Representative King Defends His Tired Racism

If there is anything so sad as a phone-picture of a printed out self-defense for one's racism resulting in the loss of committee seats, referring to that as an assault on "Freedom of Speech", and including a thumb, I guess it would have to be something especially self-congratulatory and insufficient as, maybe, a president hosting championship award-winning athletes at the White House during a government shut down with some room temperature fast food served on good silver and china, but without benefit of even chafing dishes and sterno. Which would be especially sad if that same president was connected to a local hotel with a kitchen that could possibly have catered even a basic business convention chicken dinner with more class. It would have to be something as pitiably late and un-self aware as an until just-now anti-LGBT, pro-Assad and pro-torture candidate thinking an apology will make her a viable Democratic presidential candidate. It would have to be...

But wait. What we have is long-time embarrassing racist Steve King, recently re-elected to his congressional seat in Iowa's 4th District, finally getting told he's a little too much. Huh! Because he said that he didn't understand when phrases like "white supremacist" became dirty words. I've talked about his racism on this blog a few times, because it affects a lot of what he says and does.  It could be a good sign that he is being censured after a fashion just now, but he was supported right through his re-election being the same exact racist guy! Prior to just now, he was supporting Faith Goldy, who is pretty openly white supremacist, and reiterated the Soros tropes that were part of the toilet-seat culture that influences the Squirrel Hill shooter. Prior to his election, he lost corporate support from several companies--but just now the GOP wants to distance themselves from King's rhetoric? What about that support Joni Ernst and Ted Cruz and Chuck Grassley gave him?

Well, what about the support that the GOP still gives to Donald Trump? Because if they don't especially love what Rep. King has been saying, the funny old thing is, Trump says quite a lot of the same. King's rant about somebody else's babies being unfit to carry forward western civilization is aligned to a recent tweet from Trump of a Pat Buchanan column that suggests that immigration will cause the United States to cease to exist. Buchanan is an old man, and I still am furious about the time I heard him speak about a "culture war" at the RNC and knew he was talking about a war on me. When Trump Tweeted that (well, someone tweeted, because I don't think Trump has this reference) that Buchanan should not go gentle into that good night, I almost thought for an instant the sumbitch might be dead. But my hopes all around account for little.  Buchanan and his ideas live. Trump and his administration can be considered pretty much pro VDARE, and still pro Steve King, and when Steve King describes the label he has as racist as "worn out" he is quite wrong, because the label of "racist" will not actually be worn out until folks like him have faded away. And even still it will remain necessary as a warning.

If I were still in any sense an optimist, I might want to believe that what happened was a reckoning for the GOP, and that Rep. Kevin McCarthy is a braver and more honest man than Paul Ryan had been (not a hard feat) and has drawn a line in the sand that needed to be made.

But if I don't believe that, it is because folks like Senator Ted Cruz can't quite disavow King, and maybe might support him again in the future, should the occasion that they need his support in Iowa (1st state in the presidential primaries) arise. And they certainly have shown no inclination to disavow President Trump at all, whatever hand-wringing over his Tweets and his cruder language might go on.

And as for King, he nonetheless won his election, and for now, is still representative of some portion of the state of Iowa, intentionally, on purpose. Will the majority of his district, less than two years from now, realize what he is and decide they don't care for it? Will his primary opponent be a less bigoted, but still conservative, better option?

I can't say I know the answers to these things, but I think they matter very much. It has to matter that words like "Nazi" and "fascist" and "white supremacist" have meanings, and those meanings impact how human beings are treated--not the people called those things, when called them correctly, but the people who are harmed by those ideologies and whose rights necessitate we call bad things by their proper names.

The Rime of the RW Radio-Listener

I'm going to forgo a discussion on the big crowd of anti-racist protestors who converged in Boston with the intent of countering a so-called "alt-lite" (AHEM!) "free speech" (AHEM! AHEM!) rally, because I don't know what there is to even say. No one on the anti-racist side was anti-freedom of speech, they just understood that the rally in question, on the heels of what happened in Charlottesville, had to be met with numbers.

