Here’s a financial tip, which I am able to bring you courtesy of The New York Times. Yes, that’s right folks, although the Times itself is drowning in debt, it may nevertheless prove to be a gold mine for a certain class of investor, chiefly, I suspect, those seeking to capitalize on the wide variety of sentimental emetics that have–now that the Age of Obama is nigh–begun to feature in the pages of our former paper of record.
Consider, to take just one example, the Times‘s recent story on “The New Face of Race Relations” (published, appropriately, in the “Fashion and Style” section of the paper). It turns out that among the many other wonders wrought by Barack Obama has been a lowering of what the Times (quoting unnamed “psychologists”) calls “interracial anxiety.” Obama, you see, is an “omnipresent icebreaker” whose beneficent influence wafts like a healing zephyr through the knotty corridors of race relations–and that’s not all! The Obama Effect has also exercised its magic on other species of prejudice and political incorrectness. Witness this reported exchange:
On the morning after the election, Kristin Rothballer, 36, who lives in San Francisco, kissed her female partner goodbye on the train while commuting to work. A black woman who sat down next to her turned and said she was sorry that Proposition 8, the amendment to ban gay marriage in the state, looked like it was going to pass.
Advertisement“We grabbed hands,” Ms. Rothballer recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, I really want to congratulate you because we have a black president and that’s amazing.’ ”
“Our conversation then almost became about the fact that we were having the conversation,” she said.
Something moved her to apologize to the black woman for slavery.
“For two strangers riding a train to Oakland to have that conversation about race, it wouldn’t have been possible if Obama hadn’t been elected,” she said. “I always felt open with my colleagues, but to say to a stranger on the train, ‘Hey, I’m sorry about slavery,’ that just doesn’t happen.”
See what I mean? Oscar Wilde said one had to have a heart of stone to read about the death of Little Nell without laughing. But is there a man alive who can digest such tripe without queasiness or worse? The Bank of America may need a bailout. The old-folks managers in Detroit may require billions to pursue their sideline making novelty automobiles. But I reckon that enterprises like Extra Packaging Corp.–”tin-tie and tape-seal bags . . . designed to provide secure sealing and easy disposability”–are positioned to make a killing in the upcoming Orgy of Obama Love.
Not to mention the folks who make Depends.
If only they had bumped into a Native American on that commuter train and thus formed a menage a trois of liberal guilt and Obama-inspired healing.
Don’t worry, there are plenty of people who still feel plenty guilty about the United States’ treatment of American Indians. And several of them just happen to be judges on the Court of Claims.
Boy, this stuff is breaking out everywhere. Just yesterday I apologized to a brown-skinned man for the Crusades. Except it turned out he was from India and a Hindu. So I apologized to him for the British.
We all have to do our part.
Let me get this straight. A century and a half after slavery was abolished, a woman who never owned a slave apologized for slavery to a woman who was never a slave. Did I get that right?
Besides a risible disconnect from reality, the only certainty about that exchange was its manifest racism.
Does this mean all of us who voted for Sarahcuda aren’t racists anymore?
What next? Bay Area libs hugging CEOs, Southerners, and car owners. No way!
Our ridiculous rag of a newspaper in San Antonio is running an “Obama Haiku” contest.
I’m 1/8 Native American. And have nothing to apologize about since my great grandfather fought with the 49th Illinois. A meeting could have been interesting, if they were sufficiently attractive.
“I still weep at the thought of how many Twinkie wrappers you and your ancestors have dropped.”
I live in Oakland. The NYT might want to revisit their investigative research into Oakland area race relations. They’ll get an opportunity if a certain BART cop gets less than a lifetime behind bars.
I don’t know if they’re men, womyn, metrosexuals, or if they know what they are, but there are plenty, if ever fewer, still buying the NYT exactly for such drivel. It seems a very popular source of consensus thought among Canadian expats.
And the rest of us here in San Francisco can be so glad that only a few things have gotten broken after the black/white lovefest in Oakland a few days ago (still ongoing, however). The next time a thug attempts to bully or rob me on BART, I’ll know that race has nothing to do with it.
I’m still waiting for someone to tell me thanks for two of my great-grandfathers getting the crap shot out of them in the Civil War while trying to end slavery. I expect to get my hands grabbed and a big wet kiss any time now.
Where is Dottie Parker when we need her?
