Honestly? With this crap again?
National Review Online published an impossibly stupid article on the travails of one Herman Cain and the sexual assault and harassment allegations that are stacking up against him. It’s a rambly tl;dr piece that says nothing and makes no recognizable effort to try. It’s the literary equivalent of the tiny puffs of gas that my dog unwittingly excretes while he sleeps.
The author, some clown who calls himself Victor Davis Hanson, purports to discuss the difference between Cain and President Obama: “Cain’s authenticity vs. Obama’s metrosexual cool” (Get it, wingnuts? The Sheriff’s a nigger homo!)
Hanson’s “article” is a pathetic piece of Cain propaganda that attempts to resurrect a golden-child simulacrum of Herman Cain that never existed in the first place, and was merely a figment of the GOP’s addled collective imagination. Where Hanson sees “Black authenticity as defined by Southern mannerisms and darker complexion, amplified by conservatism or traditionalism,” I see unabashed incompetence and the human embodiment of Idiocracy.
You see, Herman Cain is, incontrovertibly, a fool:
- He has no grasp of the Constitution;
- In an election where “Repeal Obamacare!” is the GOP rallying cry, he does not understand the manner in which Medicare benefits are provided (and had to ask Uncle Newt to help save him from embarrassment during last weekend’s inappropriately-named Lincoln-Douglas debate), but is quite certain that such benefits should be
slashedprivatized anyway because Paul Ryan, that’s why; - He is only able to discuss domestic tax policy in fruit-based terms;
- He is a misogynist pig who attracts other misogynist pigs — “Karen Kraushaar is an ugly bitch!” — like flies to a steaming pile of freshly squeezed shit;
- He cannot pronounce the names of any country the name of which is word- and not acronym-based — USA! USA!
- He was for death-by-electric-fence before he was against it — and then for it again;
- He is delusional enough to think that he can garner 1/3 of the black vote while spouting pandering bullshit about blacks being brainwashed by Democrats, racism being dead because “look at me!” and Planned Parenthood existing for the purpose of planned genocide in black communities.
Hanson endeavors to drag Cain up by Cain’s bootstraps, and he does so by denigrating women and black people with such ease one suspects that Hanson has never met a stereotype or bias that he didn’t call “science.”
Ultimately, Hanson’s attempt fails; it is nothing more than a last-gasp attempt to paint the media as “in the can” for liberals. How many keys of coke did Obama snort his way through at Harvard? Did he ever graduate? Where are his transcripts? And that birth certificate he released? How do we know that it isn’t a forgery? Barry is far too black/not black enough to be president.
Hanson’s article is garbage, and I am stupider for having read it (so thanks a lot, pal). Here are the low-points (keeping in mind that there are no high points):
- Fuckin’ librulz, man: “I thought it was only a matter of when, not whether, Gloria Allred, the leftwing billboard lawyer, would show up at a press conference with more “evidence” of Cain’s “serial” transgressions against the meek and defenseless of yesteryear.”
- Both sides do it!: “Cain’s supporters bewail the unfairness of it all… as they reckon up the relative media uninterest in sex-poodle Al Gore, the serial wenching of Bill Clinton, or Eliot Spitzer’s prostituting — not to mention the fact that the National Enquirer was alone in breaking the John Edwards love-child story.”
- Obama! Cocaine! Bill Ayers! Dumb Negro at Ivy League Schools! Goddamn America!: “As John McCain closed in on Barack Obama in 2008, the media floated rumors of his purported affair with a Washington insider — in contrast to their lack of interest in just how much cocaine Barack Obama had really admitted to using or how exactly he had gone from Occidental to Columbia to Harvard Law School, or how patently untrue were his characterizations of his relationship with Bill Ayers.”
- Ignore the page-gropers, bathroom-stall tap-dancers, meth-head evangelists, and rentboy enthusiasts — it’s Librulz who are pervy! “Both supporters and detractors agree that Cain should know by now that alleged misdemeanors by Republican frontrunners are always more serious than known transgressions by Democratic rivals. All true — and all irrelevant in the age of liberal indulgence and exemption where noble ends sometimes must justify tawdry means.”
- It’s not men’s fault. Young women prey on older men! Those bitches are maneaters! Whoa here they come!: “In my time as a student and a professor, I saw four or five “asymmetrical” relationships in which much younger attractive graduate students made fools of aging nerdish professors, always to their own career advantage. The younger women in such relationships either dumped the power-brokers when the latter were no longer useful or filed complaints about being harassed if the dividends proved insufficient.”
- It happened before Cain got cancer and totally almost died, so it doesn’t count! “Get cancer, get a do-over.” I saw it on a ribbon, I swear! “Note there is no exemption for Cain even though the charges date from over a decade ago, and even though Cain in the interval was given a 30 percent chance of survival from stage-IV metastasized colon cancer.”
- At least he didn’t stick it in! “Cain, who has not as of yet actually been accused of engaging in sexual intercourse with a female subordinate, finds himself in the “sexual harassment” labyrinth, from which there are few paths out in the present era.”
The article then veers off into racist asshole-land through a combination of words and punctuation that add up to nothing, make no sense, and offer nothing by way of insight or intelligence, and ultimately lands in the dumpster wherein lies the remains of Laura Ingraham’s similarly racist and privileged screed:
Yet Cain also wins greater scrutiny, not exemption, because he is black — or at least a certain sort of black. In addition to his conservatism, his voice, bearing, grammar, and diction, even his showy black cowboy hat, bother liberals in much the same way that Joe Frazier was not Muhammad Ali and Clarence Thomas was not Anita Hill. Black authenticity, as defined by Southern mannerisms and darker complexion, amplified by conservatism or traditionalism, earns liberal unease.
~snip~
Yet most Americans are far more concerned with authenticity than with color or diction, and Cain is nothing but authentic. His speech and manner are as genuine as Obama’s are forced and often phony. His everyman persona and appeal to the working classes scare the liberal elite, in much the same way that Sarah Palin’s did. If Cain were to say “corpse-man” or “punish our enemies,” he would be written off as an embarrassment — in liberal parlance, a “minstrel” and “buffoon.” But if he said “corpse-man” with an academic non-accent and a Harvard pedigree, well, that’s a momentary, understandable slip for a gaffe-prone Harry Reid or Joe Biden.
~snip~
Again, the comparison with Obama is volatile: Cain is authentically African-American and of an age to remember the Jim Crow South; Obama, the son of an elite Kenyan and a white graduate student, came of age as a Hawaiian prep-schooler, whose civil-rights credentials are academic. Cain’s lack of experience and seemingly embarrassing ignorance about the right of return or nuclear China are amplified by his unaffected style, whereas Obama’s similar gaffes (57 states) [No. Stop it. During the 2008 primaries, Obama said in a speech “I’ve been in 57 states.” It was a gaffe to be sure, but one on a much smaller scale than Cain’s ignorance about China’s nuclear capability for the following simple and easy-to-understand reason: there are 57 primary races (50 states plus Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands, DC, American Samoa, and a caucus in Texas that is split in twain and counts as two races) which send 57 delegates to the convention. Got it? During primary season, 57, not 50 is the magic number. -ed.] and buffoonery (inflating tires to preclude drilling for oil [ who’s the buffoon now, bitch? -ed.]) are mitigated by metrosexual cool. After all, we live in an age when Herman Cain, with his black hat, his deep Southern cadences, and his ease among tea-party crowds, is suspect, whereas Barack Obama booms on about “millionaires and billionaires” while golfing, jetting to Martha’s Vineyard, and shaking down demonized corporate-jet owners at $35,000 a pop.
This has got to be some of the most odious racist nonsense I have ever read today. Essentially, the argument boils down to “black politicians running for preznint talk like dis” but “halfrican Muslin faux-groes running for president talk very properly indeed — like so — whilst eating arugula with honey dijon mustard vinaigrette and metrosexually applying Kiehl’s moisturizer to their not-quite-black-enough-but-still-too-black faces.”
This is what passes for conservative thought in America, yet Herman Cain thinks that black people are brainwashed? Ninja please.
Conservatives treat Herman Cain like a buffoon; an idiot who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing and must be taught the conservative way, but who nonetheless deserves points for trying. I mean, he’s black after all, and you know how Democrats “harangue” conservative and more impressive blacks. Any black that can cross the Great Democrat Rubicon is deserving of the best love and support that Republicans have to offer their blacks — until you start harassing pretty white women, that is — then it’s bye-bye poll numbers. It is this “there there, little one” sentiment that resulted in Erick Erickson’s embarrassing love letter yesterday, written as if to a four year-old. Also, it is this sentiment that compels Republicans to keep giving Herman Cain a pass for his utterly ridiculous 9-9-9 plan which has been thoroughly debunked as economically disastrous, but which continues to enjoy Republican reverence, simply by virtue of it being “bold.” (See also, Ryan Budget.)
