What Jindal Is Trying To Prove

Jindal's bid to be the GOP's next Presidential candidate faces many obstacles. Not the least of which is Bobbeh must overcome the simple fact he's not a Caucasian cracker like the majority of his party. (See: Pat Buchanan's latest racist rant here).

Jindal has officially rejected $90 million in StimPak^TM cash. In doing so he fucked over 25,000 constituents. This goes waaay beyond pure partisan politics.

I've been rattling his strategy around in my head most of the week. There's only one way it makes sense. Closeted Republicans rail against gay rights. Some Jews in WWII covered their tracks by out-Naziing the Nazis. African-Americans who "passed" acted bigoted in the process.

One common deceitful aspect of human nature is a willingness to misrepresent ourselves as something we are not to get ahead (or at least to stay pat). In the animal kingdom, it's a pervasive survival mechanism. For humans it can be an innocuous strategy to get a date with the green-eyed beauty at the end of the bar. Or it can be an insidious, cynical power-ploy.

Here Jindal is trying to prove he can out-cracker the crackers. He wants to show he can out-cracker the competition too.

Naked, unbridled ambition is an ugly thing. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is positively dripping with it.

-AF

Mr. John Legend Applies The Smack Down

Ol' Rupe is the recipient:

Dear Editor:

I'm trying to understand what possible motivation you may have had for publishing that vile cartoon depicting the shooting of the chimpanzee that went crazy. I guess you thought it would be funny to suggest that whomever was responsible for writing the Economic Recovery legislation must have the intelligence and judgment of a deranged, violent chimpanzee, and should be shot to protect the larger community. Really?

Did it occur to you that this suggestion would imply a connection between President Barack Obama and the deranged chimpanzee? Did it occur to you that our president has been receiving death threats since early in his candidacy? Did it occur to you that blacks have historically been compared to various apes as a way of racist insult and mockery? Did you intend to invoke these painful themes when you printed the cartoon?

If that's not what you intended, then it was stupid and willfully ignorant of you not to connect these easily connectable dots. If it is what you intended, then you obviously wanted to be grossly provocative, racist and offensive to the sensibilities of most reasonable Americans. Either way, you should not have printed this cartoon, and the fact that you did is truly reprehensible. I can't imagine what possible justification you have for this. I've read your lame statement in response to the outrage you provoked. Shame on you for dodging the real issue and then using the letter as an opportunity to attack the Rev. Sharpton. This is not about Sharpton. It's about the cartoon being blatantly racist and offensive.

I believe in freedom of speech, and you have every right to print what you want. But freedom of speech still comes with responsibilities and consequences. You are responsible for printing this cartoon, and I hope you experience some real consequences for it. I'm personally boycotting your paper and won't do any interviews with any of your reporters, and I encourage all of my colleagues in the entertainment business to do so as well. I implore your advertisers to seriously reconsider their business relationships with you as well.

You should print an apology in your paper acknowledging that this cartoon was ignorant, offensive and racist and should not have been printed.

I'm well aware of our country's history of racism and violence, but I truly believe we are better than this filth. As we attempt to rise above our difficult past and look toward a better future, we don't need the New York Post to resurrect the images of Jim Crow to deride the new administration and put black folks in our place. Please feel free to criticize and honestly evaluate our new president, but do so without the incendiary images and rhetoric.

Sincerely,

John Legend

He's not just musically talented and easy on the eyes, ladies and gentlemen, he's damn eloquent too.

-AF

From The "What Have We Done?" Dept...

Michael Steele Thinks He's Hanging with Snoop

I'm pretty sure Michael Steele doesn't know hip from hop. Still, how long before this kinda talk starts freaking out the GOP faithful?

-AF

This Is Why I Don't Gamble

Boy, was I ever wrong. Ex-MD Lt. Gov. Michael Steele is the RNC's first black chairman. A very bold move indeed. The money quote from RI national committeeman Joe Trillo:

"It's a diverse party. We're tired of being labeled as white supremacists."

