It’s like Herman Cain is the only person who can’t hear “The Merry Go Round Broke Down” playing at volume factor 11 whenever he speaks. Talking with Neal Boortz today, Cain admitted his new target is Mitt Romney, but then he said this about President Obama:
Boortz, at the tail end of the interview, asks Cain how he’d do in a debate against Obama:
“It would almost be no contest.”
Ticking off ways he could compete with Obama, Boortz says that Cain would be able to talk about the black experience in America.
Cain’s response: “[Obama’s] never been a part of the black experience in America.”
That might be the single most hysterical political thing I’ve heard so far this year. I understand that the GOP perception of President Obama is that he simultaneously occupies the set of all other infinite points on the Blackness Line other than the acceptable amount of Blackness for any given situation (we’ll call that mathematical set B, where b, the aforementioned acceptable amount of Blackness can never be equal to any possible value of B just so Obama loses in any situation, and just to really piss everyone off the GOP keeps changing the value of b arbitrarily) but Herman Cain’s redefinition of B as zero is honestly a new one on me.
I don’t know what to say other than I’d really, really like to see Herman Cain and President Obama have that debate while believing that Cain is pretty much the least deserving of the GOP Clown Car Crew of having one. As I’ve said before, new and exciting branches of mathematics are needed to sufficiently quantify how much of a complete asshole Herman Cain really is.
Brian S
Weren’t Limbaugh and Boortz and the rest of the clown car saying back in 2009 that the only reason Obama won was because voters wanted to vote for the black guy? Now Obama’s not really black. I don’t get it.
Violet
Except for all those times the wingnut pundits claim he got jobs or was admitted into top universities because of affirmative action. Those wingnuts can’t keep it all straight.
Ash Can
Herman’s just dancin’ to the tunes his bosses be playin’.
Cat Lady
So, the teatards will vote for Cain because he’s authentically black, but not for Obama because he’s not black enough? I get it/
Linda Featheringill
Oh, isn’t that cute? Cain wants to debate “blackness” with Obama.
Question: What percentage of the US cares about the relative “blackness” of the two people?
I suspect that at least half of the African-Americans don’t care and maybe more. And among the non-black population, there are probably three people who give a damn.
It’s not an issue.
El Cid
Obama truly never has been part of the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
JoshA
Best I’ve heard it described.
Cris (without an H)
So Trinity United is not part of the black experience either. Got it. I think.
El Cid
Fire fighters are already soshullist. Now, thanks to our conservatives’ love of Freedom and hatred of making us Americans wards of the state, we’ll just replace increasing number of employed fire fighters with prisoners.
Spaghetti Lee
I think Cain’s been notably crazy for the last few weeks. He said something along the lines of “Well, y’know, maybe Niggerhead was an unfortunate thing for Rick Perry to name his ranch”, and of course the entire right wing started shrieking like banshees (“He was supposed to be the black politician who TRANSCENDED RACE! BETRAYAL! APOSTASY! SKREEEE!”) So he’s really had to amp it up recently.
This isn’t a new idea, but Cain represents a sort of platonic ideal made flesh for the right. He’s the living embodiment of “I have a black friend”, or rather IHABF on an epic historical scale. He categorically rejects any idea that the Civil Rights movement and the resistance to it had anything to teach us about the history of race in America, and thus gives wingers permission to write off all opposition to civil rights movements as Not Racist. Thing is, it’s a very difficult line to walk-hence the platonic ideal part of the equation. Someone who grew up in Georgia in the 50’s and 60’s (and went to Morehouse, for God’s sake), simply put, is not going to be able to fake having the racial experience of white people living in 2011 exurban America, and occasionally the illusion will slip and reveal his actual human experience. And that terrifies the people who want to see him as this sort of abstract icon of how conservatives really aren’t racist. So he’s been stepping up the crazy to ensure that the mask won’t slip anymore. It’s a weird relationship, and one that can’t survive a whole campaign season.
piratedan
well if there’s a debate between these two, what are the chances that we get Shirley Hemphill as a moderator?
Warren Terra
Obama wrote a whole goddam book about how he decide to embrace his Blackness and to work in the Black community.
Herman Cain sold shitty pizza and joined the Albino Party.
To be sure, Cain may have experienced Black Culture more fully as a youth in the South than did Obama as a youth in Indonesia and Hawai’i. But anyone who thinks Obama isn’t Black enough rally needs to ask the question: Black enough for what?
