Harry Reid's Negro Problem - And Ours [Mark Steyn]
Re Senator Reid and the "light-skinned Negro", I agree with much of what's written below, and obviously any Republican Senate Majority Leader who started musing on such matters would be dark-skinned toast in nothing flat. But this comment by Matthew Yglesias (full disclosure: Mr Yglesias has no use for me) tiptoes ever so tentatively toward the heart of it:
"It’s good that Reid apologized, but at the same time you can’t really apologize for being the sort of person who’d be inclined to use the phrase “negro dialect” and it’s more the idea of Reid being that kind of person that’s creepy here than anything else."
One understands the realities of power. You can talk about how light-skinned and clean the Negro is and that's perfectly okay as long as you support the President's policies (or, as Mr Obama put it in his acceptance of Reid's apology) "social justice". But, if you go along to a town hall meeting and say you oppose the health care bill because you're very concerned at what you hear about waiting times for MRIs in Canada, you're obviously a knuckledragging racist who's itching to string that uppity Negro from the nearest tree."
Okay, fine. But, even if you accept all that, you're still left with what Mr Yglesias calls the "creepiness" - the fact that the Senate Majority Leader and to a lesser extent the Vice-President think in this way. To those of us who find identity politics repugnant, it would seem to confirm that an unhealthy obsession with "anti-racism" eventually becomes so condescending it's indistinguishable from racism - or, at any rate, the micro-classifications of apartheid - to the point where bigtime Dem honchos are sitting around saying, "What we need here is a clean octoroon." "Well, this high yaller from Chicago might do the trick." I mean, in what sense are Harry Reid's remarks any different from this? The Weekly World News' "Ed Anger" commenting last week on Obama's first transsexual appointment:
"I saw some pretty lousy looking she-males back in Korea, and I gotta say: this new one at least can pass"
Posts
6 comments:
Steyn makes about as much sense as Eleanor Clift here. I know AA that you refused to analyze that.
Still, at least he's entertaining.
As to "thinking like that": what does Steyn mean? The spiel he puts later hasn't anything to do with Reid (or Biden) deeming Obama acceptable...
He means that the Democrats have had once consistent trait in their long and sordid political history; the collectivist view of man, by race, by class, by tribe. The braying Donkeys that set out a "progressive" racial agenda under the guise of "for the greater good", of the modern era, where borne of the Asses of yesteryear with their regressive racial agenda under the guise of "for the greater good". And many of the individuals on the former also belonged to the laughter.
Scratch a Byrd or a Reid, and the same hair lies beneath.
That, komrad, is his point.
Yet more.
Hey, AA, why did you copy-and-paste the full Steyn piece on the front page of the blog? Even Herr Rot, in full-hog ouzoesque stupor, can figure out how to click on the link!
That said, I tend to agree more with das Rotter on thsi one. Though I understand your point, I don't quite see it developed in Steyn's piece -- you're more like divining it from what he writes (a bit like Rot reading between the lines from the penumbras of the Constitution). Methinks these Corner pieces are a bit slam-bang blogging, where he tries out quickly various ideas, as they pop in his mind. Oftentimes, one needs to wait for the more formal, polished article that follows. Still, I like the Corner format, many times it's more spontaneous -- like blogging is -- and up-to-the-minute, of course.
Oh Tecs. You lack faith in just how moronic the Massachusettsolusitanian mind can be.
I am the one that put the link in at the title. I think AA hasn't figured out that each blog post at NROCorner has its own link and so he stares and stares, fingers greasy from fried bacalhau, until he finally gets the idea to copy the whole thing.
I just wonder if he used copy-paste or if he retyped it all out himself, like the mediaeval monkron that he is.
I first transcribed it in syrian ink, with a feather taken from the Peacocks of the Papal menagerie for a quill, in the high calligraphy of the Book of Kells; this as devotion to God. Then, after vespers, by the dim light of a tallow candle, I wrote long commentaries in the style of Meister Eckhart on a palimpsest of the finest Byzantine markets; this as an honor to our Lord and Savior. Then, these labors at last completed in the early hours of dawn, a small benefice of aguardente and surrendered wholly to the ghost of rest.
The Friars of Singe Verda do it right.
Post a Comment