Ken Mehlman goes to the NAACP, apologizes for the GOP’s past sins, and Bob Herbert unloads on him:
One of President Bush’s surrogates went before the N.A.A.C.P. last week and apologized for the Republican Party’s reprehensible, decades-long Southern strategy.
The surrogate, Ken Mehlman, is chairman of the Republican National Committee. Perhaps he meant well. But his words were worse than meaningless. They were insulting. The G.O.P.’s Southern strategy, racist at its core, still lives.
My goodness. What could Mehlman have said that was so offensive? Did he pull a James Watt? Let’s look:
“Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,” said Mr. Mehlman. “I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.”
Oh. Can’t imagine why President Bush may be reluctant to address the NAACP if this is what creates such vitriolic condemnations. At any rate, Herbert does repeat a few canards:
The Southern strategy meant much, much more than some members of the G.O.P. simply giving up on African-American votes. Put into play by Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon in the mid- to late 1960’s, it fed like a starving beast on the resentment of whites who were scornful of blacks and furious about the demise of segregation and other civil rights advances. The idea was to snatch the white racist vote away from the Democratic Party, which had committed such unpardonable sins as enacting the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and enforcing desegregation statutes.
I’ll let you deal with that one on your lonesome in the comments. Herbert continues:
So what did Ronald Reagan do in his first run for the presidency, 16 years after the murder, in the summer of 1980? He chose the site of the murders, Philadelphia, Miss., as the perfect place to send an important symbolic message. Mr. Reagan kicked off his general election campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, an annual gathering that was famous for its diatribes by segregationist politicians. His message: “I believe in states’ rights.”
I’ll let Kevin Drum take care of this one:
Reagan obviously knew the racial baggage of a phrase like that at a place like Neshoba, and it’s a genuine blight on his record. However, it’s worth noting that (a) Reagan talked about states’ rights routinely in a non-racial context, (b) Mississippi at the time was seen as a swing state that Jimmy Carter had only barely won in 1976, and (c) the Neshoba event wasn’t originally planned to be the kickoff for his campaign. His original intent was to kick off the campaign with a speech to the Urban League, but his advisers were afraid of the symbolism of doing that first and following it with Neshoba.
Drum goes on to note that Dukakis and others all went to the Neshoba County Fair, and that the reason may have more to do with the fact that this is the ‘it’ event for this region, and a campaign stop for everyone.
I am not going to whitewash or defend the Republican party’s checkered past on matters regarding race, as there really is no excuse for many of the past behaviors. In fact, most of us in the party acknowledge it, and it is why we have such a hair trigger when people like Trent Lott attempt to glorify the segregationist past of people like Strom Thurmond. I have even written at length about some of our sins and how the biblical rhetoric employed against blacks now has been retooled and redeployed against homosexuals.
Despite all that, it is still profoundly unfair to even attempt to portray this White House as racist. Bush may be wrong on a lot of issues, but it is a stretch to claim that racism is one of those sins, and Herbert is simply trying to keep hate alive.
capelza
“”The NAACP unfortunately in the 2000 campaign likened the president to James Byrd, who was a racist killer in east Texas, who the president brought to justice.” Mehlman, on Larry King Live.
I kind of felt sorry for him when he said that, talk about shoving your foot down your throat. Don’t know if this statement would undermine any progress Mehlman made in his overutres to the NAACP, but it sure made me cringe.
I don’t believe the Bush Admin is racist, but for Pete’s sake, saying stuff like that sure makes them look dumb.
SomeCallMeTim
Yeah, baby. Like the new look. Now go get some of that “drop-down category” code for your blog roll; you’ll be nearly beautiful. Also, (a) no preview button (Henley got one somehow), and (b) you might mention that people might need to look for a new RSS feed; at least I did.
As to the substance:
1. McCain, South Carolina – maybe Mehlman meant that they won’t go racist unless they really, really need it.
2. There are at least a few accounts from Reagan partisans acknowledging that Reagan’s views on race remained as they were initially fixed when he grew up – i.e., not great.
3. Lott got hammered because of a series of long-standing links to fairly racist organizations. The Thurmond thing was merely the trigger. I note that a while back, Lindsey Graham said something that could have been misconstrued as racist (something about the Civil War, IIRC). And, briefly, people kicked it around. It died away when lefty bloggers (Gillard, IIRC) pointed out that Graham had a pretty good reputation, that there was a more charitable reading of his comments, and that given his reputation, he deserved that reading.