Satanicpanic
Herb isn’t saying he didn’t have a black experience, just not black American experience. Everyone knows Obama was born and raised in Kenya.
beltane
What is an authentically white experience? Snorting lines of blow off the back of Todd Palin’s snow machine?
Spaghetti Lee
@Brian S:
Like Zandar said, it’s an infinitely changeable variable. He can either be Muhammad Al-Blackpanthro waiting to give the orders for the Kenyan invasion or a cynical career politician exploiting an accident of birth to gain white-guilted supporters, depending on how wingnuts are feeling that particular day.
Cris (without an H)
@El Cid: Not necessarily stoned, but uh, beautiful.
MoeLarryAndJesus
Obviously there are only a few genuinely black people in America today. Herman Cain, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Allan West, Alan Keyes, maybe Condi Rice. If there are any more maybe Cain will be good enough to mention them in future interviews.
J. Michael Neal
@JoshA: Whenever you want politics explained, always go to a mathematician. He’ll give you a proof, which is more than anyone else will do. He’ll only have to
make a few assumptionsstate a couple of axioms to make it work.Keith G
ABL, ABL, ABL.
Comrade Javamanphil
Actually, I think this is an easy one. By declaring Obama as not black they satisfy that inner voice that is constantly saying “You are not a racist, you are not a racist.” As always, the inconvenience of the facts that disprove their worldview can be ignored as liberal propaganda.
RSA
I guess a guy named Herman, with a current net worth of $18 million, is a better representative of the “black experience in America”. Sorry to appeal to stereotypes, but really. If Cain had any sort of self-awareness, he’d realize that the black experience covers a very wide range.
beltane
@El Cid: Because nothing could go wrong with that. They sure are smart down there in Georgia. First they kick all the farmworkers out of the state, causing the crops to rot in the fields, and now they want to give desperate criminals access to people’s homes when the occupants are at their most vulnerable. Sounds like a plan.
FlipYrWhig
Obama must be Zeno‘s Negro.
Bill E Pilgrim
@El Cid: FTW
Violet
Herman Cain is getting center stage at the debate tonight, right? Popcorn!
Culture of Truth
I don’t whether Herman Cain is an asshole or not, or stupid or not, but I suspect it’s much less of either that comes across. Statements like this strike as the desperate flailings of a political amateur very new to running for office. Sure it looks easy, and he’s polling well, but he will crash and burn and blame the liberal media.
OmerosPeanut
New and exciting mathematics… back before the definition of infinitesimals, perhaps?
Southern Beale
Zandar:
I’m sorry: I thought it was patently obvious that Herman Cain is not running for president. He’s on a book tour, not the campaign trail.
This is all theater, hon. It doesn’t matter because all he’s in it for is to sell books. Ditto Michele Bachmann and everyone else. It’s the grift.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Well at least he got one thing right. Not in the way he thinks, but still…
Spaghetti Lee
@Brian S:
I also thought the wingnut word on the whole Authentic Blackness debate was something real white Americans didn’t care about and it proved that liberals are the real racists. Now, of course, it matters immensely, and Obama loses and it proves liberals are the real racists. To paraphrase Ball Four, whatever the problem, they always know the cause.
shortstop
It all makes sense when you consider that Cain is speaking directly to, and only to, resentful whites who feel they’ve been constantly victimized by people who possess the towering advantage of being black in America. The “he’s not a real black guy; I am because I’m the kind of black guy you like” thing (of which this is just another iteration), the dismissal of the civil rights movement, the insistence that black people are brainwashed en masse by the left, etc., etc.–these are all the exact lines used by angry white conservatives, the very same people who think that all discussion of race, regardless of content or context, is itself racist and “playing the race card.”
Even that bit about getting a third of the black vote is just playing to the white people who need to be able to tell themselves that their candidate gets support from black voters, too. Cain doesn’t believe for a minute that he’d get more black votes nationwide than he can count on two hands and two feet. But he knows some white people need to think he will, and he’s talking to them.
FlipYrWhig
@Southern Beale: There’s been an opening on the right for Black Conservative Man. That’s certainly Cain’s angle: to make a career out of being less of a freakazoid than Alan Keyes.