Easy Joe. Putting an African-American at the top of the food chain doesn't wave a wand and instantly change decades of racist GOP bullshit. Not when your chair is despised by the black populace. Not when your party engages in massive voter caging, voter suppression, voter caging, etc., specifically targeting the African-American community. You were doing it as recently as 13 weeks ago!

Once again the party of Lincoln proves to be the party of delusion.

Five fun things to know and tell about Steele. Think Progress has much more.

-AF
*Update #1: TPM jogged my memory about the new RNC chief's 2006 attempt to fool Dems re: his party affiliation w/his "Steele Democrats" signs.
**Update #2: Steele is one of only 5 black RNC members out of 146 or just under 3%. Two of the five ran for chairman.

Then There Were Five

Chip Saltsman*, the idjit cracker of the infamous "Barack The Magic Negro" Xmas CD mailer, didn't make the cut for the RNC Chair ballot. Clearly lacking any magic of his own, Chip failed to find the six backers required. Loser.

So who's left? Allow me to have a go at handicapping the race...

1. Current RNC Chairman Mike Duncan. Toast. Invisible and ineffectual (see: 2008 elections here & here).
2. Ex-MD Lt. Gov. Michael Steele. High profile. Couldn’t be worse than Duncan. Dumb as dirt tho' (see: silly contrived "Oreo incident"**). Steele’s only possible chance is if Republicans get crazy & take the “we’re-makin’-our-top-token-black-person-GOP-chair-to-make-like-we’ve-really-changed-even-though-we-haven’t-changed-at-all” route. A super long shot but don't count him out given this narrow field.
   
3. Ken Blackwell’s partisan bona fides are as good as it gets. But Kenny’s Ohio election shenanigans were waaaaaay too high profile. Find me one person who doesn’t deep down think this sucker belongs in prison. One person. And there's that Diebold thang. And the he's black thang (see: Michael Steele). Not a hope in hell. Next.
4. Katon Dawson’s strengths are he’s white, from the South and appears to be baggage-free. Major bonus points for truly impressive outreach to SC’s African-American community. Smells like teen spirit to me.
   
5. Will Saul Anuzis' moniker be enough to trigger widespread RNC nomatophobia? Republicans do have a marked tendency to get afeared of "unusual" names. Anuzis is a 2nd generation immigrant & former Teamster too. Could cause queasiness amongst the RNC's sizeable anti-immigrant/anti-labor Kool-Aid drinkin’ crowd. See-ya Saul.
   

That leaves us Michael Steele and Katon Dawson.

If successful, Steele’s installation would come in the wake of President Obama’s thunderous debut. The first black RNC chief can't look anything but pathetically bandwagonesque. You gotta think right about now committee members, at some subconscious level, can't exactly be predisposed to any black candidate. Bitterness runs deep here.

Pay no mind. This is not the time for two consecutive weak Committee chairs. And Steele is simply not strong enough. It's gonna take a far more powerful contender than he to overcome an RNC rank & file as of yet unready for an African-American head. Say sayonara to Steele.

Smart money’s on Dawson. The dude has the biggest upside. His proven fundraising ability alone could've sealed it. But the clincher is unlike the brothers on the ballot, Dawson has yank with his African-American communities. In fact, both Blackwell (voter suppression) and Steele (laughingstock) set back Republican-black voter relations in OH & MD respectively by years. It speaks volumes about the GOP when their two most prominent African-American politicians are persona non grata in the hood

Dawson, and only Dawson, brings desperately needed street cred with home state African-Americans to the party. The kinda cred that offers the GOP their first, best step towards transforming from the “underhanded tight-ass whitey-only political club” into something slightly less awful.

Stay tuned...

-AF

*Could there be a name whiter than "Saltsman"? What's whiter than "salt"? Seriously.
**Damn, how the late great Steve Gilliard was all over that one.

Apology Rejected

Ex DOJ voting rights chief John Tanner has a lot to learn about making apologies.

