When is blatant racism acceptable?* When it is used by a liberal as a ‘rhetorical ploy:’
ROOTS CANAL: Colin Powell dances for his massah.
I’m sorry, but any shred of dignity or integrity Colin Powell may have had is now long gone. His continuing Stepin’ Fetchit routine on behalf of the Cheney/Rumsfeld administration is outrageous and embarrassing.H
How humiliating. Any man in Powell’s position with the slightest shred of pride or self-respect would have resigned a long time ago.
When called on this overty offensive and blatantly racist statement, he replies with this tortured logic:
UPDATE: Some people are criticizing this post as en egregious example of “race baiting.” I disagree. It’s an attempt to light a fire under people’s butts by using incendiary rhetoric. I am not arguing that Powell is acting like a compliant Uncle Tom BECAUSE he’s black, and that’s just the way black people act. Quite the opposite. It’s demeaning for a man of his stature and reputation to be put forward by this administration and to dance for the cameras, and lie about pre-war Iraq intelligence.
Fortunately, Oliver Willis and Tacitus treat this bile seriously, because I was merely going to turn it into a game for my readers. Like, for example, see how many cotradictory thoughts you can find in Hesiod’s post in 30 seconds. Or, count the number of different ways this is racist (I found 3 in no time).
* General Disclaimer for moonbats and others who plague the comments section- Racism is never acceptable, and no, I don’t think liberals and Democrats are racist. Quite the opposite, which is why Hesiod’s post is so breathtakingingly offensive.
Slartibartfast
Why even bother to read him at all?
Dixie Flatline
Where are the usual suspects (Kimmet, et al) on this one? Good chance to disavow Hesiod’s “house nigger” comments, but I guess if they can’t defend it, they’ll just leave it alone.
M. Scott Eiland
“Where are the usual suspects (Kimmet, et al) on this one?”
There are plenty of hair-splitters over at Tacitus ready to claim that Hesiod really isn’t a racist, no matter how obvious his own explanation of his comments makes it that he is. To their credit, a lot of left of center posters want nothing to do with Hesiod’s slime, and have said so emphatically.
Dean
Not good enough, M. Scott. After all, if the conservative blogger didn’t immediately denounce Trent Lott (preferably as hysterically as possible), it was taken that his actions were considered acceptable.
Presumably, what is good for the goose is good for the gander?
drew
There is no room for this type of racism anywhere.
Dean,
Trent Lott and Hesiod…Apples and Oranges
Trent Lott and
Mike
Like Ronald Reagan sending Donald Rumsfeld to shake Saddam Hussein’s hand and deliver a letter of praise after he had been confirmed using chemical weapons in warfare, I think it would be “stoopid with 2 o’s” for someone to vouch for this Hesiod guy after using the Powell/Fetchit analogy just because he’s a democrat.
Mark V. Shaney
I think Den Beste put it best when he said: The philosophic justification for the “root causes” argument that we’ve heard so much about is the point: individual racists are not necessarily evil, even though racism is. Individual racists can be loving and compassionate chauvinistic contempt.
It reached its most pathological in Fisk’s notorious attempt to explain away his being beaten by a crowd in Pakistan as ultimately being the result of western imperialism.
This attitude is racism of the characters. There are no villains in the movie, because it’s not about that. By soft-pedaling the racism and yet never ducking it, the movie makes a more profound statement about it than some other films which pound it into the ground and paint all the characters as caricatures.
But it goes deeper than that: if we are responsible, then they will live good lives. They are less than we are. This is deeply loving and compassionate chauvinistic contempt.
Mark V. Shaney
“Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat!”