Conservatives think that Cain-style buffoonery is representative of the black population; that it’s “authentic.” They cannot conceive of a man like Obama who talks like them — all white and stuff — and who went to Ivy League schools like them (how’d he get into those schools, anyway?). To them, Obama is a phony. Yet the authenticity that conservatives ascribe to Cain’s buffoonery is borne of the racist iconography that they themselves created. Cain is pandering to these assholes, and employing caricatures of Black people that southern “conservativism and traditionalism” birthed! It would be clever if it weren’t so sick, twisted, and yes — disgustingly racist.
And here’s what amuses me: these conservatives are seemingly confused that black folks aren’t running headlong into the open and grope-y arms of Herman Cain. They believe, as Herman Cain does, that blacks have been brainwashed, and that the way to win the hearts and minds of black Democrats is to simply dangle another Negro in front of us, and swing him back and forth like a pendulum used for hypnosis: “You are geting sleeeeeeepy. You will vote for Herman Caiiiiiin. Barack Obama isn’t really blaaaaaaack. He’s not really one of youuuuuuuu. Join ussssssss.”
They cannot fathom that black folks have the requisite wherewithal to recognize Herman Cain for what he is: a lying, misogynist, uninformed ignoramus who is willing to pander to dog-whistling conservatives like Victor David Hanson, in order to help the Tea Party shake the racism out of their party like water from a dog’s back. They can’t grasp what most of us can — that Herman Cain is a joke and will never be President. Ever.
As for Mr. Hanson’s privileged comments wherein he attempts to define what is and isn’t black — as if he has a fucking clue as to what he’s talking about — I will simply refer you to a post written by Zandar in response to Laura Ingraham:
MadamSir, you are no more the arbiter of the President’s racial identity and what it means to America than the pile of fecal matter inside your cranium, and the poison-saturated sack of hypocrisy that constitutes your soul is not anything I would wish on my worst enemy. I am proud of being biracial. It does not make me any less pure or less worthy or less human than human, and I greatly resent the implication. I am exceedingly proud of my President because he is someone like me, and I live in a country where someone like me can in fact be the leader of the free world and govern a country of 310 million people, all of whom are better people than you are. If you cannot find the singular joy in a society that allows that to happen, your worldview is a hopelessly broken and bleak landscape of endless recriminations that is so exceedingly and perfectly empty that you will seek to fill it with shallow, sneering, venal attacks in order to find some way, any way, to stop the relentless pain that your daily existence must entail.
Mr. Hanson, if you were on fire and I had a bucket of water, I wouldn’t bother to put you out.
[cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles]
BGinCHI
How long until Cain becomes that Dave Chappelle character who is the black and blind leader of the KKK?
You know, the one who, when he finds out he’s black, divorces his white wife for marrying him.
Baud
I don’t mind. We want Cain to be their nominee. I say more Cain puffing, please.
General Stuck
That’s okay wingnuts, you can keep oogling yer own navels searching for a map to success, meanwhile, the ‘metrosexual” is drinking your motherfucking milkshakes.
Let’s see, Obama the sellout over debt ceiling deal. By getting the wingnuts to hand him control of future debt increases, in return for a supercommittee with a pair of triggers from the dem wish list, pointed at the GOP stinky feets. Your move Mitch and Mccain. Who’s your daddy now?
THE
Impressive speech. The pathology of white privilege by Tim Wise. h/t Pharyngula
Wildcat12
//50 states plus Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands, DC, American Samoa, and a caucus in Texas that is split in twain and counts as two races) which send 57 delegates to the convention. Got it? During primary season, 57, not 50 is the magic number//
Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t that total 56, not 57?
Otherwise, fantastic post.
Brachiator
Hanson is a fool. Thanks, I guess, for some comic relief reading material.
The most amazing thing about all this is watching conservatives, more used to attacking black people than defending them, try to raise some kind of sympathetic black consciousness while trying to raise some Cain.
But their hearts just aren’t in it.
It is also pathetic to see them trying to play the racial authenticity card. Especially, National Review. I still recall their first attempt to smear Obama, by appealing to that old time racist religion. This was some screed suggesting that Obama had that commie taint on him because when back in the day, the only white women who would pal around with nonwhites were, you know, members of the Party. They quickly tried to dial it back, but they had revealed themselves for what they really were.
dmsilev
In fairness to Hanson, he’s been a moron on a wide swath of subjects, not just racial issues.
dmsilev
@Wildcat12: ABL forgot one; there was a “Americans living abroad” primary as well, though I don’t really remember the details of how it was run.
Nutella
Blacks with southern accents are more ‘authentically black’ than blacks with other accents? Who knew?
Linda Featheringill
How many people in the US care just how black Cain is? Three, maybe four?
It is possible to be southern, have Dixie manners and a dark skin, and be a wonderful human being. Herman Cain is not.
rikyrah
I’m impressed that you even wrote this.
that anyone thinks that Black folk look at Cain and see anything other than a MINSTREL…
well, Cain’s the type of Black person that can be loved by two groups:
1. racist White folk
2. Cain’s fellow Minstrels….
but, I admire you writing the piece, ABL.
Hunter Gathers
What is really, and I mean really fucked up about all this is the fact that Herman Cain isn’t actually running for President. He’s out on a book tour (and using campaign funds to purchase his own book, at that) and angling for a gig at Fox News. Watching all of the Wingnuts come to the defense of this grifter reminds me of all the ink and terabytes they wasted ‘defending’ Sarah Palin from the ‘librul media’. Cain is nothing more than Palin Mark II. But to pour salt in wound that is Snowmobile Snookie’s bruised ego, Cain’s a much better scam artist than Palin could ever hope to be.
Linda Featheringill
@rikyrah:
A blackface minstrel, perhaps, played by an unimaginative white &(*^%$).
MikeJ
@Wildcat12: Democrats Abroad have a primary too.
Yutsano
@dmsilev: The International primary is interesting, as they have to pick a place in a particular country to send and tally the primary votes. Bill E Pilgrim (or some other expat) could shed more light than I could. I think most of them do individual country caucuses.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Cain is really reminding me of Steel and this is even more delicious he’s out polling Rommeny.
You know this might be deliberately on Cain’s part; he has this scandal in his past, outs it during the primary because he knows the wingnuts will flash back to their own harassment complaints and rally around him. By the general election its old news so no October Surprise 2012 for him.
Also this harassment drama distracts from the Cain’s far more serious violation of election law, Cain iffy conservative purity, his wife being a Democrat and Cain has had cancer.
Brachiator
It’s not just this. Many white conservatives still appear to have a miscegenation fetish. It is very tribal. And so, you see this over emphasize on how Obama is supposedly only half black or half white.
You can positively hear the fear when they talk about this. The great fear is that Obama only pretends to care about “all Americans,” i.e., Real American White People(tm) and will use his secret ju jitsu knowledge of the ways of white folk to bring them down.
It is truly pathetic.
It makes it all the more bizarre that these same dopes want to ply Cain with “the blacker the berry” love.
Trentrunner
Hanson tl;dr:
Obama = faggot
Cain = our nigger
Any questions?
sharl
No mention of Victor Davis Hanson should be considered complete without an appropriate link to The War Nerd.*
I read – somewhere – that VDH was once a fairly decent historian on his specialty (ancient Greece/Peloponnesian_War), but once he found some degree of fame (and presumably a few extra bucks) via the wingnut circuit, he sold out in a heartbeat. Now he’s just another wingnut chickenhawk with a thirst for blood, as long as it is shed by others.
*Some speculative background on the mysterious War Nerd here.
Cacti
Rush Limbaugh and Victor Davis Hanson…
Our national authorities on the African-American experience.
dj spellchecka
this was flagged by steve benen a few days back…
“To say that Herman Cain has an imperfect grasp of policy would be unfair not only to George W. Bush in 1999 but also to Britney Spears in 1999.” — T.A. Frank in the New York Times Magazine.
j
The Pumas @ Hillbuzz are dregging up Larry Sinclair again to push that “Obama is really gay and hits on menz” golden oldie in order to clear Cain.
http://hillbuzz.org/why-wont-the-agenda-driven-media-report-on-barack-obama-being-gay-dating-actor-kal-penn-and-frequenting-chicago-bathhouse-mans-country-you-know-the-way-they-leaped-to-trash-herman-cain-with-u
Now that Reggie Love is leaving the WH their headline is:
BIZARRE: White House releases statement on breakup of Barack Obama and his boyfriend Reggie Love
Read more http://hillbuzz.org/bizarre-white-house-releases-statement-on-breakup-of-barack-obama-and-his-boyfriend-reggie-love-84658
The GOP is populated by psychopaths.
geemoney
It’s crazy:
“Cain, who has not as of yet actually been accused of engaging in sexual intercourse with a female subordinate, finds himself in the “sexual harassment” labyrinth, from which there are few paths out in the present era.”
These people can’t distinguish between rape and sexual harassment.
Cacti
@rikyrah:
About the only thing that might have topped him calling the Kochs “my brother from another mother” is if he started tap dancing during one of the debates.
metricpenny
Great critique ABL.
The author of the article couldn’t see the forest for the trees. If Cain were authentically black, he wouldn’t be a republican.
Jenny
New CBS poll: Romney falls into a tie with Newt for 2nd place with 15% support.