-AF

**Update: "Supposed Apology" Is "Even Funnier."

I'll Never Understand Bigotry, Pt. 1

I've mentioned elsewhere I do not understand bigotry. I never have. I don't think I ever will.

Borne of ignorance and nurtured by environment, bigotry grows beyond it's inherent ugliness. It's cowardice. It's irrational. It drives man to commit the most unspeakably evil acts. It's completely pointless.

Yet bigotry seems innate to humanity. Perhaps bigotry is something we were hard-wired for prior to walking upright as a mechanism to defend our turf and its resources against strangers' encroachment. Millions of years later it seems to serve that self-same purpose.

The Nation's Katrina's Hidden Race War is one crucial read -- a powerful story of racism, opportunism, murder and institutional apathy. Check this particularly chilling passage:

"It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it." A native of Chicago, Janak also boasts of becoming a true Southerner, saying, "I am no longer a Yankee. I earned my wings." A white woman standing next to him adds, "He understands the N-word now." In this neighborhood, she continues, "we take care of our own."

Janak, who says he'd been armed with two .38s and a shotgun, brags about keeping the bloody shirt worn by a shooting victim as a trophy. When "looters" showed up in the neighborhood, "they left full of buckshot," he brags, adding, "You know what? Algiers Point is not a pussy community."

Katrina left Janak's exclusive almost entirely white New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers Point pretty much unscathed. Due to its intact ferry terminal and central location, the National Guard dubbed Algiers Point an "official evacuation site." Federal agencies dropped flood victims there to be herded onto buses to Texas. Unbeknownst to them, African-Americans who headed to the Point on foot risked being treated as "looters."

Some of the gunmen prowling Algiers Point were out to wage a race war, says one woman whose uncle and two cousins joined the cause. A former New Orleanian, this source spoke to me anonymously because she fears her relatives could be prosecuted for their crimes. "My uncle was very excited that it was a free-for-all--white against black--that he could participate in," says the woman. "For him, the opportunity to hunt black people was a joy."

"They didn't want any of the 'ghetto niggers' coming over" from the east side of the river, she says, adding that her relatives viewed African-Americans who wandered into Algiers Point as "fair game." One of her cousins, a young man in his 20s, sent an e-mail to her and several other family members describing his adventures with the militia. He had attached a photo in which he posed next to an African-American man who'd been fatally shot. The tone of the e-mail, she says, was "gleeful"--her cousin was happy that "they were shooting niggers."

I found Katrina's Hidden Race War so disturbing, so sickening and so alien it took me at least 10 tries to read it through. (Stories like these test my weakened resolve to not turn away from suffering). What is absolutelyfuckingmindblowing is to date only three gunshot deaths during Katrina and its entire aftermath investigated by the police involve shootings by NOPD: The Danziger Bridge incident and Danny Brumfield.

I don't think I'll ever truly understand bigotry. Except in those rare cases marked by extenuating circumstances (i.e. self-defense, euthanasia), I am unable to make sense of murder. That something so stupid and irrational as bigotry can "drive" someone to murder is way beyond my capacity to understand.

-AF

"Why Do Bigots Smell?"

"So that blind people can hate them too."

A very lame joke. It was spontaneous -- the best I could do under the circumstances. I was standing in Sully's (no, not that Sully) BC dorm room twenty-seven years ago. Sully had just moved in. Upon learning throwing furniture out the window was punishable by expulsion, we were considering bringing furniture outside and throwing it back in through the window. You know, just to fuck with the RA.

Sully stepped outside to consider logistics. I cracked a brew with our friends Jay and Chuck. Sully had just introduced his room mate, "G", who was also present. Just four white guys hanging out. Drinking.

About a minute in, "G" tells what is colloquially known as a "nigger joke." (As if any "humor" characterized by such an ugly, hateful word could be a joke). Jay, Chuck and I ignored him. "G" told another one. Now I was officially fucking pissed. But I said nothing. Chuck was a wimp, Jay was confrontation averse and I really didn't want to slug it out with Sully's new room mate his first weekend at school. Did I mention that "G" had twenty pounds on me?

