This commentary is rated MA for mature audiences. It contains some foul language, although honestly, only so much as is needed to get the damned point across. Parental discretion is advised…
Attention to all self-proclaimed liberals and progressives.
I would like to properly introduce you to a man about whom you’ve heard much — especially from his enemies and those who prefer a continuation of the status quo — but at whom you might wish to take a second look, and whom you might consider supporting for president.
Unlike Barack Obama, he supports an immediate end to our current and ongoing wars abroad.
Unlike Barack Obama, he supports an end to predator drone attacks by the United States military, which kill innocent civilians and foment growing hatred of America. He believes that the so-called “war on terror” as we’ve engaged it has undermined American freedoms at home and contributed to greater tensions and anti-American sentiment abroad.
Unlike Barack Obama, he supports an entirely revamped Middle East policy, in which the U.S. will no longer subsidize the oppression of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel.
Unlike Barack Obama, he supports either abolishing or fundamentally reforming the Federal Reserve system, and he opposed bailing out the banks with public funds.
Unlike Barack Obama, this individual opposes government spying and believes in absolute freedom of speech and the press, and as he puts it, “reduced government intrusion into our lives.”
Clearly, with such a progressive vision, no one of the left would want to pass up the opportunity to support a candidate such as this for president! Surely it would be a vast improvement over Barack Obama, that Wall Street- friendly, imperialistic, war-monger, who promised to close Guantanamo but didn’t, among other unforgivable crimes.
So by all means, let’s get behind someone who will close down the national security state, stand up for civil liberties, and stop handing out money to bankers.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the left, I give you your perfect candidate for 2012:
David Duke.
Oh I’m sorry, did you think I was talking about someone else?
I can still recall, vividly in fact, an exchange I had with a woman in one of my audiences seventeen years ago, who had come to my talk at Kansas City Community College: an address in which I examined the intersectionality of racism and heterosexism.
The woman, who identified herself as a mother of two, stood up shortly after my speech and insisted that she had every right to teach her children that homosexuality was immoral and that gays and lesbians were going to hell. How dare I, she bellowed, challenge her right as a parent to raise her children as she wished. After all, she explained, they were her property.
Seriously, that’s what she said: Her children were her property.
Putting aside the inherently disquieting nature of equating one’s offspring with one’s ottoman, or perhaps, end table — a point I made rather caustically to her, to no effect, as I’m sure you can guess — there was something even more problematic about her claims to parental supremacy, informed, in her case at least, by her hard-line religiosity. It was something I thought of again this morning when reading two news items, both of which discussed ultra-conservative Christians pitted against the public schools in which some of their children are enrolled, and which, to hear them tell it, are impeding on their religious freedom to teach their children as they desire.
The first, out of my own state of Tennessee, involves attempts by conservative lawmakers to pare back previously adopted anti-bullying legislation, by carving out exemptions for students whose religious beliefs compel them to “share their views” on homosexuality. A recent suicide by a rural Tennessee student who had been bullied because he was gay has led anti-bullying advocates to push for greater protections, while the Family Action Council of Tennessee has stepped up its push to enshrine bigotry into the law, because that’s what Baby Jesus would want, after all.
You’re tellin’ white lies
You’re tellin’ white lies
Well I can see right through that thin disguise
Can’t you tell I can tell when you’re telling’ white lies?
—Jason and the Scorchers, “White Lies”
Forget so-called “political correctness.” In Arizona, there is a far greater threat to free speech and educational integrity — a new P.C. if you will — that we might label, “patriotic correctness.” The fact that conservatives will not only not be bothered by it, but indeed are thoroughly responsible for it, only signifies, once and for all, that their much ballyhooed devotion to the Constitution (which the Tea Party types have sworn is the principal motivator for their activism), is a monstrous fraud.
And whereas the thing they derisively called political correctness was really never more than an attempt by we on the left to get people to not be assholes (by doing blatantly racist, sexist and heterosexist things), patriotic correctness threatens to remake the way schools operate, and limit the access that students in Arizona have to accurate historical information and multiple perspectives.
This week, administrative law judge Lewis Kowal ruled that the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) is in violation of state law because of its Ethnic Studies program. Specifically, Kowal, whose position likely requires less understanding of the law than that displayed daily by Judge Judy on her eponymous television program, decreed that Ethnic Studies violates state statute for three reasons: first, because it was designed principally for one ethnic group alone (and thus, ostensibly promotes a form of segregation); second, because classes in the program promote racial resentment against whites; and finally, because Ethnic Studies as taught in the TUSD promotes racial and ethnic solidarity amongst Latinos, rather than treating everyone as an individual. As an additional aside — and one to which we will return — Kowal added his own grievance to the decision against TUSD, by noting that the district had failed in its obligation to teach about oppression “objectively.”