5 years. 100 million dollars. And Romney keeps sinking.
quannlace
Wow, oh wow. That article (at least from the excerpts) careens from Cain-apologia straight into Crazy Land. Black authenticity is determined by how dark your skin is?? All those (mythical) predatory co-eds who are so ‘hot for teacher’ somehow makes it alright? Cain got cancer years after the alleged incidents, so that should wipe the slate clean? Ay-yi-yi.
******
After all that though, I gotta say this was the funniest sentence quoted:
” “As John McCain closed in on Barack Obama in 2008, the ”
If closed in meant going down in a flaming fire ball.
Redshift
I’m still kind of stunned at the idea that there could be a rich white conservative who thought it would be a good idea to sit down and explain to all the ignorant lower orders who is “authentically black.”
I mean, I know Hanson is a professional idiot, but what could he have possibly thought this would accomplish? We’ve seen a lot (pre-Obama) of wingnuts trying to pretend not to be racist to appeal to suburbanites who don’t want to associate with racists, and this blows that out of the water. It tries to say “liberals are the real racists,” but muddles it by berating African Americans for not being on board with his obviously stereotypical list of characteristics of “authenticity.”
And that’s without even getting into the phony victimhood piggybacking on the nonsensical new talking points that the press paid no attention to indiscretions of Democrats that we all know about because the press was actually obsessed with them for months, and declaring that liberals hate African Americans with his list of “Southern” characteristics, when in fact there are a number of them in Congress and Republicans have none.
But hey, if he wants to start from where Derbyshire left off and further alienate non-racists, women, and everyone else who hasn’t tuned out everything but the right-wing bubble, more power to him!
RinaX
@BGinCHI:
Heh, Clayton Bigsby. Although I’m partial to referencing him as Uncle Ruckus myself.
Jebediah
I love how ABL turns Hansen’s ship of fail into such a win-filled post.
And so educational! I never knew, for example, how important one’s exact amount of pigment is, or that real conservatives prefer MORE melanin, thank you very much – or that, if you commit a series of transgressions, they are “serial” not serial.
Quaker in a Basement
It’s a little known fact that having a Brooklyn accent automatically makes you part Italian.
Citizen_X
Seriously? Their pro-Cain argument boils down to “Obamnmer talks white”? Gah.
And let me mention that I despise the whole vague, indefinable concept of “authenticity,” and have ever since it started showing up on Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirts. (“SINCE 1970. AUTHENTIC.” Uh, yeah. Authentic what?)
Oh, and “sex-poodle Al Gore”? WTF?
AA+ Bonds
I assume Obama went from Occidental to Columbia to Harvard by studying hard?
Or else he was quietly shooed into Harvard Law, then quietly shooed into Harvard Law Review, then quietly shooed into election as president of Harvard Law Review, i.e., the most selective student organization of any law school on the planet Earth.
Because those are all real things that can totally happen.
What this really demonstrates is that Hanson et al. have no fucking clue how a mere peasant could accomplish anything without being a multi-generational Ivy League legacy,
and also that Republicans are racist as shit.
Anonymous At Work
New definition of “authentic black” should be “the traits of the most prominent black in Republican leadership that don’t match the traits of the most prominent black Democrat. Update weekly.”
Rick Massimo
Serwer’s all over this. A highlight:
I forget who said it first, but sometimes (a dwindling fraction of the time) they write stuff to convince other people, and sometimes (a growing fraction) they’re just writing stuff to convince themselves.
Brachiator
By the way, I don’t think the either the Republicans or the Tea Party are simply play acting. Racism is still America’s problem, not the sole property of conservatives or Republicans. The GOP would have to deal with and purge racists from their ranks in order to embrace Cain, and probably are doing so, just as the Democrats had to do soul searching and fight within to establish firm support for a Civil Rights plank years ago.
Racists don’t want, would never accept a black front man. The most diehard racists are committed to the notion of white supremacy. You see this clearly in the freely posted comments of dopes who see Obama as polluting the White House with his presence. How would a Herman Cain presidency be preferable to this despicable bunch?
This was brought to mind again when reading a fascinating revisiting of John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me in the current edition of Smithsonian Magazine. A white author who darkened his skin and traveled the South, one of the most powerful observations he made was this one:
I’m not sure that I read the book, but I recall seeing a movie version of Black Like Me starring James Whitmore. But I never knew how long Griffin kept his experiment going.
gwangung
People of Color: “Been there. Done that. ” Only people still stuck in the 60s talk about authenticity.
AA+ Bonds
It might be nice to see a roundtable of prominent black Americans grill Herman Cain for an hour or so on national television, but of course Cain wouldn’t agree to that because the only people who actually like him are racist white conservatives
Redshift
@Brachiator:
Ah, that makes a lot of sense. There are so many angles to the Obama racist freakout; I hadn’t considered that one.
AA+ Bonds
Ann Coulter is a fucking Kluxer and a shame to this nation.
Bob Westal
It’s true that Victor Davis Hanson apparently really is a respected historian as well as a guy who writes really stupid, really sociopathic pieces about various topics. Still, he arguably even sold out history, acting as a consultant on Frank Miller’s brazenly bizarre neoconservative reading of history, “300.”
quannlace
It’s funny, seeing his three part name and it’s cadance, I kept thinking of the character from ‘Philadelphia Story,’ C.K. Dexter Havon.
**********************
Though looking at his publications, I think he’s more of a fan of films like ‘The 300 Spartans’ and this weekend’s ‘The Immortals.’ Lot’s of blood, gore and heaving pectoral muscles.
I guess Obama is just too civilized for him.
harlana
I didn’t know it was possible, but I think you just insulted dog-farts.
AA+ Bonds
There is one thing of which I am certain:
The Republicans have lost the non-white vote until 2020, at the least.
They simply cannot help publishing racist-as-shit articles like this in their organs, and I think they sincerely and stupidly believe that they can win the next decade’s national elections with white votes alone.
El Cid
Obama said “57” because he meant he had personally visited 47 states by that time in the campaign, i.e., all but three, but he said 57 instead of 47.
It was a slip of the tongue. It wasn’t a reference to the territories.
AA+ Bonds
Victor Davis Hanson is a fucking agenda-toting fascist in his field and the only people who think he’s a “good” historian are folks who don’t read historians
Caz
Your racism is so obvious and blatant that I wonder if people on Buffoon-Juice who agree with you just forgive the racism because you and they are on the same team, or are just so oblivious to reality that they don’t recognize the racism when they see it. Neither one would surprise me.
But I find it hypocritical and insidious that you use this site to promote your racist views under the guise of being for the best interests of America and Americans.
Even your posts about Cain show your unending racism, which is no small feat considering he is black himself.
This little echo chamber of unreality is quite entertaining theater for those of us who have a firm grasp of reality and is happening to our country. And I can always count on the angry black lady to put forth her racist views in a nicely wrapped package that purports to be insightful commentary on the issues of the day.
Keep up the good work.
Sincerely, Troll
ABL
@rikyrah: It stuck in my craw so badly that I couldn’t ignore it. It was more for my own catharsis then for readers.
Calouste
I’m surprised they haven’t rolled out the line that Obama isn’t an Authentic Black(r), because he hasn’t sexually harassed women like Authentic Blacks(r) like Herman Cain and Clarence Thomas.
AA+ Bonds
How the shit a bunch of Democrats see a Hoover Institution fellow as being some sort of reasoned Enlightenment figure in his professional life, it’s beyond me, anyway
AA+ Bonds
@Caz:
You know you had a good thing going when you were trying to troll from the center-right, it might have made the futzy Friedman-lovers who still hang around here insecure, but you’re aging rapidly here
Yutsano
@gwangung: Ahh yes. The insufferable need to fit in privilege’s box.
AxelFoley
Herman Cain is jokes.
AA+ Bonds
Victor Davis Hanson: an agenda-driven anti-empirical historian meets the Grand Wizard of the KKK
El Cid
__
Could NRO create an article so impossibly stupid that even it could not publish it?
AA+ Bonds
Victor Davis Hanson: he looks how he is
AA+ Bonds
Roger Moore
@Nutella:
I think this is a subset of the belief that the South is the most authentically American place in the country. Anything from there is Real American(TM), while stuff from other parts of the country is suspect. This is why, for example, NASCAR is the Real American(TM) car racing rather than Indy Car or NHRA.
Samara Morgan
@ABL: i have started seeing the Obama is a seecrut homoseckshual meme at Hot Air.
amazing.
do you think it will get any traction?
Hal
Listening to NPR today, and someone, can’t remember who, from the website The Root, said Cain was popular with white conservatives because of an unspoken agreement. They support Cain, and Cain says exactly what they want to hear about black people, at which point they can basically say, hey! I’m not racist! Herman Cain agrees with me.
Citizen_X
@Caz: Dude, I want to speak to your supervisor. You’re not even trying; you’re just mechanically repeating “Racist! Racist!” without any attempt at explanation.
Culture of Truth
Um… what?
AA+ Bonds
Xenos
@Hal: This is not too different from the deal with Colin Powell — that he not talk about race at all, under any circumstances.