It was, and well-done, and even Trump realized he couldn't turn this into an "OMG Leftist anti-cops and stuff!" thing. (Not that some digital a-holes aren't going to try it on. There's a lot of photo-shops out there trying to hang up antifa as worse than they are--I recommend taking any picture of so-called anti-racism or leftist violence with a grain--some of the photos are from Occupy anarchist crashers years back. In general, leftist skull crackers isn't the problem with these rallies.)

Nah. I want to go back in the Wayback machine to reminisce about a wedding I went to circa 1996 or 1997. I was on my first marriage, and the bride was a cousin of my ex's. I was in my maxi-length empire waist navy blue Wanamaker's favorite all-purpose looking awesome dress--I loved this article of clothing. I kid you not, it was the perfect cut and fabric (stretchy) for a curvy person who wanted to look modest and sophisticated and I wore that thing to weddings, and job interviews and work and damn! I really wish I still had a dress like that in my wardrobe.  Navy is the greatest of stealth neutrals! I was chilling around the pool at the hotel in Wildwood at the wedding after-party where drinks and a Viennese table with pinenut cookies and cake and finger foods and whatnot were available, and I found myself in political conversation with someone who marked me out as a liberal.

"Well, I know you are a Clinton-fan" I think, was his actual words. The wedding-guest who stopped me was a short, stout, 1990's era Van Dyke (people who call it a goatee are wrong, because that refers to a beard only--the circle-beard is actually a Van Dyke) early-adopter. "Say what?" I improvised, caught flat at the idea that I literally wore my bleeding-heart liberalism in my sleeve. Was it my wire-rim specs? Something about the insouciance of my long-banged Rachel cut?

"Have you heard about the Clinton death count?"

"Vince Foster and who else?" I snapped back, as if to show I was aware of all internet memes, in an era when internet memes were not yet really a thing.

MSNBC Says "So long and thanks for all the hate" to Uncle Pat

Long-time commentator and people-hater Pat Buchanan, known for declaring culture war in 1992 and basically being the hard-right conservative liberals shudder to occasionally agree with at MSNBC, has been released from his relationship with the cable news station that "leans forward."  The pundit will still be penning columns and books and appearing on television from time to time, but you know it's a huge blow to a man's freedom of speech when his main employer just can't deal with the racism anymore. So naturally, Buchanan wrote a bit about that for The American Conservative:

They are saying that a respected publisher, St. Martin’s, colluded with me to produce a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic book, and CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, Fox Business News, and the 150 radio shows on which I appeared failed to detect its evil and helped to promote a moral atrocity.

If my book is racist and anti-Semitic, how did Sean Hannity, Erin Burnett, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Megyn Kelly, Lou Dobbs, and Ralph Nader miss that? How did Charles Payne, African-American host on Fox radio, who has interviewed me three times, fail to detect its racism? How did Michael Medved miss its anti-Semitism?

In a 2009 cover story in the Atlantic, “The End of White America?” from which my chapter title was taken, professor Hua Hsu revels in the passing of America’s white majority. At Portland State, President Clinton got a huge ovation when he told students that white Americans will be a minority in 2050. Is this writer alone forbidden to broach the subject?

That homosexual acts are unnatural and immoral has been doctrine in the Catholic Church for 2,000 years. Is it now hate speech to restate traditional Catholic beliefs?

One sighs--clearly, MSNBC let this go on too long without saying a word. How did all these various persons and outlets fail to see the racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia that has long been part and parcel of Buchanan's work? They didn't fail to see it--they failed to acknowledge it.  Unfortunately, from time to time, racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia have not just been culturally acceptable, but actually profitable in some circles.  The news network in question has made the determination that Pat Buchanan's particular work product is not profitable for them to be associated with. A pretty good call, that.