"G" told his third and final "joke."

What came next:

Me: "I have a joke for you."
"G": "Great!"
Me: "Why do bigots smell?"
"G": "Why?"
Me: ""So that blind people can hate them too."

Silence. Jay and Chuck immediately flinched. Two or three beats later it dawned on "G" that I was fucking with him, attacking him for his racism. What ensued was predictable -- "I'm gonna kill you!" vs. "Give me your best shot, cracker!", etc. Chuck and Jay kept us from mixing it up. "G" split presumably to find a more sympathetic audience. Every subsequent visit to Sully, "G" left before I arrived.

Here's what I learned from this incident:

1. People often choose to ignore racism in their friends, family, co-workers, etc.
   
2. If you ignore bigotry, it won't go away.
   
3. Ignoring bigotry is read as tacit approval thus encouraging more of the same.
   
4. Confronting racism is a tricky, sometimes dangerous, business.
5. Bigots are bullies. Stand up to them and they usually back off.
6. Less confrontational techniques might prevent me getting my head kicked in.
   

Enough for now. I'll pick this up again tomorrow.

-AF

They Got It From Their Parents

What's racist, red and white all over? Rexburg, Idaho. That town's children chant "Assassinate Obama" on their school bus." BYU, Rexburg Psych prof sez:

"I think the thing that struck us was just like, 'Where did they get the word and why would they put that word and that person together?'"

This is a job for Captain Obvious!

-AF

Still Hate Rears Its Ugly Head

I really, really, really wish I hadn't seen this. Crooks&Liars has the skinny on all the racist shit that went down at Baptist Baylor University yesterday. I hope you're proud of yourselves.

You can take the Baptist out of Waco, but apparently you can't take the Waco out of these Baptists.

-AF

It's All About The Hope Babies

Hearing the angst, hurt and racial weirdness/bigotry emanating from losing side has really jarred me. I'm not talking about the pundits or the candidates. Nothing they say could ever surprise me. I'm talking about everyday people, McCain voters, like those in my View From The Ground series, Parts 3 & 4. (I can't even begin to wrap my head around the gay marriage bans).

I confess this all left me feeling a lot less hopeful.

Cue RS's Matt Taibbi. Matt is acerbic, sharp as a whip and funny as fuck. He's also a keen observer of human behavior. Amidst the post-election pain, confusion and fear of many voters he sees...um, well...Hope:

There are still a lot of mixed-up, terrified people out there who went to bed last night in a panic about what "those people" will do now that they have one of their own in the White House. When I finally got to watch a replay of Obama's speech in my hotel room late last night, it occurred to me that it's those people who were actually the big winners in this election. Why? Because a lot of them are going to wake up a year from now and realize not a whole lot has changed. And quietly, when no one's looking, they're going to relax a little.

That will be a bigger and more beautiful day than last Tuesday. Read it here.

-AF

Views From The Ground

"L." checked in from Raleigh, NC yesterday. Her coworkers were buzzing about the election. The hot topic was how "when Obama becomes President, he will help the blacks enslave the whites."

-AF

Views From The Ground

Race wasn't nearly as big an issue in the election as the media built it up to be. Here's one indication that as far as we've come, we still have a long way to go...

"R." in rural Tennessee tells of an exchange as she left her polling station. A man a few steps ahead was approached for an exit poll. When asked "Who did you vote for?," he replied "I voted for the nigger."

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

"R." also reports being surprised months ago to learn most of her farmer-neighbors were ardent Barack Obama supporters. They put up Obama lawn signs and put Obama bumperstickers on their pickup trucks. These folks attended rallies and canvassed neighborhoods too.

Yet all throughout the campaign they referred to Obama by the same foul racial epithet.

This shit is so fucked up I'm speechless.

-AF