AA+ Bonds
@Roger Moore:
And yet nothing’s changed since 18th/19th century American literature: the common man in American culture is still not a Southerner, and he visits the South for a terrifying and alienating experience that resolves when he journeys back to America.
See: Simpson, Homer; Griffin, Peter.
Martin
Obama had Bin Laden hunted down and shot in the head.
Cain made pizzas and poked random ladies with a blunt object.
Sign me on with the metrosexual, please.
Xenos
@Martin: We are
SpartaThebes!AA+ Bonds
Martin
@Hal: The history of race relations in the south for well over a century can be summed up with “I’m okay with them, so long as they know their place.”
Nothing’s changed.
Culture of Truth
Frederick Douglass, noted writer and orator, had (probably) a white father. Another noted NotReallyBlack fraud.
Hoodie
Hanson is clearly familiar with this research:
Also, it is clear that Obama is not familiar with such indicia of cultural authenticity as “Camptown Ladies” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”:
You would think this is parody if you didn’t know better.
Mike in NC
I hadn’t seen anything from Vic Hanson in ages, back when his head was firmly stuffed up Dick Cheney’s asshole.
BGinCHI
I think Huntsman has a real shot at this thing.
Martin
@Mike in NC: Hey, everybody poops.
AA+ Bonds
@Culture of Truth:
About 25% of what Hanson writes is flowery gibberish. He’s the sort of academic who never got told to shut up on his way up through the ranks of the insular conservative pseudo-historians’ club.
The NRO readership, a bunch of WASPy silver-spoon MBA dawdlers who like to think they can grasp complex ideas, just eats Hanson up.
Really, he’s walking, talking evidence of exactly how fucked up American academia has become.
BGinCHI
@Martin:
Hey, everybody
poopsHansons.Fixed for fecal accuracy.
Ecks
Brava, ABL, brava.
An opus, I applaud you.
Jebediah
@AA+ Bonds:
Hence the increasingly offensive attempts at vote suppression.
Ben Cisco (mobile)
Wow. That is some REALLY fucked up shit right there. I can’t imagine why you tortured yourself by reading the whole thing.
__
I agree that the GOP has lost pretty much every non-white vote for the forseeable future. Also, non-pudding-brained votes, too.
Jebediah
@Martin:
If shit needs to get done, you go with the guy who can get shit done… sign me up too!
BGinCHI
@AA+ Bonds: Um, easy there sparky. Not all of academia.
Just the conservative branch, which is too weak to bear any real fruit.
The rest of us are pretty smart and good looking.
harlana
@BGinCHI: you’re forgetting Newtmentum
BGinCHI
@harlana: Just like shit, it flows downhill.
Yutsano
@Caz:
This sentence is more telling than you realize.
tam1MI
According to Gallup, Cain has fallen to third place in the field behind Romney and the newest rising NotRomney, Newt Gingrich. Whew. It’s good to see that the Tea Party types have bought a clue and that their newest darling has not a hint of scandalous behavior concerning women. <–Sarcasm
Thus implying that his own father was a manwhore.
AA+ Bonds
@BGinCHI:
You have to admit that if you painted a picture of the problems that plague American research you would probably end up with an oil-on-canvas of the Hoover Institution in late autumn with Vic Hanson and Ed Meese playing hacky sack out front
ABL
@harlana: I laughed out loud.
travis
How can even the morons on the right, which is all of them to one degree or another, find any of this idiots words convincing? Fucking pathetic by any standard. I swear, few if any, right wing or even center right writers seem capable of even the most basic debate structure. None of these idiots could beat a high school team.
Gordie
Seriously. Please let Cain be the nominee. If there is any way to keep white Southerners from going to the polls next November, it’s to have on the ballot a black guy and another black guy.
ABL
@Caz: I laughed out loud at this, too. Harlana’s comment was funny. Yours is so stupid I wonder if you didn’t mean it as a joke.
No wait! I don’t care.
BGinCHI
@AA+ Bonds: What? In what fields? Science? The arts? Humanities?
I’m not following you.
The conservatives in think tanks are NOT academics, unless your dictionary is broken. In fact, the only utility think tanks and places like Hoover have is to get the right wing nutjobs out of classrooms and away from their sensible, productive colleagues.
The rest of the right wingers in academia are mostly in B schools, econ depts, Poli Sci, Engineering, and a smattering elsewhere. They are an annoying minority.
harlana
If you want to look on the bright side, just look at it as another “episode” in the awesome spectacle that is the death throes of the GOP. The bleatings of Erickson, insane, racist-fueled drivel about Cain being a better black than our black, AnybodyButRomney, Newtmentum(?) History unfolds before our eyes and the republican race is just a really expensive reality show. (No offense to reality shows).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@tam1MI:
Todays ABC had Cain surging along with Newt-a-mentum, this a new one?
The Great Orange Satan on it
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/11/1035481/-And-the-identity-of-the-real-Republican-frontrunner-is–unknown?via=blog_1
SiubhanDuinne
Whenever I see the name Victor Davis Hanson, I always have to stop and sort of count on my fingers and send my mental file clerk to work inside my head for a minute in order to work out the difference between him and Mark Victor Hansen.
And then I think, well, Victor Davis Hanson’s next book will probably be called “Chicken Shit for the Soul.”
Villago Delenda Est
The fucktards at NR are so hung up on the color of Cain’s skin that they actively ignore the content of Cain’s character.
The display of that character, under scrutiny and pressure over the last week or so, has been most enlightening, at least to me.
But NR is still focused on his skin color.
Amazing, that.
NOT.
GregB
Does anyone care to find out if Cain is actually selling bumper stickers that say:
Beat Obama with a Cain?
Link.
SiubhanDuinne
Oh, ABL, if you have a minute, check your email, I sent you another item for the ODS file.
AxelFoley
@Caz:
Caz is jokes².
piratedan
OT: as of right now, Police are breaking up Occupy Portland now, ahead of the 12:01 AM Sunday deadline that they gave protestors. So much for the liberal NW. Supposedly, they are confiscating certain building/camping supplies based on what I’m hearing from the news folks.
smintheus
@AA+ Bonds: It’s my field. Hanson did some very good work in ancient Greek history before he became a neocon pundit.
lamh35
OT, I have not watched a basketball game in years, but I might actually watch this one. A basketball games played on a airline carrier…wow.
Who should I root for?
http://www.cbs8.com/story/16016682/uss-vinson-ready-for-the-big-game-and-the-president
JCT
@Jenny: Gotta love the GOP primal scream ….. NOOOOOO, NOT MITT!
Villago Delenda Est
@smintheus:
Well, if the final product on the screen in 300 is any indication of Hanson’s chops as a historian, that “very good work” was an abberation.
scav
There’s a certain lackadaisical grim efficiency in their reaching into the usual scrap-bag of stereotypes, sticking a shiny happy-faced “Authentic!” sticker on a convenient few and hitting “Publish!”. They might even go so far as to just re-use the Willie Horton footage as evidence of yet another authentic voice coming out in support of good ol’ HC.
Social outcast
More evidence that deep knowledge of an esoteric subject like ancient greek warfare doesn’t stop you from expressing very stupid opinions about everything else.
SuzieC
Epic rant, ABL. Some pretty great comments too.
MikeJ
@lamh35:
Slam. Dunk.
Menzies
@Villago Delenda Est:
The only person who honestly thinks that 300 was historically accurate, and who was in a position to make it so, is Zack Snyder. As a version of the Frank Miller comic, it isn’t bad, I’m told. (I could be wrong here.) I believe the idea was that as one of the Spartan soldiers is telling the story to pump up his fellow soldiers, it would naturally be more badass than what happened in real life.
It’s my field too; VDH’s The Other Greeks is still considered a seminal work of classical history, because it was one of the first books to focus on Greek society rather than just the big-name generals and admirals. Given the quality of his punditry, though, I’m inclined to agree with your assessment of it as an aberration.
Raven
@MikeJ: Nice attire, bad anthem!
MikeJ
@MikeJ: Obama speaking now.
Tom Hilton
For the record, I am an Authentic White Person. Victor Davis Hanson, however, is just a Metrosexual Poseur.
smintheus
@Villago Delenda Est: An older academic I was friendly with back in the ’80s advised me never to have anything to do with advising for a Hollywood movie. Had some funny anecdotes dating from a movie he got involved with many years earlier. He said, and a few other academics have told me the same, that the movie types typically listen to your historical information and then ignore it.
West of the Cascades
OT, but there’s a college basketball game being played on the deck of an aircraft carrier tonight because … America, Fuck YEAH! I guess.
I hope the Department of Defense is using the revenues to help shrink the budget deficit.
Also, after reading the synopsis here, I’d like to shove Victor Davis Hanson’s head in a toilet and hit flush for about an hour.
MikeJ
@West of the Cascades:
It’s veteran’s day.
Kane
In one breath republicans are insisting that Barack Obama must show his papers to prove his legitimacy while arguing that Obama hates white people and that his policies are all about racial quotas and reparations. And in the very next breath they are arguing that Obama isn’t “authentically black” because he plays golf and he has some white friends and coworkers. I wish they would make up their minds.