Bill E Pilgrim
@El Cid: Shorter
HerbVirgilHerman Cain:El Cid
Obama isn’t really black, but he sure hates white people, because he’s Kenyan, and though Kenyans are black, at least the non-white ones, this doesn’t make Obama black, his anti-colonial attitude comes from both being black and not being black enough.
JGabriel
OT, but this is good. Via Atrios, the Elizabeth Warren Announcement:
.
sistermoon
From what I’ve seen from his book, Mr. “move to the back of the bus” seems to have spent his youth rapidly sprinting away from Black culture. He attended an HBCU only after being rejected by Georgia State and, as he’s admitted, had nothing to do with the Civil Rights movement.
Sadly, Herman Cain is a man who has gained acceptance by going out of his way to prove that he’s a black man who knows his place.
Spaghetti Lee
@Southern Beale:
everyone else? I’d personally argue that Mitt Romney at least wants to be president (and how sad is it when you have a group of 7 people and Mitt Romney’s the least disingenuous?) And maybe that’s why he’s winning right now. He’s the only one with enough brains to realize that running for president is more complicated than doing a book tour for your ghostwritten hagiography. What’s pathetic, then, is how long he’s taken to put the rest of these clowns away.
Mothra
I can’t believe he’s even talking to Neil Boortz.
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201106140022
Even after watching his performance these last few weeks, I can’t believe he’s this willing to grovel before Boortz.
El Cid
@shortstop: I’ve heard a lot of enraged white men vent about how unfair affirmative action is giving all these advantages to black men.
When I point out that in whatever job we’re discussing there are few to no black men, certainly not in proportion to the population, and none or nearly none in management, it doesn’t count, because either there was this one time where they saw X happen, or it happened to them, or they know a guy or a friend of a guy who got screwed over by a black person being favored.
shortstop
@El Cid: And those guys love, love, love to hear black people like Herman Cain and Clarence Thomas claim that affirmative action has ruined America and given all the plum jobs and educations to unworthy layabouts. They fucking love it. Cain is the panderingest in a thoroughly pandering lineup of candidates.
ETA: I don’t know if this guy seriously thinks he’s running for president or if this is just an elaborate setup for selling books and running his mouth in a regular slot on Fox. I don’t really care. The MO is the same: give resentful white folks exactly what they want.
Southern Beale
@FlipYrWhig:
A post held by Michael Steele if I’m not mistaken.
Southern Beale
@Spaghetti Lee:
Yeah Mitt is the man. It’s HIS TURN dammit! Everyone else is just sideshow.
Of course he wants to be president. Yet ironically, he’s also hawking a book.
Just in case.
Spaghetti Lee
@sistermoon:
Makes me wonder: You don’t get to be CEO of anything by being deferential. So how long is he able to keep up the Political Magical Negro act before finally blowing his stack at having to kowtow to all these peasants? Hope it’s soon.
RareSanity
As a black man, I do not have the writing talent, to form the words, to adequately express how repugnant Herman Cain is.
This whole Cain campaign reminds me of the 30 Rock episode when Alec Baldwin’s character, was trying to convince Tracy Morgan’s character, to be a celebrity spokesperson for the Republican party.
Herman Cain is about on the same intellectual level as Tracy Morgan’s character.
shortstop
@Southern Beale: That didn’t turn out so well, so the position has been reposted.
Spaghetti Lee
@Southern Beale:
Well, everyone writes a book. Although, growing up, I always thought of “books” as things that presented interesting characters or situations, were intellectually challenging on some level, and contained higher meanings that you could think about after you put the book down. I think whatever the Republican candidates are churning out might be called overgrown brochures, or bloated 30-second TV spots put to print.
RareSanity
@Mothra:
Neal Boortz is Herman Cain’s sponsor…
He let Cain sit in as host of his show when he was on vacation. He was the force behind Cain getting his own radio show. In Cain’s mind, Neal Boortz is proof that racism is dead.
Let that thought sink in for a few minutes…
Insomniac
This is simply quite deliciously put! Lovely.
pete
@El Cid: Hey, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell were barely more tanned than albino zombies, and they were totally in the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
FlipYrWhig
@El Cid:
This is the core of the conservative ethos. Somewhere out there is One Of Those People getting a free ride, because of The Government. It works for every issue.
pete
@Spaghetti Lee: I gotta say when Lawrence O’Donnell was attempting to eviscerate Cain the other day, Cain held up pretty well under a ferocious assault. I was kinda thinking he might yell &/or storm out, but he actually kept his cool and continued to respond pleasantly for longer than I could stand watching. OK, he made no logical sense, but we’re talking emotional affect here, and I was somewhat impressed.
eemom
@pete:
interesting. I thought he came across as condescending and defensive.
