UPDATE. Speaking of which, here's Victor Davis Miles Gloriosus Hanson on America's recent wave of police-and-race demonstrations, which he seems to think have more to do with Michael Brown than with Eric Garner -- well, it's all the same to Hanson; that Trayvon Martin was a thug, too, and anyway what the protesters really want is a lawless Negrocracy in which cops cower before the dusky hordes:
Some of the public may think that the lessons of Michael Brown — and Trayvon Martin — are that it is unwise to commit a crime and then assault an officer, or confront a stranger in the rain and slug him in the head and get into a tussle, given that such targets may be armed and may respond with deadly force. But I think critics would privately respond that in Al Sharpton’s America both cases instead advise to take the beating and do not dare use a firearm for self-protection from assault on the chance the attacker is unarmed. In retrospect, Zimmerman might have preferred to have been “whoop-assed,” or Wilson preferred being slugged than to become lifelong targeted pariahs...You white liberals will be sorry when the oogaboogas steal your latte money! Beyond this Afro-6 vision, there's the usual black-on-black-blahblah ("That 5,000 to 6,000 African-Americans are murdered each year, the vast majority by other blacks... is not so important as the single death of Michael Brown"), and how come there's no riots when black people (who are not cops) kill white people, etc. Also, Hanson invokes Al Sharpton three times; maybe he thinks it's like Beetlejuice and it'll free him from this mixed-race netherworld before they remake Clash of the Titans with Morgan Freeman and spoil all hope of escape.
Will some law enforcement officials now surmise that it is wiser to ignore some crimes in the inner city on the practicable logic that the denouement for the officer will likely be negative — either by stopping the assailant through force or not stopping the assault and thus being assaulted?
[conservatives]America has a race problem because all those non-White people just don't know their place anymore! Why can't they be like the good coloreds used to be a remain out of sight until summoned? Why can't those Hispanics stick to picking lettuce and staying in Mexico between harvests? Why can't Obama just come out a tell those niggas to shut the fuck up about cops killing their kids?[/conservatives]
ReplyDeleteI blame Roy.
ReplyDelete~
The Great Rush Limbaugh
ReplyDeleteStopping right fucking there. ¡No Pasaran!
If only he'd stop being so blackity-black!
ReplyDeleteIt's all Roy's fault for playing the race card. What's that...? SHUT UP, I'M NOT LISTENING [fingers in ears]
ReplyDeleteHmm, what is this Mango Smoothie that Roy has placed on the breakfast bar for us?
ReplyDeleteWalking into America’s poorer minority neighborhoods, are things significantly better or worse than they were on January 19, 2009, the day before Obama took office? Are the schools performing any better? Are there more job opportunities? Are there fewer people struggling with addiction? Are there clearer paths to success? Have the crime rates changed dramatically? Is the relationship between the citizens and the police forces any better?
ReplyDeleteall things the GOP in 2014 genuinely care about.
So sick of their shit.
ReplyDeleteWarning for those who have allergies, may contain pissedassholery nuts.
ReplyDeleteRush:
ReplyDeletet is on the verge of destroying the things that provide order and respect.
Order and respect mean obedience and subservience, respectively.
Shorter every conservative: "He claimed that if he was elected, Republicans would stop being such fucking assholes. He lied to us!"
ReplyDeleteI'd say that White Republicans are the Susan Smiths of American Politics but that is an insult to Susan Smith. She was at least objectively mentally disordered in her thinking thanks to years of abuse from her right wing Sherriff father when she murdered her own kids and accused some fantasy "black man" of the crime. What is their excuse?
ReplyDeleteHow could they even make this statement--what would have changed? Was there increased funding for infrastructure that was not blocked by Reublicans? Was there increased funding for schools that was not destroyed by the charter school privatization movement? Was there increased funding for job training? Was there any attempt by Democrats and Republicans in congress to stop the oursourcing of jobs? If the answer is no what does this have to do with the election of Obama? Its not like Congressional priorities shifted.
ReplyDeleteA divine assurance and an impervious complaisance, as of one habituated to require subservience and to take no thought for the morrow, is the birthright and the criterion of the gentleman at his best; and it in popular apprehension even more than that, for this demeanor is accepted as an intrinsic attribute of superior worth, before which the base -born commoner delights to stoop and yield.
ReplyDeleteSome Norse dude.