Pretending that the Republican Party is not the party for white racists (not of racists; I think the vast majority of Republicans are not racists) is silly. It’s true on its face.
sarah
Well, Mehlman did appear to play both sides a little bit. He gave an interview to NPR after his appearance at the NAACP that somewhat denied there ever WAS a “Southern Strategy.” So I’m can’t be too convinced of his good faith efforts here.
DON GONYEA (NPR): But if that was meant as an apology — and early media reports treated it as one — Mehlman himself tempered the remarks later in the day in an interview with NPR:
KEN MEHLMAN: I think it’s a mistake when people talk about a “Southern Strategy.” The fact is that in the past folks in the North, the South, the East, and the West didn’t do a good enough job in reaching out to African-Americans.
GONYEA: Mehlman then added:
MEHLMAN: If anything, the Democrat Party is today benefiting from racial polarization. It’s certainly not in my best interests when Democrats get 90% of the African-American vote.
Nonetheless, I would agree that while the Bush White House is many (many) things, they have done a fairly good job at reaching out to underrepresented minorities.
Prudence Goodwife
Do you have to be a racist to exploit racism for political purposes?
Is exploiting a problem for votes the same as endorsing it?
Were the phrases “law & order” and “welfare queen” used as substitutes for more racially loaded terms?
Just asking.
SherAn
Bob Herbert’s point was that the electioneering that went on in Ohio and Florida prove the lie that is Mehlman’s claim that the Southern Strategy is a thing of the past. It is alive and well and thriving in Karl Rove’s world. Read John Conyers’ report on the “irregularities” in the Ohio vote for a real eye-opener. Most of the disgusting tactics were utilized in predominantly black precincts and facilitated by an Uncle Tom (J. Kenneth Blackwell, a gubernatorial candidate on the GOP ticket).
Otto Man
Not really sure what you think is wrong here.
Giving credit for the CRA and VRA solely to the Democrats? True, the CRA was only passed when LBJ convinced Everett Dirksen to bring the moderate Midwestern Republicans on board, to counteract the effects of Southern Democrats who were stonewalling. It definitely wasn’t solely a Democratic adventure, though if one party gets credit (or blame as the case may be) I think it’s fair to give the nod to the Democrats, since the CRA and VRA both began with Democratic presidents pushing for them.
While the moderate Republicans do deserve credit for supporting the CRA, this was the last act of racial moderation from the GOP for a while. When the ’64 nomination went to Goldwater — who was not a racist, but someone whose vote against the CRA was embraced by racists — the ground began to shift. Moderates like Rockefeller and Hatfield got shouted down at the Cow Palace, and the GOP started to embrace former Southern Democrats (and avowed segregationists) like Strom Thurmond and Bo Callaway, who fled the Democratic Party explicitly because of the national support for civil rights.
The end result was that the parties quickly adopted different identities on racial issues. As late as 1962, polls asking which political party was “more likely to see to it that Negroes get fair treatment in jobs and housing” showed that Americans saw virtually no difference between Democrats and Republicans. But in 1964, when asked the same question, 60 percent said Democrats and 7 percent said Republicans. Asked which party was more likely to support school integration, 56 percent pointed to the Democrats while 7 percent did so for the Republicans. In the South, such assumptions about the parties’ racial policies led segregationist whites to rally around the Republican banner for the first time in a century.
And as far as Herbert’s last comment, about “enforcing desegregation statutes,” it’s pretty clear the (national) Democrats alone were serious about enforcing the CRA through HEW appropriations. Johnson took this seriously and, at long last, brought about desegregation in the Deep South. When the HEW carryovers kept up the heat under Nixon, however, the new president had a famous order: “Knock off this crap! Do what the law commands, and not one bit more.”
And the Nixon strategists were very clear they were hunting for the old Wallace voters. Go look at the Nixon tapes, or simpler yet, read strategist Kevin Phillip’s 1969 work, The Emerging Republican Majority. He lays it all out pretty clearly.