Also the way he kept saying “Lawrence” got to be pretty grating after a while.
Ken
@Spaghetti Lee:
For suitable definitions of “winning”, which may require Zandar’s mathematical finesse to formulate. Something like “having a bare plurality among the four candidates who poll in double digits”, for example.
He probably will win the nomination, simply because of the Republican winner-take-all delegate system. I expect some hard feelings among the supporters of the candidates who took second place with 23%, just behind Mitt’s 26%.
grandpajohn
@Spaghetti Lee: well he now trails Cain in SC according to a poll released here today, however only by one point. Perry is a distant third 10 points behind according to the ARG poll
Nellcote
Have Afican Americans been polled on their support of Cain?
FlipYrWhig
@Ken: Didn’t the Republicans switch to a proportional system this cycle? Or am I misremembering?
gocart mozart
@El Cid:
Au contraire El Cid
http://fishingwithfredo.blogspot.com/2011/05/author-is-obama-jimis-love-child.html
J. Michael Neal
@Ken:
Not in this election cycle he won’t. I’m counting on their switch to requiring states to use proportional representation to produce a giant clusterfuck and a hasty decision to reverse the decision.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Because “Obama isn’t really black, so don’t let white guilt/black pride trick you into voting for him,” worked so well the first time. Is our Repukelickans Learning? Don’t be stupid.
Zandar – You deserve a medal for coming up with the Blackness Formula, but I suspect you’ll have to settle for a place in the Lexicon. (And my heart.)
@Nellcote: I initially read that as Halfrican Americans and laughed way too hard.
El Cid
@Insomniac: I forgot to make clear that I was talking about jobs in which I was working.
So, I wasn’t citing stats about CEO’s or some such.
I was pointing around saying ‘Where are all these black guys / women being favored?’
In some of the jobs, the only black people were in the manual labor sections.
And even when there were conflicts for real, most of them were so petty and nonconsequential as to be meaningless, but, OMG were they pissed.
Mnemosyne
@Warren Terra:
As I’ve said enough times before that I’m sure people are sick of me saying it, this is the real beef the right has against Obama: he chose to be black. He didn’t have to do it, he had other options, but he made that conscious choice and some people absolutely cannot forgive him for it.
Speedy
@Spaghetti Lee:
Or overpriced door stops for dipshits.
shortstop
@J. Michael Neal: They’re not requiring all states to go the proportional route, are they? I thought they just switched up the schedule so the winner-take-all states go in April and the proportional ones earlier.
El Cid
@gocart mozart: Was one of Jimi Hendrix’s all-too-short-lived skills that of editing law reviews? Does Obama have a secret life as a guitar master? And was Jimi Hendrix a Kenyan Indonesian Muslim who pal’d around with terr’ists too?
InquiringDefiling minds want to know!Ken
@FlipYrWhig: (and J. Michael Neal): Ah, I had not heard that. That could make for a very interesting convention, if enough of them stay in to Super Tuesday to split the delegates four or five ways.
I did hear that Michigan and a couple of other states are moving their primaries up again, I guess because it worked out so well for them in the 2008 Democratic race. Has the party taken a stance on how (and whether) those delegates will be counted?
AnotherBruce
@Southern Beale: But who buys these books? I mean, who actually plucks down hard earned cash to read the ravings of a cranky pizza mogul? Apparently life isn’t short enough.
gocart mozart
@gocart mozart:
[par. breaks deleted because FU b-quote]
http://fishingwithfredo.blogspot.com/2011/05/author-is-obama-jimis-love-child.html
maya
@Nellcote:
Brachiator
@shortstop:
Sorry, this still doesn’t make sense.
Arclite
Wow, for Cain to admit that he’d almost certainly lose is admirable.
Sorry, Cain, but Obama would crush you. Romney appears to be the only one taking his candidacy seriously.
rikyrah
I’m gonna say it again,
KNEEGROW, PLEASE.
