Thanks to Nelson Mandela, I should have plenty of insane rightblogger shit for the
Sunday night column.
Here's a nice specimen for you from Joel Pollak of Breitbart.com, who has a few other columns up about Mandela, distinguishable mainly by the ugly dissonance between Pollak's attempted generosity toward Mandela and the
repulsive gibberings of his readers in comments (Samples: "MANDELA was a communist... He and BO have lots in common," "He is hanging out with Yashir arafat and Hitler in Hell right now," etc). Perhaps out of embarrassment (look, stranger things have happened), Pollak follows up with something to get the punters on Mandela's side: an article about how Mandela makes Obama look bad -- which God knows is true, but Pollak's angle is that Obama looks bad because he doesn't share the conservative values of Nelson Mandela. (Sample: "Mandela was fiscally responsible, Obama is profligate." Funny, I've never read a conservative encomium to Mandela's economic stewardship before this.)
Pollak gets even further out in his colleague
Tony Lee's interview of him, which contains this gem:
[Pollak] also said Mbeki also did not think a virus caused AIDS and denied the vaccine to South Africans because he unilaterally believed that government knows best and has intellectual and political authority. Pollak said Obama also has that tendency, thinking he can tell Americans "what reality is and what reality isn't."
And that's why Obama, like Mbeki, ignores the scientific community and supports such ignorant superstitions as anthropogenic climate change. Not to mention his wacky plan to extend health insurance to all Americans.
UPDATE. In comments, Sharculese: "Squaring the circle between their commenters' rabid hatred of Mandela and the desire not to look like total loons is going to show us which recipients are truly earning their wingnut welfare and which ones are just strapping young bucks buying t-bone steaks."
Squaring the circle between their commenters rabid hatred and the desire not to look like total loons is going to show us which recipients are truly earning their wingnut welfare, and which ones are just strapping young bucks buying t-bone steaks.
ReplyDelete...but Pollak's angle is that Obama looks bad because he doesn't share the conservative values of Nelson Mandela.
ReplyDeleteMakes perfect sense in Opposite World.
~
Obviously, this messaging mismatch is Obamacare's fault.
ReplyDeleteWho is this theater even being performed for? This is Breitbart.com, for godsakes. Why even try to muddle through some kind of conservative reclamation of Mandela when your audience thinks everything left of Rush Limbaugh is equally as bad as Hitlerstalin?
ReplyDeleteYou know what might be instructed? A straight-across-the-board comparison between the brethren's reaction to the death of Nelson Mandela and their reaction to the death of Augusto Pinochet. A cheap trick perhaps, but I suspect it would be instructive, especially with the "serious" conservative pundits.
ReplyDeleteHeck, you can skip over the brethen.
ReplyDeleteGo right to the neocons and the Milton Friedmanites.
~
The current trend is to attempt to claim pretty much everyone for conservatism. Course, that only really works when your fans can restrain themselves, which ain't happening this time.
ReplyDeleteFunny, I've never read a conservative encomium to Mandela's economic stewardship before this.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard anything at all about Mandela's economic approach before, ever, and it never even occurred to me to wonder.
...well, sure, I've seen a hojillion Rightards say he was a commie, but I don't know if they know that's an economic system.
I think it's for the cable news hucksters. Calling Mandela a liberal fascist might play well to the comment threads, but it might get you kicked off the end of the standby list for Red Eye.
ReplyDeleteMandela was a conservative. He was a communist. He was a conservative! A communist! He was a conservative AND a communist!
ReplyDeleteForget it, Roy. It's Breitbarttown.
O, the comments there! I love the indignant jackass who says: "If that is the definition of racism, that I love my people, and consider
ReplyDeletemy people to be the best, then I'm a racist." Hahaha YIKES, it's hard to tell if he's proudly a white supremacist or actually has no idea that considering your race better than all others is pretttttty much the very definition of classic racism.
And there's plenty more over there. Team Red is terrifying.
Mandela was not above playing racial politics at times
ReplyDeleteIt's moments like this when you realize they're literally writing straight from their brain stem.
...straight from their brain stem.
ReplyDeleteI want certified video of 'em breathing before I'll grant you that. Anyone can claim to have a brain stem.
Meanwhile, Rick Santorum compares Mandela's decades-long struggle against apartheid to Republican opposition to Obamacare.
ReplyDeleteSo ... what you're saying, Ricky, is that Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney would have insisted on supporting Obamacare?
Mandela was not above playing racial politics at times
ReplyDeleteAbout apartheid, no less. I mean, of all things to drag race into, who on earth would pick apartheid?
Going after Mandela when you and your family were a direct beneficiary of apartheid raises some uncomfortable questions for someone who's a native white South African, as Pollak is. It's more treacherous ground for a guy like him than for American conservatives, who could more easily pull off the move of being anti-Mandela while also pretending to oppose apartheid.
ReplyDeleteit's a floor wax AND a dessert topping!
ReplyDeleteTPM has something similar, except instead of pseudonymous right-wing blog comment sections, they're rounding up Facebook reactions, where people are using their real names (well, maybe not 'Phil B. Liberty'), their real addresses, and have cute pictures of their dogs or their son's peewee league game right next to grade-A skree about white genocide and communism. Some modern art guy could probably do something clever with the juxtaposition. Note in particular the in-some-cases dozens of likes and upvotes these creeps are getting.
ReplyDeleteIf right-wingers of the past had the internet in their time, I'm sure they would act just as awful as modern wingnuts. But one thing I am convinced has changed is that there is now no social pressure to hold back your ugliest and most savage impulses. Conservatism alone didn't cause this, but conservatives do enjoy it, because they're nothing but ugly impulses.