Raven
@West of the Cascades: Amazing it took this long for the whining to start. It’s college sports too so cue up that shit as well.
ABL
@SiubhanDuinne: will do!
Raven
@MikeJ: Oh that’ll change it’s mind.
SuzieC
@MikeJ: We’re watching it. Obama just gave a great speech in which he mentioned the OBL mission. Now he’s shaking all the veterans’ hands. Great visuals. Better than Commander Codpiece and “Mission Accomplished.”
Kane
According to Victor Davis Hanson, not only isn’t Barack Obama authentically black, but only those within the tea party are considered authentically white.
Raven
@Kane: Make him go to his right.
JPL
I’m streaming the game on espn but I missed the speech. This has to be one of the most exciting venues for both the players and the military.
MikeJ
@Raven: Nobody better tell him that the gubbmint wastes money on music and sports and video games and tv and radio to entertain people locked up at sea for months at a time. And yes, they sometimes even provide entertainment in port. Gasp.
Free college bball tickets! The horror!
Raven
@JPL: I suspect the glow may fade when Sparty tries to keep up with this loaded Heels club.
JPL
This is awesome. I wonder if the coaches had the teams practice outside.
Raven
@JPL: Oh yea. Sometime pick up “My Losing Season”: by Pat Conroy about his senior year at the Citadel. He learned his game playing on the playgrounds in DC. Great book.
lamh35
@JPL: @MikeJ:
Alright, I tend to root for the underdog, so who should I root for now?
Jenny
I love how he walked in to “Hail to the Chief”
Raven
@lamh35: MSU, as they just said. “Roy Williams thought his front line was all going to be in the NBA this year”. MSU is very young.
Jenny
@JPL: I’m sure it will be posted later, tonight, on http://theobamadiary.com/
MikeJ
@lamh35:
Osama bin Laden? Mitt Romney?
I know nothing about basketball.
Raven
@MikeJ: Put the ball in the hole.
wrb
Just how and why Victor went insane mystifies me.
I still value his older work on the Classical world, and on farming.
Part of it was that in the post 9-11 moment he adopted some extreme positions, as some around here did, but instead of later recanting he doubled down and developed justifying theory.
dlnelson
They have no free thinking folks. They are told what to say and talk about starting very early in the morning, c span starts with Washington Journal. It is a swamp of right wing nuts. Then, the infiltration of Reuters, AP, (thinking Laurie Montgomery), she is a scribe for AEI; this has been planned and paid for over thirty years ago. You are not seeing independent politics, it is bought and paid for. The right wingers are fiercely organized, their top contenders are bought and paid for by corporations. Herman Caine is a distraction, he does not know the truth, or else he would remember it. He simply studies what the talking points are. How many republican boobs are left within the administration that Obama has to deal with. Make no mistake, they will do anything to get rid of him. Bush filled the epa, defense, education, etc. departments with folks from Liberty et al. He cannot go the the bathroom without some scum coming after him. He is as clean as they come, but he is hog tied by the past administration.
wrb
@Menzies:
It is a favorite of mine, and one that offers insight relevant to our time.
How did dude lose his mind?
harlana
Let us savor their desperation and tears.
WereBear (itouch)
@harlana: Few deserve it more.
Kobie
Yep, I remember never seeing anything in the media regarding Clinton or Spitzer. Thank you, VDH, for enlightening us.
Tehanu
TBogg used to make up V.D. Hanson names. The ones most apposite here are:
Victor Davis Conan the Historian Hanson
Victor Davis Non Compus Mentis Hanson
Victor Davis Erectus Dysfunctionus Hanson
and a whole Shorter:
9/5/07: [Shorter] Victor Davis Booga! Booga! Hanson:
A brown person is going to kill you… now! Okay…now! Now! Wait for it…now!now!now!now! now!…now!
Now!
Also, from Scott on World o’Crap:
Victor Davis We Who Are About To Watch You Die From A Comfortable Distance Salute You! Hanson
and from Doghouse Riley:
Victor Davis Tiberius Drusus Nero Vietnamicus Hansen
and my favorite ever:
4/19/09 – Gavin on Sadly, No!
Victor Davis Hanson, whose late career resembles a series of crank calls from Allan Bloom pretending to be Squidward.
Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Brachiator:
Well, I don’t know about that. I think an awful lot of teabaggers and Republicans overall indeed are racist; But I think a good many of them are the kind of watered down racists who throve for so many years before the Civil Rights Acts: the kind who just knew that segregation was something that both races needed, since blacks just weren’t up to keeping up in the same schools of their own white children and who believed somehow that blacks really, deep down liked segregation, and knew it was for their own good–aside from a few ne’er-do-wells like that troublemaker Martin Luther King and other peple like that.
These people, if you’d asked them, would have told you about how much they liked some of the blacks they knew, and it was almost always blacks who were poorer or of a lower social class, and who, though they would never likely put it in so many words, knew their place. They were the “good” blacks. You could trust them to come clean your house or help take care of your children or to work for you, but, damn, you’d never want to have them over to eat lunch or dinner at your house; you’d never ask them to your wedding or anyhting like that, though you might let their children come to your children’s birthday party, at least until the children reached 5 or 6.
These people would never really think of themselves as racists; they would draw themselves up indignantly if you ever hinted that they might be racists. Racists were low-class, violent drunkards, the kind of people who burned down black families’ houses or lynched uppity negroes. That was what racists were: subhuman thugs who would be no more welcome in these upright people’s drawing rooms than the nice black man who sold them their vegetables would be.
Now if you got on their good side, and they came to trust you enough to tell you what they really believed, the racism would seep out fairly quickly; but it wouldn’t be the violent kind of the low-class thugs; it would be quite nice, reasonable, low-key racism that did nothing more than acknowledge how blacks and whites just weren’t the same and never would or could be, and that everybody was better off and happier, too, if everybody just had the good sense to stick to their own kind. Birds of a feather and all that, don’t you know.
Now, as I said, they’d get around to how blacks aren’t really fit for lots of things whites are fit for; blacks are likely to be drunks; they’re sexually promiscuous; they just aren’t really as smart as we whites are. There’s a reason they’re all poor, right? There hasn’t been any slavery for 100 years, and they still ahven’t gotten it together. They’re all poor and lazy and ignorant, and, well, that’s just because that’s the way they are; nobody’s blaming them, it’s their nature. (Today these people would have a few delightful words about welfare and affirmative action and shit like that, too.)
Oh, sure, there are some really notable exceptions, like that nice black Doctor Whoever who looks after all the black people in the county, or the good Reverend So-&-So who leads his flock so diligently. Now maybe these people could conceivably be competent to even doctor or minister to white folks, or even hold some elected office, but, well, we know they are the exceptions, and they’d never be so presumptuous as to try to do something like that, lest they upset the natural order of things.
Well, these people are still with us. They’ve mellowed somewhat; they kind of had to, when segregation ended and society didn’t fall down into a fiery pit of rioting and rape the way they just knew it would. So they’ve learned to deal with the fact that black people can be doctors and lawyers and politicians and might even be teachers at their own white children’s schools and they might be damned good at it.
You know, a good way to look at it is what happened in Brooklyn after Jackie Robinson began playing for the Dodgers. Lots of people from Brooklyn would never think of letting Robinson–or any other negro–into their house, but damned if that darkie couldn’t hit! He was helping them win! They came to love Robinson, even if they still didn’t want any blacks living on their streets. And, too, they were aghast at the viciousness that Robinson dealt with: pitchers throwing balls at his head, runners spiking him as they slid into second base, fans in other towns screaming “nigger!” at him, to say nothing of throwing things at him on the field or sending him death threats. These people, many of them were racists, but they weren’t the worst kind of racists: they could see the unfairness of what Robinson went through, and they didn’t like it, even if they’d never want their daughters dating him
That’s what a lot of Republicans and teabaggers are today: Brooklyn Dodger fans of the 21st Century. They don’t want Jim Crow; they know racism is wrong; they harbor a shitload of racist assumptions, but they sure don’t want anybody to think they themselves are racists. This is one of the things that draws them so inexorably to Herman Cain: he’s living proof that they aren’t racists! “Of course I’m not a racist! How can you even say that? I’m voting for Herman Cain, for Christ’s sake! Would a racist do that?” And the fact that Cain is more stereotypically black than Obama is just even further, more delicious proof of that!
And even better, in their minds, Obama’s the kind of black dude we (liberals) would assume they’d vote for, since he’s only half black and therefore not scary to bigots, and yet they’re voting for the scaaaarier-ass black dude who’s so much blacker than Obama. In their minds, they’re so enlightened, they’re willing to vote for the scary black guy over the “good” black guy. (They don’t get that it’s Cain who’s the ultimate non-threatening “good black”, since he’s willing to do whatever the bigots who vote for him want him to do, but then telling the difference between what something looks like on the outside and what it really is has never been what conservatives have been best at.)