Sister Toldjah
Herbert’s comments are expected but I was surprised to read Mehlman’s. Didn’t sound much better than Trent Lott’s backflips and somersaults on BET after L’Affaire de Thurmond. On a pandering scale of of 1-10, with 10 being the highest of course, I’d give this one about an 8.5.
I realize the Republicans (of which I am one) need to do more to reach out to the black community, but continually apologizing for the past isn’t going to cut it.
p.lukasiak
Ah yes, more GOP talking points…. “George Bush isn’t a racist”…
despite the whispering campaign in South Carolina accusing John McCain of fathering a black child, and
despite the fact that his first campaign stop in South Carolina after the New Hampshire primary was at one of the nation’s most notoriously racist colleges (Bob Jones U.)…
and despite the fact that Bush hasn’t lifted a finger to renew the Federal Civil Rights Act.
No, we are supposed to be impressed with Bush because he is doing “outreach” to the black community. Of course, much of that “outreach” consists of exploiting the significant homophobia within the black community, which our host supposedly decries. But no matter, its outreach to the black community, right?
ppGaz
It’s not about racism. It’s about pandering.
Bush’s team is the Gold Standard in pandering.
The pandering here is to the still-alive resentment of Dems and the Civil rights movement (and its attendant bashing of the South).
There are two ways to express this: One, the Repubs are much more adept at holding their coalition together than their opponents are. Two, the Repubs will do anything for votes.
Take your choice. They’re both true.
Bernard Yomtov
Sorry, the Reagan appearance in Philadelphia won’t wash. He didn’t have to go. He didn’t have to talk about states’ rights. And the symbolism of the visit was apparent to anyone.
KC
I just had a conversation about this yesterday. Credit is due where credit is due and one bit of credit Bush deserves is his having a diverse cabinet. He’s definitely broken the old-white-man mold of former Republican (and up until recently, many Democratic) Presidents. Maybe the the Republicans in Congress havn’t quite caught up, but I think in a matter of time they will. Bottom line is that the GOP is changing. As time moves forward, any party that fails to appeal to people of various colors and ethnicities will be bound to fail.
Christie S.
Politicians will say whatever, promise whatever, DO whatever it takes to win an election. Always have, always will. Out of both sides of their mouths and usually at the same time.
No rhetoric is verboten when targeted specifically to the audience being spoken to.
ALL politicians do this, no party has a clear record. As such, this is just more business as usual. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
SeesThroughIt
Right on, p.lukasiak and ppGaz. I also found this rather humorous:
“My party’s racism drove Blacks to the opposing party. Therefore, Democrats enjoy racism!” Mehlman’s such a douchebag.
I also agree with the logic put forth in this article:
don surber
PPGAZ:
Politicians pander. Imagine that.
Compuglobalhypermeganet
Keep calling Bush, a man you’ve never met and a man who has the most racially-diverse Cabinet/advisors in history, a “racist.” Please. Keep at it. There are more elections for you to lose by appearing to be delusional, hatefilled punkasses. Thanks in advance.
metalgrid
You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Turn that around to focus on Reps and it says a lot by the dixiecrat vote they get and you have to wonder, whether they really aren’t racist. Another case in point is the religious fundies that are far more prevalent among the Reps than the Dems. If John’s statement is true “I have even written at length about some of our sins and how the biblical rhetoric employed against blacks now has been retooled and redeployed against homosexuals.” just extrapolate from that to infer that the presence of religious bigots on the Rep side automatically distances them from the gay civil rights movement.
What I am usually amused about Dems is that they focus so heavily towards the whole welfare thing as a means of attracting the afro-am vote, they fail to realize the inherant racism of that stance -i.e. afro-ams are incapable of succeeding on their own.
Sojourner
” Please. Keep at it. There are more elections for you to lose by appearing to be delusional, hatefilled punkasses.”
Interesting. As compared with a party and administration that lied the US into a war, outed a CIA operative, and trashed the economy?
SomeCallMeTim
they focus so heavily towards the whole welfare thing as a means of attracting the afro-am vote, they fail to realize the inherant racism of that stance i.e. afroams are incapable of succeeding on their own.
That’s a bizarre statement. AFAIK, no part of the safety net is race-based. Also, the now-traditional complaint of African-Americans is that Dems take their support for granted; that is, they do very little or nothing to attract African-Americans, because they don’t believe they have to do so.
p.lukasiak
I think my favorite GOP talking point on race is the one about how the Democratic Party does nothing for African Americans, and just panders to them at election time.