The only Black folk that will give you a glance are your fellow bootlicking, shinning and grinning slave catchers.
shortstop
@Brachiator: Which people haven’t you met? The large numbers of racially resentful white people who like black people who validate white racism, or the (thankgodfully) small number of black people who eagerly comply with the first group’s desires?
Xecky Gilchrist
the GOP perception of President Obama is that he simultaneously occupies the set of all other infinite points on the Blackness Line other than the acceptable amount of Blackness for any given situation
cf. Douglas Adams’ concept of recipriversexcluson, “a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself.”
Calouste
Douglas Adams defined a “recipriversexcluson” as an imaginary number that can only be defined as anything other than itself. It seems that that is what we have hit on here. It is, not unsurprisingly, related to the “Someone Else’s Problem Field”.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
What other options were there again? Apparently I missed something growing up.
maya
@AnotherBruce: You’d be surprised. A significant number of middle class whites buy them as presents for family and friends. The idea being that they themselves surely then must be regarded as enlightened and non-bigoted by the recipient of such a gift.
My mother, who was in that aforementioned class of whites, gave me a copy of Colin Powell’s auto-bio one Xmas. I had to resist the impulse to lol. Had no inclination to sit down and wade through the horse shit festooned path of life of Lt.What My Lai? I just thanked her.
Bruce S
Edward Brooke is turning over in his grave…
J. Michael Neal
@shortstop: You are correct. The rule is that any primary or caucus held before April must award delegates proportionally. If a state goes after that, it may use winner take all.
However, it looks like only a few of the states going April or later are going the winner-take-all route. Of the ones I checked, Arkansas and Oregon are proportional. New Jersey and a couple of others are straight winner-take-all. The majority of those states are using a system in which the winner of each Congressional District receives three delegates (or, in the case of some, he only gets all three if he wins a majority; if he doesn’t, the second place candidate gets one) and then the remaining delegates are awarded either by winner-take-all or by proportion, most with one or the other guaranteed, but some where you need a majority to win all of the rest or it is some form of proportional, with a threshold between 3.5% and 20% for being allowed a share.
This has lots of clusterfuck potential if the Not Romney voters can’t come to a consensus.
I’m still picking Not Romney to win this, and I still think that Perry is the most likely Not Romney, but who the hell knows at this point. I’m spending the weekend with my friend who is one of the founders of Pollster.com and in-between hockey games, I’ll ask him what he thinks.
Edit: I suppose at this point, I’m picking Nut Romney rather than Not Romney.
J. Michael Neal
@Ken:
I believe that Iowa is going next Thursday and New Hampshire over the following weekend at this point.
Canadian Shoggoth
@AnotherBruce:
Remember mass purchases of books by right wing organizations is another way to launder the wingnut welfare cheques.
Plantsmantx
@piratedan:
None whatsoever. Guess why.
Bubblegum Tate
@Spaghetti Lee:
Exactly. Herman Cain is the GOP’s very own version of Stephen Colbert’s black friend, Alan.
pete
@eemom: I can certainly see how you got grated, he was just calmer than I expected.
pete
@gocart mozart: Holy moly, batpeople, I had no idea. Law Review may not have been Jimi’s thing (actually, Jimi’s thing was Jimi’s thing, come to think about it), but surely he palled around with terr’rists, not to mention Keith Richards.
AnotherBruce
@Canadian Shoggoth:
I think that’s true to an extent, but I know that some considerable number of people will read his book. And it will re-validate their precious beliefs. Still I can’t comprehend the mind that would want to wade through a bunch of bland crap like this. But hey, a lot of people watch those grey zombies on the Sunday talk shows. And a lot of them post about it on blogs. I’m just grateful they do so I don’t have to.
SiubhanDuinne
@piratedan:
Shut up, fool. She’s dead.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
I’d just love to hear what they would say if Obama had made a conscious decision to choose to be white! Enough to make a cat laugh.
JDReign
@shortstop:
Beautiful
karen marie
@Mnemosyne: I don’t know if “chose” is the right word. I think “embraced” is better.
JDReign
@Nellcote:
No we are all brainwashed by the Democrats so its no use
burnspbesq
@MoeLarryAndJesus:
You forgot J.C. Watts.
gaz
@Xecky Gilchrist:
holy crap, i was thinking the very same thing when I read this…
i’m glad there are a lot of nerds on this board =).