I was pondering that very thought earlier today, when it occurred to me that the reason they attempt the postmortem credit for all these guys is this: in every case, society and history have vindicated them - but only after they were constantly vilified by conservatives while they were living. They were calling Mandela a terrorist and communist and etc. while he was imprisoned in S. Africa. Then, he was released and it became apparent that the man was about as far removed from being a "terrorist" as it's possible to be. Mandela's post-incarceration behavior - as well as his entire legacy, including the years served for opposing apartheid - showed the conservative bullshit to be just that - bullshit.
ReplyDeleteBut because conservatives can never be wrong, it becomes necessary to claim Mandela in death, so as to re-write history and distract from the fact that they all piled on him when he was down. Because that looks, you know, racist.
At least, in the past, they waited a decade or two for memories to get fuzzy before they started in with the "XXX was really a conservative" routine. Nowadays, there's practically a death watch countdown. The moment someone of note dies--and cannot, therefore, defend themselves or personally refute the right-wing claptrap--the oh-so-clever right pounces.
ReplyDeleteIt's sorta like that line from "Paper Moon": "I don' know what scruples are, but if you got `em, you musta stolen them from somebody else." That, or they're borrowing from the Mormon practice of baptism into the faith after death....
Also, the rightblogger reaction I've seen so far makes me think I'll find another way to spend Sunday night. Maybe snorting blood pressure medicine.
ReplyDeleteMaking fun of McArdle pretending to understand economics or Goldberg pretending to understand TV shows, now that's fun. But when some black-person-related news story triggers the right-wing brain's Fucking Racist Node and they start going at it like elks in mating season? Not fun. Not funny. Just depressing.
This is an Olympic level contortion:
ReplyDelete"He tried to offer 'free' housing and a 'right' to health care, and the result was poor housing and the spread of HIV/Aids"
To say Mandela caused AIDS to spread by trying to give people access to healthcare is like arguing building homeless shelters causes homelessness. Moreover, doesn't this imply that all of Scandinavia should have AIDS by now?
I see you have failed to understand that conservatives have long since freed themselves from the tyranny of liberal logic and philosophy of time to produce this undeniable proof:
ReplyDelete1) Conservatism = good
C) Therefore, anyone currently considered good is conservative.
QED.
Have a great weekend, Roy!
ReplyDeleteHe thinks everybody prefers their "own race"--its a loveable foible like asserting that your mamma is red hot while someone elses is doodly squat.
ReplyDeleteThey want mandela to be better than sll that partisany stuff. Like the imaginary liberal who is too polite to takebhis own side in an srgument.
ReplyDeleteBullwinkle: Watch me pull a rabbit out of my ass.
ReplyDeleteSomething unusual happens. (Use your imaginations)
Bullwinkle: I guess I don't know my own strenth!
Urgh, that is probably spot on. It's happened to me a few times -- once I moved into an apartment complex that was 90% Indian, and a caucazoid nitwit neighbor introduced himself by saying, "Looks like it's just you and me against the hordes. We gotta stick together!" Grinning like of course I must be thinking the same thing. They always think you must be thinking the same thing -- you're just too cowed to say it.
ReplyDeleteYes.
ReplyDeleteRight, because he was a wholefrican and not a halfrican he understood that blacks could not be good blacks unless they were nice to whites. Really, really, really nice to whites. Like forgiving them. Totally. All the time. No matter what. Or else.
ReplyDeleteHa! I was wondering how long it would take one of the knobs to co-opt Nelson Mandela as a Secret Conservative after he died! Not long at all, as it turned out.
ReplyDeleteConservatives don't feel comfortable thinking favorably of a leader unless they can shoehorn him/her into the US right-wing mold (in both senses of the word). People of color are particularly suspect, but worth the effort because now the wingnuts can claim they're not racist because they're totally down with (their cartoon version of) Nelson Mandela or MLK Jr.
ReplyDeleteOr to sum up:
NRO WRITER: What's our take on Nelson Mandela? He freed a generation of South Africans from one of the most oppressive and racist institutions in the world.
NRO EDITOR: Hmm... but what's his take on the capital gains tax?
And Ed! Don't forget Ed Roso! Have a great weekend, too, Ed! (And don't spend it all listening to Roy bitch about his stupid readers.)
ReplyDeleteIt's bad enough that he had the nerve to be black and politically active at the same time. But when he pushed for policies that didn't exclusively benefit white people, ooh, he crossed the line.
ReplyDeleteYou have just described the ultimate rhetorical car crash. I don't want to look, but I can't look away.
ReplyDeleteAnd also not asking for their mower back.
ReplyDeleteCollapses as blood pressure drops critically low.
ReplyDeleteIt's really an exquisite textbook example. Pollak admits that Mandela "was not above playing racial politics" but he also:
ReplyDeletegenerally did all he could to bring people together, in both real and symbolic ways. He famously donned the Springbok rugby jersey, once a symbol hated by blacks, to show solidarity with whites.
Blaming white people for stuff, in the country with the most shit to blame white people for per capita in the second half of the 20th century: "racial politics"
Putting on a rugby jersey so white people will stop shitting themselves: not racial politics
I really wish they'd let us know that was all it took. Obama just needed to put on a Skynyrd stars 'n' bars shirt and pop a beer into a HERITAGE NOT HATE coozy and all would be forgiven.
That's been going on for a while, but I maintain that Jonah Goldberg made it way worse. One of the more subtle effects of his gaseous exegesis on fascism is that he convinced other conservatives that political forms could be compared straight across to late 20th/early 21st century American politics, regardless of place or time. Liberals do this too, but it's the cons who've built a cottage industry around tagging historical rulers with "liberal" or "conservative," as if those terms were universal.