They think this is like some magic wand they can wave at us, and be free from any charge of racism, and it baffles them that this isn’t working. That’s one of the reasons I think Cain does have some kind of shot at the nomination: there’s such an emotional need for so many Republicans to be seen as not racist. A lot of these people will stick with him right until the end, whether that’s next week or in January or March or August or even November.
Kiril
ABL, I know you’re angry, but you can’t be this angry this early. It’s gonna be a long year. Pace yourself, girl.
jimbo123
Dear Republicans: Soooo, Herman Cain is “strong coffee”. And your point is…?
Odie Hugh Manatee
Someone on the right with the initials “VD” fired off some syphilitic junk that his lovers will gladly swallow? Not surprising in the least.
@Martin:
Fix’t.
Go with the guy who can do it and succeed rather than the one who wants to but fails. Repeatedly.
fourmorewars
Hermain Cain’s ‘black authenticity’ doesn’t survive a single listen of that ’08 radio spot. Featuring the whitest voice since the guy who introduced The Wonderful World of Disney saying things like ‘Hey, that’s TOO cold, bro. I don’t snuff my own seed!’
Well, maybe it would survive someone like VDH listening to it. ‘What do you mean the other fellow isn’t black?’
Thymezone
The top post is a nice takedown of the horse’s ass Cain, but … I really want him to get the GOP nomination. He is what that party deserves for itself right now, and the election outcome would also be what they deserve.
Go, Herman, go. Keep callin’ the women bitches and keep makin’ fun of knowing stuff, and make a rousing acceptance speech at the convention next summer, and then sit back and watch yourself get your ass kicked so bad you’ll break Goldwater’s modern record for losing in a landslide.
AA+ Bonds
@BGinCHI:
I think we’re actually agreeing with each other – I’m just saying that right wing think tanks are boils that need to be lanced, full of pus-headed “academics” who couldn’t cut it in their own field, and yet also full of money.
AA+ Bonds
I also would not underestimate the racism of Cain’s supporters, most of whom know damn well that there is no threat of a black man actually becoming the Republican candidate
@Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
Exactly.
cckids
@j:
No. Hell no.
AA+ Bonds
@Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
^ And this is probably the best explanation for Cain’s support that I’ve read anywhere
AA+ Bonds
@j:
At least explain that this group is a GOP front organization that floats trial balloons for Karl Rove.
AA+ Bonds
It probably would have helped Cain with the “who me racist” argument if he hadn’t joked about electrifying Hispanics to death – that tipped his hand, since racism against Hispanics, like racism against Arabs and Persians, remains something raucously supported by much of the Republican base.
Ben Cisco
@Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): Out-fucking-standing!
Southern Beale
Victor Davis Hanson is an old white guy. And I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ve tolerated old white guys weighing in on which blacks are “authentic” in this country since before the days of the 13th Amendment.
rikyrah
ABL,
when he broke into SONG at the National Press Club, I was done.
My last Black nerve was snapped.
he made me CRINGE.
CRINGE as a Black person.
For whatever Black people may have, in terms of disappointments, with President Barack Obama, they cannot honestly point to anything that Barack Obama has done to make them CRINGE as a Black person in America.
Herman Cain?
from Call me Cornbread…
to ‘ shucky ducky’
to My Daddy told me to sit in the back of the bus
to I’m a Koch Brother from another mother
to breaking into Song at the National Press Club…
it was one cringeworthy moment after another.
I LMAO at the pure idiocy of the GOP, thinking that they could just put up any Black person, and Black folk would actually vote for Cain, as he espouses the Tea Party nonsense.
I don’t even have to get to Cain’s POLICY issues to point out how idiotic this is.
The Majority of voters in the Black community are BLACK WOMEN.
IN WHAT WORLD, would Black women turn against Barack Obama..
Barack Obama who has never carried himself with anything but self-respect..
Barack Obama, who has never shown anything but love and devotion to his beautiful Black wife…
and turn TO a shuckin’ and shinning and grinning Mistrel like Cain who, while having a Black wife at home, can’t seem to keep his hands off White Women in the workplace..
like I said… I don’t even have to get to his bullshyt Tea Party policies for this clown to be a non-starter with Black folks. it’s the LACK of the content of his character, that has done him in with Black folks.
muddy
@wrb: Also he got the big money once he started being nutty, or did he get the money first? Anyway he used to be more reasonable, and was a Democrat previously. I think he was always prejudiced against Mexicans though. He built a big wall to keep them out of his place.
I was at a dinner party with him 4-5 years ago, he thought of himself as a humble country farmer, quite blue-collar. He monopolized the conversation telling long and boring stories of how much he was oppressed. Quite tiresome.
AxelFoley
@Raven:
That’s what she said.
j
@AA+ Bonds:
Apparently the servers have crashed, but at your leisure Google “Obama went to Mars” in a few hours.
According to “sources” (per the Seattle Examiner)[[http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/mars-visitors-basiago-and-stillings-confirm-barack-obama-traveled-to-mars]] Obama was a time traveler who went to Mars as a student at Occidental College as part of a CIA program in 1981 and 1983 (because his mother was a CIA agent specializing in Kenya and Indonesia).
He was seen on the surface of Mars by at least 2 different military people at two different times.
He has a top priority as does his appointee to DARPA
Just Google it. I read it all on sever sites today, but ALL of them are down right now.
HERE’S A NEW LINK!! This baby’s got wheels!!~
http://www.ktradionetwork.com/unexplained/mars-visitors-confirm-barack-obama-traveled-to-mars/
And to think, all the wingnuts could come up with in 2008 was that Obama was a master at mass hypnotism.
Little did they know!!!
ChristianPinko
Don’t worry, scrote! There are plenty of ‘tards out there living really kick-ass lives!
Villago Delenda Est
@smintheus:
That I find incredibly easy to believe, because lord only knows how my I and other Army officers would laugh our asses off at Hollywood’s depictions of the US Army, and warfare in general.
“Its sounded like firecrackers!” is the standard line of anyone who hears gunfire who isn’t used to actual gunfire which sounds like…well, firecrackers! Not what you hear down at the octoplex.
To be fair, the needs of someone making a movie…to make it entertaining and insure it will at least make back what it cost to put together…means that more often than not historical or technical accuracy is tossed out the window.
Which makes me wonder why they bothered with any historical adviser on 300, which should have been seen, from the getgo, as not turning history into a movie, but turning a comic book into a movie.
Mark S.
Just because women find him repulsive doesn’t mean he can’t sexually harass them.
@Bob Westal:
Yeah, I think he’s actually done some decent history, but he’s the kind of historian I can’t stand. The kind that thinks the Greeks invented everything and learned nothing from their browner neighbors, who were all savages and hated democracy.
j
More “proof” this time with hot links!
http://www.ufodigest.com/article/mars-visitors-basiago-and-stillings-confirm-barack-obama-traveled-mars
WAIT A MINUTE, MABLE.
IF these alleged witnesses are now 50 and 44 years old, and they both worked for the CIA Mars project in the 1970s…that means that THEY were either child geniuses, OR that THEY made a mistake in the time space continuum and forgot to regress back to their “Earth Date” selves.
(OH, just read all the shit, for crying out loud. It DOES explain how Obama keeps in shape, using Mars magic age shifting technology(.
Wingnuts are insane.
So, not is he a Kenyan Indonesian Communist Fascist Socialist Black Christian Muslim…HE’S AN ALIEN FROM MARS TOO!!!
El Cid
Awesomer and awesomer.
Villago Delenda Est
@j:
OK, now I know for a fact that the MarsBase wasn’t established until 1987, because I was communications officer for it, so this is just a load of hooey. There were no military personnel on Mars before we put the first tent up in ’87.
j
@El Cid: He was asked a rambling question about his campaign schedule and if he was going to visit all 50 states. HE started out by saying the Secret Service nixed him going to Alaska or Hawai’i and then turned to an aide and asked “how many stops have we done so far?” When he was told the number he asked “how many more to go” and was given that number. He then turned to the reporter and added the CAMPAIGN STOPS together and said “so we have 2 or three to go, so we’ll see”.
The wingnuts (who can’t add, or follow thoughts) thought he was talking about STATES, but he was talking about appearances, and if there was any time available to actually visit all 48 that he was being allowed.
It’s another “Dean Scream” thing w/ the MSM repeating that same old GOP zombie lie.
Aaron Baker
And, as always when VDH is the subject of discussion, I have to share an excerpt or two from his Epaminondas novel, No Man a Slave:
Writing this bad requires more than garden-variety incompetence. It’s the product of a kind of anti-talent or negative genius–with which Hanson is supremely anti-gifted. I’m in awe, really, and I want the rest of you to be in awe, too.
El Cid
@Villago Delenda Est:
They needed to make sure that the leather thongs and tans were historically accurate with their fantasies.
Svensker
@Aaron Baker:
Awesome.
j
@Villago Delenda Est: Don’t ask me, I’m just “reporting” what the wingnuts said.
Hell, I didn’t know they had working toilets in Kentucky until I saw one at a rest stop on the highway. Apparently they don’t have bleach or soap, though.
