• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

How stupid are these people?

You cannot shame the shameless.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Mobile Menu

  • Seattle Meet-up Post
  • 2025 Activism
  • Targeted Political Fundraising
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute / D’umb

D’umb

by DougJ|  September 13, 201012:22 pm| 72 Comments

This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute

FacebookTweetEmail

TAP on Dinesh D’Souza’s latest high-brow anti-Obama screed (via):

For whatever reason, elements of the right have chosen not to evaluate Barack Obama based on his actions or his policies but through the kind of postmodern literary interpretation that wouldn’t make it through the vetting process of a freshman bong circle at Wesleyan. In these retellings of Obama’s personal history, the president’s life is an epic, Marxist, sinister version of a Joseph Campbell-style heroic journey, with its hero ultimately falling, like Anakin Skywalker, to the dark side of the force.

There was a time when I knew liberals who wanted the left to “have its own Fox News”, but that was pretty isolated. The right consistently embraces caricatured versions of what it sees as leftist tropes, whether it is persecution narratives, relativism, or stuff they heard in college English classes.

And shame on Forbes for publishing this shit. Their leather daddy would not be proud.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Nothing New
Next Post: Scram »

Reader Interactions

72Comments

  1. 1.

    El Cid

    September 13, 2010 at 12:28 pm

    Do you really need to know more than the fact that one of his names is “Hussein” and he was once in Indonesia and in Kenya?

  2. 2.

    A Guest

    September 13, 2010 at 12:30 pm

    That was a sickening piece by D’Souza. Truly pathetic and creepy.

  3. 3.

    Dave

    September 13, 2010 at 12:30 pm

    I saw this and Gingrich’s screed the other day. It’s pseudo-intellectual word salad to disguise blatant racism. Saying Obama embraces “Kenyan anti-colonialism” is insane. But I suppose it’s more socially acceptable than saying “The black guy in the White House wants to go all Mau-Mau on your white asses.”

    But if being a liberal means being a Kenyan anti-colonialist …I guess we’re all Kenyan anti-colonialists now.

  4. 4.

    MikeJ

    September 13, 2010 at 12:30 pm

    I think most of them actually know that birtherism is a crock, but it annoys liberals. Therefore it must be pushed at every opportunity.

    I wish they knew how much I’m annoyed when people drink poison.

  5. 5.

    Bill Murray

    September 13, 2010 at 12:32 pm

    I would like the liberals to have a popular media organization dedicated to getting its message out. This part is like Fox News. I would not want said organization to traffic in lies and distortion. This part is not like Fox News

  6. 6.

    Steve

    September 13, 2010 at 12:38 pm

    The ultimate proof that Barack Obama knows nothing of our Founding Fathers can be found in his anti-colonialist attitudes.

  7. 7.

    Omnes Omnibus

    September 13, 2010 at 12:41 pm

    @Dave: I once wrote a paper on the Mau-Mau for a political modernization course. I wonder what that says about me?

  8. 8.

    aimai

    September 13, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    Pathetic and creep are D’souza’s middle name. As someone said over at Adam Serwer’s site D’Souza is still trying to please some kind of “gora sahib” or white master. You really can’t get any lower, intellectually or morally, than someone who will do anything to come inside from the racial/cultural divide that has made them feel small and powerless. D’Souza has always been willing to prostrate himself, and prostitute himself, in defense of powerful religious, social, and racial interests. This piece is just an extension of his general bootlicking.

    aimai

  9. 9.

    cleek

    September 13, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    among various leading post-hermeneutical theoreticians, a contra-dialectic meme of the type formally expressed by Gingrich et al is known by the technical term: “a distraction”.

  10. 10.

    Catsy

    September 13, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    @Dave:

    we’re all Kenyan anti-colonialists now

    I smell a tag.

  11. 11.

    gnomedad

    September 13, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    @Steve:
    Win!!

  12. 12.

    Catsy

    September 13, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    @cleek:

    among various leading post-hermeneutical theoreticians, a contra-dialectic meme of the type formally expressed by Gingrich et al is known by the technical term: “a distraction”.

    Also: bullshit.

  13. 13.

    Comrade Javamanphil

    September 13, 2010 at 12:43 pm

    For whatever reason…

    The reason is pretty obvious.

  14. 14.

    Midnight Marauder

    September 13, 2010 at 12:43 pm

    @Dave:

    I saw this and Gingrich’s screed the other day. It’s pseudo-intellectual word salad to disguise blatant racism.

    I don’t know how you could possible say that any of the racism coming from Gingrich was disguised.

    What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”
    __
    “This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president,” Gingrich tells us.

    And this, of course, is what he is referring to:

    Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

    If that is how racism is being disguised today, then I weep for the future.

  15. 15.

    Xenos

    September 13, 2010 at 12:43 pm

    The funny thing is that BHO Sr.’s academic career foundered when, in the first flush of independence, he criticized the political and economic policies of “African Sockialism’.

    And now his son is accused by association with the very enemies who were explicit sockialists and who made it impossible for BHO Sr. to make a living in Kenya. With the result that he met a certain white lady in Hawaii…

    This means that Dinesh D’Souza is on the side of the Sockialists, because he is out to get the Obamas, too. It figures because D’Souza is Goan, and the Communist Party of India has been awfully active in Goa over the last 60 years. I guess this means that D’Souza is not really stupid, but is a communist agent tasked with making American Christians look foolish. He is pretty damn successful at it!

