Make Harry Reid and the Liberals Pay
If Harry Reid is forced to retire, do conservatives and Republicans actually end up the biggest losers?
This morning I read a quote from Ilya Somin of the Volokh Conspiracy and laughed out loud. Here’s what was said:
If the GOP wins this particular fight and Reid is forced to resign, there will be a new norm in public discourse under which no prominent person can openly say the same kinds of things as Reid without being labeled a racist.
We’ve been there for a long time — if you’re anything but a liberal Democrat. Republicans, conservatives … regular Americans can’t say what Harry Reid said without censure.
Noting that President Obama turns the jive on and off is no different than noting that Hillary Clinton does it. It’s no different than noting that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson do it. It’s no different than noting that major sports and music celebrities (white and black) do it. That is not racist. That’s a fact. Now, whether or not this verbal nuance is a good or bad thing is another argument entirely, but I don’t think anyone can honestly argue that it doesn’t happen.
If I said these things and I was a Democrat, though, I wouldn’t be presumed racist — just a little edgy and maybe somewhat insensitive. But since I’m a conservative, that last paragraph just confirms what is self-evident to someone from the left: I’m a racist — else would I be a conservative?
Never mind that there are plenty of black people who would make the same observation. Never mind that there are black conservatives who would say the same thing. The conservative blacks, though, are illegitimate. They betray their race for refusing to do things like sliding into jive in front of certain audiences. They are trying to be “too white.” They aren’t proud of their black heritage, evidently.
Of course, the whole “black enough” argument is deeply offensive and ridiculous and actually very racist. But these notions are put forth by the very leaders who insist that they are for changing the black culture to respect education, erudition, and intelligent discourse.
So while Ilya Somin is correct in decrying the constriction of speech for all people, I’m saying it’s already happened for some people. Now, I wrote those words because I have already given up. Being labeled racist bothers me less than restricting my speech. And by virtue of being conservative, I am already labeled racist.
What makes me inherently racist is my conservatism. It’s axiomatic. So screw it. The label has lost it’s sting.
The democrats have ALWAYS been the party of the Klan.
BUT
they can play the media as they want.
And they can control what you are taught in school.
So, after the racist remarks by Dean, by Clinton and by Reid…
they will come out as the anti-racist party once more.
It makes sense, it is called totalitarianism.
Agree completely. It’s simple, recursive use of Rule #4 from you-know-who.
The whole contretemps is just plain silly.
I hold no brief for Reid, or for The Won, but there’s this to bear in mind at all times: A fact cannot be racist. Or sexist. Or any other variety of “ist.” To note, truthfully, that Barack Hussein Obama is a “darkie au lait” who don’t speak no jive is merely an observation of evident facts.
The shamans of political correctness are using our sensitivity to their artificial, insincere, and ever more trivially triggered offense response to silence us. It’s an effort we should oppose, not approve.
Sincerely,
Your Mick-Wop Pal,
Francis W. Porretto,
Curmudgeon Emeritus to the World Wide Web.
Reid will retire because of his low re-election poll numbers in Nevada.
Well,we may all as well be hung for sheep than goats…so let us make political hay while we yet may with the weapons we are given…including flaming Reid’s son Rory who is running for governor of Utah this year…we can send both of them on to well deserved obscurity
“They use the language of hate and dare the right to challenge them, knowing that a charge of racism or any other -ism will sink a conservative or Republican because Republicans actually worry about those things.”
We have let the left box us into a PC corner. Our pols for years have been afraid to speak to the truth of race, racism, the other isms and to the lies that the left informs the American public especially blacks. We have cowered for fear of a lable being attached to our pols and we have not had the backbone to support our pols against these specious and ad hominen attacks and lables. From Bork through Thomas to that buffoon Lott, we have let the left destroy our conservative pols, SC justices and anyone attached to our cause.
The left has co-opted the language for their own aggrandizement. Orwell predicted this much. And time after time we see their hypocrisy and we yell and scream but do nothing about it. Name someone in Congress on our(?) side that has stood up and decried this latest dumbspeak by a leftist??? crickets chirping.
We cower. Our pols cower. And then we take to the blogs like yeah, we’ll show the left… As I said on Driscoll’s thread, we do not need to harp on this topic and display our bona fides on race. We know we are the real champions of equality. But we let the left and MSM dominate our message and us. Everything wrong with the left we let it happen. Because we have no backbone otherwise know as principles or b@&&%.
