Among the many things to fault about then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s 2008 then-celebrated* speech on race was his failure to cite the most important speech on race in American history, Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

That great American dreamt that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  With that line, King defined the ideal we should all strive for–to judge an individual not by his skin color, but but his character.

That notion seems to be lost to many Democrats attacking Republicans for raising questions about Ambassador Susan Rice’s public statements on Benghazi.  As Victor Davis Hanson put it two days ago:

Susan Rice misleads the country and suddenly her critics are racists and sexists — does not mean that it does not work in deterring critics. A white liberal can all but destroy Condoleezza Rice or Alberto Gonzalez and feel very liberal, but a peep about Barack Obama or Susan Rice from a white male is akin to a KKK slur.

We will have truly realized Dr. King’s dream when defenders of an African-American figure subject to criticism don’t assume that his (or her) critics were motivated by her race.  They may well have been calling her character into question — or her actions.

And they will defend her character — or her actions — rather than make assumptions about her critics’ motives.

* (more…)

“Democrats and liberal journalists“, observes the Washington Examiner’s Timothy P. Carney, comparing Vice President Biden’s recent “chains” comment to other leading Democratic allegations of Republican racism, “into are constantly calling us racists for the crime of being conservative.”

Last fall, a reader from the Bay Area was visiting Los Angeles joined me for a meal at a restaurant in LA’s Farmer’s Market. As we faulted the incumbent for his failed big government policies, a woman sitting at the next booth turned toward us and accused us of being racists in our criticism of the president.

It is odd how some can only see opposition to the president’s policies as rooted in racism or a desire to sabotage the economy. Some folks on the left can only see us as self-hating because, through their distorted lens, the GOP has been built on bigotry. “They cannot help,” as Christian Adams put it on Sunday in a piece on Andrew Breitbart, “but attribute any opposition to racism and bigotry.”

Via (Instapundit.)  Well, now there’s a video on how Breitbart is fighting back against such name-calling:

The likelihood that I would back Rick Perry for the Republican presidential nomination has been waning since he accused the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of “treasonous” behavior for “printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history”.  Even after his commentary caused a media firestorm, he stood by those comments.

Now, I agree with the Texas governor that it is “treacherous” for the Federal Reserve to print more money at the present time as that would fuel inflation and thus further retard any real economic recovery.  Yet, Bernanke’s action is hardly treason; he’s not trying to betray his country, he’s trying to help it. The policy may be wrong-headed, but the policy-maker does not intend to harm the country.  And isn’t intent necessary to commit treason?

A man who aspires to national leadership does not so fault the motives of public servants — or his ideological adversaries.

That said, I believe the mainstream media have blown the story of the stone with the offensive word (that Perry and his family painted over) way out of proportion.  On Monday, John King devoted a segment of his eponymous CNN program to the “invented scandal”.  Fortunately, he included Donna Brazile in the discussion (let’s hope we see more of her*).  This sharp lady also seems to offer a smart and sensible commentary.

This Democratic strategist who happens to be African-American brought some sense to the discussion:

I’ve known Rick Perry when he was a Democrat. So I believe I can say this with credibility that he’s not a racist. So I don’t think that’s the issue.

The issue is the insensitivity of having that word written on a rock, and not doing something about it, and according to him they did something about it.

Now let’s go beyond that and stop dealing with what I call race in a very superficial way. It’s more of a distraction. It’s more annoying when you discuss it, especially when you discuss it in political company. So I think we need to move on.

Governor Perry will have to say that for himself. I can tell you that he is, at least from my knowledge of him back in the 1980s, he’s a decent person.

While some in the Democratic Party — and their allies in the mainstream media — have been grandstanding the issue, at least one Democratic partisan dismisses this story.  Why must they dwell on stories like this?

Oh, yeah, because their favored candidate has polling numbers like these.

* (more…)

Reading about all the supposedly really smart people are looking down at all us hoi polloi (defining hoi polloi even those like Charles Krauthammer with similar intellectual pedigrees and residence in or near coastal big cities and university towns) who have questions about the “Ground Zero Mosque,” I started seeing a pattern in their criticism of those putting forward conservative ideas or opinions at odds with their world view.

They who sneer how simplistic rubes right-wingers are offer a remarkably simplistic analyses about the motivations for our actions, that our political opinions are rooted in animosity against minorities.

If we oppose the mosque, it’s because we’re anti-Muslim.  If we oppose Obama’s policies, we’re racist.  If we disagree with courts overturning the will of the people to mandate state recognition of same-sex marriage, we’re anti-gay (or self-hating if we are gay).  If we support tough laws cracking down on illegal immigrants, we’re anti-Hispanic and xenophobic to boot.

