7107: Fishing For Racist Excuses…?

From The Chicago Tribune…

Fishing with tackle box that’s full of race bait

By Jonah Goldberg

Of all the poisonous and intellectually vapid controversies ginned up in my lifetime, the current breakout of St. Vitus’ Dance over the “racist” opposition to Barack Obama may be the most egregious.

Al Sharpton tells CNN’s Larry King that decent and racially sensitive Americans shouldn’t let a small minority make health care into a “racial issue.”

Someone in the control room surely yelled, “Cue the laugh track!”

In case you don’t get the joke, this entire “debate” over whether opposition to Obama’s health-care reform is racist is totally, completely and in every way conceivable an invention of the left.

Oh, sure, there are some racists who oppose Obama. Shocking news, that.

And, yes, a tiny, tiny fraction of the signs at the tea party protests last weekend were racially insensitive. But if that’s how we’re going to score, then opposition to the Iraq War is anti-Semitic. After all, I saw a bunch of signs at anti-war protests that said bigoted things about Jews.

Meanwhile, no significant conservative politician, pundit or intellectual has said that they object to Obama’s agenda because he’s black. Rather, they’ve said they oppose his agenda for precisely the same reasons they oppose Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s and Barney Frank’s agendas. They stand athwart Obama yelling “Stop!” just as they did with Bill Clinton and Democratic presidents before him.

Magically, the alchemic powers of Obama’s black skin transmogrify the same arguments and the same rhetoric into racism. Saying “you’re wrong” to a white politician is a disagreement; saying it to a black politician is like shouting through Bull Connor’s megaphone.

It’s been said that a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. Well, these people can indict a ham sandwich for being racist. There is not an issue, topic or flavor of ice cream that Sharpton won’t inject racism into. But suddenly King needs to ask him whether opposition to socialized medicine is racist—as if Sharpton’s response was ever in doubt. Why not just ask the host of an infomercial whether you really need a ShamWow?

Left-wing writers spent the week droning on about how it’s now racist to say “I want my country back.” These amnesiacs are blissfully unaware that “taking back” America was the rallying cry of the Democratic Party for eight years under George W. Bush. Anti-white racists all?

Jimmy Carter sighs, “It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.”

Well, ditto. Except I think the abominable circumstance is the Vesuvian eruption of nonsense belched forth from distempered liberals frustrated by their inability to win a public policy debate.

An “overwhelming proportion” of the vocal opposition to Obama stems from the “inherent feeling” that “an African-American should not be president,” testifies the de facto voice of Southern self-loathing and pharisaical pomposity.

Really, President Carter? Based on what? Polls you’ve studied? Which ones? Or did you descend from the temple of the Carter Center, flee your entourage of sycophants and canvass some neighborhoods? How many people told you they don’t think a black man should be president? Or are you reading minds again?

The good news is that the race peddlers have undermined themselves. The notion that opposing skyrocketing deficits and socialized medicine is racist is met with eye rolls by the vast majority of Americans, who do not need Sharpton and Carter to tell them what is—or is not—in their own hearts.

And, in fairness, when it became clear that Carter had turned this “debate” from mere fraud to farce, it suddenly dawned on some Democrats, including those in the White House, that smearing millions of voters (many of whom voted for Obama) as racists isn’t the best politics.

But some just won’t let go. Maureen Dowd of The New York Times hears Rep. Joe Wilson shout, “You lie!” And her instinctive response is: “fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”

It’s the “fair or not” that gives Dowd away. She admits to hearing racism whether or not it’s warranted. That’s called prejudice. And unlike Wilson’s foolish outburst, Dowd’s was carefully considered. Dowd, Carter and Sharpton can’t grasp that conservatives are less hung up on race than they are and that we can get past Obama’s skin color. “Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it,” writes Dowd. She’s right. She’s one of them.

Tribune Media Services Jonah Goldberg is an editor at National Review Online.

7104: Obama’s Critics Lie?

