Atrios links to a great old David Halberstam piece about the White Citizen Councils that Haley Barbour is so fond of.
The remarkable thing about the article: it appeared in Commentary magazine, which nowadays is filled with neocon gibberish. It is very difficult to imagine a piece of this quality appearing in the magazine today (just to get this out of the way: yes, the Barbour quote about White Citizen Councils is in the Weekly Standard, but the piece hardly condemns Barbour for it).
It’s sad to see how many institutions conservatives have run into the ground.
me
Haley probably is a Bibi fan and that’s all J-Pod needs to know.
chopper
the us government, hell the entire country, being the saddest example.
stuckinred
Halberstam didn’t fuck around. He was in the delta at the same time as Holbrook and he didn’t have any trouble telling it how it was.
Phil Perspective
@stuckinred: But Halberstam didn’t work for the government, did he?
Warren Terra
Still, the speculation about why they ran the quote can be fun.
Were the writer and editor of the piece so monumentally clueless as not to realize that the quote was, in effect, Barbour defending vicious racism, if a version slightly more genteel than that offered by the KKK? Were they aware, and deliberately letting Barbour smugly damage himself so as to give an advantage to some other contender? And, the most fun, might they be full-fledged double agents secretly working for George Soros?
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Only three dimensions. Needs 8 more.
Zifnab
The institutions come and go, but the people are always here. I bet David Halberstam would be writing for the Washington Independent or Harpers or some other news source if he was alive today.
4tehlulz
@Warren Terra: They’re clearing the field for Palin, who, stupid and ignorant as she is, at least knows not to speak fondly of the CC
on the record.4jkb4ia
It’s nepotism that ran Commentary completely into the ground. Gary Rosen was a halfway decent editor from the few issues I saw.
DougJ
@4tehlulz:
That’s more or less what I think too. I think Huck can be forced out with enough emphasis on that rapist/murderer guy whose sentence he had commuted.
GregB
Ah say, this place is nothing but a hotbed of communists, homersexshuls and miscegenators.
Leave Haley alone!
The Real American Democrat
Barbour doesn’t stand a chance. His racism will bring him down before the donors even start contemplate writing checks. Thus clearing a way for Palin to be elected. At about the same time Obama’s very shrewd economic policies will begin to pay off and there will be a direct inverse correlation between his rising approval ratings and declining unemployment numbers.
batgirl
@DougJ: If Palin runs in and wins the Republican primary, I believe we will see a so-called “moderate” or “centrist” like Evan Bayh run in 2012 presidential election as an independent. I have no clue what this will do to the dynamic or to Obama’s chances for reelection.
Martin
Barbour is quite strongly in the Christianist wing of the party, even if he’s not so transparent about it. So as a result, he’s endorsed by the neocons by way of the ‘we need to save the Jews so we can nuke them and get beamed up to heaven’ rationale.
For some reason, a lot of Jews are okay with this. Personally, I’m all for Israel defending their right to exist (but not the right for them to exist outside their borders) but that’s because I don’t want the Jews nuked. As a result, I’d be labeled an anti-Semite.
And we wonder why so many Americans stay as far away from politics as possible.
DougJ
@batgirl:
Who would vote for Evan Bayh?
TR
The Weekly Standard ran the quote because they are utterly clueless. Period.
stuckinred
@Phil Perspective: No and I don’t care.
4tehlulz
@DougJ: The most-entertaining thing about the GOP 2012 primary would be watching Fox News deal with that.
Do they throw Huck under the bus and allow those attacks to air (siding with Palin and/or Mittens) or do they stand by their contributor and more-or-less sit on it?
Tom Hilton
I really wish my parents (civil rights workers in Mississippi in the mid-’60s) were still around to comment on this. Given their direct contact with the Citizens’ Councils back then, I’m pretty sure they’d have an opinion about Barbour’s statements…
catclub
@GregB:
You left out the mongrelizers.
catclub
@DougJ: Cokie Roberts
Southern Beale
OH MY GOD. It gets worse! I just clicked through and saw “I Am Love” on the list. Jesus. The husband still hasn’t forgiven me for making him see that one. It was also insufferable, in a melodramatic, overwrought sort of way.
Best thing about that movie was Tilda Swinton’s wardrobe.
Southern Beale
oops. wrong thread. Will go out and come in again.
Davis X. Machina
Woody Allen has said that with the shrinking world of left wing New York Jewish intellectuals, and the flight to the suburbs, Dissent was being merged with Commentary, with the remaining magazine moving to Westchester County and becoming Dysentery
kommrade reproductive vigor
Conservatism can not fail. It can only cause everything it touches to fail.