I was struck by Geraghty's description of Rush Limbaugh as "great", too. Rush has always been a conservative, but he used to put some thought into it. Following the Oklahoma City bombing, he was challenging his listeners: "How many rights would you be willing to give up to prevent another bombing like this?" he asked on the air, with no takers. (His clear implication was that Janet Reno and Bill Clinton would be coming around to grab everyone's guns. A perennial favorite through the nineties, and they're still trying to get mileage out of it. It's anyone's guess as to whether people have stopped buying the argument or if angry white men have run out of money. Either way, gun sales are down.) But I guess the paycheck Rush got for switching to full-time hippie-punching was irresistible.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, Geraghty blows half his space on a massive Rush block quote. (I'm sure the name-drop had nothing to do with that.) The elisions are mine, of course:
You’ve been watching CNN and...you are not prepared to deal with it because you have yet to hear the facts because you’ve been watching CNN, what do you do? It’s contrary to everything that you’ve been told. So what do you do? You get mad. You get ticked off... I think they need all of this. They need to be victims. They need the perception to be that the government is a...stacked deck... They need that. That’s what fuels them. That’s what propels people to the polls. What is playing the race card on Election Day, what is playing the race card? It’s...the only way that they can then survive being wrong is to place themselves as victims as well, victims of an unfair country, victims of unfair society.
My goodness, Mr. Limbaugh, how did you ever come to perceive matters in this way?
Dumbest comment ever on this blog.
ReplyDeleteyou're asking this question of a guy who BEGINS his piece with, "the great rush limbaugh."
ReplyDeleteWhat is their excuse?
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, it's really hard to break a 300-year-old habit.
When a system imbues you with a sense of superiority through no effort on your part you will cling to it with every bone in your body, especially as you have been taught that you as an individual don't matter. Obedience to authority is what matters because If you submit to authority you will gain approval and acceptance. Race, class, politics, team sports--all are influenced by this attitude because it is the fundamental way authoritarians view the world.
ReplyDeleteWhy did he make such lofty promises, then? It was all bs. You let him off the hook because he has opposition. Weak opposition his first two years.
ReplyDeleteThe guy's been a disaster as far as race relations. It's not all his fault but he's not blameless, either. Not after the hype he came into office under.
Stop apogizing for him. It's embarrassing.
This is my favorite kind of 'anyone who claims to care about the Noble Principles of Federalism is bullshitting' example- the kind that doesn't even mention the Noble Principles of Federalism but just straight up throws them out the window so we can pretend the President has direct control over local police forces, a thing wingnuts would throw a tantrum over were it true.
ReplyDeleteDoxxer JennOfArk.
ReplyDeleteI thought we were now color-blind and opportunity had equaled. It's so confusing.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I click on a Jim Geraghty column is a special treat, because I do it rarely enough to forget he looks like an oversized ten-year-old.
ReplyDeleteI don't scroll down too far tho. That's fucking nuts.
So to break it down: We know that these protesters hate the President because they aren't chanting “way to go, Mr. President” - reciting the names of people you like being common at street protests, I guess. And it will only hurt the President because he didn't wave his magic wand a month ago and fix everything. Oh, and de Blasio is an asshole because he used a common rhetorical device exhorting common action, but didn't list a point-by-point explanation as to what it meant.
ReplyDeleteSigh.
Apparently, I'm more of a reckless optimist than I thought. I keep thinking that pundits will start feeling bad about taking money for such asinine pieces and straighten up.
Both sides blame the president of the opposition party for everything. They both do it. Nothing new.
ReplyDeleteRight? What kind of Constitution-shredding despot is this guy?
ReplyDeleteGeraghty isn't a major figure, so he doesn't get the same flood of wingnuttery as, say, Goldberg. In fact, he's got people down there heckling him. One of them posted this choice Limbaugh quote from 2009:
ReplyDelete"You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama's
America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering,
"Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on," and, of course, everybody
says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he's white."
Racism is dead, and if isn't it's because of black people. So sayeth the great man.
He's right you know. If it weren't for Obama, I totally wouldn't care that the police are allowed to assault and kill unarmed African-Americans.
ReplyDeleteThere's no evidence for it, of course, but those are the facts.
ReplyDeleteFun fact guys- my job on occasion involves reading essays written by DC high school students. The batch I looked at over the weekend included a couple that addressed the Brown and Garner slayings.
ReplyDeleteSo not that I needed it, but I now have empirical proof that your average wingnut writes less intelligently on this subject than a teenager.
