I think I just don’t like conservatives. Take Mark Steyn:
I found Obama’s speech profoundly depressing. It was cold, precisely calculated, and, on the Chris Matthews Legometer, stunningly effective, and (as Victor says below) likely to have very wide influence. A reader makes the following point:
How can we call on the “good Muslims” to bravely denounce and actively counter the jihadi terror-endorsing clerics who give their children permission to kill and to hate on behalf of Allah when we seem to be afraid to ask the good African-American Christians to stand up against those, like Wright, who call for the “damn”-ing of America, blame everything on “rich white” people, blame Israel and Jews for a host of imagined sins, and tell their children it is their duty to Jesus to “destroy” people because their skins are white?
Pre-speech, Mickey Kaus offered the following advice, untaken by the Senator:
There are plenty of potential Souljahs still around: Race preferences. Out-of-wedlock births. Three strike laws! But most of all the victim mentality that tells African Americans (in the fashion of Rev. Wright’s most infamous sermons) that the important forces shaping their lives are the evil actions of others, of other races. …
That is the psychosis that has left so much of the Muslim world mired in backwardness -political, social and economic. It’s sad that the first viable black candidate for the US presidency has chosen to endorse it domestically.
I don’t know whether Steyn sincerely feels this way or not. I can’t believe anyone would be sincerely depressed by Obama’s speech unless they were depressed that it was defusing a potent election stratagem. If Steyn is sincere then I think his mind is just poisoned.
Steyn is the kinda guy who would have labeled Martin Luther King a hate monger and a communist. Like the poor such idiots will always be with us.
Steve’s right. Remember, African-Americans such as myself are really just one step away from being raghead sunzabitches and rising up to jihad you at the local Applebee’s.
Or do we magically expect Steyn and his ilk to start voting for the Dems in November regardless of what he says?
LOL at the thought of a jihad at Applebee’s!
‘Like the poor such idiots will always be with us.’
This is definitely a monumentally startling statement. Maybe you could clarify. Or is it sarcastic?
it’s sarcastic. “the poor will always be with us” is from the New Testament.
Yep
for what it’s worth Huckabee joins McCain in defending Obama and Wright:
Mike Huckabee on Barack Obama’s Speech on Race
To Watch this video -you need to get pass the mini sermon…and the Iowa doughnut history.
Oh, I saw that this morning! And my response?
Faint. Thud! FLATLINE_____________
Here lies AP, in shock because a conservative was honest on national TV.
(OK, so the first part was self-serving, but the second–alrighty then.)
Beep. Beep. Beep… Signs of AP picking herself off the floor.
I think the thing that disturbs them most is the possibility that Obama’s message might actually resonate. Conservatives have made a lot of hay over the last couple of decades off the perpetuation of the “victim mentality” and the “blame whitey” that they so love to point to and decry as a major motivator in the black community.
Obama’s eloquent speech threatens to address the very issue which they have depended on to sell their petrified ideas to the mostly white electorate.
Conversations about race, healing of racial wounds and an effort to bring people together are all bad for the conservative brand. Without racial tension and the US-vs-THEM narrative, they lose a big club to swing.
At the end of the speech yesterday, Obama told the same story about the SC volunteer “Ashley” as he did at the MLK day speech. But he threw in an extra bit after the part where Ashley finishes telling her story where here mother got better and before she continues around the room to ask others why they’re there.
That was a brilliant addition.
is that Obama never frames anything in the US-vs-THEM narrative to pit one person, one race or one religion against another. Now it might be naive to think that this will appeal to all of the people, but I damn sure do find it refreshing. People I know have tried to say, “He’s just doing the old Rodney King, ‘Why can’t we all just get along’, thing”. That it sounds good but it doesn’t really accomplish anything. That he is just doing this as a political calculus. But there is no arguing that his message has motivated hundreds of thousands of previously uninvolved people to dip their toes into the political water; to be actively engaged in the governance of the country.
Without that message those people would instead be sitting at home being spoon fed conventional wisdom from the TV punditry and giving no serious thought to the consequences of their vote. So that fact alone more than validates Obama’s message.
