Lawd Have Mercy
I have no words. I may have some words later. But for now, I have none:
The recent dustup due to Hedges’ article on Cornel West could be a real God send. [sic] While some of what West said was probably ill-advised, he also touched on many things that the NPA (New Progressive Alliance) could enthusiastically back him on.
I’m a little afraid that West will back down, overall, out of fear of becoming a pariah. See http://my.firedoglake.com/kgosztola/2011/05/18/cornel-wests-disgust-with-obama-should-not-make-him-a-pariah/
Much better would be to go on the offensive, IMO. I.e., exploit this dustup [sic] (with West’s blessings, of course), to take things to a higher level. Specifically, West, with the NPA’s backing, could undertake an education program, with the initial target the US black community, of teaching them about, say, Obama’s Top 10 betrayals, and Obama’s Top 5 betrayals of Afro-Americans.
This might draw howls of protest from main stream media’s “service intellectuals” (to use Denis Rancourt’s phrase), but that would be a good thing, provided West and the NPA stick to their guns.
To increase the trouble making factor (with the resultant extra media attention), a 3rd prong of the educational effort could be incorporated, namely one exposing the Top 10 Veal Pen members (and individual service intellectuals whose effect on the public mind is similar). Maybe Ed Shulz [sic] will rank as a Veal Pen-nish service intellectual, despite his lefty preferences.
One of the maddening things about American politics is that people are too tribalistic, and tend to demonize their opponents across the board, unfairly. This makes opportunistic and rational cooperation on specific issues very difficult, and is thus dis-empowering for the electorate, as a whole. However, it’s just as maddening when large segments of the population are so ignorant that they can’t identify who their enemy is, on any particular issue. (This is sort of the opposite of dichotomous tribalism.) Obama is not the friend of black or white Americans when it comes to health care, and a whole lot of other stuff. It’s a shame that more black Americans don’t realize this, but this situation is rectifiable.
Time to make – by educating Afro-Americans, and eventually the rest of the counrty [sic] – some enemies in high places, no? The folks at blackagendareport.com could also be key allies.
Cornel West just became every emo white liberal’s “I have a black friend” go-to Negro.
Congrats, Brother.
UPDATE: For those wondering what the NPA is, it is apparently the New Progressive Alliance which has as its favored candidates the following folks (in order): Elizabeth Warren, Russ Feingold, Howard Dean, Richard Trumka, Alan Grayson, Cynthia McKinney, Al Franken, Paul Krugman, Dennis Kucinich, and Jane Hamsher. Notably, the author of the above post appears to have placed listings on Craigslist for potential primary candidates. Would that I were kidding.
I guess I need to be educated by a bunch of uneducated white liberals who think I don’t know any better. This reeks of desperation since the Gallup poll came out and on top of that They now have Uncle Corny here to thank. Be prepared to see more of these negroes. Between slavery and 2011, times and attitudes are really not that far apart
Yuck. This just drips with condescension. I stopped reading FDL more than a year ago and it appears they’ve gotten even worse.
Just when you think they’ve sunk as low as they can go, they surprise you.
While I still hold Hedges’ “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” in very high regard as a memoir/cautionary tale, I can’t for one moment get behind his current holier-than-thou pontifications on matters social or political.
Nor do I take advice from Cornel West on much of anything.
I’m just a graying white guy who likes President Obama and makes up my own mind on things, thankyouverymuch.
Than again, it is FDL – what did anyone really expect from that lunatic asylum?
Jeebus. This may call for the highly complex and dangerous facepalm->headdesk maneuver…
Interesting how this echoes in some ways the argument (made generally by the same folks) about all those ig’nrt white trash folks who vote repub against their own interests.
Which, I have to confess, I’ve argued myself on occasion. Hrmm.
~JGS
For an interesting exercise in contrast, I suggest readers here at ABLC compare the comments thread here with those where it is cross-posted, at Balloon-Juice.
Enlightening.
Seriously, between the chick with her 1/2 Black and Jewish children who just can’t understand why ABL is so hung up on the racism, when her children and her husband just don’t have the same issue…what is wrong with poor ABL?
Seriously, some of the commenters at BJ have really jumped the shark on this shit.
one has to feel very sorry for her children.
Is the next step reeducation camps for wayward black liberals? Where will they stop with this garbage? This plan assumes that large groups of people are incapable of making up their own minds and need to be guided to the whit…I mean, light. Idiocy.
My political views are thus: listen, read, study, and make up your own mind. If you need someone else to tell you what to think, you weren’t actually interested in the issue to begin. And if you think it’s your duty and obligation to teach people the “right” political opinions, you’re an idiot. Offering a viewpoint: ok; insisting it’s the only correct viewpoint, idiocy.