What I love is the gLibertarians coming in with their "Yeah, man, the pigs are the stormtroopers of the fascist tax empire!" *waves fist*, as if the problem is not so much the fact that we need to keep a closer eye on those we trust with deadly force as to eliminate them altogether (or privatize them, meaning only those with sufficient funds can access security which is almost the same thing). I'm not sure if willfully ignoring the racial component is worse than defending it, but it's up there.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many things kids in D.C. don't have in common with your average winger.
ReplyDeletelifelong targeted pariahs
ReplyDeleteOh my heart fucking bleeds.
And what's with the blue glow, and why is it eating through the bar?
ReplyDeleteI really should be past this point now but the cigarette tax thing is just so deeply... weird. Reaching the point where you're down to vocalize that banning the sale of loose cigarettes will inevitably lead to the police brutalizing a dude for selling loose cigarettes is just completely foreign to me,
ReplyDeleteGeraghty blows [. . .] Rush
ReplyDeleteFixed for truth.
The GOP "cares" enough to squeeze the last drop of money out of public schools and give it to religious nuts to indoctrinate the kids, whereas the democrats wants to squeeze every last drop out of the public schools to give to some hedge-fund manager's (or silicon valley brahmin's) privatizing scheme.
ReplyDeleteWho says there's no difference between parties?
In retrospect Zimmerman might have preferred to be "whoop assed?" That does it: I take back all my sympathy for Trayvon and his parents. What is the untimely death of a promising young child compared to the Zimmerman agonistes?
ReplyDeleteWill some law enforcement officials now surmise that it is wiser to ignore some crimes in the inner city on the practicable logic that the denouement for the officer will likely be negative — either by stopping the assailant through force or not stopping the assault and thus being assaulted?
ReplyDeleteNo.
They will still be beating the fuck out of blacks for being black, punching women in the face in the patrol car, breaking "some mouthy fucker's" ribs in the elevator at the police station, or as the off duty cops who hung out at the bar where I worked liked to do, ask the waitresses over to "watch a few fuck films and climb in the hot tub". Because you can't afford a better quality of scum to put between Victor Heliogabalus Hansen and the people who would nick his chainsaw.
That 5,000 to 6,000 African-Americans are murdered each year, the vast majority by other blacks... is not so important as the single death of Michael Brown
ReplyDeleteThose people go on trial and then to jail. Oh yeah, and the taxpayers don't fund or oversee criminals who kill people. These are not minor points, nor are they particularly hard to grasp, so why don't these guys get it? Oh, that's right - it's your job to not understand this shit, isn't it?
Given how far up Wrong Creek the anti-tax zealots have paddled, it's not a real surprise that they're trying to pin everything on the ebil gubburmint grabbin their monies. Next week: how the IRS causes tooth decay. Fillings used to be made out of gold! Coincidence? I think not!
ReplyDeleteNo more dental Fiat-llings!!
ReplyDeleteI think they need all of this. They need to be
ReplyDeletevictims. They need the perception to be that the government is
a...stacked deck... They need that. That’s what fuels them. That’s
what propels people to the polls.
Does the Race Card say "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas?"
the denouement for the officer will likely be negative — either by
ReplyDeletestopping the assailant through force or not stopping the assault and
thus being assaulted?
So in VDH's fetid imagination, it's always and forever "kill or be killed". Negotiation, non-violent intervention, those never work - so rather than take one on the chin for society police should just go in blazing away at the first sign of trouble, because they're screwed either way.
It's a 3/2 with trample and protection from white.
ReplyDeleteFuck, the projection in that Pigman quote - you could boost New York City to Saturn with that.
ReplyDelete"Haste" as well, for quick jumping to conclusions.
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying the DToMs who are suddenly very much against all forms of protest because you know, it's disruptive.
ReplyDeleteT, say "That's racist": Target black creature is unblockable until end of turn.
ReplyDeleteWell, it depends. First you need a brown paper bag to hold up next to the perp...
ReplyDeleteAnd then there's that whole motive angle. What if it's a hard-working white Real American who just shot a chainsaw thief? Or a chainsaw thief? Or a so-called "women's clinic escort"? It's not like those are real crimes anyway.
all of these potential police beatings will now be lost...like...chainsaws...in the rain...
ReplyDeleteIf I'm following this correctly, the time-line of actions here would have been Zimmerman deciding to "watch" his neighborhood, then deciding to stalk the only Black kid he came across, then deciding to confront the Black kid, then deciding to get physical about it, and then giving up so the kid could beat him up?!?!? Is that the deal?
ReplyDelete"You have yet to hear the facts because you're watching CNN..." I hate it when I find myself agreeing with Rush Limbaugh. Now I feel unclean.