So this woman’s admitting to keeping slaves? Or maybe participating in human trafficking in some other fashion? Someone should show that story to the FBI.
Considering my ancestors were in Europe while slavery was going on here, why should I be sorry for slavery? Because of my skin color? Isn’t that… racist?
Despite the fact that Obama approved of Prop 8 – or at least it’s goals.
More willfully blind people you could not find.
Among the NYT staff and editors responsible for running (fabricating – I hope?) that story, there had better be some raucous laughter and shared sense of having pulled a fast one. I can’t believe that that’s being passed off as serious journalism, or that anyone like Ms. Mothballer would actually lack sense enough to know not to share such an insipidly banal episode with a “journalist”.
Wow. Just wow.
That story doesn’t pass the smell test. If it were true, the women knew each other well before the day after election day.
There are many blacks who would think you are the world’s biggest fool if you apologized to them for slavery.
I guess these folks didn’t get the memo.
The New York Times is still being published? Who knew?
See Theodore Dalrymple’s “False Apology Syndrome” at incharacter.org.
The New York Times….
It’s not just for bird sh*t anymore.
I think I just had an obamagasm….
Wait, so lesbians are responsible for slavery? Boy that’s going require a lot of history book re-writing.
I propose a new civil war. In an attempt at “irony,” the lesbians shall recruit only their most feminine members to be soldiers (i.e., no softball players, no Ellens or Rosies — pretty much an army of Portia de Rossi’s, LUGs, and the cast of The L Word). We shall fight them with whipped cream, Klondike Bars, lacey undergarments, a variety of K-Y Brand products, and HD video cameras.
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
I do not understand. Many of us with New England roots worry that our ancestors may have been involved in the slave trade. If your family was in rum or textiles, you’re on one tip of the triangle. Most Southerners suspect the same. Native Americans had their own ownership arrangements. Back in the day.
So why the thrill over the ascendancy of a man whose family was doubtlessly, in their homeland, involved in selling human beings?
“Many of us with New England roots worry that our ancestors may have been involved in the slave trade.”
Actually, many of us in New England had ancestors who were busy being dirt farmers in Ireland. But your point remains valid.
Was that the “Farewell” issue of the NYT?
Oh, not yet? Sorry. I’ll check back later.
Was that the “Farewell” issue of the NYT?
Oh, not yet? Sorry. I’ll check back later.
…..this is the very best thread of comments on the theater of the absurd (NYT) imaginable. You are all brilliant……and dead on right!
I suspect that all Obama’s election proved, racially, is that if either of the parties had nominated one, a Black candidate could have won twenty years ago.
My Scottish ancestors have been wandering around in the rain in generally foul mood for centuries now…an English apology would do no good at all I am warning ye..dont even try it…
this past Saturday morning i listened to 4 hours and 20 minutes of NPR’s (commercial free) adulation, before i finally fwoo up.
pass the dramamine, Roger.
Roger,
I just don’t believe that morning-train-victim-encounter-group-therapy-session really happened. It just rings totally false.
I blame the NY Times for turning the entire paper into a political op-ed style section section but I also blame higher-ed for producing the mealy-mouthed Ivy league English Major’s to staff the NY Times.
It was more likely the case of an Obama voter, high on the feeling of having assuaged her liberal guilt, who witnessed or was actually one of two women kissing goodbye on the morning train. With what she interpreted as an approving glance from a nearby Black person, she either imagined or exaggerated the story to a friend who passed it along to another, who passed it along etc..
Somewhere in the game of telephone it became the anecdote the NY Times “journalist” put into the story as “evidence” for a pre-ordained political conclusion. In an obscene gesture to journalistic ethics, he or she simply called a couple of friends in the story chain to “verify” it and ask the age and identity of the original teller, who, with a chance to be written-up in the NY Times for her liberal rectitude, willingly obliged.
I’m sure there are still a few quality hard news people at the NY Times but they’ll be gone within two years if the paper even survives that long.
“Hey, I’m sorry about slavery”??? God help us.
Isn’t it on the order of characterizing the Holocaust as, like, “a total bummer”?
Gee, speaking of apologies, I dare say NYT is going to eventually have to outsource its backlog of same to India. I understand they don’t mind being obsequious if its on someone else’s behalf, and someone else’s dime.
Oh shoot. I apologize for that remark.