Everything Dr. Clouthier said in the last four paras is great but we have no voice. No to defeat PC we need to defeat the left which amounts to a civil war. They have devalued the ballot box, (will get 12 million new illegal voters) control the MSM, teach our students so the only way to defeat them is through “any means necessary.” Otherwise we are just wasting time and our lives and watching from the sidelines as our once beautiful nation surrenders to marxism.
I don’t want Harry to resign or retire. I want to see his butt kicked in the next election for reasons having nothing to do with observations about light-skinned Negroes. And, anyway, if anyone’s entitled to take umbrage, it’s we the electorate who, according to Harry, are too prejudiced to elect someone with dark skin who is identifiable as black by the timbre of his voice. Let’s move on.
Leftists use political correctness to constrain their enemies.
Not quite true. Leftists have always had keen understanding of how to use the rules of ‘polite society’ against the majority of society, and by doing so they cheerfully steer their enemies into constraining themselves, as part of a (futile) effort to appear ‘sensitive’ or ‘polite’. Breaking those rules when it benefits the leftists, of course, is simply the means justifying the ends.
A close parallel: the ability of extreme Islamists to use the tolerance of liberal democracies as a weapon to erode and eventually destroy them. We suffer the buffoons of the TSA on all flights as a direct result of this asymmetric weapon.
The most recent example of this silly self-restraint is that of the Directors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art – who are going to remove images of Mohammed from their Islamic Art display (no matter that they were painted by Muslims), for fear of ‘offending’ the few extreme jihadists who just ‘might’ commit violence against the Museum.
Defend society against this corrosion of civilized behavior? Not if those Directors are to set the example. But is Dr. Clouthier finally ringing the gong we’re waiting for – the gong that signals the end of double standards favoring the lefties and their Islamist allies? Finally defying political correctness and, like Patrick Henry, declaring “if this be politically incorrect, let us make the most of it”? Giving as good as we get?
Hasten the day.
Related parody: Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid Introduces Resolution Celebrating Diversity in Sensitivity Standards http://optoons.blogspot.com/2010/01/democratic-senate-leader-harry-reid.html
I’m with you.
I despise PC with every fiber of my being; but it is all one-sided.
Let’s fight fire with fire. Make him pay. And keep making Dems pay and pay and pay until they give up and grow up.
Hang the bast*rd.
Hold them to their own stupid standards.
Hey, you know who said that?
Saul Alinsky.
Are you listening, Ilya?
The article makes many good points, and the ideas go well beyond race or even political correctness. The entire philosophy of Progressivism needs to be made radioactive, and not just for politicians.
This country will right itself again when it becomes as socially risky to openly announce oneself as a Progressive or to openly support Progressive ideas as it would be to boast of being a [pedophile, Nazi, fill-in-your-own-revolting archetype].
Certain philosophies are too destructive to allow casual acceptance on a wide basis and, in America in the 20th/21st centuries, that happens to be Progressivism.
The problem with Harry? Simple, he didn’t use value neutral sociological jargon. For example, we have a Harvard black lawyer who speaks standard elite English–an example of “affirmative action” upward social mobility–not a Ghetto black who speaks standard ebonics on the fast track to incarceration in “total institutions” for enhanced social control. See? No problem.
Harry Reid said nothing wrong in this particular instance. I have no interest whatsoever in holding him to an unjust standard of behavior. It behooves conservatives to be perceived as fair minded and logically consistent. Reid would have been better off not employing the outmoded term “negro.” Still, that’s not an example of racism. The vague notion of insensitivity is not enough to justify punishing Reid. Obama’s lighter skin color and Harvard diction helped him to get elected. This is merely a rational observation. No foul was committed.
Take a page from “Rules for Radicals”: make the PC crowd live up to the very rules they use to smother our freedom of speech. So don’t stop until Reid the Racist is forced to resign.
Use the same rules to get at those celebutard ecofascists, whose monthly carbon footprint is 50x that of a family of five over the course of a year. See if they can live with the energy policy they demand we have.
I was listening to “Morning Joe” on the way to work this morning. His liberal sidekick, Mika Brzezinski (who is so in love with the sound of her own voice), was saying that the main gist of the point that Harry Reid was making was true…..white people really do feel more comfortable with light skinned blacks than they do with dark skinned blacks. This made me so angry.