You get the picture.

Over the weekend, John Hawkins of Right Wing News posted an interesting observation on race on Facebook:

Irony: People who view everything through a prism of race are perpetually accusing people who don’t of being racist.

Anyone who has ever attended a large protest rally is bound to encounter his fair share of kooks, loons and assorted fringe elements.  At the Santa Monica Tea Party I attended in April 2009, I talked with a 9/11 Truther, who seemed to have showed up not so much because he agreed with the small-government rhetoric of the assembled protesters, but because it was, well, a gathering of protesters.  And he wanted the chance to wave his sign.

Over a Politico, in a piece lamenting that despite promise that the of Barack Obama would “transform the charged, stilted ‘national conversation’ about race into a smarter and more authentic dialogue,” Ben Smith finds that instead “the conversation just got dumber.” He observes further that “while MSNBC scours the tea party movement for racist elements, which one could probably find in any mass organization in America.”

Except MSNBC won’t tell you that.

They’ve been rooting around for racism not as a means to expose bigots, but as as a part of their campaign to discredit conservatives.  Their goal (as well as that of others peddling the racist narrative) isn’t honest reporting, but, to borrow a famous phrase, the politics of personal destruction.  Maybe they’re trying to convince themselves that conservatives really are the horrible, no good and very bad people they imagine them to be.

They want to match the reality of the world to the images inside their head.  And to do so, they have to pretend that it’s only at rallies protesting Democratic politicians and liberal policies than you find nutbags and kookooheads.  They have, as one scholar put it, “overplayed” the race card.  And in so doing, Democratic politicians and left-of-center pundits and reporters have, if anything, exacerbated racial tensions in this country — undermining, more than anything perhaps, the greatest promise of Barack Obama’s election in 2008.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds links an article on race and quips: “REUTERS: Analysis: Race issues beset Obama’s “post-racial” presidency. Well, he’s played the race card nonstop, but it’s no longer trumps.”

The release this morning of various e-mails from left-of-center journalists and bloggers on the attempt of some members of the Journolist listserv to squelch media coverage in 2008 of then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s relationship with a racist pastor shows just what’s behind attempts to smear the Tea Parties as racist.

It has nothing to do with the alleged prejudices of Tea Party protesters, but with politics. As Ed Morrissey put it, “the racist attack — was deliberately political:”

Let’s put this in its proper perspective.  Ackerman wasn’t talking about a strategy to exposereal racists, in the media or anywhere else.  The Washington Independent reporter wanted to conduct a campaign against any figure on the Right, including journalists like Fred Barnes, to smear him as a racist for the political purposes of electing a Democrat to the White House.  Notice that Ackerman doesn’t even bother to ask people to look for actual evidence of racism, but just suggests to pick a conservative name out of a hat.  Tellingly, the pushback from members of Journolist had less to do with the outrageous idea of smearing an innocent person of racism to frighten people away from the story than with whether it would work.

Bold added.

Ed adds, “It certainly puts efforts by the Left to paint the Tea Party as racist in an entirely new light.”  Indeed it does.

Guess evidence doesn’t really matter when you’re trying to peddle a narrative about conservative racism.  Do hope Barney Frank and other Democrats will “differentiate themselves” from the attempt to smear conservatives a racist.

Meanwhile, we have one more piece of evidence to show that some of the left attack conservatives as racist not based on a evidence, but as a means to discredit their political adversaries.

UPDATE:   (more…)

While, on its surface, the video that Bruce posted earlier today presents pretty strong evidence of the NAACP welcoming the racial attitudes of an Obama Administration official, like the Anchoress, “I want the rest of the story before I start passing judgment on it“:

I want to see the rest of the tape. I cannot believe Sherrod ended on “I took him to one of his own.” Either she said something much worse after that (which we would have seen) or she said something much better.

If it was something “better” then we should have seen that, too.

Via Instapundit.

That said, with the attitudes of the Department of Justice toward the Black Panther case as well as this woman’s initial attitude toward a white man in need, we have considerable evidence of racial attitudes in the Obama Administrations, attitudes that the mainstream media is all but ignoring while dwelling on the NAACP resolution and a few isolated racially-tinged signs at Tea parties.

It seems that whenever I have gone to the gym these past few days, I look up to see something on CNN about the NAACP resolution; the “news” network almost always features the same stock footage of four, maybe five signs, only two clearly racist, one likely a fabrication of a Tea Party crasher.  (Wonder if CNN investigated the phenomenon of Tea Party crashers.)