Personally I put West in the “birther” camp. What’s the difference? He accuses President Obama of being afraid of “free black people” because the President has a white mother and white grandparents. In other words, the President is the “other” – not one of “us”. He called the President a “black mascot”. He accuses the President of being in the pocket of corporations, but never chastises his friend Smiley from taking money from corporations. This reeks of jealously and the old “crabs-in-the-barrel” mentality. Whatever good points West may or may not have made, IMO, are discredited by his personal attacks and his ‘Obama is not black enough’. I wonder if West feels the same way about his mixed race child living in Europe with his white mother.
West claims he did 65 campaign events for the Prez. Does anyone know anything about that? I just remember him pouting with Tavis but I’m on the west coast and don’t get much Princeton elite news here.
You know,
these mofos have lost their damn minds. they are fucking crazy with this nonsense. Black folks do NOT need to be edumacated about President Barack Obama. I would dare to say that never before in the history of modern politics, has the ‘average’ Black person been more engaged when it comes to politics. They are watching everything that this President does, and especially the REACTION to what this President does.
Yeah. OK. Read this last night. Blood still boiling. Not wading into the BJ cesspool. With the responses I have seen on various blogs to the various race-based posts done by WHITE people (mostly similar to responses I’ve seen at BJ, if not worse), I’m done.
::drops mic and walks out::
Don’t go to Balloon Juice. John Cole calls the post “nitpicky” because ABL (and allen in the comments) holds FDL editors accountable for the racist content ion their site.
I guess if teh FDL post had said “NIGGERS ARE TOO DUMB AND TRIBAL TO UNDERSTAND WHAT OBAMA IS DOING. ALSO WATERMELONS” then Cole would have been convinced that we Negro people had been sufficiently offended enough that he should step from his White People Position of Authority and deem — Yes. Yes, This was racist enough to rise to the level beyond “nitpicky.”
Alas, Negroes. Our assess weren’t so lucky this time. This content was simply mid-level racism, as good daddy Cole sees it, and therefore isn’t important enough for some editor (some busy white person, I am sure) to respond to, take down or even attempt to monitor.
Too late. I waded in. Dropped my two cents and waded back out.
I get Cole’s point, and part of me agrees. Cole doesn’t like to delete anything. I don’t know if he’d agree with me on this, but I’m pretty sure that the framers of the Constitution/Bill of Rights put that whole free speech thing in there literally for laughs: Let people keep talking, and they’ll make fools of themselves sooner or later.
But FDL does monitor, edit and delete their comments and diaries. I have the expectation that FDL will delete that which doesn’t comport to their standards. That the offending diary was allowed to remain on the site is an indictment of those standards, imo.
What she said.
I waded into the fray over at BJ. Said my piece or two. I doubt it will make much difference, but this stuff really bugs the shit out of me. And, the excuses made for it. “Well, his wording was clumsy, but he does have a point about educating the masses.”
It’s like banging my head against a brick wall over and over and over again.
I was done when Cole tried to excuse it by saying it’s just a diary by one of the posters, it wasn’t written by the braintrust, blah blah blah fishcakes. Being that FDL is supposedly moderated to an inch of its life, the fact that those comments are still standing days later tells me that Jane and her minions are perfectly A-OK with those sentiments.
Even though I hadn’t been to BJ in months I still gave Cole the benefit of the doubt. After twisting himself in knots today trying to rationalize this I have lost all respect for him. Wrong is wrong.
A commenter way late in the thread put it well: Imagine a reverse situation. A black-owned liberal/political site (or any other POC) who put out a constant stream of anti-white pieces and all the commenters jumping in and piling on. You think white liberals wouldn’t jump on that shit and declare it racist? So, why is FDL and Jane being given the benefit of the doubt again and again? As he said, white privilege.
Joshua Holland needs to put a cup on if his nuts are that sensitive.
Just sayin’.
Who.the.fuck.is.this.person?
I…can’t even. My brain has exploded and can’t form a rational response — likely because this is a big ol’ piece of steaming shit, and it’s hard to respond rationally to steaming shit.
I’ll go over and say as much at BJ.
Fucking hell!
Leftybaggers…
So, I have a question. But, before that, some provisos: bear in mind, I have no idea who Cornel West is, who or what ‘Hedge’ is, or what ‘the recent dustup’ was about. As for FDL, while I am aware that it is viewed here and elsewhere as a site that harbors a dangerous amount of racism and general stupidity, it’s also a site I haven’t actually read in years. Their relentless Obama bashing was intensely irritating, and I read blogs for fun and relaxation, not to go get irritated on purpose.
So, in other words, I have no context whatsoever here. If the majority of the issue lies in the context, then please let me know and then proceed to ignore this. Also, I am aware that the usage of the term ‘afro-american’ is suspicious at best.
That having been said…
I sincerely believe that rednecks, as a group, are being lied to and taken advantage of by the Republican party. The Republicans have got them so twisted up in cultural issues that rednecks have lost sight of the fact that the Republican party, at base, exists to serve the interests of rich people and corporations. Those interests are frequently, even usually, directly at odds with the interests of the social and economic class represented by your average redneck.