  16. 16.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    September 13, 2010 at 12:43 pm

    So our anti-colonialist President is doubling down on our colonialist venture in Afghanistan…how do I get paid large amounts of money to peddle shit?

  17. 17.

    Dave

    September 13, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    @Amanda in the South Bay:

    Well, you have to be a Republican first. The beauty of being a Republican is that you can espouse ridiculous viewpoints that are easily countered by facts because those facts don’t matter. And if you need to change your story, you can argue the opposite point without worry. Or even both at the same time!

    The GOP must have one hell of a Paradox Machine in their headquarters…

  18. 18.

    c u n d gulag

    September 13, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    @aimai:
    You have to go a long way to out-D’souza, D’souza, but D’souza’s done it!
    What a pathetic little ass-kissing weasel…

    To Republicans and Conservatives: Stop with the metaphors and dog whistles, just say the word you want: N****R! Repeat X 11, or until you finally get your rocks off.

  19. 19.

    R-Jud

    September 13, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    @Amanda in the South Bay:

    how do I get paid large amounts of money to peddle shit?

    Well, are you white, and kinda folksy? It helps if you own a pick-up truck and can cry on demand.

  20. 20.

    Xenos

    September 13, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Aha! you must mean the ‘Land Freedom Army’. When I did a semester abroad in 1987 in Kenya the first thing they did was sit us down for a 30 minute movie clarifying how the ‘Mau Mau’ was a legitimate peasant uprising. I think they assumed that our impression of Kenya was a terribly violent, deadly place.

  21. 21.

    Steve

    September 13, 2010 at 12:50 pm

    @aimai:

    As someone said over at Adam Serwer’s site D’Souza is still trying to please some kind of “gora sahib” or white master.

    I don’t know why someone like Dinesh D’Souza or Newt Gingrich says the terrible things they say. Maybe I’ll never understand that mentality. But given that you and I know relatively little about D’Souza personally, don’t you think that assuming his bizarre mentality must stem from his race is sort of hasty? Maybe even a little offensive? Arguably it’s like the flip side of deciding Obama’s politics stem from “Kenyan anti-colonialism.”

  22. 22.

    catclub

    September 13, 2010 at 12:50 pm

    Maybe he mispelled Keynes?
    Obama is, after all, a Keynesian.

    I thought the founding fathers were anti-colonial.

    Or is the wrong quality of Obama’s anti-colonialism
    his blackness?

  23. 23.

    Martin

    September 13, 2010 at 12:51 pm

    We’ve now got two guys pushing Kenyan anti-colonial memes. That’s not a coincidence.

    And I don’t see how escalating the rhetoric against Obama helps the GOP. If the Dems are apathetic this cycle, attacking Obama personally is only going to get Dems to rush to his defense, even if they’re disappointed with the progress of the last 2 years. It’s a basic ‘rally around the flag’ kind of reaction.

    But put me down as a vote to make that either a tag or at least in the banner rotation.

  24. 24.

    bcinaz

    September 13, 2010 at 12:51 pm

    Conservatives are all about the Myth and The Narrative. Look what they did to Ronald Reagan. They pretend he wasn’t the guy responsible for the biggest tax hikes in modern history after really screwing up the economy with the discredited “Trickle Down” theory. They pretend he was the toughest SOB around, sinking the evil empire, and do not acknowledge how he rewarded terrorism when he pulled the Marines out of Beirut after the suicide bombing of their barracks.

  25. 25.

    MattF

    September 13, 2010 at 12:51 pm

    Forbes is a vanity publication masquerading as a business magazine. This particular instance of Obama Derangement should be regarded as a demonstration of the weirdness of Steve Forbes– in case you didn’t already know.

  26. 26.

    Martin

    September 13, 2010 at 12:52 pm

    @R-Jud: Having nice juggs and/or fuck-me boots doesn’t hurt.

  27. 27.

    Omnes Omnibus

    September 13, 2010 at 12:58 pm

    @Xenos: Yes, that is what I meant.

  28. 28.

    GambitRF

    September 13, 2010 at 12:59 pm

    I love the graf where he pretends to be confused as to how oil consumption is relevant to an oil spill.

  29. 29.

    EdTheRed

    September 13, 2010 at 1:00 pm

    For the record, the bong circles at Wesleyan are often comparable to the finest fin-de-siècle Parisian salons. Er, or so I’ve heard…

  30. 30.

    Midnight Marauder

    September 13, 2010 at 1:01 pm

    @Steve:

    I don’t know why someone like Dinesh D’Souza or Newt Gingrich says the terrible things they say. Maybe I’ll never understand that mentality. But given that you and I know relatively little about D’Souza personally, don’t you think that assuming his bizarre mentality must stem from his race is sort of hasty? Maybe even a little offensive? Arguably it’s like the flip side of deciding Obama’s politics stem from “Kenyan anti-colonialism.”

    Maybe you don’t know enough about D’Souza personality to make those kinds of judgments, but anyone with a passing familiarity with his “academic work” would understand that he is an utterly loathsome, unscrupulous asshole. You are talking about someone in D’Souza who argues that liberal Americans are at least partially to blame for 9/11, and once said–on national television— that he finds some of the criticisms from radical, anti-American extremists to be legitimate.