The inherent racism of those kinds of statements, which boil down to “blacks are too stupid to recognize that the Democratic Party doesn’t help them”, is astonishing.
Mr Furious
That, of course, is the only reason he is even out there talking about this/pretending to apologize. To get votes. Period. The southern strategy is alive and well, just using some new techniques. Plenty of examples have already been given upthread (Bob Jones U, McCain, voter intimidation, etc) I’ll throw in the fact that Bush punted on the South Carolina Confederate flag on the State House issue in 2000.
They’re not going to the black community out of any kind of “outreach”, they just have a new angle to exploit — black homophobia (and maybe that canard about blacks dying young and getting screwed by social security…).
I’m not going to counter the comments defending Bush on his appointments of minorities by saying they are tokens. That’s not exactly fair, and on the balance sheet, Bush should be commended for those picks. But on an individual basis, they are idealogues first, people of color second, and often mainly for inoculation’s sake. Notice how fast the race card flies out of the deck in any scenario when those people are scrutinized.
I always want to give Bush the benefit of the doubt by thinking he’s not a racist, he’s actually a nice guy who believes in this stuff and leaving a legacy of diversity. that his handlers and strategists are the bad apples. I have doubts about that now–not that that makes Bush a racist–I’m just not sure how much he really cares, and how much is for show. He let’s this shit go on in his name and in his campaigns, so he bears responsibility, and that more than cancels out his legacy of diverse appointments.
Jeff
I think i’ll start the Balloon Juice/ p.lukasiak drinking game. Every time Lukasiak spews about “talking points”, do a shot! You’ll be smashed after two posts.
And the views of Bob Jones university on inter-racial dating and marriage are exactly the same as those of Spike Lee, but that didn’t stop Al Gore and Bill Bradley from kissing the little punks ass during their primarty debate at the Apollo back in 2000.
Besides, i can’t get too worked up about all this when the mayor of my city (Philly) can scream ‘THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS ARE RUNNING THIS CITY….THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS ARE IN CHARGE in front of a sympathetic group of black reporters, get thunderous applause, and then get re-elected largely by playing the race card.
It’s funny, i used to try and argue with pompous lefties like the ones above over issues of race, but i’ll just look around my extremely diverse South Philly neighborhood and realize that racial tolerance is about how you live your life, not about sitting behind a keyboard and calling people racists.
SomeCallMeTim
“It’s funny, i used to try and argue with pompous lefties like the ones above over issues of race, but i’ll just look around my extremely diverse South Philly neighborhood and realize that racial tolerance is about how you live your life….”
Shades of Jesse Helms saying, “We would have fixed Jim Crow if only the north had left us alone.” Pass.
Jeff
Thanks for proving my point, jerkoff.
BinkyBoy
Instead of attacking the Southern Strategy and how it was launched as an attack on the Civil Rights movement as a Democrat vs. Republican type of issue, its really more about progressive liberalism vs. Conservatism, at least Southern Conservatism.
The Southern Strategy pitted Republican vs. Republican and caused many to switch parties and allegiances, yet their core standards remained the same.
It basically cleaned house for the two parties.
Steve
The Republican Party keeps doing all this “outreach” to African-American voters, but they never actually offer any policies or suggestions. All they do is show up at conventions and say “gee, we’d like your vote.” I wonder if there is a Step 2 to this plan?
metalgrid
I wonder if there is a Step 2 to this plan?
Well, if you count Medicare as welfare and that welfare disproportionately addresses the afro-am population, you can say Republicans are responsible for the biggest welfare increase in history. One imagines that reparations might have been cheaper.
p.lukasiak
“It’s funny, i used to try and argue with pompous lefties like the ones above over issues of race, but i’ll just look around my extremely diverse South Philly neighborhood and realize that racial tolerance is about how you live your life….”
As someone who has lived in Philadephia for the past 28 years, I have three words for you.
Whitman Park Plaza.
John Cole
I have no idea what that means, lukasiak.
Jeff
“I have no idea what that means, lukasiak”.
It’s p totally missing the point and inadvertantly proving another one.