60 or 70 years ago, when racism and segragation were socially acceptable, this statement would be true. But look how far we’ve come since then. Oprah Winfrey is one of America’s most beloved figures. Inter-racial marriage is commonplace (especially amongst members of our armed forces). Some of Hollywood’s most popular actors are black. But more importantly, the way that white people and black people interact on a daily basis is completely different from the way things were 50 years ago. If a white guy goes into a Supercuts to get a quick trim, he doesn’t think twice if the gal cutting his hair is black or hispanic or whatever. Kim Kardashian makes a sex tape, and people talk about how she’s a ditz, or she’s got a great body, or she’s a fame pig, but they don’t care that the guy that she’s having sex with is black.
So if it were really true that white people are still leery of dark skinned black people, then there’s no way ANY black person would be elected president, I don’t care how light his skin was. Especially a guy with a paper thin resume and a name like Barack Obama.
Liberals are the only people who are willing to believe that racial attitudes haven’t changed all that much over the years because they are invested in believing that America is a racist country. Their negative views of the American people dovetail quite nicely with their desire to defend Harry Reid’s remarks.
If conservatives can play this incident with the requisite skill, we can get two excellent results:
1. Raise a carefully calibrated amount of hell over Reid’s comments — without going too far. We don’t want him to resign. Right now he’s losing to either of two Republicans with less than 50% name recognition — it’s hard to believe that the Democrats could (or would) come up with an alternate candidate with that kind of qualification.
2. At the same time, keep the fire going at a low level to sensitize Democrats to the danger of discussing the qualifications of their minority candidates in intelligible terms — since those terms, no matter how complimentary, are apparently racist on their face. Reid’s booboo was evidently committed in a private conversation in which he was evaluating Obama as a Presidential candidate. If we can make this episode memorable, perhaps future Democratic discussions of prospective candidates will be conducted in such elliptical language that neither speaker or listeners can be sure what is being said.
Sukie is right!! Leave the moron alone and use the power of the vote to deal with him…
Don’t give the dems a chance to find a replacement for him..
Political Correctness is only for skewering the ‘other guy’. The Leftists can’t ever, never, ever be raaaaaaaacists no matter what they do or say. IMPOSSIBLE!
The Democrats have long been masters of playing all sides of indentity politics and nothing is more sacred to them than race. There are so many good reasons for Reid to resign (other than this one) and I hope he and his ilk all get voted out for wasting so much time, energy and resources on health “reform”. I am not particularly interested in how tanned our Presidents are, I am keenly interested in whether they can keep us safe and improve our economy. Using those two measures, Obama comes up short. Way short.
The problem is not only with the imaginary sinner in political correct matters (Reid in our situation) – the problem is with Blacks who are willing to march yelling and asking for Trent Lott’s head, yet rapidly put up with Reid -
And more than this – the Blacks who so casually accept denigratory terms and things when they come from a kin, but go ballistic over much less that comes from a white -
Remember Jesse Jackson’s “I’ll rip off that ***ger’s **lls” – big deal, let’s get over it -
Or the uniformly debasing rap lyrics (lyrics?) – well, lyrics -
I agree with SukieTawdry (#7) and tommyd (#18)
A pertinent but awkwardly worded remark would not have triggered such a blast without so much electricity in the air at the moment it comes to the surface. The tension comes from the impending procedural victory of the Reid-Pelosi-Obama Troika in the mindless pursuit of something we don’t need and don’t want, on the technical strength of strict arithmetic advantage.
That’s enough stupidity going around. Let’s not get side-tracked by political folklore. It’s Reid’s actions that are offensive, and that’s what we need to focus on. Political correctness will eventually fall over its own sword.
“I don’t want that. I just want Reid to be nuclear waste — hazardous to touch, but impossible to fire.”
That was…that was GOOD.
“Raise a carefully calibrated amount of hell over Reid’s comments”
This would be immoral. We cannot embrace the doctrine that the ends justifies the means.
I think whites should be the most offended by Teid.
The blacks should be offended in the fact that this comment said “pure” blacks (African Americans should try being Americans for a change) are inferior and could not be elected…that’s what i got out of it.
Reid needs to follow the same road Lott did…however, you and I know that this is not going to happen in this administration.
Reid does Obama’s dirty work…so that Obama can keep his half white hands clean..and it’s gonna stay that way. I’m not proud of his white half..it seems to be tainted.