Martin
I’ve been having a series of conversations with my conservative mom about the CA budget and related matters. It’s been kinda interesting. But she surprised me by expressing exasperation that the GOP will not give up on the social policies (she’s pro-choice, etc.) She seems to think that Ike is still the model Republican and that all of these other folks are just fringe groups that eventually will be shed leaving behind a fiscally responsible, non-discriminatory party. I laughed at her, and then apologized before calling her an idiot, and explained why the GOP has lost even more support here in CA, the home of Nixon and Reagan, and why she’ll never see Republicans like that ever again. Her only hope is the south and southern Republicans will never, ever give up the culture war.
I think she realizes I’m right, but has drunk enough from the Fox News punchbowl to think that anyone on the left is clinically insane, and doesn’t quite know what to do.
Zifnab
@4tehlulz:
They’re backing half the GOP field. That problem is going to be true of just about every candidate.
I’m of the opinion that FOX doesn’t give a shit and will happily gobble up all the ad dollars from every campaign that wants to cut them a check. FOX has always been about cornering the market on right wing crazy. With Citizens United allowing unlimited spending and FOX commanding a massive share of the GOP audience, 2012 is just going to be a bumper year for News Corp. Jack up the rates come election season and milk the candidates for every dime they’re worth.
DougJ
@Zifnab:
A strong Palin performance will help their ratings a lot, though.
Cain
Neocon sells magazines. So basically, it’s the only thing that is making money. So everybody is jumping on that not realizing that his neocon “bubble” is going to end badly.
cain
cat48
They’ve taken the “White” out of their name. They’re now known as “Council of Conservative Citizens” ……..they have a interesting website hating on Obama like 98% of political websites, whatever party or cause they support. Stale stuff.
robert green
commentary at the time was run by my grandmother, frances green. she worked for the publisher, elliot cohen, who was a cold war liberal. my grandmother’s job was to make sure that all of the writing in the magazine (which was reliably liberal in most things other than foreign policy adventures in central america and so on) was done by people who had no commie skeletons in the closet. basically she was a hatchet (wo)man for cohen. this included not publishing hannah arendt for her membership in the Communist Party in the old country despite hannah being my grandmother’s friend.
later my grandma would hire irving kristol and norman podhoretz, thus ruining the world though at the time they were liberals so who was to know?
KG
@Martin: there’s a lot of that in the California GOP, I think my folks fall in the same category (pro-choice, pro-gays, etc).
@batgirl: meaningful third party candidates are highly irregular. Perot in 92 is probably the only one that really mattered, though they say his voters would have gone about evenly for the other two. Anderson in 1980 didn’t win enough votes to swing the election. Nor did Perot in 96 (I think). Even Nader would have been a footnote in 2000 is it wasn’t because of Florida (hell, Florida would have been a footnote if Gore would have won his home state).
Honestly though, I don’t think it’s going to help Palin. There’s already a big number of people who say they wouldn’t consider voting for her in the general. She’s pretty much hit her ceiling. And some people considering voting for her would go to the independent, leaving her in third place. It could potentially hurt Obama, but he’s going to win most of the bigger states, no matter what. Plus, the third party candidate could actually help swing some smaller states to Obama (if Conseradem and Palin split the vote in, say, Montana or the Dakotas, that could open the door for Obama to pick up some states). Ultimately, it depends on the potential independent candidate.
Zifnab
@DougJ: FOX will do well if the big GOP fundraisers do well. Then FOX can raise it’s rates and really soak the candidates for every dime of campaign contributions.
Palin’s a good draw, but you also need a bunch of well-funded opponents willing to spend Meg Wittman-style on their media campaigns. FOX will want something on par with the Democrats in ’08, where its down to the wire in Texas several months into the primary.
batgirl
@DougJ: My Republican Aunt & Uncle who voted for Obama because McCain picked Palin. Okay, so that’s only two.
But I think you underestimate the vote someone like Bayh could get. Hopefully, I overestimate the stupidity of the American people.
balconesfault
@4tehlulz:
You actually believe that Palin could tell us who the CC is/was without some serious coaching?
chopper
@batgirl:
any indie that runs in response to palin gettin the nod (bayh, bloomie) may act like they have good intentions but any one of them with half a brain would realize they’d be splitting the non-moron vote with obama and possibly assuring a palin win. so bloomberg would reconsider. can’t say so for a guy like bayh tho.
Zifnab
@batgirl:
Bayh who? If you’re not a political junkie, inside the beltway, or an Indiana resident, I doubt you’ve heard the name in more than passing. He tried to run in ’08 until he realized he had less name recognition than Mike Gravel. And he was a top pick for VP until Obama realized he was an obnoxious self-centered political maladroit.
As a Texas Republican, I could see Evan Bayh running for President. But as an Indiana Democrat?
batgirl
@Zifnab: I don’t want to get hung up on Bayh. (Though I think name recognition at this point isn’t that big a deal. Who knew Perot?) I just threw Bayh out there as an example of the type of “centrist” or “moderate” that gives Broder a boner.
I think that if Palin won the Republican nomination you could likely see a third party candidate of this sort.