    At what point do you stop giving people like D’Souza respect that they actively work to shit on? When do you start taking his words, behaviors, and actions at face value for illuminating who he is as a person?

  31. 31.

    Bulworth

    September 13, 2010 at 1:04 pm

    I would take the time to read this screed by Dish Dezouzu, but I’m not going to.

  32. 32.

    SpotWeld

    September 13, 2010 at 1:07 pm

    The right consistently embraces caricatured versions of what it sees as leftist tropes, whether it is persecution narratives, relativism, or stuff they heard in college English classes.

    Well the left does this too, but generally it’s to ridicule and mock. (ala Jon Stewart and Colbert) The right seems to consistantly fail to be able to do that “hey laught at me as a deadpan this reidiculusiousness. ” Comedians seem to be willing to supress ego for the desire to please an audience. The right-wing top dogs just can’t let go of ego long enough to do that.

  33. 33.

    Steve

    September 13, 2010 at 1:09 pm

    @Midnight Marauder: You don’t seem to have read my comment, in which I hardly argued D’Souza should be given respect or that his opinions are anything other than contemptible.

  34. 34.

    GregB

    September 13, 2010 at 1:11 pm

    I wonder if the political right would make hay of an American liberal Democrat with the following background?

    From Wikipedia: “D’Souza was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, to parents from the state of Goa in Western India. He arrived in the United States in 1978…..”

    Just asking.

  35. 35.

    Erik Vanderhoff

    September 13, 2010 at 1:13 pm

    Dinesh D’Souza practices a particularly egregious form of stupid.

  36. 36.

    Mike

    September 13, 2010 at 1:13 pm

    Anyone else noticed that Kenyan + yes = Keynesyan ?

    Kinda makes ya think, dontit?

  37. 37.

    tomjones

    September 13, 2010 at 1:15 pm

    @Steve: Primo snark there!

  38. 38.

    4tehlulz

    September 13, 2010 at 1:16 pm

    You know who else opposed the British Empire….

    that’s right, George Washington.

    This really is the dumbest right-wing meme ever, which means it will be on CNN within the hour.

  39. 39.

    FlipYrWhig

    September 13, 2010 at 1:17 pm

    @Midnight Marauder:

    This philandering, inebriated African soc1alist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions

    I like how Newt Fucking Gingrich is capable of reading this and saying, “Dinesh D’Souza is right — there’s no place in politics for ideas drawn from a resentful, philandering megalomaniac!”

  40. 40.

    Steve

    September 13, 2010 at 1:17 pm

    Sullivan, responding to a random Obama critic:

    Lastly “a greater role for government in the financial and automotive sectors.” What you will notice is that there is no reference in any of this to the appalling economic circumstances Obama inherited which determined both policies. It’s like describing FDR’s policies as if the Great Depression never happened. What a leap toward Kenyan anti-colonialism that was.

  41. 41.

    SiubhanDuinne

    September 13, 2010 at 1:26 pm

    @bcinaz #24:

    Conservatives are all about the Myth and The Narrative.

    Reminds of a line I heard once about the genius of the Viennese: They managed to convince the entire world that Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler wasn’t.

  42. 42.

    Midnight Marauder

    September 13, 2010 at 1:28 pm

    @Steve:

    You don’t seem to have read my comment, in which I hardly argued D’Souza should be given respect or that his opinions are anything other than contemptible

    No, I read and understood your comment, but I was addressing your contention about not knowing D’Souza personally and it potentially being offensive to note his odd racial rhetoric. What I was saying is that those grossly offensive comments he has uttered in the past serve as a very solid foundation for the idea that he harbors some very warped and disturbing views on race.

    Such as this:

    The piece de resistance – so far (feel free to cross your fingers, hold your breath) – of D’Souza’s career, “The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society,” was published in 1995. The book was received with a collective gasp by people who have any appreciation at all for civil rights and the struggles of Americans to overcome discrimination. Ostensibly an attack on affirmative action and multiculturalism, The End of Racism is a nasty attack on African-Americans and all aspects of African-American culture. D’Souza blames “black cultural defects” for what he predicts will be the ultimate failure of affirmative action. He creates a laundry list of the “dysfunctional” aspects of African-American culture: “high rates of criminal activity…the normalization of illegitimacy…the predominance of single-parent families…high levels of addiction to alcohol and drugs…a parasitic reliance on government provision…a hostility to academic achievement…and…a scarcity of independent enterprises.” He attacks rap music for allegedly fostering a tendency toward violence through the worship of the “cult of the bad nigger,” a symbol of rebellion nurtured in the days of slavery. In addition, he cites “racial paranoia-a reflexive tendency to blame racism for every failure,” “rage that threatens to erupt in an orgy of destruction or self-destruction,” “a heavy dependence on government,” “repudiation of standard English and academic achievement,” “violence,” and the “bastardization of black America.” In sum, D’Souza’s book offers a remarkably offensive portrait of African American culture and a reckless discussion of race and racism in America.
    __
    In the book, D’Souza also calls for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial discrimination in employment and in access to public places like restaurants and hotels. He argues for “rational discrimination” in the areas of housing, crime control, banking, and education. “A bigot is simply a sociologist without credentials,” he explains. In addition to arguing that slavery was not a racist institution, he concludes that white racism isn’t actually racism at all, but a logical response to alleged deficiencies among minorities and that “the American obsession with race is fueled by a civil rights establishment that has a vested interest in perpetuating black dependency.”