ReplyDeleteStalking and assaulting someone, only to get beaten up by the stalkee?
ReplyDeleteWhere is the justice, I ask you?
I think it says Condolences.
ReplyDeleteRandy Weaver never sold no loosies.
ReplyDeleteBring back the gold filling standard!
ReplyDeleteShe was at least objectively mentally disordered in her thinking thanks to years of abuse from her right wing . . .
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking the Republican Party is objectively mentally disordered in its thinking that's to years of abuse from its right wing.
Dentistry is theft!
ReplyDeleteAbout that non-police violence... not too many people protest appropriate indictments.
ReplyDeletePlus Dominican boychild prostitutes on tap.
ReplyDeleteThe reviews are in.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLiu7B25G4o
What do you people want, anyway ... a trial?
ReplyDeleteWhat's the point of having power if you can't take it out for a spin and see how far it can go?
ReplyDeleteand anyway what the protesters really want is a lawless Negrocracy in which cops cower before the dusky hordes
ReplyDeleteThat line is 50 Shades of Awesome, Roy.
Just focus on the fact that Limbaugh doesn't mean that CNN is a vacuous parade of talking heads reassuring each other that the status quo is awesome, he means that it's ideologically indistinguishable from Pravda.
ReplyDeleteI know that's what he means. Just like the New York Times is a bastion of the far left rather than a pathetic pompous repository of conventicle wisdom.
ReplyDeleteZimmerman is the Bernie Goetz of our times.
ReplyDeleteThis is the kind of biting commentary I come here for!
ReplyDeleteOFF THE BOTTOM OF THE DECK.
ReplyDelete~
VHD: "In hindsight, Officer Darren Wilson apparently made two postmodern mistakes." WTF VHD? Dude's got some weird form of Tourette's
ReplyDelete"maybe he thinks it's like Beetlejuice and it'll free him from this mixed-race netherworld before they remake Clash of the Titans with Morgan Freeman and spoil all hope of escape."
ReplyDeleteRelease The KKKracken!
I wish we had the New York times that only exists in the heads of conservatives.
ReplyDelete"Postmodern Mistake" = Pajamas Media hiring VDH, who thinks civilization died with Philip of Macedon, to write a "cri de chainsaw" column about life in the twenty-first century
ReplyDeleteThe top-rated comment over there is this mango with cinema-quality projection: "You just can't deal with or live with people who will not even try to see reality, who dislike you intensely and impute all kinds of nasty characteristics to you simply based on your ethnicity, who feel entitled to benefits and special treatment due to some long past history and who are certain that you have rights and privileges that they don't have ...." He thinks he's talking about black people.
ReplyDeletelifelong targeted pariahs
ReplyDelete"Lifelong" being the key word there, bub. But yeah, in retrospect I too would prefer they had NOT KILLED SOMEONE FOR FUCK ALL than be treated with disdain from the portion of the community that's not going to publicly suck their dicks.
Poe?
ReplyDeleteDon't they know that dead black kids are the price we willingly pay for our sense of security and stability?
ReplyDeleteI had to wonder. It lies firmly in the nebulous gray area generated by the Poe particle; the "Poe Field" if you will, where it simultaneously is and is not parody.
ReplyDeleteBut it is totally unfair to hold police to a higher standard of behavior than criminals.
ReplyDeleteAnd many conservatives think it's a bargain at twice the price!
ReplyDeleteI thought it said "Go to jail. Go directly to jail."
ReplyDeleteWalking into America’s poorer minority neighborhoods, are things significantly better or worse than they were on January 19, 2009, the day before Obama took office?
ReplyDeleteI guess it depends on your perspective. For the residents of those neighborhoods, things have gotten worse--especially with regards to police gunning down your kids.
But from the perspective of conservative commenters, things have gotten better--especially with respect to the police gunning down Black kids.
Macros, macaroons--same results.
ReplyDeleteVDH
ReplyDeleteGeorge Zimmerman
Trayvon Martin
One of these things is not like the others . . .
As I've written elsewhere, I'm convinced that the key psychological hallmark of conservatives is a profound inability to empathize with anyone not exactly like themselves.
At some level, they know that or they wouldn't be so eminently proud to back the not-as-white-as-they-are Zimmerman. Look! We're multi-racial racists! We have an hispaniel!