ReplyDeletePretty much rules out the old "people are assholes on the internet because of anonymity" argument, doesn't it? One of the better explanations I've heard for this sort of behavior is that the internet is "autistic," in that we miss out on subtle non-verbal behavioral cues when we communicate remotely. If you were to walk into a real life party and start talking about how Nelson Mandela caused a "white genocide," you'd quickly discover that people found that objectionable, even if no one explicitly said anything. Most likely, you'd find no one willing to listen to your repetitions of a racist Afrikaner celebrity's nutjob theories. Online? It's a different story altogether.
ReplyDeleteAll I can glean from that clusterfuck of wingtard brain gas is that Obama would be better if he were more like Mandela. Well, he's got a ways to go, but I would certainly find an insurrection against Whitey both welcome and refreshing.
ReplyDeleteAll they have to do is read some back issues of their own magazine. Given the founder's actual views on apartheid (short version--for it) they really, really need to keep out of this. But they won't, because they're NRO.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to process the idea of Nelson Mandela not playing racial politics. From his alternate-universe, Pollak-approved 1990 Cape Town address:
ReplyDeleteThe destruction caused by apartheid on our sub-continent is incalculable. So there's no reason to calculate it.
The fabric of family life of millions of my people has been shattered. So we must restore the two-parent household.
Millions are homeless and unemployed. So we must grow the economy.
In fairness, that seems to be a common belief even outside of this country. Any time I've worked overseas, I've dealt with locals who just naturally assumed that I wanted to spend all my free time with other white people.
ReplyDeletewriting straight from their brain stem
ReplyDeleteWonder what would happen if someone sprinkled some (pink Himalayan) salt on it. . .
He famously donned the Springbok rugby jersey, once a symbol hated by blacks, to show solidarity with whites.
ReplyDeleteOh FFS. What you have is your echt-bullshit right there. It is symptomatic of Pollak's worldview that he can only see Mandela's policies as intended either to attack the white minority, or to show solidarity with them. Because it's all about Pollak.
The apartheid regime had done the best they could to make rugby and the Springbok team into symbols of white supremacy, but Mandela had the sense to not let that limit his own vision -- he saw that they could still work as symbols of broader national unity, to bring the various non-white groups together.
Bonus 6th way that Barack Obama is no Nelson Mandela: Mandela spent 28 years in various prisons, while putting Obama behind bars remains, for the brethren, a distant dream.
ReplyDeleteFloor wax, dessert topping, yada yada. The question is can you make meth with it.
ReplyDeleteHey Joel, people in glass houses shouldn't
ReplyDeleteCRASH!
Never mind.
The key word there is "famously" -- generally an indicator that the speaker is describing events which never happened that way, and is using such exaggerated confidence in the hope of compensating for the lack of veracity
ReplyDelete"All I can glean from that clusterfuck of wingtard brain gas...." Whoa! That's as far as I got: I had to stop and read it out loud a few times. It has a sassy, rhythmic sort of charm that transcends its subject matter. Kudos. Seriously.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I think about how it took us 5,000 years as a species to get from written language to a printing press, but the internet barely existed 20 years ago, social media barely 10 years ago, and they dominate so many people's lives, and how it's the evolutionary equivalent of going from a toy wagon to a rocket ship.
ReplyDeleteThink of the 50-and-older bigots who, for most of their lives only had their friends and family to pester with their bigotry, but now-the whole world! And they can find other people just like them! And they don't have to worry about getting beat up for it! Like a kid in a candy store, it must be.
IIRC, it's fairly accepted that anonymity (or the illusion thereof) makes people act differently on the internet than they would otherwise. I remember one study about how female video game players would be more violent in-game with gender-neutral avatars than with gendered ones: societal expectations gone, yada yada. The other two pieces of the puzzle are 1) even if you do have a name and face, and so do the people you're yelling at, it still just feels like pixels, and 2) if you start a political flame war and get whupped, you can immediately find dozens of like-minded comrades who will tell you that you were dead to rights and they were wrong and where do they get off in the first place. And of course, you never have to see the person your were bullying again if you don't want to. Quite different from letting something slip at work or at a family dinner and dealing with it for days or weeks afterwards.
I'm generally pro-internet anonymity and (if it's not too late) and if I had to choose between the trolls and nutjobs of the world and the PTB who want Facebook/Google/Apple to do to the internet what Walmart did to retail, I'd pick the former. But sometimes, it's just-Jesus, can people not be assholes? Is that so hard?
Problem is, it never really is just about enjoying the company of your own group and taking pride in their achievements. There's no reason that those things have to go hand in hand with attacking other groups, or seeing them as objectively inferior, or cowering in fear of them, or crying 'traitor' at people from your group who want to experience new things from other groups. But it sure seems like it.
ReplyDeletePreferring the company and culture of your ingroup isn't the worst thing in the world. Sure, people like that ought to get out more, but I'd take ten people who keep to themselves because they're uncomfortable around other races over one who makes actively makes things worse for other races. I generally think the human impulse to be part of groups is a good thing: it reminds people that they have a stake in the world at large and serves as a healthy antidote to the Randian crap that pollutes too many minds these days. But I sure wish it was easier to separate sincere love of one's own from using it as an excuse to hate others.
Pollak said Obama also has that tendency, thinking he can tell Americans "what reality is and what reality isn't."
