Our host is a master of singling out the more gaudy wingnut expressions, providing a humorous and contemporary perspective. Then we commenters get to riff on that. If we tend to speak to each other in agreement, or lockstep according to you, I would suggest it's not because Roy's observations accord with a left-liberal slant, but rather that we're all properly horrified that hateful dreck is being published and disseminated without being called out for what it is in the wider corporate media.

    So solace for one thing and a wish for common decency, as well. That's what binds us, IMO. No partisanship required, just a regular-sized dollop of humanity.

    ReplyDelete
  99. Matt Thompson9:30 PM

    I realise this is a partisan board, but I do try and get people to look at a different angle occasionally.

    You brave little soldier.

    ReplyDelete
  100. Matt Thompson9:31 PM

    But okay, today, I am a terrible person, until I agree with the worldview on this little corner of the internet tomorrow (probably) and then everything will be cool beans once more :)





    You brave little soldier.

    ReplyDelete
  101. reallyaimai12:00 AM

    Obviously you can't argue that Powell is right in rivers of blood and Clapton is wrong in having said something racist on stage. But that seems to be what you are arguing. Because you seem more concerned with some imaginary standard of "ours" vs "yours." Clapton ,however, isn't "ours" in any meaningful sense. Like most people I don't give rats ass what some guitar player thinks about anything and I certainly didn't have any passes to hand out. Enoch Powells speech was a political speech meant to exhort white people and britains legislators to overt hostile action against non white citizens and residents. I don't think it's even necessary to label that racism if that freaks you out: it was immoral, dangerous, reckless and wrong just on its own terms. What this has to do with ERIC Clapton ill never know. It was really rather squid inky of you to throw it in there.

    ReplyDelete
  102. reallyaimai12:02 AM

    If only it could be pantomime.

    ReplyDelete
  103. glennisw1:25 AM

    Ah, yes, Bay of Pigs!

    ReplyDelete
  104. DocAmazing2:18 AM

    Clapton drunkenly went on & on in front of an audience and went on an extended rant about how right Powell was. It was one of the biggest reasons for the founding of Rock Against Racism.


    I think TJ is trying to imply that Clapton has been given a free pass for his racism, while Powell has been upbraided for his. I must disagree: lots of people, myself included, find Clapton wildly overrated and an asshole in the bargain.

    ReplyDelete
  105. TJ, it's simple. You suggested Enoch Powell was misunderstood, and wasn't as racist as he's remembered. You also said his "Rivers of Blood" speech turned out to be true economically. So we went and read his speech and it's just as bad as folks remember it being and has little to nothing in it about economics. I'll gladly cop to being partisan, but that has nothing to do with this situation.

    ReplyDelete
  106. Reading the speech, he seems to be preparing British whites to blame their troubles on African immigration. It's not just counterproductive, it's dangerous.

    ReplyDelete