Love you Melissa! Yes! Screw it! Liberty and the truth are far more important than a label which is meaningless. If everyone is a racist, noone is. If certain people are not and they do the same things as those who are, it has no meaning because it is now MORAL RELATIVISM. The left’s favorite state of being. Nothing better than hoisting them by their own petard.
The Dems will hang Dirty Harry because he is running so far behind in the recent polls. If Reid had a chance to win in November, this would be a non issue.
Old Harry Reid didn’t really show any racism toward Obama, which is why Obama is defending him. It’s the darker skinned folks in this country who don’t speak “white folk” like Reid or Obama who have been impugned by his remarks. So Old Harry slithers over to the side of his statement which involves Obama, where he is safe. His elite buddies circle the wagons around him to defend their territory. But his real racism is given a pass. Who knows what he thinks about dark skinned Latinos and a multitude of other ethnic groups who don’t meet his standards of color and speech. He apparently accepts Obama as a “house Negro” – but he doesn’t think the “field Negroes” are worthy enough to rub elbows with himself or Obama. My only question is what the hell is wrong with Obama accepting this crap from the guy like he payed him a compliment or something, unless he thinks the same way? Didn’t he learn anything from Rev. Wright or Malcolm X? Heck I’d consider voting for Obama if he smacked this Reid guy down – but he just kissed his backside instead. Let’s get real -both these guys have their noses in the air. This is offensive at its core. I can see why white liberals accept this stuff – but where the hell is the black voice in this country that has had enough of this racism?
“A fact cannot be racist. Or sexist.”
Fact-Women are better at bearing children than men.
Fact-The above statement is sexist(since it quite clearly places one sex inferior to the other). It is also quite true.
I’m sure you can think of an equally obvious example for racism(or maybe not when I review what I quoted from you).
Let’s make it simple, treat everyone’s stupidity the same way, when a Republican says it and when a Democrat says it. In Harry’s case, it would go like this, the report comes out that Reid said something stupid, people comment on it, Reid apologizes (or says get screwed) and it gets sorted out. No one calls for his resignation, let his voters do that in the fall.
What’s amazing here is no one is commenting on Clinton’s remarks, as regards Obama. There are a couple of ways to take that, too. I would just love to see the press go after both parties the same. No one, in the media, has bothered to ask Harry Reid what he meant by that. Was he saying that no dark skinned black could win, especially if they had a “negro dialect”? What did he mean by what he said. The same goes for Clinton, what did he mean? Did he mean that someone with Obama’s lack of experience wouldn’t be campaigning for President, he’d be getting campaigners coffee, or back to the black servant thing? I’d like to know how to take that, also.
Excellent article.
29. Skeezik: Example of racist fact
Careful; You are close to the edge
of moderation.
This message is from the Memory Hole;
Tell us, Mr. Moderator, exactly what
is the criterion for comments which
get tossed in, or is it racist to ask ?
Trent Lott, Imus, Jimmy the Greek, Rush, Jesse. Who doesn’t fit this list?
Answer, of course, heymetown Jesse. Because pretty much the thought police let Democrats say most anything, and
they get away with it. Case in point, of course, hapless Harry.
So Melissa, who I like very much, suggests Dems be held to the same standards as Republicans. As
the kids use to say in high school. “Never happen.”
Main reason for the double standard not about to be overthrown is that we have a slave media that only picks rhetorical cotton for
Democrats. Of course, we can yell and shout as conservatives or Republicans, but when only glenn and Hannity and Fox
listen to you, you don’t have that much influence on the general public.
The real problem is ball challenged Republican senators and representatives.
In the Lott case, they were so afeared that the racist tag would
be pinned on their donkey butts that they told Trent to resign. If Republicans weren’t so afraid of being called racist,
they would have defended Trent like Democrats defend hapless Harry. George W, who I also like, didn’t realize that Democrats
calling people racist get their real power from Republican fear. When the subject of race comes up, I can count on Republicans
to duck and cover. They remind me of Pavlov who taught dogs to salivate when they heard a bell.
In much the same way, when I hear Imus talking about his firing because of some alleged insensitive remark, I don’t salivate, but I do feel like puking. He’s now afraid to say anything wrong. Sounds like Imus had some kind of
radical politically correct lobotomy, being ready to confess his oral sins to anyone and everyone who’ll listen. Kevin McCarthy who played the lead in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” would know exactly what I’m talking about. In fact, there’s a double irony here because “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” was a metaphor for people who are too easily compromised by communist group think.