Unless and until the ruling is overturned on appeal, the state has the power to withhold up to 10 percent of the TUSD’s budgetary allocation, thereby jeopardizing the cash-strapped schools there and casting its students and teachers into an even greater institutional crisis. All this, because of a program in which a few thousand students each year were enrolled, and which, according to the available evidence, was boosting retention, graduation and college-enrollment rates for those kids who came through it, as opposed to the other Latino students who did not. But success doesn’t matter. Because that success, to hear Kowal tell it — or to hear other Arizona conservatives tell it, some of whom have been trying to eradicate the program ever since its inception — was at the expense of patriotic correctness, at the expense of national pride, and at the expense of unity, however contrived.
Last week, Forbes Magazine’s small business reporter Gene Marks penned a column that has set the internet abuzz ever since. Therein, Marks, who quite accurately describes himself as “short, balding and mediocre,” proceeded to counsel poor black children as to how they might succeed in America, despite facing, by his own admission, longer odds than white youth like his own children, or other white middle class kids in general. Far from a harsh right-winger bent on condemning the moral decency, character or abilities of the black poor (or like Newt Gingrich in his 1994 vintage, ripping them away from their mothers and dumping them in orphanages), Marks appears to fashion himself an enlightened benefactor of good advice, a caring liberal who believes in the ability of anyone to make it with the right combination of hard work and a positive attitude.
No believer in Bell Curv-ish nonsense about black intellectual inferiority, Marks makes clear that the children about whom he speaks are no less capable than his own kids. Of course, one wonders just how much of a compliment Marks really intends for this to be, given his strange habit of dissing his offspring, on more than one occasion, as rather unintelligent, unmotivated, promiscuous and even inclined to petty criminality. Not sure what kind of asshole says things like this about his children in print, but I suppose we can leave that discussion for another day.
No doubt Marks would say that he was simply encouraging poor African American kids to take personal responsibility for their success. He might even say that by acknowledging unfair and unjust structural inequity (and even, indirectly, white privilege), he was doing so in a politically ecumenical way. Certainly Marks would perceive his words and intentions as quite different from those of right-wingers whose hectoring of the poor so often involves blaming those at the bottom of the nation’s economic hierarchy for their station in life. To Marks, poor black kids are not to blame for the position in which they find themselves, but they nonetheless hold the keys to their own liberation, and if they would simply follow his sage counsel they could surely make it, like anyone else: even the cerebrally challenged and oversexed spawn who slumber each night just down the hall from he and his wife.
There is much one could say about Marks’s advice — rather typical bootstrapping fare about studying hard, coupled with a more modern emphasis on becoming a techie like him, and thereby, presumably, an irresistible college or job applicant — and most of it has been said already. Like, for instance, this piece, or this one, or this one, or maybe this one, all of which eloquently critique the privileged and naive mindset displayed by Marks, and explain how even when poor kids of color do everything right, the structures of society are too often set up to help them fail anyway.
A shorter and different version of this essay appeared shortly after Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1995, in the political newsletter, Counterpunch (September 25, 1995). Some of the quotes for the article appeared in the New Orleans Times Picayune, in a feature story on Gingrich in 1995, while others appeared in old copies of the Tulane Hullabaloo during Gingrich’s time as a grad student at Tulane in the late 1960s. Still other quotes, specifically from David Kramer and Blake Touchstone, are from interviews I conducted with both men in 1995, the former by phone and the latter in person. Though the material has been previously published, it received very little attention at the time, and because of the pre-internet era in which it was distributed, very few people ever saw it. I have now updated the piece to reflect Gingrich’s current run for President of the United States. Given the re-emergence of the previously discredited Gingrich as a national political figure, it seemed relevant to re-examine some of Newt’s largely undiscussed history.
Some things in politics really don’t change, and among the most consistently effective rhetorical memes in the quiver of conservative candidates for the past forty-plus years, “Hey-Dirty-Hippie-Why-Don’t-You-Take-a-Bath-and-Get-a-Job,” is among the most tried and true. From former Vice President Spiro Agnew to Ronald Reagan (especially in his incarnation as California Governor) to Newt Gingrich (now among the leading contenders for the Republican Presidential nomination), nothing is more sure to whip the troops into a reactionary lather like bashing young people with long or unkempt hair whose attire suggests they are something other than, well, hedge fund managers.