From The Chicago Tribune…

Fiery rhetoric of Obama’s critics

By Clarence Page

People are asking, but President Barack Obama’s White House team denies that racism has anything to do with the protests against his health-care reform plan. That’s smart. The same approach worked during last year’s presidential campaign. In public, Team Obama constantly said race didn’t matter, while in private the team never forgot that it mattered a lot.

Race still matters, although it’s not always easy to say how much. Why do some people think, for example, that the “9/12 Project” tea party protests on the Washington Mall were racially tinged? Maybe it was the sign that television networks photographed that said, as I remember the quote, “The zoo has an African [lion]; The U.S. has a lyin’ African.”

Other signs promoted the idea that Obama is not really a natural born citizen or that maybe he should just die.

But, in fairness, most of the signs weren’t like that. I’m sure most of the folks who showed up in the Mall didn’t have race first and foremost on their minds. Yet, their efforts to appear racism-free seemed downright poignant at times.

For example, somebody made the effort to produce some preprinted signs that offered helpfully: “Not a race issue, Not a party issue, Just an old American freedom issue.” Dear sign carriers: I’m sure you mean well, but every time a black American of my generation hears someone say, “It’s not a race issue,” I immediately think, “Yup, it’s a race issue.”

The great success of the civil rights revolution was to make discrimination illegal and make any sign of racism taboo in decent society. Yet, as serious racism receded, suspicions of racism rushed in to fill the gap. People are afraid to talk about race for fear of offending someone, and if you bring it up you risk being accused of playing the race card.

Yet, it strikes me that one of the byproducts of having a black president is how many white people I know are learning what it feels like to be black in a society that constantly is telling you that something is not a race issue when you so plainly and clearly think it is.

For example, my column-writing colleague Maureen Dowd of The New York Times arched many eyebrows with this bit of mind-reading after Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, rudely blurted out “You lie!” during Obama’s health-care address to Congress: “Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber. ... Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president—no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq—convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.”

My response: Welcome to my world. Judging by the polls, about 15 percent or so of the country was in shock and even ran to gun shops to stock up, according to news reports, when they heard Obama won the presidential race. Some of them naturally show up at protests like the 9/12 march and buy “I’m with Joe Wilson” T-shirts. I just hope Wilson’s new fans are still happy when they have to go dig up their birth certificates and prove their citizenship just to get some health care.

Yet, on a more cheerful note, a scene you probably did not see on TV happened after the protests as the mostly white protesters wandered home through the nearby Black Family Reunion, an annual two-day street fair on the Mall. Although it sounds like a setup for a zany Hollywood movie, everyone was civil and courteous. Some of the protesters mingled and bought some lunch. That’s the Washington way: Never let political differences get in the way of a good meal. There’s a valuable lesson in civility. Appetizing too.

In judging Obama’s performance, it would be wrong to make too much of the role played by race, although it would be foolish to make too little of it. Team Obama came into office with a lot of defensive boasting about the big jobs they had to do with two wars, economic catastrophe and a broken health-care system, among other disasters. How do you separate the impact of Obama being the nation’s first black president from that of his being the first to take on such a big load of hot-button issues?

Yet, I am amused by conservatives like talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh who insist racism has nothing to do with Obama’s problems. Only a few months ago they were blaming white guilt for his success. Folks, you can’t have it both ways.

7103: Not Racist? You Lie!

From The New York Times…

Carter Sees Racism in Wilson’s Outburst

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that Representative Joe Wilson’s outburst last week during President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress was an act “based on racism” and rooted in fears of a black president.

“I think it’s based on racism,” Mr. Carter said at a town-hall-style meeting at his presidential center in Atlanta. “There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”

Mr. Carter, a Democrat, said the outburst was a part of a disturbing trend directed at the president that has included demonstrators comparing him to Nazi leaders.

“Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national program on health care,” he said. “It’s deeper than that.”

Mr. Wilson’s spokesman was not immediately available for comment. But his eldest son, Alan, defended him, saying, “There is not a racist bone in my dad’s body.”