ReplyDeleteI'd love to hear Pollak explain how to use the declarative mode without doing this. ("Your shoelace is untied." "There you go again, trying to tell America what reality is!") Just to complete the paradigm:
When Obama uses declarative mode, it reveals his metaphysical hubris;
When he uses the conditional, it shows his inability to take a stand;
When he uses the interrogative, it means he's ignorant and helpless;
And obviously, when he uses the imperative, he's Black Hitler.
Not fun or funny, but it does strip away the translucent veneer that many of these people wear, allowing the public to see all kinds of stuff--none of it good. There's the racism, yes. But then there's also the incredible mean-spiritedness. The pinched and narrow worldview. In astonishing complete inability to be charitable about anything for even a moment.
ReplyDeleteMost people are repulsed by individuals with these traits. So I can only encourage the wingnuts to let their freak-out flags fly over Mandela. Show the world what you're made of!
And when Pollak tells us what reality is, no matter what our lying eyes tell us, God knows it's not from intellectual authority.
ReplyDeleteAnd sometimes you just need a break from eating mayonnaise sandwiches and listening to Johnny Mathis.
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe he could give back the chain saw?
ReplyDeleteWell, but it was in a movie, so its double plus good.
ReplyDeleteWWKDTD*
ReplyDelete*What Would Kim Du Toit Do?
I got into an argument over at TNC's blog, but I repeat myself. But it was actually pretty interesting in this: it was about whether Alec Baldwin was a "bigot" for any purposes of the word, for shouting abusively at gay men using gay oriented threats and demeaning terms. Although you'd think TNC himself had rather neatly dispatched this argument in his original posts on the topic, which are great, there are a large number of white men in the comments who are pretty sure that shouting angry abuse at other people is a natural feature of daily life. They don't even think its limited, say, to white men--they assume everyone does the same thing and needs the same release. People asked, in a touchingly youthful kind of way, "But what do you do when you are involved in a very emotional debate with someone? What words do you use to really hurt them?" Like this was the most natural thing in the world. Of course you need angry, abusive, slurs to get your point across! What would you do if you couldn't shout "cocksucker...I'd rape you until you scream like a little girl but I don't even find you attractive!" (paraphrasing).
ReplyDeleteI was intruiged by this because its just not a problem everyone has--is it? I mean, I will shout "jeezus christ" or "motherfucker" if I hit my finger with a hammer, or get cut off in traffic, but in an actual interaction with another human being with whom I have a relationship? I don't find the ability to "really hurt someone" all that valuable. Is it because men and women occupy different kinds of networks in which jockeying for position happens in a different way? I have very few relationships which are disposable or hierarchical in this way in which I would both feel free to destroy the other person emotionally and also can assume I could keep the relationship--which, in the Baldwin case was master/servant or employer/employee. You have to have a lot of money,and a lot of power over the other person, to abuse them in order to hurt them (or to fully express your anger and disgust) and not consider the relationship ended.
I love Dr. Hunky Jimpjorp's "who is this theater even being performed for?" I think the answer should be obvious "The persecution and assasination of Andy Breitbart as performed by the inmates of Breitbart's malformed offspring and partial birth abortion asylum" for the delectation of themselves.
ReplyDeleteIts the transitional period between life, death, and social death that they can't handle. Its like their version of the Bardo--for 40 days and nights the soul of the departed lingers, and is excoriated for being a Marxist/Islamist/Terrorist. After that period of purgatory like existence some are chosen to rise to the heights of "fiscal conservative" and secular saint of conservativism while others will be forever cast down to the pit.
ReplyDeleteTry saying Iaian Paisley three times in a mirror at midnight.
ReplyDeleteActually, because its projection all the way down, they actually do think its (potentially) a loveable foible when black people do it. Or at least totally normal. Remember the rage at those stupid T shirts with a logo of Africa on them and the tag "Its a Black Thing...YOu wouldn't understand?" (Maybe the "you wouldn't understand was implied, can't remember.) There was an instant backlash and a rash (as it were) of "its a white thing."
ReplyDeleteWhite people who couldn't define their own culture if it were growing mold right in front of them are rendered both uncomfortable and angry at the thought that having pushed their world view on everyone by force there are yet some areas of philosophy or culture or art which are not wholly defined and owned by white people. As soon as they saw a boundary--like the N word--using it or transgressing it or putting up a "no gurrrrls ALOWED" crayon on the clubhouse became an instant necessity.
My exeperience of other countries is that people in your class associate primarily with family members (same race) and people they went to school with--which often means the same thing. Wherever it doesn't overlap, where there has beens significant expansion of public and higher education to include racial minorities, your friends will have a wider circle of friends and introduce you to them and socialize with them. In places like France people tend to socialize primarily with people they grew up with/went to school with/are related to. Ditto for England. But I think the racial composition of the two groups is quite a bit more egalitarian and broad in the UK than it is in France.
ReplyDeletePlus appropriating the symbols of christianity.
ReplyDeleteThey have explicitly likened the medicaid expansion to a drug--the first hit feels great but then you are hooked and can't get off.
ReplyDeleteThat's the thing - it comes from nowhere but the wingnut lizard brain. This game of word substitution is not new to conservatives; just as now anything they don't like = socialist, back in the 80s anything they didn't like = communism.
ReplyDeleteThe whole terrorist label came from the fact that he was a black man challenging the white ruling authorities so duh! Terrorist.
Seems like there ought to be more to it than that, I know. I've been flummoxed in the past about some of the real golden oldies they trot out, wondering where they came from, but this is pretty much always the way - you find out the why, and it still makes no sense.
there are a large number of white men in the comments who are pretty sure that shouting angry abuse at other people is a natural feature of daily life.