    But why stop there? Let’s just take a look at some of his greatest hits on race:

    “Most African American scholars simply refuse to acknowledge the pathology of violence in the black underclass, apparently convinced that black criminals as well as their targets are both victims: the real culprit is societal racism. Activists recommend federal jobs programs and recruitment into the private sector. Yet it seems unrealistic, bordering on the surreal, to imagine underclass blacks with their gold chains, limping walk, obscene language, and arsenal of weapons doing nine-to-five jobs at Procter and Gamble or the State Department.”
    __
    “The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.”
    __
    “If America as a nation owes blacks as a group reparations for slavery, what do blacks as a group owe America for the abolition of slavery?”

    In conclusion, fuck that guy.

  43. 43.

    cleek

    September 13, 2010 at 1:29 pm

    “neo-colonialism”, “liberation theology”, “Kenyan” – doesn’t matter what they mean or if they’re backed up by facts. they’re all ways of reinforcing the idea that Obama is exotic, different, intellectual, foreign.

  44. 44.

    SiubhanDuinne

    September 13, 2010 at 1:36 pm

    @Mike #36: Funnily enough (because my mind tends to anagram things whether I want it to or not), I actually *did* notice that! Heh.

    @thread: I think I saw somewhere (maybe at Media Matters? Can’t remember) that the D’Souza article in Forbes is an extract of a forthcoming book on Obama. I’m going to go way out on a limb here with a couple of predictions: (1) it will be published in late October, and the author will be doing a high-profile book-signing publicity tour in the days leading up to the elections; and (2) bet any amount of money that a prominent cover blurb, or perhaps even the foreword, will be contributed by Newt. I don’t believe for one second that he “just happened” to stumble across it in Forbes, which is kind of the message he’s trying to put out.

  45. 45.

    Steve

    September 13, 2010 at 1:38 pm

    @Midnight Marauder:

    No, I read and understood your comment, but I was addressing your contention about not knowing D’Souza personally and it potentially being offensive to note his odd racial rhetoric.

    Maybe you didn’t understand it. I didn’t say it was offensive to note D’Souza’s racial rhetoric. I asked whether it was maybe a tad lazy or offensive to assume that D’Souza says these crazy things for a reason that is rooted in D’Souza’s race. There are plenty of lily-white wingnuts, like Newt Gingrich, who seem happy to say the exact same things as D’Souza.

  46. 46.

    daryljfontaine

    September 13, 2010 at 1:43 pm

    @Mike: Yes We Kenyan?

    D

  47. 47.

    Midnight Marauder

    September 13, 2010 at 1:45 pm

    @Steve:

    Maybe you didn’t understand it. I didn’t say it was offensive to note D’Souza’s racial rhetoric. I asked whether it was maybe a tad lazy or offensive to assume that D’Souza says these crazy things for a reason that is rooted in D’Souza’s race. There are plenty of lily-white wingnuts, like Newt Gingrich, who seem happy to say the exact same things as D’Souza.

    Agreed. But D’Souza isn’t lily-white (which is kind of why his comments garner so much scrutiny) and his history of rhetoric on race is filled with the kinds of examples that make you legitimately wonder if he has self-loathing issues and such a veneration for dominant white culture, where he is driven to write things like “The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.” Normal, well-adjusted people do not write sentences like that. And I don’t think it’s lazy or offensive to assume such positions because his empirical record of written work very much affirms this.

    I would maintain that it’s less surprising this day in age for someone like Newt Gingrich to make that argument (heterosexual white male) than it is someone like Dinesh D’Souza (male, originally born in India, Evangelical Christian).

  48. 48.

    hilzoy

    September 13, 2010 at 2:12 pm

    Tim Burke, who actually knows a lot about African anti-colonialism, responds.

  49. 49.

    geg6

    September 13, 2010 at 2:40 pm

    @aimai:

    You know, between your brilliance over at DeLong’s place yesterday and this comment today, I am thinking I’d turn lesbian for you, aimai.

    You’ve been on a roll, girlfriend. Your grandfather would be proud.

  50. 50.

    New Yorker

    September 13, 2010 at 2:46 pm

    It’s amazing how much the right has embraced the elements of the left that they once denounced so loudly (and not without some good reason, I might add): race-based identity politics and victimization (what else is the appeal of Beck and Palin?), dreams of global conquest to create the utopian society around the world (the neoconservative worldview), and a total embrace of postmodernism (where objective truth does not exist, but is merely a social construct dependent upon whether one is a Real ‘Murkan or an “elitist”).

    Where is Alan Sokal when you need him?

  51. 51.

    debbie

    September 13, 2010 at 2:48 pm

    @ Dave:

    Any less disguised, and they’ll be shrieking “N-word” over and over. How bereft the GOP has become.

  52. 52.

    jayjaybear

    September 13, 2010 at 2:49 pm

    D’Souza is the white Michelle Malkin. The amusing thing is that if D’Souza (or Bobby Jindal, for that matter) were to wander into a Tea Party rally or a “Ground Zero Mosque” protest unannounced, they’d probably get stoned (and not in the good way).