Now, I wonder if the NAACP has been harping on the alleged racism of the Tea Parties, basing their resolution, in large part, on unsubstantiated charges, in a desperate bid to make the organization relevant in an age when most Americans increasingly see race an increasingly irrelevant and warm to Dr. King’s dream that his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  Well, maybe not so desperate given the makeup of the MSM today. (more…)

Over at the Kansas City Star, Derek Donovan posts the entire NAACP press release on its resolution condemning “racism within the tea party”:

The resolution condemns the bigoted elements within the Tea Party and asks for them to be repudiated. The NAACP delegates presented this resolution for debate and passage after a year of vitriolic Tea Party demonstrations during which participants used racial slurs and images. In March, members of the Congressional Black Caucus were accosted by Tea Party demonstrators and called racial epithets. Civil rights icon John Lewis was spit on, while Congressman Emanuel Cleaver was called the “N” word and openly gay Congressman Barney Frank was called an ugly anti-gay slur.

(H/t:  Gateway Pundit)

Seems they based their entire resolution on a jaundiced view of the Tea Parties.  By their method of argument, if fringe elements of a large movement use hateful rhetoric, that rhetoric can be used to criticize the movement.

First, what the resolution is asking to be done (not sure who they’re asking given the use of the passive) has already been done.  Tea Party leaders have repudiated the handful of racist slurs at image, heart and seen at a handful of Tea Party (yet described in a plethora of media reports, blog posts and opinion columns).

Second, look at the actual “facts” cited by the organization.  Despite a $100,000 prize for video evidence of such activity, no one has stepped forward to provide the video and claim the money.  As Deroy Murdock explains:

If such comments actually were uttered, the NAACP and its leftist allies would have played them over and over and over and over and over and over and over to embarrass and humiliate Republicans, conservatives and the allegedly racist tea party movement. In fact, no one has stepped forward to collect Andrew Breitbart’s $100,000 prize for any documentary proof that these supposed race bombs ever were dropped on their targets.

February 18, 2009: Attorney General Eric Holder calls USA a “nation of cowards”

July 13, 2010: NAACP Passes Resolution Condeming “Racism of Tea Parties”

Mr. Attorney General… who are the cowards now?

RELATED STORY: The Racism of the NAACP – BigGovernment.com

In the short history of the Tea Party there has been one racist incident, one, and it was a Tea Party protester who was the victim. The NAACP has abandoned its mission and become a partisan political organization.

Sadly the NAACP has forgotten the words of Dr. Martin Luther King:

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In a week when I find it tough to focus on the world of politics, much is happening in that realm.  A decision is expected imminently in the latest Prop 8 trial, this one held in a San Francisco federal court.  Should Judge Vaughn Walker decide that the courts can impose social change, watch for the legal drama to continue until this reaches the U.S. Supreme Court.  Expect further social divisions on gay marriage and further whining from gay activists, with little discussion of the meaning of the institution and why its benefits and responsibilities are good for married couples in general and gay people in particular.

With the Senator who stole Christmas now signed up to vote for the Democrats’ financial overhaul legislation, this 2,000-plus page bill is set for passage, further regulating the banking industry, providing additional paperwork responsibilities on small banks, is all but certain to pass.  This will discourage rather than encourage small banks from making loans to small businesses, the enterprises the most net new jobs, thus further delaying a real economic recovery.

(Take note of the bias in the AP article on Senator Nelson’s switch; they dub the liberal Nebraska Senator a “conservative Democrat“!)

Democratic Senate candidates traveled to Canada for political fundraisers while one poll shows my gal Carly Fiorina surging ahead of Barbara Boxer in the race for the U.S. Senate seat that that 28-year Washington veteran has held since the last days of the George H.W. Bush Administration.

Log Cabin’s suit to overturn Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) gets a hearing in federal court.  This lawsuit causes us to question whether that ostensibly Republican organization understands conservative ideas and constitutional principles.  A conservative organization should be wary of setting precedents that would allow courts to second guess the executive and legislature on matters military.  (They are basically compounding the problem begun by Bill Clinton who, when trying to save his political skin back in 1993 (shortly after Mrs. Boxer first won election to the Senate), allowed the legislature to intervene on a matter the constitution clearly delegated to the president.)

A new poll shows that 6 in 10 Americans Lack Faith in Obama. (more…)

This post on Instapundit got me a-wonderin’:

GOOD GRIEF: NAACP Leader: Kenneth Gladney Not Black Enough.

More here: ” Apparently, a HuffPo writer was present. You can see her laughing at the remark in the video.”

I mean we support the Tea Parties and all.  And when in Boston, I bought a “Don’t Tread on Me” mug.

Based on a handful of signs amidst the hundreds of thousands of protesters at Tea Parties nationwide, the MSM has concocted a narrative of the racism endemic on the right.  But, rank-and-file Republicans just won’t conform to media stereotypes.