ReplyDeleteMaybe "rage addiction" is a real condition. If it is, I don't know if there are enough medical resources to handle the 80 million or so addicts in the U.S. (Population x 27%)
I wonder whether "I love my people and consider my people to be the best" would be judged a natural, or even forgivable sentiment if it came from a citizen of China, Iran or (shudder) France.
ReplyDeleteYes. I think that rage addiction is a real problem but I think its also probably the result of poor parenting and what we in the biz call an "impovershed toolbox." I'm pretty sure that Alec Baldwin (given his brothers' political leanings and his own abusive attitude towards his daughter) was raised in a household where the boys came in for a lot of gender based abuse and perhaps even a competitive ladeling out of the abuse to the boys as a way of "toughening" them up and distinguishing between winners and losers in the family.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually talking about places where I was in the minority. Can't exactly speak to the rest of the world, but in East Asia everyone just assumes that Westerners want to hang out together. And in fairness, that seems to be true for a lot of us. I used to walk past this bar and grill that was nothing but foreigners. There were also shops, clubs, and other services, meaning that you could virtually go your entire day without running into any non-whites. It would be like you never left home, which was missing the point as far as I was concerned.
ReplyDeleteI think Dan Savage has the right take on the Baldwin thing. He was on Real Time a few days after it happened, and he said something to the effect that Baldwin is of an age and from an era where using the word he used isn't so much a sign of homophobia as much as just a word that's there in the toolbox that comes out when he's pissed off with someone. He's not that much older than I am and I know from my youth that yelling "faggot" at someone was a pretty common thing among kids, which wasn't really intended to literally mean "you homosexual, you" but rather as a multi-purpose insult. Savage didn't give him a pass on it per se, but just said he doesn't think it reveals some hidden, lurking homophobia that Baldwin harbors. Which sounds about right to me.
ReplyDeleteYep. When white kids destroy other people's property, it's called "vandalism." When grown black men do it...they're terrorists.
ReplyDeleteAt some point in the recent past, people decided that rage was both funny and informative in and of itself. Setting aside the former for now, I've encountered plenty of people who believe that if you're not cursing making ad hominem attacks against the other side, then you're not sincere about your beliefs.The problem, I think, is that people get numb to that sort of thing. Once you've been exposed to that sort of inchoate rhetoric for long enough, civil discussion seems very slow and uninteresting. And for people my age or a little older, that rage is all we've ever known. My first memory of politics was two teachers discussing the fucking Clinton Body Count List and it got worse from there! I never fell into that crap due to some awareness-raising foreign work experience and a general aversion to people screaming, but for a lot of people it's totally normal. Our palettes have been deadened, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteBeg for cash from strangers after spending years alienating the public, then snivelingly quit the internet when no cash is flowing your way?
ReplyDeleteIts a bit different to say that "westerners" want to hang out together than to say that people want to hang out with people of "their own race." Just as its a bit different to say that people are avoiding being with Japanese people in Japan when they may also enjoy relaxing and being with people from their own cultural background, or occasionally prefer to eat a cinnabon for breakfast rather than rice.
ReplyDeleteMy experience of being in a place where I was both a racial minority (qua white person) and a cultural minority (qua American) is that I could really enjoy spending some time with my fellow Americans--at the Embassy or with the PEace Corps workers-- without that implicating race at all. Our Americanness transcended racial differences to an enormous degree. I'm thinking of Nepal where the idea of a truly multi racial American, in which Asian looking people were as American as I was, was an impossibility. Similarly, my identity as a woman and a liberal meant that I had more in common with my Nepali Limbu research assistant than with a crew of English Golfers who flew in to Dharan with me once.
I think TNC's take on this is more interesting than Savages, if that is Savages take. Actual homophobia, as in a horror of homosexuals, would be more forgiveable than that you resort to abusive and humiliating slurs whenever you are crossed or denied something. Baldwin's unforgiveable sin isn't that he is/is not a homophobe but that he is definitively an angry, abusive, jerk who takes any chance he can get to kick down and when he is caught out by the person he attacks saying "hey, I don't have to take this shit from you." He responds like a wounded toddler "I didn't mean it and you made me do it anyway." He's an infantile and unrepentant asshole--isn't tha tthe real sin?
ReplyDeleteTNC's take is basically "sure, a lot of men use the language they were taught to attack and demean other people in the battle of life but what is any grown man's excuse for continuing to do so? When you were a child maybe you spake as a child but by the time you are a man you should grow the fuck up and speak like a man."
Well, no. He engaged in and supported armed struggle against a white majority that identified itself heavily with capitalism and capitalism favoring dictatorships and he reached out, as many anti colonial fighters did, to the then powerful communist regimes for money, training, and anti colonial language. Its as fair to call him a terrorist as it is to call George Washington a terrorist.
ReplyDeleteI was intruiged by this because its just not a problem everyone has--is it?
ReplyDeleteIt's probably about as useful as any other stereotype. True (maybe) in the aggregate (depending on how you define it, who you sample, etc.) but with enough exceptions (I've met men who never swear and women who swear all the time) that it would be pointless to assume such about everyone you meet. And I think there's a difference, to some degree, between two relative equals using such language and the situation you describe (compare two drunk friends fighting over a football game to a rich guy cussing out his maid.)
But as I understand it Baldwin's rants didn't come in to play because of politics but because he is simply used to being abusive to people who work with and for him--people he can usually rely on to cover for him as servants and employees and tipped staff have always covered up for their employers, whether we are talking physical abuse or drunkenness or verbal abuse. His choice of targets may have been gay men, and his choice of slurs may have been homophobic, but he was simply enacting rich man's or celebrity privilige in letting his inner rage child hang out without believing there would be any consequences. I'm pretty sure that Baldwin was raised to believe that important and grown up men get to do and say what they want to unimportant workers, whether male or female, het or gay. Its just that he prefers the slurs he has on the tip of his tongue to other, less hurtful ones.