  53. 53.

    Ash Can

    September 13, 2010 at 2:52 pm

    @hilzoy: That’ll leave a mark. Thanks for the link.

  54. 54.

    gocart mozart

    September 13, 2010 at 2:55 pm

    @Xenos:
    This is the most cogent and rational explanation I have heard so far.

  55. 55.

    El Cid

    September 13, 2010 at 2:57 pm

    Although the actual realization of such efforts was often hypocritical or even anti-independence (the US’ typical policy of supporting or installing tyrants throughout the 3rd world), the US was formally for decolonization (self-determination) of colonized areas — as expressed in 1941’s Atlantic Charter.

    First, [the US & UK] countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;
    __
    Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;
    __
    Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them…

    So, I guess D’Souza opposes FDR’s push for self-determination! Fuck India’s independence!

    Pro-Axis traitor!

  56. 56.

    Anya

    September 13, 2010 at 3:33 pm

    First, what’s wrong with being anti-colonialists? Isn’t the whole “tea party movement” named after an anti-colonialist act?

    Second, my understanding of Pres Obama’s history is that his father was absent from his life, so when did he instil all of this anti-colonialists Kenyan sentiment?

    Third, D’Souza is a shameful race hustler, so fuck him.

  57. 57.

    El Cid

    September 13, 2010 at 3:43 pm

    @Anya: Their version of “anti-colonialism” (see D’Dumbass’ definition) means a bunch of angry Commie dark skin natives rising up to kill Western values and blame successful whites and a perpetual dedication to ruining decent white Western nations.

  58. 58.

    ChristianPinko

    September 13, 2010 at 3:50 pm

    @EdTheRed: You’d better believe it!

    ChristianPinko, Wes ’87

  59. 59.

    aimai

    September 13, 2010 at 3:50 pm

    @Steve:

    No. I don’t think its a bit hasty. Actually D’Souza’s function as a token Asian conservative, a “model minority” spokesman, goes all the way back to his Dartmouth days. In South Asian context he belongs to a specific minority: Catholics from Goa. In the US he has chosen to be “plus royaliste que le Roi” by emphasizing a brutal, more Catholic, anti-liberal/anti gay agenda even to the extent of accusing the US Bishops of being tools of the liberals.

    Look, just because its both racist and historically and biographically inaccurate for D’souza to insist that Barack Obama, who has written extensively on the subject and who has a well known biography to the contrary, is some kind of closet Kenyan Mau Mau doesn’t mean that it is illegitimate to look at D’Souza’s own public history and think “someone’s got issues.” His issues are that he got to this country and instead of aligning himself with liberals and non-racists he threw himself into the embrace of the most racist, reactionary, forces at Dartmouth College. If Obama had actually come to Harvard Law and started the Kenyan Lost Boys Association for Killing White Folks I would have no hesitation in saying there was something to that analysis. But he didn’t. Meanwhile, D’Souza did precisely that, in a Dartmouth context. He joined up with a party which, if you look at the fate of Jindal, will never fully support him *because of his race* and he attempted to distinguish himself from other non-whites by being more agressively reactionary than even his white colleagues. Yah. Someone’s got issues. And anyone who knows anything about the Indian Sub continent and the history of Catholicism there knows that those who converted have serious issues stemming from social and caste issues translated through a foreign religion which has, up until recently, reserved its top positions for white guys.

    aimai

  60. 60.

    Cacti

    September 13, 2010 at 3:58 pm

    @aimai:

    if you look at the fate of Jindal, will never fully support him because of his race and he attempted to distinguish himself from other non-whites by being more agressively reactionary than even his white colleagues.

    So, he followed the Clarence Thomas model?

  61. 61.

    jayjaybear

    September 13, 2010 at 4:13 pm

    @Cacti:

    D’Souza is more like Steele than Thomas. Thomas is pretty close-mouthed…the man barely speaks in public. Steele is PAID to speak in public (although the GOP should really ask for a refund on that one on the basis of malpractice), as is D’Souza (okay, WRITE in public, so to speak).

  62. 62.

    Steve

    September 13, 2010 at 5:01 pm

    @aimai: I think you are one of the most thoughtful and interesting commentors I will ever have the pleasure of reading on the Internet, but I still think liberals are too quick to whip out the “self-loathing” argument whenever they encounter a minority conservative. I think we might overestimate our aptitude at instant psychoanalysis.

    Consider, for example, Larison’s argument against D’Souza: Obama is a mainstream Democrat who espouses the exact same policy views as countless other mainstream Democrats. Therefore, rather than concocting theories about how Obama can only be explained by reference to Luo tribesmania or whatever, maybe the more sensible conclusion is that he came to those views for pretty much the same reason as all those other mainstream Democrats.

    Can we not make the same point when it comes to analyzing D’Souza? Sure, what D’Souza said about blaming liberals for 9/11 is nutty – but Pat Robertson is the same kind of nutty. Sure, what he said about Obama’s father is nutty – but Newt Gingrich is the same kind of nutty. Rather than instantly leaping to the conclusion that D’Souza says these things because of his race or ethnic origin, maybe the more sensible conclusion is that he’s simply a wingnut.