El Cid
@j: BUT! BUT! TELEPROMPTER!
smintheus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Or why anybody with a camera ever bothers with historical advisers, whose insights they routinely ignore.
I once was approached by the producer of a PBS style series on ancient and modern seapower, who wanted me to be a talking head. I declined because I had no control over what they’d do in stitching up my comments to suit themselves. The producer still wanted to run his ideas by me and get my insights into the use and purposes of ancient navies (for free as it happens). Turned out that he was planning to create a grossly anachronistic portrait of seapower in the ancient world. I spent a couple of hours showing where and why his ideas were inaccurate historically, and explaining how navies were actually employed. And it was in one ear and out the other; he had a fixed idea on the subject (in which he himself had zero expertise), and however goofy it was, he intended to run with it. And I thought to myself ‘Thank gaud I turned him down and don’t have to spend several years grinding my teeth at his blithe indifference to facts.’
Chet
Whenever I hear righties talking about “authenticity”, I’m reminded of this (surprisingly forthright) Derbyshire article from 2003:
Confessions of a Metropolitan Conservative
Jebediah
@Villago Delenda Est:
I don’t believe a word of it. When Candace Flynn went to Mars she was running all over the place and I didn’t see ANY signs of military bases.
Chris
@Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
I know other people have said this, but this is probably the best explanation I’ve read in a long time not just for Gooper attitudes towards Herman Cain, but their attitudes towards race in general.
(I continue to call it George Wallace racism versus Nixon racism. The vast majority of GOP voters today are the latter, who don’t actually want hard legalized segregation back, but still have tons and tons of racial prejudices that’re easy as hell to exploit in an election).
And you’re right about the immense emotional need of white conservatives not to be seen or see themselves as racist. Though I think in a lot of cases, that has more to do with the civil rights movement’s success at turning that into a dirty word than any deeply held value. They’re like young kids who’re at the point where they know not to do certain things because it makes Mom angry, upset or disappointed, but haven’t yet made the leap to understanding why those things are wrong in and of themselves.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Aaron Baker:
Crikey.
ABL
@Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): i always love your comments. spot on.
ABL
@rikyrah: i hear ya. he makes my skin crawl, too.
lovable liberal
Fixed!
(But I guess that’s a guy thing.)
Yutsano
@Jebediah: WIN!!
@Sarah Proud and Tall: Look away Miss Sarah. Your delicate constitution is too frail to witness such atrocities.
Jebediah
@Yutsano:
Thanks!
Earlier tonight I was doing a little P&F proselytizing with a co-worker. I’ll found out next week if it worked….
Yutsano
@Jebediah: You could play up Perry the Platypus and his awesomeness. Or mention that Ferb is probably the best character evar. Or the one college level vocab word that sneaks into every episode. And then there’s the music. The creators write all the songs. They’re mad geniuses.
Caz
So I’m just crying “Racist!” without any justification simply for the sake of saying it? Isn’t that what you progressives do every time someone disagrees with or criticizes Obama for anything? You can’t criticize Obama or organize a political movement against Obama and his administration without you progressives yelling “Racist.” Your playing of the race card is so predictable and tired and even when real racism rears its ugly head, your complaints about it don’t have any credibility because you cry wolf too much. So from now on, any time you criticize Cain, you’re racist, just because he’s black.
Besides, how can someone who supports Cain and criticizes Obama be racist? Is there some type of selective racism that I’m not aware of? I thought racism meant you hated ALL members of a race, not just the ones you disagree with politically.
I was pleased to see at least a couple entertaining responses to my trolling though.
By the way, how many times do I have to comment before I’m not considered a troll anymore? Or does troll simply mean someone who disagrees with you all on here? Or maybe it’s a reference to some World of Warcraft character that has the power to make people see reality.
Whatever. Keep up the entertainment. Those of us who are in touch with reality appreciate the levity from time to time, especially when you’re intending it to be legit commentary.
But how does anyone NOT see how racist ABL is? Virtually every post is dripping with racism, and she doesn’t even try to hide it anymore. I know you can get away with racism as long as you’re a progressive, but still, someone should be calling her hypocrisy out, if only to help shore up your credibility as a group.
Quite an entertaining echo chamber of useful idiots though!
Yutsano
@Caz:
Erik is that you?
(Only ABL will get that. But she’ll chortle anyway.)
Jebediah
@Yutsano:
Everything you say is true, plus I recently decided that Irving’s older brother Albert is a perfectly conceived and executed nerdy older brother.
I did tell her that I like how carefully they draw the guitars the boys play – I am pretty sure in one episode Phineas was playing a Gretsch.
And yes – the songs! Do you have a favorite? I lurve “Nemesis” and “Atlantis” but they are uniformly fantastic.
Jebediah
@Caz:
You’re a troll because you’re a troll, you sad fuckwit.
Canadian Shoggoth
@Caz:
You need to stop trying to tap the race card for white mana.
JR
@Wildcat12:
No, 57. See:
50 states +
51 Puerto Rico +
52 Washington DC +
53 American Samoa +
54 American Virgin Islands
55 Guam +
56 first half of Texas caucus
57 second half of Texas caucus
Because Texas is somehow split, maybe ’cause it’s so big? I dunno, but that’s how ABL got to 57. I may be a hillbilly, but I can count on my fingers – and if necessary, take off my shoes (if it’s cold out). ;-)
And, also too, I got a B in Calc III. With my shoes on!
JR in WV
Chris
@Caz:
Oy gevalt. They worship a political party where a black man can’t even register his offense at the word “nigger” without having to apologize immediately thereafter for his audacity, and they still can’t tell how they’re racist.
Perfect specimen, though, of what Jimpersons was talking about, and the HUGE emotional need not to be seen as racist.
Patrick Phelan
See, I didn’t mind Caz recently, he seemed to be doing better, but if he’s saying “I like Cain! So how can I be racist?” then ABL criticising Cain and liking Elizabeth Warren makes her super-duper anti-racist never-prejudiced to the fiftieth level, right?
John
“Some clown who calls himself Victor Davis Hanson?” Really? He is a clown, of course, but I have little interest in reading a blog by someone who is so unaware of all internet traditions that they’re first hearing of Hanson through this article. Dude’s been one of the most ridiculous “warbloggers” for the last decade.
Aaron Baker
John,
I have no idea whether this is ABL’s first brush with the awesome anti-greatness that is Victor Davis Hanson, or she’s just being dismissive–but really, it’s an enormous bunch of internets out there, too big a bunch for anyone to keep track of ALL the crazy.
Aaron Baker
I’d grant that someone could well support Cain and criticize Obama and not be a racist. But you’re suggesting that one who does both these things CANNOT be a racist, as if the only racists out there would NEVER under any circumstances vote for a black guy. Here’s my “how can” question: how can you believe that Klan-intensity hatred is the only kind of racism?
Brachiator
@Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
I have never understood this false historical revisionism. White Citizens Councils were made up of the elite of white racist communities. And as even Senator Robert Byrd admitted, you had to belong to the Klan in order to move up socially and politically. And one of the points of Klan gear was to allow “respectable” people to do disrespectable acts without being recognized.
Once again, you are mistaken. There were, maybe still are, white people who would rather die than be treated by a black doctor.
But we don’t have to go that far back in history. In 2008, pundits were speculating whether working class whites in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and elsewhere would be able to put aside their natural racist tendencies and vote for a black man. And we had Geraldine Ferraro angrily declaring that Obama was an unqualified affirmative action candidate. To suggest that it is only Republicans who are racist is absurd on the face of it.
Racism, American Apartheid, was always founded on the notion of white supremacy. Clearly, the Republican Party has given aid and comfort to racists. And clearly, we have posters like Caz here who cannot simply embrace their racism, and stupidly project it onto ABL and other Balloon Juicers.
But the insistence that Republicans are racists who support Cain just because they want to avoid the stigma of being called racists is just and reductive.
@Aaron Baker: @Aaron Baker:
Here is my question. How could a racist sincerely want Cain to be president?
Follow up question. How did Bobby Jindall get 66 percent of the vote in the recent Louisiana gubernatorial elections if all Republicans are racist?
Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Brachiator:
I was trying to explain how the people themselves thought (and still think today) and how they saw (and see) themselves. I was not saying that they were right, though I can see how I could have been clearer about that.
Aaron Baker
Well, if he (the racist) thought Herman Cain was so much better than all those other black people.
This isn’t just hypothetical for me. When I was an adjunct Humanities instructor in the early 90s, I shared a desk with an older gentleman who was initially well-disposed to Clarence Thomas, but then changed his mind–not because he thought Anita Hill’s allegations were true, but because he’d learned that Thomas was “a miscegenator” (his word).
Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I’ll chip in again, as I’ve been mulling over my 21st Century Brooklyn Dodger Fans of the Republican Party™ theory this morning.
I think that one of the most important things to keep in mind about low-grade racists’ support of Cain is that they can get something from him; he’s useful to them: they can point to their support for him as “proof” that they aren’t bigots, and, if he somehow got in office, he’d govern the way they want him to. So he’s a “good” little darkie. Not like that unpredictible and threatening Obama; they get nothing from him.