ReplyDeleteRecently Obama has distanced himself from the ablative.
ReplyDeleteI'm agreeing with you--actually--I don't think this is a problem everyone has at all. I think its raced, classed, and gendered and also, obviously, situational. What was interesting to me about the comment thread was the very large number of men (sometimes self identified as white but of course verbal agression is not a white thing) who simply couldn't imagine a world in which such conflict was normal, normative, and to be expected.
ReplyDeleteNot only have I met men who never swear I'm married to one, the child of another, and the sister of yet another. And I have certainly encountered women who attack each other "like fishwives" who were, of course, legendary for their foul mouths and foul attitudes.
I'm not arguing thatits gendered (although I think it is) so much as it is classed/raced/and situational. Definitely cultural. Baldwin's attacks were down: to his social inferiors/employees. His defenders, interestingly enough, didn't focus on this aspect of his assaults at all seeing them as totally forgiveable and normal forms of "letting off steam" or "expressing yourself to other people." I think thats actually classed and regionally cultural as well. Ignoring the class differences between Baldwin and the people he attacked is a special kind of (white) american blindness to class and power. Its not high class or low class--its just a common blind spot about the issues surrounding a given interaction that makes shouting "cocksucker" to your hairdresser or makeup guy different from shouting it at your buddy.
And verbally abusing someone to demonstrate your feelings is really culturally inappropriate among (some) US elites. Its so not Yankee and stiff upper lip. Meanwhile, Letting go and losing control is highly valued among some other US elites under certain circumstances--with people from a lower class or another race. Its socially complicated.
I'm hazy on my dates - wasn't Mandela already at Robben Island when Reagan put the ANC on the list? So how could he be responsible for their terrorism?
ReplyDeleteOr perhaps as fair as to call George Washington a Jacobin, since the new United States reached out to the French for help.
ReplyDeleteI'm always impressed that Joel Pollack can read Barack Obama's mind.
ReplyDeleteIt's hilarious that they can't figure out whether to love and co-opt Mandela for their own, or revile him. It's like the mirror-image of Barack Obama as another black leader they hate is somehow enacting a force-field of cognitive dissonance on them.
ReplyDeleteDATELINE, 2063: NRO-Koch Holo-opfeed Headline: "Barack Obama: More Goldwater Than Goldwater?" by Jonah Goldbergbot
ReplyDeleteWell, Mandela was a member of the Communist party. And when non-violent resistance failed to work, the ANC took up arms. Some people think these are bad things (well, when "those people" do it), but not me.
ReplyDeleteThe Soviets, Cubans and the Chinese were very active in Africa and the chickenhawks thought that the Black folks would immediately rush to the red banner when the apartheid arsewipes were out of power.
ReplyDeleteI dunno, you enslave people, steal their money and land, kill them in jail, brutally suppress them and, first chance they get, they turn on you. Commies!
You beat me to it.
ReplyDeleteOnly if their brain stem is in their ass.
ReplyDeleteDo the zombies on "Walking Dead" breathe? I only watched it a couple of times- too gory for me.
ReplyDeleteIt would seem the Repug opposition to Obamacare is based mostly on their avowed desire to "make him fail". They have no further goal. I bet if Rmoney had won he'd have kept a fair amount of the health plan, no doubt with some unpleasant alterations.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the boycotts by people and institutions in Capitalist countries- everyone knows boycotts are communist, NOT free-market.
ReplyDeleteYeah. Gandhi was a terrorist, too. Its terrfying when the oppressed, subject, class rises up and tries to make some space for itself and its dreams.
ReplyDeleteYou are impugning the innate dignity of the noble elk with this comparison to wingnuts. Otherwise, agree.
ReplyDeleteStill I believe Roy needs to keep bringing it, depressing or no.
"If they feel so 'oppressed' then why don't they just get jobs and make something of themselves?" / wingnut hivemind chorus
ReplyDeleteYou're doubting Saint Ronnie? He knew who was really calling the shots.
ReplyDeleteSo you're saying I'll have another batch of neo-nazi dingbats to screw with Monday evening if I can't find anything old wrestling matches on YouTube I want to watch. Groovy.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing's there if you want to watch it, but the gist: Israel (the producers of the film are Israeli) and the US supported the apartheid regime in SA; the USSR financed the man armed opposition.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-49tTxTWpOM
Yeah, eating's that way, too.
ReplyDeletePerfection!
ReplyDeleteYou jest, but rage releases many of the catecholamines (adrenaline and such) that things like skiing and sky-diving do, but at little or no physical risk to the person experiencing the rage. It's basically the chickenshit's adrenaline rush.
ReplyDelete"German barbecue"? Those are two words I've never read together.
ReplyDeleteActually, my favorite response to those T-shirts was "It's a white thing--you wouldn't be interested".
ReplyDeleteThen again, I lived in Oakland at the time...
I don't find the ability to "really hurt someone" all that valuable. Is it because men and women occupy different kinds of networks in which jockeying for position happens in a different way?
ReplyDeleteI can only speak for the male half of the equation. Men in groups will definitely be trying to one-up each other, be it in terms of toughness, cleverness, what have you. My educated guess is that women do much the same thing, although it may take different forms. But "really hurting someone" intentionally is just a bad, bad idea if you're going to be dealing with them again. So this line of defense seems to come from people who consider social exchanges a distant, one-time thing.