  63. 63.

    rickstersherpa

    September 13, 2010 at 5:12 pm

    I add the following from Professor Krugman.

    ” Ex-Im Bonkers
    Via Jon Chait, a stark demonstration of the madness that has overtaken the American right. It seems that Newt Gingrich is approvingly citing an article in Forbes by Dinesh D’Souza, alleging that Obama is a radical pursuing a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” agenda.

    His prime example is that the Export-Import Bank has made a loan to Brazil’s offshore oil project, which D’Souza finds incomprehensible except as a plan to shift power away from the West.

    Except, you know, the Ex-Im bank’s job is to promote US exports — and this was a loan for the specific purpose of buying US-made oilfield equipment. And the board approving the loan was … a board appointed by George W. Bush.

    In other words, aside from being ignorant, this is complete the-Commies-are-putting flouride in the water to steal our vital bodily fluids stuff. Yet there it is in Forbes, being cited by the former Speaker of the House, who is a regular guest on Sunday TV.

    Scary.” For more on the whole made up absurd storry, you can read about it http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/braziloil.asp

    But the is 30% of the people will believe it as gospel, another 30% won’t be sure, and the folks in the MSM will find themselves adopting this meme that perhaps Obama was induldging in his “Kenyan anti-colonial” nature while helping George Soros at the same time. (George Soros, the one Jew, along with Rahm, that the right can openly hate and demonize.) And I think that is what KThug means by scary, that D’Souza, and Gingrich can put out what is a lie and feel bullet proof about it. I am sure next summers impeachment hearings will give this charge a lengthy hearing.

  64. 64.

    Midnight Marauder

    September 13, 2010 at 5:22 pm

    @Steve:

    Can we not make the same point when it comes to analyzing D’Souza? Sure, what D’Souza said about blaming liberals for 9/11 is nutty – but Pat Robertson is the same kind of nutty. Sure, what he said about Obama’s father is nutty – but Newt Gingrich is the same kind of nutty. Rather than instantly leaping to the conclusion that D’Souza says these things because of his race or ethnic origin, maybe the more sensible conclusion is that he’s simply a wingnut.

    But the problem with your analysis is that it completely ignores the arc of D’Souza’s cultural and political history, especially after he came to the United States. Moreover, you keep wanting to maintain that D’Souza and people like Newt Gingrich are motivated by the same forces in their criticism, when they have two entirely different histories. You are talking about someone in D’Souza who wrote an entire book in 1995–700 pages–that featured statements like “Segregation was intended to assure that blacks, like the handicapped, would be insulated from the radical racists and – in the paternalist view – permitted to perform to the capacity of their arrested development”

    Your primary argument, it seems, is cautioning against “instant psychoanalysis,” but what you keep overlooking is that no one is making their case against D’Souza based solely on this article, or even what he’s written in the past 20 months. This is an individual who has a long and sordid history of being a race baiter. The kind of person who founds a newspaper at Dartmouth that engages in the following kinds of stunts:

    Under D’Souza’s “leadership,” The Review ran notoriously tasteless, bigoted, and just downright offensive articles of all stripes. Among his signature pieces: a parody of African American students at Dartmouth entitled “This Sho Ain’t No Jive Bro”; an interview with a Ku Klux Klan member featuring a graphic of a hanged black man; and selected words of wisdom from Adolf Hitler. The Review consistently referred to gay men as sodomites, and D’Souza himself publicly outed one gay student in an article based on stolen correspondence between members of the Dartmouth Gay Student Alliance.

    This is what I’m talking about. D’Souza’s track record goes all the way back to the mid-1980s. There is nothing new here, except some of the names and places he talks about.

    Consider, for example, Larison’s argument against D’Souza: Obama is a mainstream Democrat who espouses the exact same policy views as countless other mainstream Democrats. Therefore, rather than concocting theories about how Obama can only be explained by reference to Luo tribesmania or whatever, maybe the more sensible conclusion is that he came to those views for pretty much the same reason as all those other mainstream Democrats.

    Of course, D’Souza is also the same person who once said the following about blacks and Ronald Reagan:

    Dryden, N.Y.: A difficult question. Watching the SIMI viewing I have been struck by the overwhelming whiteness of the crowd. This to me is one dark facet of the Reagan legacy, a man who chose to start his campaign in Philadelphia, Miss. (where three civil rights workers were murdered). Why do you think he was so tone deaf on the vital American issue of race?
    __
    Dinesh D’Souza: Reagan had an unfailingly inclusive vision of America. His view was that it didn’t matter where you came from or who you were. What mattered was what you could do. Immigrants found this appealing. Blacks in general didn’t. Blacks are at a peculiar point in their history where many of them believe that “race does matter” and “race should matter.” A different vision from what Martin Luther King held in his “I Have a Dream” speech. So Reagan didn’t reject blacks, blacks rejected Reagan. It’s unfortunate, but I don’t think it tells against Reagan. Maybe there will be some reconsideration of Reagan now by African Americans.

    The guy is a case study waiting to happen.

  65. 65.

    El Cid

    September 13, 2010 at 5:41 pm

    The Economist blog plays a bit of D’Souza’s crazy anti-Obamunist derangement on D’Souza.