They are being taken for a ride, and they appear to be too ignorant and too stupidly, obstinantly tribalistic to even get a glimmer of who their real enemies are, and who their real friends should be.
If a Jeff Foxworthy type were to declare his disgust with, say, the Boehner, I might even recommend we, as liberals, do our best to try and use him to help educate his less enlightened brethren. Maybe we suggest a series of jokes on the theme of ‘you might be a redneck that’s been betrayed by Republicans if…’
None of that is exactly revolutionary thought, of course. In fact, pretty much exactly that has been said in a thousand ways in a million comments and posts.
So, finally, here’s my question: what is the basic difference between that and the post quoted above? Yes, the above post is some presumably white person expounding on his beliefs about the ignorance of black people. However, I am a fairly well-off person who just got done expounding on the ignorance of rednecks, and I’m fairly sure that if I lifted those couple of paragraphs out and posted them as a comment to any liberal blog wondering why the south is so solidly Republican, they would not have appeared out of place.
So, is the problem just that I am more prejudiced against ‘rednecks’ than I think I am? Or is there a more fundamental difference I’m not seeing?
Thanks,
me
I agree with this comment. A white guy has as much right to lecture African-Americans as readers have right to call out the racism they perceive in his post. It’s a discussion. And FDL is just the forum. If MyFDL is going to start censoring personal blogs where does it end?
A white guy has as much right to lecture African-Americans …
They do not. No person has any “right” to lecture others on matters they know nothing about (or read a couple bell hooks books back in undergrad, once.)
Just because whites (once again) assert and act as if they have an inborn “right” to lecture whomever they please, even from a position of bone-stupid-ignorance, does not make it so. This is why we laugh at them and smack down their outsized sense of entitlement, and supremacy.
Well at FDL they have that right, and that’s where the article was posted.
It’s not a “right” and has nothing to do with “rights”, that’s teabagger talk. Ignorant whites don’t have any “right” to lecture Blacks, on ANY topic.
Why would you try to defend such a bogus concept of “rights”? Lol!
Optional –
In some ways what you say is similar to the FDL article. Taking a large and diverse group of people and lumping them together in order to call them stupid is obviously a bad thing. Saying that “rednecks” are being taken for a ride is unfair to — what, poor white southerners? That is not a uniformly Republican group.
But I do understand what you’re getting at, and the difference is that there is a very well funded, longstanding propaganda machine that has intentionally, over decades, used divisive social issues to establish a tribal, us vs. them mentality, and to, more frequently in recent years, link their social messages to the free market principle. People who might think otherwise about economic issues habitually tune into these sources of news, and thereby hear the free market propaganda along with the message that information from outside the tribe in unreliable and dangerous. There is nothing remotely like this in the African America community, which gets news from regular, mainstream news sources, rather than a giant propaganda mill.
I don’t think “rednecks” are stupid. I think some of them are very smart (and vote Democratic), some of them care more about those divisive social issues than economic issues, and some of them do not have access to reliable information.
Also, there’s the whole white-man’s-burden, ign’ant darkies, MASSIVELY RACIST aspect to the FDL post, which just doesn’t apply when you’re talking about a subset of the dominant social group.
I got weary of the BJ thread somewhere around where it was about to hit 300, and I realized I wasn’t even halfway through.
I’m surprised I stuck it out that long.
Those are the types of threads you’ve GOT TO stick with.
Forgive me for making light (here and there) over what I think is a very important post- especially in that, I think, it dovetails with ABL’s ongoing thing with Joan Walsh- but when they get that long, there’s plenty of humor to be mined.
Those are the types of threads you’ve GOT TO stick with.
Bleh, why bother.
As a highly educated black woman, I really appreciate the NPA’s attempt to “educate” me about President Obama because you know, I can’t read, and I have no critical thinking skills. And, oh, I need a nanny to tell me for whom to vote. /s/
Please.
The title of this post is right-we’re not as stupid as the NPA group thinks we are. This group is making the same mistake about blacks as the republicans have been making for years, and its efforts will most likely backfire. You don’t insult someone and then expect them to listen to you. By insulting someone right out of the gate, you’re setting yourself up for failure. IMO, the NPA is attempting to control what liberals of all stripes think/do/feel/say. I’ve seen this in the Republican Party, and it has borne some very ugly fruit. And to add to the problem I have with this group of short-sighted, condescending individuals, I have an extreme aversion for anyone who attempts to use authoritarian tactics on others. This isn’t democracy. IMO, it’s the first of many steps on the path toward fascism. The goals of the NPA are no better than those of the GOP. They’re both seeking control over the minds and actions of others.
I really must thank Missy Jane for the gracious education she and other firebaggers try to provide me, the condescending ratfuckers they are