Regarding the touchy subject of Buchanan's latest book and that comparison of his subject matter with that of others, I think the major difference is the assumption that a less-white America is necessarily a less-American America, as if non-whites are not able to carry out the ideals or appreciate the values of our democracy without the monitoring of a white majority. Regarding the claim that Buchanan merely restates Catholic beliefs regarding LGBT* people, the practice of one's beliefs are a private matter.  Buchanan is welcome to practice not being gay since his church frowns on it, but this has very little to do with how anyone else needs to see things.

Buchanan is under the impression that he has not been given a "hearing" before this determination was made: did no one read his book?  Has no one read any of his books, or columns, or blog-posts, nor listened to things he has said aloud, on the tv-machine, where people could hear?  I am certainly not the first person, and will definitely not be the last, to trot out the old standby: Words mean things.  If, for example, your words indicate that you think that President Obama is an affirmative action baby who isn't half so smart as all that, or that Sonia Sotomayor is a half-literate because she's Hispanic, you give away your game, don't you?

Enough. Pat Buchanan isn't "Blacklisted" in the least. He will still have outlets that will carry his particular version of parochial punditry. And how very curious to be such a free speech martyr-baiter when he's said such nice things about Senator McCarthy?  There were many people who were deemed un-American and their careers suffered true hardship because of that grandstanding nonsense.  My sympathy, it fails.

Good riddance. As limited as it may be.

Just some odds and ends of the Best of the Worst 2012 business--

Randall Terry, who isn't a real candidate, got glitter-bombed by Vermin Supreme, who isn't a real candidate either.



Nonetheless, I enjoyed seeing Randall Terry being glitter-bombed. Some people need a little disrespect every now and then to keep the world around them sane.

Speaking of which--Gingrich was called a rude thing:



I'm sticking with, "It's funny because it's true."

Oh, and finally, Ron Paul is finally feeling the actual irritation of being asked legitimate questions by journalists about stuff that appeared under his byline, instead of getting fluffed by libertarian fringistas.

I don't really get the appeal of Ron Paul. Some of the things he's said remind me a lot of Pat Buchanan. The non-interventionist foreign policy, for one thing, and the quasi-racist if not actually racist small gov't/but law and order stuff. And yet, Pat was never cool.  So how come Pat Buchanan's philosophy turns on ignorant hipsters when dressed up as an ol' country doctor?  Am confused.

Anyway--that's my half-assed round-up about some of today's half-assed candidates.

Pat Buchanan links to White Nationalist study--

[TW: racism]

I've been sparse on the posting, thanks to holiday-related fatigue, but this is the sort of thing that interests me about "mainstream" conservative figures like Pat Buchanan--they really are just thisclose to the fringe. Now, this is a snippet of the context Buchanan put Steven Sailer's work into:

WHHHHARGARRRBBLLLEE!

(Sorry--that's a Townhall link. But it was already Pat Buchanan, so what do you want from me?)

Congratulations to Elena Kagan!

I am pretty happy that she was confirmed without a whole lot of drama. She seems like a smart, capable person who will be a fine addition to the Supreme Court. And also, I have to say it's pretty neat that there are now three women on the court. It's not balanced to represent our real numbers out here, but it's getting there.

It's stupid that I was expecting a "thing" where Pat Buchanan got all Jew-county and culture warrior wannabees like Newt Gingrich alluded to her possible sexuality maybe, hard to say, by linking her to the recent Prop 8 ruling.

Hey, you stay classy, you guys--wait--

I meant, "try classy". Try actually making an attempt at being classy, you guys. Don't suck so much.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing how she does.

Pat Buchanan--WTF?

He's nuts. I know. Picking on Uncle Pat for his peculiar version of racism is like a canned hunt, but you have to give Rachael Maddow points for marksmanship just given that many people in the mainstream media have not actually considered him a game animal before. But here, he just looks like what he is--an artifact of a bygone era in American ethnocentricity.

I think the thing I like best is his implausible assertion that not only is Sonia Sotomayor an affirmative action choice for Ivy League studies, which might be plausible given that she entered Princeton with a full scholarship, but that her success, such as graduating from Princeton summa cum laude and winning the Pryne prize, stem from some insane liberalism that must have infected every single professor she had.