I never said Philly is a racially tolerant city, because a lot of neighborhoods aren’t, and when you have a racially divisive mayor like John Street, who throws gas on the fire, it’s not gonna get better.
I was merely pointing out that MY neighborhood (3rd and Carpenter, for those of you that have lived here 28 yrs and know where that is) IS diverse, and i’ll worry more about how i live my life than what a bunch of race-hustling liberals say from behind their keyboard.
Although, the entire city might be more tolerant than i thought since p.lukasiak had to go back to the Frank Rizzo days for an example of racial tension.
Why wouldn’t you use Brewerytown as an example, p? That’s going on right now. Or, doesn’t a black civic group trying to keep their neighborhood all black work for you?
BinkyBoy
wow, metalgrid, way to just pump out racist BS.
I’d challenge you to a source, but I’m not sure I want to read whatever hate site you reply with.
p.lukasiak
I was merely pointing out that MY neighborhood (3rd and Carpenter, for those of you that have lived here 28 yrs and know where that is) IS diverse,
I know exactly where that is, and I also know that no one calls that neighborhood “South Philly”. Did you buy BEFORE they torn down the projects on Washington Ave? Or are you one of the gentrifiers waiting for the last black family to leave your block?
metalgrid
wow, metalgrid, way to just pump out racist BS.
Dude, chill out. I was making a joke at the expense of both sides.
Stormy70
Bush got 16% of the African American vote in Ohio in the last election, so the Republicans are making small gains, but it does have some, like Donna Brazille worried. Here is a recent oped in Philly, too.
The NAACP should be shunned by Bush, because the 2000 Byrd add was beyond the pale. The animals who did it were given the death penalty, and Bush had nothing to so with his death. I really despise them as an organization, they serve no real purpose anymore.
Stormy70
I really need the preview button: add= ad, sheesh!
Jerri
Diverse cabinet??? You must be talking about Bush’s poodle Rice. The Black community treat her like Justice Thomas
Jon H
One big oops for Mehlman was, apparently, that on one of his TV appearances last weekend he mentioned the Byrd killing (the guy who was dragged to death), but said Byrd was the racist killer in the case.
Al Maviva
Um, speaking of Philadelphia and the Southern Strategy, and how Republicans hate dem black folk (thanks, Sojourner!), Richard Nixon invented both the Southern Strategy and race based affirmative action. Nixon believed that he could skim both blacks and Southern bigots (as well as simple traditionalists who didn’t like being screwed with by outsiders) from the Democratic Coalition. He additionally believed that he could fracture the union vote.
The plan was to back race based affirmative action – flat out racial quotas – on union and municipal work sites in the North, while bad mouthing interfering Washington liberals while in the South. The strategy kind of worked. Democrats seized on racial quotas as a winning issue among Blacks, and locked up an ever increasing share of the Black vote, since AA was hard to square with the Southern strategy. On the other hand, the Philadelphia Plan did help break up the union block – probably not as much as Volker/Stockman/Reaganite economic policies that favored sizable capital investors and large corporations (which in turn employed union labor) – but it did play the races of against each other. Kinda like the NAACP alleging that George Bush is a lynch mob leader, only not quite as blatant.
RS
One point that seems to be overlooked in the discussion here – and perhaps it’s only my personal beef, being a lifelong Southerner, but the idea of the “Southern Strategy” is deeply insulting to many of us, because it turns on the notion of the South as a monolithic bastion of ignorance and bigotry.
It’s part of a larger bias toward the South and things Southern that surprisingly lives on in many parts of elite media opinion to this day – attitudes and preconceptions about the entire region that are based on anything but fact.
As an illustration of what I mean – TNT recently began airing a new drama called “The Closer.” The show’s creator boasted that his gimmick was that the heroine, who hails from Atlanta originally, is actually intelligent despite her origins “down there.” Perhaps you have to be a Southerner to understand how simultaneously hilarious, infuriating, and sad that is – the hook to the show is that the lady with the funny accent is the smart one!
That sort of thinking, it seems to me, informs Mr. Herbert’s analysis of the “Southern Strategy” and its alleged appeal to the people of the region, whom he seems to perceive as “Deliverance”-style bigots salivating for some Elmer Gantry to pander to our worst instincts.
Lee
Why even pander to the naacp? it IS in itself a racist organization and it’s quite funny reading these posts trying to defend it.
blacks (and…. what does the ‘c’ stand for?) is only done harm by this sad organization.