Console
Right wing intelligentsia has always consisted of making excuses for idiot right wing populism. Today it’s pretending the tea partiers aren’t racist and have legitimate complaints about government spending. Yesterday it was pretending whites were right to be skeptical of integr…. i mean social engineering.
Case in point, the national review’s editorial board was against the civil rights act.
Midnight Marauder
@DougJ:
Duh. Harold Ford.
Paris
Hannah Arendt wrote a controversial but thoughtful essay on school desegregation for Commentary in 1959. I have it in one of the collection of her writings and re-read it frequently. It explores the roles and interactions of the private and public spaces and the role of organized religion to span the two in terms of behaviour and ethics. I would be hard pressed to name a journal that would touch an essay like it now a days.
Fuzz
I was just down in the Mississippi Delta region visiting my sister who does TFA down there. The racial issues still exist in a weird way, and though you know it exists it is very eye opening to see it happen in person. The looks that elderly whites give elderly blacks in Greenville, Mississippi give new meaning to ‘if looks could kill.’ Schools are still segregated, the public schools in every town are overwhelmingly black, the worst performing in the US, and wrought with violence. The white kids, who all live in the same towns, go to Christian, private or Catholic schools which are at least 80% white. The parents all say it is to avoid the secular influence of public school but frankly there is nothing secular about public schools in a place like Greenville, MS. Both sides have rather settled into a state of mutual resentment and disdain, rather than blood boiling hate.
The other thing is that honestly they’re just more open about their segregation than we are. For the most part here in NJ, blacks and whites live in different towns. Every public school is either 95% white or 95% black. In the Delta blacks and whites live in mixed towns but are separated by neighborhood and as said, send their kids to different schools. The amount of racial interaction though and even racism is probably about the same.
DougJ
@Zifnab:
Huck is a snooze, though. A long drawn-out Palin/Romney battle “for the soul of the party” would be great for Fox ratings, though.
Shalimar
@DougJ: I’m not even sure Evan Bayh would vote for Evan Bayh. It wouldn’t shock me if he voted for one of the other two candidates hoping his support would lead to a cabinet post.
robert green
@Paris: that essay was published after hannah had numerous of her other pieces rejected by elliot cohen, who was sure that arendt was still secretly some kind of communist, or would tar the magazine with guilt-by-association. i’ve read some of the other pieces she submitted (most of which ultimately were published elsewhere) and it is a tragedy how paranoid Commentary was, but that was the temper of the times.
Paris
Never mind. It was in Dissent, not Commentary.
agrippa
Conservatives have run institutions into the ground — and none of them are able to recognize it. very sad that this country has come to this.
Elie
@agrippa:
I think some of them DO recognize it.. but don’t know what to do… they keep pressing the same buttons and getting the scary monster bile spewing that just burns and burns —
I suspect some of their elder statespeople, are anguished and alienated from their folks… not enough consensus for making change.. they are still in exile…
It will in part, at least, be a demographic solution… next 5-10 years the last of the WWII generation will pass and the boomers are split politically and economically.
I don’t think that this is just happening in the US. Worldwide, we are in a huge change period…
Joey Maloney
@Martin:
You’re going to have to define what you mean by “a lot”, because Jews vote overwhelmingly more Democratic than the public at large.
njdc.org/site/page/chart_jewish_vote
NonyNony
@batgirl:
Palin’s not going to win the nomination on her own – that isn’t how the Republican Elite work.
The way Palin wins the nomination is if she’s “paired up” with one of the Republican Elite on the ticket. Much like how Reagan/Bush got together in 1980 (remember, back at the time Reagan was essentially the “Sarah Palin” candidate – the Democrats were hoping he’d win the nomination because he was the least serious option – look how that turned out).
IF Palin is anywhere close to the ticket in ’12 (which I still consider a BIG FUCKING IF), she’ll be paired up with a handler. A “grown up” like Cheney was for Bush the Lesser and Bush the Elder was for Reagan. Without that, the “reasonable Republicans” aren’t going to go near her, but if they are content that she’s just a puppet and the “real” Presidenting is being done by “someone more realistic” they’ll cast their ballots for her anyway. McCain tried this tactic in reverse by putting her on the VP slot BTW – didn’t work, just undermined his “reasonable Republican” status incredibly. You can’t work the con that way – the crazy person has to be seen as making a “really good choice for their VP”, it doesn’t work if the “sane person” on the ticket is making a crazy-person choice for VP.
My prediction is that IF Palin is on the ticket in ’12 (again BIG FUCKING IF) it will be a Palin/Bush ticket – with Jeb Bush as the “grown-up” running mate. The hard core Republican base – even the ones who hate Palin – are starting to convince themselves that Bush wasn’t so bad and will be willing to give his smarter brother a chance as a VP. I think his name is still toxic in a presidential campaign, but as a VP he’d be an asset to Palin (probably not to anyone else). And hey – there’s the old saw that the Republicans can only win the White House if a Nixon or a Bush is somewhere on the ticket, so he has that going for him too.