Never one to shy away from slamming anything remotely resembling a countercultural movement, Gingrich recently pilloried the activists of Occupy Wall Street for their supposed inadequate devotion to either steady employment or soap, much to the delight of the uber-right-wing audience members at the 479th GOP candidates debate of the past month. Ignoring the many Occupy activists who are gainfully employed, Gingrich naturally offered no ideas as to where the less fortunate among them might find work in an economy where there are several applicants for every job opening. Clearly appraised of the oversight, he then, within 48 hours offered his plan for job creation: namely, eliminate child labor laws in poor communities so that inner-city kids can be made to work as janitors at their own schools. No word on what would happen to the actual janitors, or when the kids might do their homework, or how any of that would put patchouli-drenched protesters to work, but I’m sure he’s still working on that minor detail.
Here is the clip from the 10/21/11 Rachel Maddow Show, in which I discuss race and the #Occupy Movement (and left activism more broadly) with guest host Melissa Harris-Perry. Didn’t get to say much but an essay will be forthcoming with a much more detailed analysis of the importance of crafting an antiracist narrative as part of the struggle for economic justice.
Everywhere you turn, conservatives are bemoaning the so-called “mentality of entitlement.”
To hear such folks tell it, the problem with America is that people think they’re owed something. Of course, income support programs, nutritional assistance, or housing subsidies have long been pilloried by the right for this reason — because they ostensibly encourage people to expect someone else (in this case, the government, via the American taxpayer) to support them. But now, the criticisms that were once reserved for programs aimed at helping the poor are being applied even to programs upon which much of the middle class has come to rely, like Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance.
Increasingly one hears conservative politicians and commentators arguing for cuts in these efforts as well, and critiquing those who rely on them for health care, retirement, or income in-between jobs. To the right, the elderly and unemployed apparently refuse to do for self. They aren’t far-sighted enough, one supposes, to invest their money in a high-growth (and high-risk) private retirement plan; they aren’t responsible enough to purchase good health care, and they’d prefer to sit at home collecting a couple hundred dollars a week in unemployment insurance than find a job that might support them and their families. In other words, there’s something wrong with these people: they’re lazy, have the wrong mindset, and need to get out there and show initiative, presumably the way rich people do.
Here’s video from my interview on CNN, from 9/24/11, regarding the anti-affirmative action “bake sale” at UC-Berkeley. It was edited down a ton, but still, the thrust of my argument in opposition to this silliness comes across…
I knew it was a conversation that at some point I would have to indulge; and last night, amid commemorative news coverage of the events of September 11, 2001, it became apparent that the time had come.
Although I had previously discussed the events of that day and the aftermath of those events with our ten-year old (who was only 10 weeks of age when the attacks took place), Rachel, who is 8, had previously been far more oblivious, paying little attention to my prior conversations with Ashton about the subject, or showing little interest if she had been.
But last night, as she watched footage of United Airlines flight 175 violently piercing the South Tower of the World Trade Center (something I, like so many others, had watched live at the time), her interest, and of course fear, was piqued. Though she was trying hard to concentrate on some cute little game on her iTouch, involving a puppy dog of some sort, I would catch her looking up at the television screen from time to time, obviously disturbed by the images she was seeing.
Then came the inevitable questions, and I realized that this would be our youngest daughter’s first real lesson in the global geopolitics of violence.
“Why did someone want to knock down those buildings? Were they important?” Rachel asked.
When it comes to rationalizing the mistreatment of people of color, there are few who manage to do it better, or more consistently, than syndicated columnist Mona Charen.
So, for instance, when officers from the NYPD’s Street Crimes Unit were acquitted of any wrongdoing after killing Amadou Diallo — whose wallet they mistook for a gun, leading them to fire 41 rounds his way, 19 of which found their mark — there was Charen ready to leap to their defense. Although she admitted the event had been “sad” and even “tragic” (words she would have no doubt found putridly inadequate had the victim been a nice Jewish boy on his way home from Yeshiva, or a WASP hedge fund manager on his way home from a hard day at the office), to hear Charen tell it, it was almost unavoidable in the case of Diallo, the African immigrant. After all, Diallo was a black man in a dangerous neighborhood, and given generally higher black crime rates, police are understandably afraid of black people. So yes, Charen agreed, Diallo had likely died at least in part because “he looked like so many of the young men in that neighborhood who are seriously dangerous,” but that was just the price he would have to pay for the “high crime rate of American blacks.”
Then there was her Thanksgiving day essay in 2008, in which she brushed aside any lingering regrets for the genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas, noting that it was merely “the usual course in human affairs,” and simply a matter of “the more technologically advanced civilization” winning. No big deal.