To go back to Robinson: Recall that from 1947, Robinson’s first year, and 1957, the year the Dodgers left for Los Angeles, they won the flag in 1947, 49, 52, 53, 55 and 56. That’s 6 times in 10 years. Now, Robinson by himself wasn’t the only reason, but he was a huge reason. It became a thing where, as I said above, well, damn, but that darkie sure can hit! He may be a darkie, but he’s our darkie, and he’s doing a shitload to help us win! So they got behind him.
But what if somebody else had been the first black Dodger? Let’s say that the first black American baseball player had been a second baseman who hit, say, .241 with only 7 home runs and didn’t steal any bases and hit into a lot of double plays and walked 22 times in a year. Somebody like that would have been a drag on a good team. Now, if that had been Jackie Robinson, what do you think the fans would have thought of him? Well, I can’t say for sure, but I’ll bet a buttload of them would’ve been throwing beer bottles at him in Brooklyn, just the way fans on the road did.
As I say, I can’t prove any of this, but my guess is that low-grade bigots like blacks–selected blacks–one at a time, if they know their places, and if the whites get something out of it. It could be something as mundane as good vegetables that nice, soft-spoken old man down the road sells, or it could be something as noteworthy as a National League pennant, but the whites in question need to get something. As for knowing their places, well, Robinson really didn’t “know his place”. If he had, he never would’ve taken the spot with the Dodgers to begin with. But he also knew that the only way to make it was not to fight back, to take what they gave him with dignity. The irony was that this was the best way to fight back of all, but I don’t think too many whites understood this then; he seemed like a nice, well-spoken colored boy who could really hit and knew his place.
But blacks need to meet both of these qualifications before white low-grade bigots will count them as “friends” or whatever. Black people who know their places but can’t give whites anything don’t get the best treatment. Think about our black .241-hitting second baseman. He’s nothing. Just scenery at best, or at worst, an incompetent who’s taking some hard-working white guy’s spot on the team. He gets no slack.
Herman Cain is the casual bigot’s dream candidate. He gives them proof that they’re just as open minded as we liberals are–or maybe more open-minded: he’s even blacker than Obama!–and he’s a suck-up. He eagerly plays the “good colored boy” who knows his place! He calls out other blacks for being no-good, lazy welfare cheats! Just like the bigots knew they were all along! And you can be damned sure he won’t push any affirmative action or anything else that will inconvenience white Americans.
I don’t know how long people will stick by him, but I wouldn’t write him off any time too soon. A lot of people stand to gain from his candidacy, even if it’s only emotional needs he fulfills. Sometimes emotional needs are more important than economic ones.
cokane
wow man
this is one of the best takedowns of Hanson I’ve ever read. Congratulations, and thank you
NRH
@JR: I think the problem is that you’re counting “50 states” in one entry and then “Texas Part One” and “Texas Part Two” as two more entries. If you’re splitting out Texas into two parts, then you have Texas Part One, Texas Part Two, and the other 49 states. Then the total comes out to 56. That’s why I think it more likely that either he was adding up campaign appearances, purely had a verbal slip from 47 to 57, or just plain said the wrong thing entirely.
gil mann
@Brachiator:
Seriously? Ever heard the term “one of the good ones?” That’s been a hallmark of racism forever, that there are exceptions that prove the rule. Check out the “Prince, Michael, and Eddie ain’t niggers” bit from Do the Right Thing, sums it all up beautifully.
I think maybe you’re coming at this from the position that lefties are too quick to smear righties with racism, and if so, I’m with ya, but you’re way off with that particular question. And if you wanna get into white supremacy, VDH is most certainly not one of the good ones.
Peggy
@Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
Precise analysis, but Cain can’t last thru November.
Cognitive dissonance is not an overwhelming motive force. Besides the moneybags will step on the circus, see Palin.
I’m reminded of a cosmopolitan Georgia lady who indignantly sent photos around of Obama with his feet up on “our White House furniture”.
Chris
@Brachiator:
I don’t know about ALL Republicans.
However, since you asked about Bobby Jindall… I only know one Jindall enthusiast. She’s a white, conservative, upper middle class Southerner (albeit the transplanted kind whose family moved there from the North in the 1970s). A year or two ago, she was quite taken with the idea of Jindall running for president in 2012, because “oooo, he’s gonna be our Obama!” In other race-related news, she also categorically refuses to date nonwhite people or to live in nonwhite neighborhoods, where she feels that her safety’s in danger even after you’ve shown her crime reports that show there hasn’t been a violent crime in that neighborhood in over a decade. She’s willing to tolerate one or two nonwhite friends if they’re presentable enough (e.g. her one Puerto Rican friend who’s light skinned, upper middle class and speaks unaccented English), but as a group, she’s firmly convinced that Puerto Ricans and Hispanics in general are crime-ridden leeches destroying America.
(It’s the same outlook Charles Lindbergh expressed back in the 1930s when he said “a few Jews add strength and character to a country, but too many create chaos. And we are getting too many.”)
In other words, she’s the exact picture of the voter Jimpersons described. She’s not a Jim Crow white supremacist, but she has racial hangups out the wazoo and it’s very easy to bring them to the surface. She’ll vote for Bobby Jindall or Herman Cain, but she’d nevertheless be horrified if either of them ever moved in next door, sat down in her church or married into her family.
Does it make sense? Of course not, but it is what it is. How many voters does the GOP have like her? I don’t know, but based on the sample of conservatives I personally know, I’m going to say quite a few.
See above. Yes, some people are complete unrepentant white supremacists of the kind who’d rather die than be treated by a black doctor, as you said – and on the other hand, some people (much more than in the past, thank God) are complete integrationists who genuinely don’t care about people’s race. But there’s also a hell of a lot of middle ground in between the two positions where things aren’t as clear-cut, and where people manage to hold fairly racist opinions without being 100% cross-burning sheet-wearing segregation-now-segregation-forever George Wallace nostalgists. And ever since the sixties, Republicans have been exploiting the shit out of that gray area. That’s all there is to it.
ABL
@Caz:
Well, there’s your problem. You don’t know what racism is. Moreover, you’re a jackass:
Yes you are. Precisely. And being a dick about it.
No. It’s not.
This is not true; merely a figment of you imagination.
You’re not the arbiter of what “real racism” is just as Hanson is not the arbiter of blackness. That statement is both privileged and stupid.
Again, this is stupid. You seem to think that it’s not racist unless it’s accompanied by a set of fashionable white robes and a burning cross. This is both uninformed and impossibly stupid.
Through either ignorance or abject brain deficiency, you do not understand what racism is. Simply liking a black person, having black friends, or liking that one Wu Tang song doesn’t counterbalance any racist actions or behaviors. Your understanding of racism is facile and not fit for adult discussion. I reckon the reason folks call you a troll is that they find it hard to believe that anyone as ignorant as you plainly are would continue to post comments in a forum where the commenters, by and large, have a better grasp of political and sociological issues. This behavior — insisting on posting with such relentless stupidity combined with your pathetic delusion that you are somehow more enlightened than those here who are able to have the more nuanced discussions you are incapable of having, and make arguments that are more cogent than “I’m not racist! I like Herman Cain!” — reveals you to be either a troll or stupid. I’m guessing people were being kind in their assessment of you as the former, although it is becoming readily apparent that you are the latter.
Accordingly, and on behalf of Balloon Juice, we apologize for calling you a troll. Henceforth I will take great care never to do it again — I will simply call you stupid.
Hopefully you feel better now.
ABL
@Yutsano: and chortle, i did!
Menzies
@wrb:
Like most members of wingnut academia, he decided ideology was more important than facts.
Aaron Baker
Caz:
It’s certainly true that a given website tends to have a consensus on several issues, and a poster who disagrees with that consensus is more likely to be called a troll than someone who never disagrees with the owners of the site. I’ve seen exactly that phenomenon happen on more than one site–though I’m not sure I’ve seen it here. Is it unfair? Sure. Does it rate very high on the world’s scale of unfairness? Not so much. And it’s a phenomenon you can avoid completely by posting on sites where everyone’s in agreement with you (the internet is very big; those sites exist).
But with you, it isn’t just a matter of honest disagreement. You’ve called ABL, one of the owners of this site, a racist. Do you really expect a polite response to that?
Also, more than one person up above has pointed, and pointed pretty politely, to the overly narrow nature of your (and Brachiator’s) definition of racism. I didn’t call you a troll; Chris and Gil Mann didn’t call Brachiator a troll. We all pointed to evidence (actual evidence) that your (and Brachiator’s) conception of racism is too narrow.
Are you open to at least some qualification of your earlier statements? That would reassure people that you actually have a good-faith interest in serious discussion.
Now if you’re not willing to reconsider in the face of some countervailing evidence, that’s certainly your right, and you might even be correct–though I think probably not in this case. Rather than insult one of the owners of the site, however, what you should say in that instance is “I’m sorry; I just don’t agree; X, Y, & Z don’t change my mind,” with your reasons why right after that. That, at any event, would be the non-trollish approach.