ReplyDeleteHanson's output these days seems to consist of a rehash of what other conservative loons wrote a few days earlier. Either that or a standard column in which he lists the many fecklessnesses of Barack Obama, starting with the "apology tour" and not forgetting to mention Benghazi. Surely even wingnut welfare shops like NRO won't keep paying for such unoriginal pap forever.
ReplyDeleteI was struck by Geraghty's description of Rush Limbaugh as "great", too.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's hard to argue with this characterization in the literal sense. The OED says "great" means "Of relatively large girth or circumference, or breadth or width, in comparison with length or height", which seems apt.
It certainly seems unrealistic.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Great Gazoogle, "postmodern" is another of VDH's favourite words, attached to nouns like "mistake" or "world" or "war" as a kind of intensifier. Perhaps he intends it to be a Homeric epithet. Perhaps it's just another macro on his wordprocessor.
ReplyDeleteIt's "funny" how conservatives have made a folk hero of a guy who claims he lost a fight with a teenager he outweighed and then brought his self-defense instructor to testify about how terrible he was at violence as part of his defense. Does anyone think I could sell a book proposal to Regnery on the sissyfication of the American male on this topic if I used general enough language, or do you think they'd catch on before i could cash the check?
ReplyDeleteIt's just the right thing for my palate.
ReplyDeleteHitler liked dogs and he was right.
ReplyDelete"Postmodern" seems to be a new right-wing shibboleth; I read a magazine article the other day that was accusing "postmodern feminists" of the usual things right-wingers accuse strawfeminsts of doing. (As far as I can remember, none of the Postmodernists I studied in grad school were particularly feminist; as I recall, Lacan seemed to think that women weren't even capable of higher intellectual thought.)
ReplyDeleteI truly can't tell whether this quote means he's sincerely befuddled at the disparate reactions, or he's being slyly disingenuous, or what. Is it too much to ask that a college professor pause over such a line and think, "Wait, the comparison is not valid"?
ReplyDeleteOh, look at me, with my faith in a wingnut's sincerity and obligation to be intellectually honest. Aren't I cute?
I would like to spend twelve years with this comment, wandering upon the wine-dark sea.
ReplyDeletePoes are rare. Morons are common.
ReplyDeleteAs little as I ever understood postmodernism, I feel pretty sure that conservatives understand it even less.
ReplyDeleteDarren Wilson, at least, appears to be making money off of his crime.
ReplyDeleteDarren Wilson, at least, claims to have raised nearly $1 million for his legal fees. Wilson & Zimmerman can probably go on speaking tours...
ReplyDeleteHas Review mainstay John Derbyshire weighed in on these recent shooting deaths of unarmed black men and children? I haven't seen his work in a while. Is he on sabbatical?
ReplyDeleteDon't call me Shirley!
ReplyDeleteI grew up in Apartheid South Africa, around cops who were trained, funded and equipped specifically for the purpose of terrorising and killing black people. American cops scare me more.
ReplyDeleteIt's the efficiency with which black people are dispatched over there. Most fatal encounters seem to end within 5 minutes of the arrival of the death squad. At least with the SAP, you had the chance to convince Piet you were a rich black. With you guys, I'd be sucking air through new holes in my chest inside 10 minutes of someone complaining that a suspicious black man ordered a pumpkin spice mocha (because *those* people don't do pumpkin spice).
He wasn't a bad person, Mike Brown might not have been a bad person but he made a very bad choice that day.
ReplyDeleteHer compassion just fucking shines through.
I cheer every dollar he gets. It's just more money for Michael Brown's family when they win their lawsuit against him.
ReplyDelete"Will some law enforcement officials now surmise that it is wiser to
ReplyDeleteignore some crimes in the inner city on the practicable logic that the
denouement for the officer will likely be negative — either by stopping
the assailant through force or not stopping the assault and thus being
assaulted?"
P.J Media "Editor"
"I can't quite put my finger on it, Victor, but that graf just doesn't... I don't know... scan. Hey, try this: "Will some law enforcement officers decide to go Galt?"
Simple, really: when VDH uses "postmodern", it means "anything that used to be conservative and good, but has become liberal and bad".
ReplyDeleteAlso, too, Peter King on Eric Garner:
ReplyDelete“First of all, the death was tragic, and our hearts have to go out to the Garner family. Having said that..."
Give King credit... at least he start out with "Yadda Yadda Yadda..."
"Show us on the doll where the postmodernist touched you." /VDH
ReplyDeleteaimai,
ReplyDeleteAt long last, have you no shame for these comments of yours?
Whose testimony are you still clinging to? Dorian Johnson's?