Daniel Aldridge
Blacks desperately need a center right alternative to current black orthoxy. Is lock step Democratic voting and remaining embroiled in resentment about racism making black neighborhoods wealthier and safer? Madness is defined as doing the same thing over and over again when it doesn’t work. Let’s try a new departure and take an approach that emphasizes enterprise and opportunity rather than remaining mired in identity politics and ethnic resentments.
RW
Perhaps Colin Powell was the subject?
Or Alberto Gonzalez
Or Christie Todd-Whitman?
Or Margaret Spellings?
Or Carlos Gutierrez?
All you could think of was Condi? They all look alike to you, eh? Or is it only the black folks that are incompetent poodles to you? Perhaps Donna Brazile says it better:
Your attitude is part and parcel of why you guys are the minority PARTY while Bush nominates minorities from within the majority party to high-level offices. By all means, keep up the kossack talk.
Sojourner
“Well, if you count Medicare as welfare and that welfare disproportionately addresses the afro-am population, you can say Republicans are responsible for the biggest welfare increase in history. One imagines that reparations might have been cheaper.”
The Medicare drug bill is welfare for the drug companies. It has nothing to do with the American people.
Sojourner
“Perhaps Colin Powell was the subject?
Or Alberto Gonzalez
Or Christie Todd-Whitman?
Or Margaret Spellings?
Or Carlos Gutierrez?”
It sure is interesting to see this list. Yes, on the surface Bush has a diverse group of people but there’s one common underlying thread. More so than previous administrations, this is a highly command-and-control administration. The folks you list don’t/didn’t make any substantive contributions. They are expected to do what they’re told. Superficial diversity gives way to groupthink that folks like Powell and Whitman ultimately rejected. Gonazales sold his soul to become the torture czar and Spellings comes across as the Stepford teacher.
Yuck.
RW
And they also make frequent trips to Venus. I mean, as long as we’re throwing out off-the-wall observations that are based on nothing other than ‘gut feeling’ and what we’ve read on our favorite echo-chamber sites, might as well go for the gusto.
No, wait, I thought Gonzalez was el Capitan de torture and abuse? So now he isn’t the brainchild of “why they hate us, part XVII”?
The Powell doctrine is a figment of everyone’s imagination?
Well, I guess it’s hard for those folks to follow the glowing legacy of Hazel O’leary (we all recall her accomplishments) and Janet Reno (see: kids, cooked).
And if there’s one reputation that Colin Powell had – other than going against the administration via leaks to the press and an internal conflict between the state department that he ran and the defense department run by Rumsfeld & the war effort run by Bush – it was that he toed the line. You know, except when he acted out on his own and did otherwise.
Real world lesson 101: subordinates do what they’re told or they hand in their resignations. This goes for the Clinton administration (name the officials who resigned after they embarrassed themselves by going out every day for a year to recite the WH line only to find out later that their boss had been lying throughout), the Reagan administration, the Carter administration, business, etc. Actually, that would be real world lesson 099, the remedial class.
Other than the condescending attitude that “those people” are gutless and kowtow to the massah (gotta be Rove, since Bush is so stoopid, you know) the attempts at brushing across glossy resume’s is quite revealing. The program would be simliar to:
We already knew that if they’re Republican minorities, they’re not “really” minorities. We got that a long time ago. The only “real” minorities are those who recite the kossack line and are registered Democrats. Got it.
Question: Do some of you (the same 12 commenters who sit at your PCs and say the same things on every Cole thread all day long) have jobs?
Sojourner
Yo, RW… Powell’s GONE. Might that be a clue that he didn’t fit in with the lockstep mentality?
Gonzalez claims he was told to write the torture memos.
Whitman had such a great time with the Bushies she wrote a book arguing for moderates to regain control over the party.
RW
So did Powell not fit in with the lockstep mentality for the 4 year term he served or did he simply do what he was told?
So did Whitman fit in with the lockstep mentality for the term she served or did she have a terrible time with the “Bushies”?
You’re arguing amongst yourself…..which is it? Which of your contradictory comments is the message you’re willing to protray (don’t disappoint me and attempt to say that they don’t contradict, even though the odds are that you won’t resist the urge).