    In other words, while I don’t have any trouble understanding how Barack Obama thinks, I have a lot of trouble understanding how Dinesh D’Souza thinks. And if I were to try to understand his thinking using the same methods he uses to interpret Mr Obama, I might look to his Indian background, which is where he says he gained his insight into anti-colonialism.
    __
    Mr D’Souza notes simply that he grew up in Mumbai, but a more complete accounting is that his parents were members of the Christian community in the state of Goa, which was colonised by Portugal. The last name “D’Souza” is a common family name in West Africa, where it indicates that the family is descended from the slave-trading coastal mixed-race elite.
    __
    In India, however, it indicates that the family likely belongs to the Roman Catholic Brahmins, Hindu Brahmins who were converted by missionaries beginning in the 17th century.
    __
    Interestingly, the Christian community in Goa retained a Hindu-style caste system, with Catholic Brahmins continuing to discriminate against Catholic dalit or “untouchables”, whom they refer to as mahara or chamaar. Elite Catholic Brahmin households in Goa sent their children to Jesuit schools (like the one Mr D’Souza attended) and often spoke Portuguese at home, referring to the main local native language, Konkani, as the lingua des criados (“language of servants”).
    __
    Goa remained a Portuguese colony until it was annexed by India in 1961, which happens to be the year of Mr D’Souza’s birth. Many Goan Christians did not welcome the annexation, fearing they would be subsumed in the Hindu-Muslim mega-state.
    __
    A later source of anxiety was India’s affirmative action (or “reservation”) policies, which set aside university slots and civil-service jobs for people from recognised historically stigmatised groups, known as “scheduled castes and tribes”.
    __
    Beginning in the early 1980s, when Mr D’Souza was off studying at Dartmouth, these affirmative-action policies engendered widespread resistance among India’s elite classes, who were terrified of losing their privileged status in a colossal country where hundreds of millions of indigents might overwhelm the available spots at top schools (and reduce their kids’ chances of, say, going to Dartmouth).
    __
    Goa itself has set itself up as a redoubt against the reservation policies: it has the fewest scheduled castes and tribes of any Indian state. This is largely because elite Christians have refused to acknowledge discrimination against the Christian dalit, or to allow them to be recognised as a scheduled caste. Pope John Paul II rebuked Indian bishops for these practices on his visit to Goa in 2003…
    __
    …It would, however, be unfair to explain Mr D’Souza’s views this way. First of all, I’m no expert on Indian history or the caste system in Goa, and the description above may be just as shallow a caricature as the one Mr D’Souza provides of post-colonial East African politics in his inflammatory article.
    __
    Specifically, I know no more about Mr D’Souza’s family’s political views than he does about Barack Obama’s father’s (about which he appears to know strikingly little, given the wealth of information available on the subject).
    __
    Maybe his parents and relatives come from a low-caste Christian background; maybe they were staunch supporters of the Indian annexation of Goa. More important, anybody who wants to know “how D’Souza thinks” is free to look up what he’s written in books and articles over the years, just as Mr D’Souza could criticise the views of Barack Obama by referring to things Mr Obama has said and done.

    Actually, I don’t think it unlikely at all that D’Souza would be a person drawn to the racist elitist American right due to anti-Indian Goan Catholic pro-elitist radicalism.

    It may be unfair to portray this analysis as having been backed by evidence, but is not different than any number of 3rd world intellectuals siding with Europeanized elites against the hordes.

    This would be quite familiar to anyone experienced with the typical hideously elitist and quite commonly Catholic (due to the church’s direct involvement in ruling Latin American societies, not really a religious preference) figures of Latin America expressing their hatred for the prospects that any of the dark masses would one day come to power via some sort of uncontrolled democracy.

  66. 66.

    Paula

    September 13, 2010 at 6:03 pm

    @hilzoy:

    Well, that’s way too complimentary to the actual substance of D’Souza’s piece that someone would take the time to distinguish the general anti-colonial from more specific (and varied) neocolonial and nationalist and ideas.

  67. 67.

    geg6

    September 13, 2010 at 6:14 pm

    @El Cid:

    Nice catch. That is one fucking awesome smackdown.

  68. 68.

    El Cid

    September 13, 2010 at 6:24 pm

    @geg6: To be honest, I had considered the same exact thing before. I just didn’t want to really air it. (And I don’t think I did.) Once I encountered that D’Souza was born from parents from Goa, raised a Catholic, was a member of the elites, and went to Jesuit schools, it did seem to give a likely context for his darkie-hatred.

    Not to mention that it’s so de rigeur for immigrants to the US, particularly those who were among local elites, to immediately take up a clear racist position against American blacks, because nothing is clearer to those arriving in America than that African Americans occupy the absolute lowest rung of the ethnic prejudice ladder and that anyone expecting to integrate successfully into US society immediately adopt such prejudices.

    Including people from heavily African populations such as the Caribbean or Brazil or Africa. You want to make sure that people know that you’re not that kind of black, you’re the hard-working other type.

    (It’s not universal — most Haitian immigrants to Florida end up living in black communities, partly because Haitians are desperately poor and only a tiny, tiny few will ever end up among US elites. It is very much a mix of race and class.)

  69. 69.

    Kathy in St. Louis

    September 13, 2010 at 8:30 pm

    Some very right wing friend of mine linked to this article on facebook. Seemed to be about why Obama is anti free enterprise? I wrote back that it was hard to imagine that Forbes Magazine would present Obama as against the free enterprise system. Uh, yes.