With “68 percent of the vote” South Carolina State Rep. Tim Scott “beat his former Charleston County Council colleague Paul Thurmond, which makes him likely to become the first black Republican to serve in the U.S. House since J.C. Watts of Oklahoma retired six years ago.”   Hmmm. . . . Republican voters in one of the most conservative states in the union overwhelmingly picking a black man over a white guy1!?!?!  Heads must be exploding in news rooms around the country.

In the same state on the same day,

Nikki Haley ["the daughter of immigrant parents from India"] trounced Gresham Barrett on Tuesday to win the GOP’s nomination for governor, breaking gender and ethnic boundaries, and sending a message to the Republican establishment: Conservatives are tired of entrenched politicians and they’re sick of the status quo.

The daughter of immigrant parents from India defeats a white male Republican.  Hmm. . . . equally confusing to those who see Nixon’s “racist” Southern Strategy as continuing to define the GOP.

While waiting for my brother-in-law and checking my accumulated e-mail, I caught this in James Taranto’s Best of the Web:

But we have argued for years against the pernicious practice of falsely imputing racism to one’s opponents in order to discredit them–a practice so common among liberals that entire academic subspecialties are devoted to it.

That does seem to be the main purpose of imputing racism to the Tea Party protesters.  Unwilling to address the concerns they raise, their critics resort to mean-spirited slurs.

Perhaps when I have a moment, I might try to probe their “need” to call their opponents racist, you know, as some would do in an “academic discipline.”

Over at Just One Minute, Tom Maguire comments on “Charles Blow['s], the NY Times other professional grievance columnist” explanation “that the Tea Party is racist until they can prove otherwise”:

According to an article accompanying a Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Wednesday: “About 61 percent of tea party opponents say racism has a lot to do with the movement, a view held by just 7 percent of tea party supporters.”

This gulf of perception has left Tea Party organizers struggling to scrub the stain of racism from its image, but those efforts may fly in the face of the facts.

Once again, relying on the critics of an organization to determine the beliefs of the organization’s members.

This is like a film critics writing a series of scathing reviews of a movie and then talking about the gulf of perception that leaves the films producers struggling to scrub the stain of bad notices from the flick’s image.  This isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.  This is the pot photoshopping a picture of the kettle to make it black and then pronouncing it so.

And while Blow blathers on about “facts,” he offers no facts whatsoever to justify his accusations, trotting out only an interpretation of a study “highly skewed by political bias.”  Those looking for racism in the Tea Party movement will surely find it, just as those looking for gay participation in such rallies will also find it.

But, no one is accusing the Tea Parties of being focal points of the homosexual agenda.  It just doesn’t fit the narrative.  From my experience, however, there are clearly more gay men, more lesbians even, in the Tea Party movement than there are racists. Far more, far, far, far more.

Ponder that for a minute as you consider the left-wing narrative.

I’m a day behind this week for some reason.  Anyway, I was going to put this post up first thing tomorrow thinking that today is May 4th.  Nope.

So to illustrate how meaningless Cinco de Mayo is to me, I’m going to link to this slasher post about the “made for beer” holiday. 

If it weren’t for beer companies, most Americans wouldn’t know about Cinco de Mayo, a celebration of – well, I’m just not sure. It originated as a commemoration of the anniversary of a victory on May 5, 1862, by the Mexican Army over the French at the Battle of Puebla. (Wow, if everyone celebrated when they defeated the French military, fighting thousands of miles from home, in a desert… half of Africa would be celebrating Cinco de Mayo.) But in recent years it’s become a celebration of victimhood, partially by those here illegally, at the hands of the evil white people who built up the Welfare, Medicare, and Education systems and wanted to spread goodwill towards those who seek a better life in America.

<…>

So, instead of this being another beer holiday where we loosely celebrate another culture such as St. Patrick’s Day… Cinco de Mayo has become a full-on assault of American culture. Speakers at rallies across the country will proclaim that the rest of us are racists and that obeying the law should be the last to do. I’m not saying that those here illegally should all be rounded up and sent back especially, as Ann Coulter said, “smoking-hot Latin guys who stand around not wearing shirts between workouts.” But at LEAST get some better border protection to mitigate against an even bigger crises.

Nor should we forget the richness that legal Mexican immigrants (and their decendants) have added to American culture. But I will not feel guilty about wanting to protect that American culture… and American laws.

I’ll drink to that!

*ducking*

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Do you think President Obama would say during a nationally televised press conference that the NFL “acted stupidly” in its reaction to false statements attributed to Rush Limbaugh?

Of course not.

Racial politics is only one-sided these days in Obama’s America.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)