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You are here: Home / Attn: Dave Weigel And Other Sullivan Fill-Ins

Attn: Dave Weigel And Other Sullivan Fill-Ins

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Mark Twain once observed, apocryphally, that it’s better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

The NAACP condemned the Tea Party because many members and a non-zero number of the group’s leadership have said and done things that are unambigiuously racist. Given the hair trigger that Abe Foxman sometimes has when it comes to liberals showing insufficient deference (I’m speaking as a Jewish person here), if anything the NAACP showed restraint.

The story really shouldn’t give pundits much to chew on. The tea party movement has an undeniable influence on the country. Ask them! They’ll tell you. If the NAACP did not call out events that could, if left unchecked, become a dangerous trend then the NAACP would lose its credibility as a watchdog. The determination of Dave Weigel and numerous others to game this out on the fifth or sixth level is emblematic of a type of blindness that I think was best covered during an illuminating conversation that I had with Ed Morrissey in 2007.

Still, I suppose that as long as the obvious doesn’t fill space on the blog, birds gotta fly and pundits gotta speculate. Did the NAACP land its five-dimensional rook on a profitable space-color-time-smell-flavor? Well, yes. Anyone who didn’t expect that some tea party leader would shoot his fool mouth off and prove the NAACP right needs to meet this guy named David Frum. You see, Frum pointed out – from personal experience! – that people with an epistemic closure problem lose track of what their voice sounds like outside the bubble while critical self-knowledge quietly dies on the vine. I bet that he saw this coming.

***Update***

Scooped! Go read Dennis G’s better post and comment there.

Reader Interactions

11Comments

  1. 1.

    Maude

    Heard winger talk radio pooh poohing the racist claim. The repubs don’t seem to like this kind of thing. After all, they are perfect and pure of heart.
    Good to read you Tim.

  2. 2.

    beltane

    Sully’s blog now resembles a house taken over by teenage partiers while the parents are off on their second honeymoon. He’ll be cleaning up a lot of vomit and spilled beer when he gets back to work.

  5. 5.

    Elizabelle

    @beltane:

    Was expecting some sensible commentary by David Weigel. Had great sympathy for him after the shabby treatment by the Washington Post. If anything, he’s making the WaPost executive junta think twice about jettisoning him to appease rightwingers.

    And am sad to say that. He is just out of his element on Sullivan’s blog.

    ***************************************

    Ann Telnaes has a great animated cartoon on Tim F’s subject.

    Sarah Palin defends the Tea Partiers.

    http://voices.washingtonpost.com/anntelnaes/?hpid=opinionsbox1

  6. 6.

    AB

    The best part of bringing up Frum is that he’s also guest-blogging for Sullivan at the moment, and posted an honest to God “immigration is taking our JERBS” stinker earlier. Epistemic closure posts aside, I’m pretty sure the guy’s well and truly still in the bubble, at least on some topics.

  7. 7.

    Svensker

    Long time no see, Tim F. Nice to have you back.

    Edit to add: Frum is a racist war-monger jerk. Apparently he occasionally gets a clue. Andrew should not have given him a platform to spew his zionist anti-muslim crap.

  8. 8.

    Ailuridae

    Great post. I can’t speak for anyone else but I feel that the qualifier here in this sentence is entirely unwarranted.

    Given the hair trigger that Abe Foxman sometimes has when it comes to liberals showing insufficient deference (I’m speaking as a Jewish person here), if anything the NAACP showed restraint.

    Abe Foxman’s actions are what they are. You should be able to mention them whether or not you are Jewish

  9. 9.

    Michael Bersin

    I covered the NAACP national convention. Here are the press conference transcripts from Wednesday:

    NAACP in Kansas City: Rev. Al Sharpton – “There clearly is some racial leaves in their tea bag…”

    NAACP in Kansas City: Rev. Jesse Jackson – “We want jobs, justice, and education for all.”

    NAACP in Kansas City: Benjamin Todd Jealous – “…we all need a testament of hope…”

    NAACP in Kansas City: press conference Q and A – “…we’ll keep our eyes on that prize…”

    On Sunday Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D) was one of four members of Congress to speak on a two and a half hour legislative panel:

    NAACP in Kansas City: Representative Sheila Jackson Lee on the tea party and human rights

    Right wingnuttia is all atwitter about this quote:

    “….And I thank you professor very much. I’m going to be engaging you with those very powerful numbers that you have offered on what the tea party recognizes, uh, or is recognized as. Might I add my own P.S.? All those who wore sheets a long time ago have now lifted them off and started wearing [applause], uh, clothing, uh, with a name, say, I am part of the tea party. Don’t you be fooled. [voices: “That’s right.”, applause] Those who used to wear sheets are now being able to walk down the aisle and speak as a patriot because you will not speak loudly about the lack of integrity of this movement. Don’t let anybody tell you that those who spit on us as we were walking to vote on a health care bill for all of America or those who said Congresswoman Jackson-Lee’s braids were too tight in her hair had anything to do with justice and equality and empowerment of the American people. Don’t let them fool you on that [applause]….”

  10. 10.

    Bill Murray

    Ta-Nehisi Coates hs some interesting things to sau regarding the whole kerfuffle

    http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/07/the-naacp-is-right-cont/59899/

    To the extent that the NAACP has, as Dave says, “failed,” it is because the arbiters of facts have ceded ground, and reporters and writers dutifully, and uncritically, dispense the notion that an organization which helped birth modern America has “a long history of…racism.” But it also fails because there is very little pushback on this notion from “sensible” liberal writers. (I don’t include Dave among them, mind you.) Instead we’re getting calls for the president to condemn the NAACP, essentially, for being the NAACP.

    and

    Dave concedes that the NAACP has a case, but concludes that they’re wrong for making it. But they’re only wrong for making it because the broader society, evidently, believes that objecting to a call for literacy tests is, in fact, just as racist as a call for literacy tests. This inversion, this crime against sound logic, is at the heart of American white supremacy, and at the heart of a country that has nurtured white supremacy all these sad glorious years.

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