Speaking of Baldwin, how pissed must Tracy Morgan be now? He was publicly shamed and nearly fired because his deliberately provocative standup act made him seem homophobic. Meanwhile, no one ever said boo to the actual homophobe on 30 Rock.
Well, I look forward to tomorrow. It's been very hard going through these last few days after Mandela's passing without knowing what wise words "nbforrest1" has to offer on the subject.
ReplyDeleteExactly. It's like criticizing the Pope for "pontificating."
ReplyDeleteYes! I keep wondering if the term "First World Problem" isn't an example of this sort of principle - I had very briefly heard the same kind of thing referred to as "White-People Problems" and then it changed. I've figured all along that "White-People Problems" made white people uncomfortable because it said too much about how things really are, and that's why you don't see it anymore.
ReplyDelete"if"?
ReplyDeleteAhem. Amok92 asked what *would*, not what *did*.
ReplyDeleteFunny, I've never read a conservative encomium to Mandela's economic stewardship before this.
ReplyDeleteOh, crikey. Thank goodness for small mercies — and please, don't give the bastards any ideas.
"But sometimes, it's just-Jesus, can people not be assholes? Is that so hard?"
ReplyDeleteMy extensive empirical research suggests that the answers are (i) sometimes, and (ii) yes.
Well, I personally do think that that whole group of activists is way too eager to tie race and class together. There are a shitload of white Americans living in abject poverty or something close to it. Stuff like "My smartphone connection is slower than usual" isn't a white person problem when the white person in question is a coal country senior on food stamps, even if that person would likely be worse off if they weren't white. Both can be true. It's a snappy slogan, sure, but like all snappy slogans, it leaves a lot of reality behind.
ReplyDeleteI'm white myself, so call me butthurt or ignorant if you like, but it seems like on the one hand you've got activists who use 'white' as an insult constantly and get outraged at the smallest faux pas, and in the other corner, you've got the Republican Party, warmly welcoming those who take the insults personally and saying "Why yes, those activists are crazy people who hate you for being white. Wouldn't you feel more comfortable with us?" Am I the only one who sees what the Tea Party has done to conservatism, on the opposite side? That certain lefties are inadvertently running a recruitment drive for their enemies?
People have the right to get angry about injustice and inequality, as they well should, but the people who use phrases like "white people problems" take such a blunt and scorched-earth approach that when they inevitably get to talking about how hostile white middle America is to their ideals, I what to shake them by the shoulders and say "Why do you think?!"
When you live in a place where 99% of the foreigners are Caucasian, "Westerner" versus "white" is a distinction without a difference. And no one in the PRC draws a fine distinction between Americans, Canadians, Australians, or Europeans. For the record, most of my foreign-born co-workers drunken degenerates and I didn't want to hang out with them over there any more than I did back home. Thing is, my native-born co-workers seemed to realize I wasn't into what these guys were into, and yet they still naturally assumed that I would prefer the company of white people to Chinese people.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's a difference between wanting to hang out with someone of a similar cultural background and walling yourself off in a little compound so you never have to see anything familiar. That's what I'm talking about - people who spent years in a city in which they were a minority and never once went to a place where they weren't a majority. That bar and grill I mentioned? It was right across the street from a couple of restaurants I frequented. Based on the reaction from the staff, I may have been the only Westerner that ever visited those places. When you won't even cross the street to go to a pretty nice restaurant because it's outside of your comfort zone, that strikes me antipathy. Or, to be more precise, it strikes me as a bunch of terrified white people who either didn't come to this country by choice, or wanted to brag about well-traveled they were without taking any risks.
I'd like to add that many liberals - not saying anyone here, but I've run into plenty - have an open disdain for impoverished white people. I grew up in a rural community where "white people problems" included things like physical abuse, parental abandonment and chronic homelessness. A lot of these kids went through shit in their formative years that I couldn't handle now, so I really can't judge them too harshly. So it pisses me off when some smug prick calls them "hicks" or "white trash" and then suggests that they're responsible for their own problems. On the other hand, when that smug prick is a liberal who proceeds to pontificate on why these hillbillies aren't on our side? That's actually kind of funny.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but notice that the GOP has had the same issue with a certain slice of the American public, where they berate this group, accuse them of being inferior, and then wonder aloud why none of them vote Republican. We make fun of them when they do that. Just sayin'.
I'm not denying your reality and substituting my own--but I'm not sure its "racist" qua racist. I mean, I knew lots of those people, too, in Nepal. Embassy people tend to be like that--they prefer to travel in little circles of people they know. Racism has a very particular meaning. If you say "people prefer to hang out with their own race" thats one thing--it implies a host of other ugly possibilities. If you say "people are comfortable hanging out with people from their own culture/background/interests" thats another. I can assure you that when Japanese and Indian people travel they, too, are often more comfortable travelling in narrow social circles and passing from friend to friend, or socializing with people from their own culture, than being outside their comfort zone all the time. I lived in Nepal pretty fucking far outside my comfort zone, in a village three days walk from the end of the road, and saw a westerner in my village only a couple of times, for a few hours--and those were peace corps people passing through. You can bet your boots I enjoyed talking to them. I didn't hang out with people in bars in Kathmandu because I don't like bars in the US. But its not proof of how open minded I am or anything that I lived with a Nepali family and preferred it like that. Its just that I had a Nepali family who I loved, and who loved me. Hanging with strangers with no connection to you is in itself a very western notion of who people are.