I’ve read that the Gettyburg Address was a flop when it was given.
Obama’s speech yesterday was truly the best political speech on race in my life (okay, with the proviso that MLK’s speeches weren’t strictly “political”). It resonated an honesty and complexity that the sellers of hate cannot handle.
One of my Christian Conservative co-workers just stopped by my desk and was complaining about how all the talking heads on the morning shows were just gushing about Obama’s speech.
“They were going on and on, like Obama had presented a Fifth Gospel for the New Testament or something!”, he said.
Fifth Gospel??? I kinda like that.
give that co-worker the YouTube video – I posted upthread – Mike Huckabee defending Obama and Wright. It includes a warm-up mini sermon on blasphemy.
That’s the weird thing about Huckabee. He will, by his nature, occasionally have those WWJD moments where he says something so totally sensibly liberal that if he’s not careful, his fellow Republicans might vote him off the island.
Modern Conservatism Defined:
False assumption entwined with faulty logic.
If Mark Steyn is sincere in his conservative viewpoints, then he should forget a small player like Pastor Wright and devote a whole lot of ink to condemning the fat cat bankers on Wall St. who have mismanaged their affairs and are presently crawling on hands and knees begging for assistance from the Federal Government.
From EJ Dionne’s column yesterday “The Street on Welfare”
“Mark Steyn” and “Sincerity” is the perfect definition of an oxymoron.
Wow, cold, calculating and effective. That’s really damning criticism in American politics. (Not that I agree that it was any of these things.)
As to the rest of it, ick. But I’m sure that conservatives are eating it up.
According to pigs like Steyn, it’s natural for black men to rot in jail. Black men should simply accept their lot in life. God just made them criminals and if they would humbly accept the jail cell and quietly atone for their collective sins they would eventually be able to be productive members of society, like janitors or bus drivers.
The American Black Male is imprisoned at the highest rate of any group in the world. White guys use more illegal drugs than black guys but don’t go to jail in the same numbers. George Bush can put cocaine up his rich pretty-boy nose and suffer no consequences. The black George Bush (let’s call him Tyrone) can use the exact same drug and have his life destroyed for it. Then to top it all off assholes like Steyney-boy get upset if the black community raises even a peep about this gross injustice. If anything, the black community has been pretty docile about America’s great shame. I can’t imagine white people standing quietly by while their young men were imprisoned at such high rates.
If there was indeed justice on this Earth Steyn would meet Tyrone in a dark alley with only their God-given skills of survival to assist them. Then we would see who is crying victim. What a pussy piece of scum this boy Steyn is.
Hey hey!! P—– are wonderful and wonderous things! (I just don’t want anyone to think I’m being obscene or anything.)
:<)
Punk ass would be more appropriate. Sniveling bastard, too. (“Bastard” = asshole in my world.)
Said lovingly and with a smile. Carry on!
I know the point has been made before, but I think it bears repeating, given that “pastorgate” is taking place during Holy Week. It is very easy to imagine that if Jesus walked among us today, candidates would be under pressure to “reject and denounce” him. He railed against the domination systems of his day, and was ultimately excecuted as something akin to a “terrorist”. Many Christians commemorate that on Good Friday. (Jesus’ Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day).
There’s a difference between anger, especially the righteous anger of “prophets”, and hate. I probably need to pull this together into an actual diary. More to say, but my lunch break is over.
Steyn is too clever by half. His comparison of American blacks and middle-eastern Muslims is intentional and pernicious. The implication is clear–both minority groups out to get white America and will irrationally blame white America for their problems. Steyn’s good intentions are assumed, I guess, just as White America’s intentions are assumed to be good. According to white conservatives, America and white conservatives are the only human beings on earth whose intentions are automatically assumed to be good and honorable. He evidently doesn’t harbor any ill-will for the blacks and Muslims. He just wants what’s best for them. If only Black America and the Muslim world were wise enough to accept White Conservative America’s noblesse oblige.