Incidentally, what was it that Imus said?
Nappy headed hoes? Well, that’s what the Rutgers girl baseketball team looked like to me in a joking way, too.
Why don’t I care if anyone
calls me racist? Because, as I said here in PJM about 9 months ago, that label doesn’t stick anymore. This has something, but not
everything to do with the fact the anointed one was elected President. It has much to do with all the racist garbage that Holder and Obama have
tossed at the American public that makes us all smell a little ripe these days. Hey, if you think all Americans are cowards when it comes to talking about race, I think you’re a half assed bigot. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
Too old a phrase? Well, throwing the race card around is getting old, too. So are double standard-filled Democratic hypocrites.
This, my friends, is the real problem as I see it. It’s kind of like being afraid somebody’s going to lambast you, so you do it to yourself.
Remember when Woody Allen in “Take the Money and Run” always had bullies pull his glasses off and step on them? So one day he pulled his
own glasses off and stepped on them?
People, keep your glasses on. And if some Democratic bully calls you a racist, let me know. I’ll walk up to them nose to nose and, like
Billy Jack did to the town mayor in the movie by the same name, use a Crescent kick to knock the Dem puke on his fat butt. The liberal
politically correct feckless, fetid crap has got to go.
Dear skeezik (#29):
Surely you jest, dear. A human being is a multidimensional quantity; his value, however you might conceive of the notion, cannot be reduced to how well he performs at one particular task.
Example: I have a 200-plus IQ. What’s yours? If it’s lower, would that make me better than you?
Example: I can bench-press 275 lb. How much can you lift? If it’s lower, would that make me better than you?
Example: Barack Hussein Obama — always use his middle name, folks — is, if memory serves, 6’4″ tall. I am 5’7″. Does that make him better than me?
Think it over.
All discussions of racism, sexism, and so forth should be tightly tied to questions of rights. Don’t ask whether Smith declines to associate with Jones because of his skin color, or gender, or sexual orientation, or choice of cologne; ask rather whether Smith is inclined to deny Jones his rights to his life, liberty, and property on such a basis. That alone would clear up one hell of a lot of linguistic confusion.
Sincerely,
Your Pikey-Dago pal,
Francis W. Porretto,
Curmudgeon Emeritus to the World Wide Web
Conservatives have probably already squeezed as much out of this particular tempest in a teacup as they’re going to get. They should leave it alone already.
Remember how the Ken Starr crusade in 1998 ended up going too far and backfiring on Republicans.
It seems to me that the racism Mr. Reid was displaying was at least as much toward whites as it was toward blacks. Isn’t he saying that whites are too racist to vote for a dark-skinned black man? As a white person who would have jumped at the chance to vote for a dark-skinned conservative Republican (had one been running) in the last election, I am offended by that. Just as with his slave-owners comment, Reid displays himself as the lowest of the low: a racist race-baiter. He should be humiliated and scorned so that we do not have to put up with this double standard in our discourse anymore.
Is this really a column by a self-professed conservative that promotes changing, rather than conserving, a standard?
My head just exploded.
Glenn Beck said Obama has a deep-seated hatred for white people. George “macaca” Allen put a deer head in a black family’s mail box. Limbaugh called Obama a “boy” and a “Halfrican.”
You have no standing.
What’s interesting to me is how this site has completely ignored this:
Sarah Palin’s appearance early next month at the first tea party movement’s convention in Nashville, Tenn., has stirred controversy in conservative circles over her reported decision to charge a substantial fee.
Palin’s aides and conference organizers won’t comment on financial arrangements, but documents obtained by POLITICO reveal the going rate for the former Alaska governor: $100,000 a speech, with a discount to $75,000 for West Coast appearances. Palin has reportedly waived the fee for some charitable events, but what’s billed as a meeting of the grass-roots conservative movement is not among those.
Tickets for the Nashville event run $549, plus a $9.95 fee, while separate tickets to see only Palin cost $349. Republican Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee are also scheduled to speak at the three-day conference at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31409.html#ixzz0cW1Jwwab
The organizer of the event is being rightly condemned by some in the movement for making the event a get-rich quick scheme, and your leader for “good sense” government is right there to make a buck off it. They’re using you idiots.
moho are you related to skeeziks?
Blotto, are you related to Sarah Palin? And is your name Trig?
The way to get rid of Reid is at the polling booth. He is like Biden, he puts his foot in his mouth, everythime he speaks.