ReplyDelete"In the long run we are all dead." -Keynes
ReplyDelete"Good." - Republicans
I've encountered plenty of people who believe that if you're not cursing making ad hominem attacks against the other side, then you're not sincere about your beliefs.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, doesn't this imply that all of Scandinavia should have AIDS by now?
ReplyDeleteI suspect many of them think it does.
Pollak said Obama also has that tendency, thinking he can tell Americans "what reality is and what reality isn't."
ReplyDeleteThis is from someone who also said "Mandela is fiscally responsible; Obama is profligate," when the sole evidence of Obama's profligacy is counterfactual wingnut assertion.
Uh! I actually heard Limbaugh this week point out that of the obese kids in America are poor. He then cited a study, which noted most of the kids are minorities and on food stamps. Limbaugh said the kids were fat because they were on food stamps, because parents with food stamps can buy what they want and that makes their kids fat.
ReplyDeleteNo food, no obesity. Suck it, libtards
To follow on Aimai's point, you ought to take some care extrapolating from your personal experience. I lived for years in a country where a huge proportion of the foreigners was white & Western ... and 99% of the local population was white as well, just not Western (though the whole Western / non-Western argument has been a cultural tug-of-war there for centuries).
ReplyDeleteThe expats tended to hang out together but that dynamic had to do with mind set (which admittedly can have some unpleasant undercurrents) and literally nothing to do with racism. So maybe in an environment where race is a factor, the same hang-together dynamic has less to do with racism than you make it out to be.
To be fair (and it pains me when it comes to right-wing asshattery), there actually is a "there" there. Mandela himself describes the particulars in Long Walk to Freedom. So to the claims that Mandela was a Communist and a terrorist, his life provides evidence ... especially if one is content to focus exclusively on these points and ignore completely the entirety of the man's life & legacy. In other words, the claims have a factual basis but to label Mandela that way is reductionism beyond reason. Shocking, I know, considering the sources.
ReplyDeleteWhat confounds me is that if these freedom-loving right wingers (what I'll call the 'water the tree of liberty with blood' brigade) faced the kind of central-government-imposed tyranny that Mandela and his black countrymen faced under apartheid, they would - according to their constant bloviating, anyway - take up arms and violently resist from the first.
But let a black man resist ... well, you all know their logic when it comes to the rest of that thought.
Funny, I've never read a conservative encomium to Mandela's economic stewardship before this.
ReplyDeleteRoy, you misspelled 'meconium'.
Isn't the elitist liberal who talks and thinks about poor white people as "poor white trash" the Hippie-who-spat-on-my-vietnam-vet-at-the-aiport of our dialogue? The people in this country who consider poverty a punishment for bad acts and bad thoughts are pretty much all conservatives--the prosperity gospel which is the flip side of this is conservative and christian. The argument that everyone can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and that government aid is poison is conservative--Hell the very phrase "white trash" is a southern term that only recently came to liberal lalaland. Double He Double Hockey Sticks if it isn't Dana Rohrbacker:
ReplyDeleteDana Rohrabacher ✔ @DanaRohrabacherFollow
@ga_bree_ella would defund white trash, but not our vets , seniors & other deserving Americans 2 provide benefits 2 those here illegally
2:41 AM - 6 Aug 2013
Oh, and what's that you say, Charlotte Hays?
Goldberg takes as her main piece of evidence a new book by antifeminist activist Charlotte Hays called When Did White Trash Become the New Normal? A Southern Lady Asks the Impertinent Question. In the book, Hays mocks working class people for allegedly being fat, lazy, and poorly dressed. Oh, and she also apparently thinks poor folks who have diabetes are hee-larious. Classy!
Hay’s book has been well-reviewed by her fellow conservatives — and her book is hardly the only evidence of right-wing anti-populism out there. Charles Murray, so often a pioneering figure in making vile politics respectable, got there first with his book on “the state of white America” from a few years back. There’s also the popularity Fox News effete-snob-in-residence Stuart Varney. It’s notable, too, that to-the-manner-born Mitt Romney didn’t even try to orchestrate any of the fake populist media stunts — think George H.W. Bush with the pork rinds — that previous G.O.P. presidential candidates were sure to pull.
A foolish consistency is Communism. (fart)
ReplyDeletePlease don't steal my lines.
ReplyDeleteBut has he given his heart to the dative?
ReplyDeleteHoo boy.
ReplyDeleteI'm white myself
As am I. Translucently.
so call me butthurt or ignorant if you like
You? Not ignorant. But thank you for pointing out how much less seriously I take the term "white-people problems" than I might.
That certain lefties are inadvertently running a recruitment drive for their enemies?
ReplyDeleteI think too many people say, "the Republicans act like assholes, so it's only fair if we do too." Which may even things up if you're just counting insults, but it doesn't help change things. And of course it simply allows "both sides do it"ism to flourish.
There are an awful lot of people who would rather be getting groceries at Whole Food than enjoying the Wal-Mart ambiance. You don't get them on your side by insulting them.
I'll stick with Biggie, thanks.
ReplyDeleteAs long as he can accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.
ReplyDelete...So... so parents with money... cannot... buy what they want?
ReplyDeleteIs Rush out to help conservatives by pumping out the message, or by making liberal heads explode?
I dunno why it never occurred to me to look, but dang if they don't a bunch of old Wilbur Snider/Verne Gagne matches. Groovy, indeed...
ReplyDeleteI'll accept Mandela as a terrorist when the Right accepts the Abraham Stern...
ReplyDeleteI'd hold out for Menachem Begin, myself, because they've actually heard of him.
ReplyDeleteBy blaming other people for their travails, it makes it easier to f*ck them later on
ReplyDelete