    These folks are, officially, looney…no other word for it. They have absolutely nothing to hang this argument on. Of course, that has never stopped them in the past.

  70. 70.

    BC

    September 13, 2010 at 8:56 pm

    The right consistently embraces caricatured versions of what it sees as leftist tropes, whether it is persecution narratives, relativism, or stuff they heard in college English classes.

    This, exactly. I have listened to the right explain what a liberal believes without ever really citing a liberal who believes that stuff – they just make shit up, including all the scary stuff they can, then say that is what liberalism is. When they are faced with the reality of what liberalism is, all they can do is sputter – but then go back to their strawmen and made up shit. It’s like they can’t actually articulate liberalism because then people would ask what is wrong with that.

  71. 71.

    El Cid

    September 13, 2010 at 9:13 pm

    @BC: RFK and JFK, 1961:

    Still another attack came from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. In Dallas, where the ultras have a politically powerful group of adherents, Kennedy lashed the Birchers and their allies as a “tremendous danger” to the U.S. First making it clear that he had no sympathy for defeatists “who would rather be Red than dead,” Kennedy went on to say: “Nor do I have any sympathy with those, who in the name of fighting Communism, sow the seeds of suspicion and distrust by making false or irresponsible charges, not only against their neighbors but against courageous teachers and public officials and against the foundations of our Government—Congress, the Supreme Court, and even the presidency itself.”*…
    __
    [John F.] In Los Angeles, as in Seattle, Kennedy spoke soberly against “those on the fringes of our society who have sought to escape their own responsibility by finding a simple solution, an appealing slogan or a convenient scapegoat.” These “discordant voices,” said the President, “look suspiciously at their neighbors and their leaders. They call for a man on horseback because they do not trust the people. They find treason in our finest churches, in our highest court, and even in the treatment of our water. They equate the Democratic Party with the welfare state, the welfare state with soshullism, and soshullism with communism. They quite rightly object to politics intruding on the military—but they, are anxious for the military to engage in politics.”

  72. 72.

    El Cid

    September 13, 2010 at 9:16 pm

    More TeaTard Birchers from 1961:

    An attractive Dallas housewife sees little of her neighbors these days. “I just don’t have time for anything,” says Mrs. Bert Shipp. “I’m fighting Communism three nights a week.”
    __
    In Hollywood Hills. TV Commercial Producer Marvin Bryan spends his spare time working for the local Freedom Club, which is dedicated to opposing “compromisers” in local and national government and to smoking out liberals in the community. Says Bryan: “We don’t want to coexist with these people. We don’t want our children to play with their children.”
    __
    At a Freedom Forum meeting in Greenwich, Conn., 800 citizens recently paid $5 apiece to sit through a day of patriotic films, speeches on dialectical materialism and attacks on the U.S. State Department, federal income tax, philanthropic foundations and Harvard University. Questions to speakers were written out, explained Mrs. Charles Chapin, one of the meeting’s sponsors, in order to screen those coming from Communists who might be in the audience.
    __
    These are only a few of the manifestations of a U.S. phenomenon: the resurgence of ultraconservative antiCommunism. Hundreds of groups and subgroups—with such names as Project Alert, Americans for Constitutional Action, Survival U.S.A. and Crusade for American ism—have popped up across the U.S., in some cases springing from nothing to several thousand members almost overnight.
    __
    More than 100 anti-Communist study groups are being conducted in Dallas alone. Because their membership is sometimes secret and usually heavily interchangeable with other groups, no sure estimate of their strength is possible.
    __
    The far-rightists intend to figure in as many congressional campaigns as possible next year. California’s Representative John Rousselot, a member of the John Birch Society, is talking of running for the Senate in the 1962 G.O.P. primary against Incumbent Thomas Kuchel. Arkansas Congressman Dale Alford has already begun to use far-right material in a buildup against Senator J. William Fulbright.
    __
    Says Indiana’s Clarence Manion onetime dean of Notre Dame Law School and a veteran anti-Communist lecturer and writer, who claims to have 350 Conservative Clubs in operation: “I’ve never seen anything like this. As one who has faced a great many empty seats in recent years. I’d say the whole atmosphere has changed in recent months.”

    Another Democratic President, another springing up of rich right-winger backed ultra-right anti-democracy ass-holes.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - Christopher Mathews - Iceland: Season's Fleeting 3
Image by Christopher Mathews (6/13/25)

PA Supreme Court At Risk

We did it!

We raised the 25,000 for The Civics Center, and with the external matches, that gives them $60,000 for this Spring effort!

You guys rock!

Recent Comments

  • zhena gogolia on Friday Night Open Thread (Jun 13, 2025 @ 9:18pm)
  • Ohio Mom on Here I Am Again, With Another Positive Message (Jun 13, 2025 @ 9:18pm)
  • Dan B on Friday Night Open Thread (Jun 13, 2025 @ 9:18pm)
  • different-church-lady on Here I Am Again, With Another Positive Message (Jun 13, 2025 @ 9:13pm)
  • Ohio Mom on Here I Am Again, With Another Positive Message (Jun 13, 2025 @ 9:12pm)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
War in Ukraine
Donate to Razom for Ukraine

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!