Race Is In Our Face But We're Talking About Shutdown (Betrayal Is Crime - But Let's Talk About Sinatra's I.Q.)

There's some interesting writing being done over the shutdown - none of it by our usual suspects which, once again, makes me wonder why they're so great (yes, Glenn Reynolds, I'm talking to you) - but mostly by people I'm known to really disagree with, like Salon's Joan Walsh, who's waded in on a subject I was discussing with a reader just last night:

  How did I write a piece about the modern GOP’s use of race and racism without talking about Rand (and Ron) Paul? What is the matter with me?

I have covered Paul’s many disappointing moments on racial issues over the years, from telling Rachel Maddow he couldn’t support the Civil Rights Act provisions that applied to private businesses back in 2010, and to his dishonest weaseling over his white neo-Confederate staffer Jack Hunter, aka Southern Avenger, to his own slurs against Abraham Lincoln drawn straight from the canon of neo-Confederacy. I can’t believe I left Rand Paul out of the piece. I apologize for the omission.

Journalists everywhere should "apologize for the omission" because I see Rand and Ron waaay too often - actually influencing American policy and the national dialogue - with absolutely no mention of what they've been part of. 

It's a snow job, perpetrated on my non-racist white reader and I, that lets the Paul's drive us to distrust and distraction in their dark fetid alleyways of the mind, we two big-hearted guys had no reason to go down. (Mitt Romney's racist space opera belief system should've been enough to disqualify him for political consideration, but that discussion was deemed off-limits by the Right as well - the real Freedom of Speech Wingers - and then, with my mouth, they wonder why they make me uncomfortable,...)

Let's get back to Walsh, talking about the cover a racist who goes by "Searcy" on Salon, but who may be named "Sixty Grit" elsewhere, lays down before firing:

If every right-wing racist nut job who claimed to have an adopted black child, or a black in-law – his son’s wife, or sister’s husband, whatever – then every single black person in America would have a right-wing racist nut job for a parent or an in-law. I can’t speak for black people, but I don’t think that’s actually true.

Nope. Since I was raised by slaves (inside joke) I don't think that's possible. Walsh continues:

I was clear,..that not all Republicans are racist, not even most. The problem is that too many are sadly addicted to the politics of racial resentment that’s powered the party since the ’60s. They can’t quit it. They don’t have the spine to tell the truth to the racist fringe. They’re too busy cashing their checks, and deferring to them at town hall meetings lest one of the wingnuts primaries them. House Speaker John Boehner has let roughly 30 wingnut Tea Partyers from overwhelmingly white districts shut down the government. He’s complicit in their racially driven obstructionism, even if he isn’t racist himself. He ought to shut them down.

Right here, I have to say, the number of things the Left, and Right, think John Boehner is capable of doing in this illogical hotbox the Right has created for him is amazing. I really feel for the guy, because I'm sure he feels alone and under the gun, when it's the dumbshit troublemakers on "our side" who ought to know better (yes, Glenn, I'm talking to you again) but keep Boehner - and the rest of us - in this no-win situation. 

Turn on them and, I'm sure, we could work our way out of this. 

Weird thought:

Glenn Reynolds could be lifting entire communities out of poverty but, instead, he's wasting our time with - quick look at Instapundit - I shit you not:

  OCTOBER 4, 2013
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Also, Outlet Deals Galore: Clearance, Markdown, and Overstock Deals.
And, today only: 66% Off Die Hard and Planet of the Apes Blu-ray Collections.

It's incredible. BTW, Ann and Meade ended yesterday with an Amazon pitch, too, because - Jesus - you know how hard-up those two are for money. I mean, it's Wisconsin, folks, come on. 

They've got it rough, and need the money, or else how can Ann get online and brag the next time she's practically the first in line for a new expensive Apple product? 

(Priorities, people.)

See, the problem isn't as Megan McArdle sees it, with the rest of us imagining whites "get together on an evening to discuss how much better their lives would be if they could only manage to immiserate vast numbers of their fellow citizens," but as it is:

They just sit and watch it happen, never once suggesting there's anything wrong with that picture, as seen by someone who isn't an extremely well-paid college professor who - no doubt - got there by bogusly complaining about how difficult it is being an American white woman with every advantage under the sun.

Which isn't racism but just (as my tags regularly say) "stupidity" based on their bizarre frame of reference. (Though it is a bit like being a slave, trying to negotiate your freedom with your owner, who just stares, uncomprehendingly, because he doesn't understand you're a human being and not an animal.) 

For instance, Ann quoted Mia Farrow's admittance of betrayal to Woody Allen yesterday, but what did Ann focus on, along with most of the media? Frank Sinatra! Not the lies Mia Farrow's spread to all of us and the damage those lies have caused Woody Allen (and the rest of us by falling for her fib), but how high Frank Sinatra's I.Q. may have been compared to his kid.

From an ethical standpoint, alone, it's just weird.

They don't see the poor - of any color - or anything else of importance.

As I wrote yesterday - to let you see the difference in perspective and concerns - when a football game can instantly be bequeathed $230,000, or NPR can collect thousands in an hour, while we know people will die in the streets this winter (and I may be one of them) this nation is FUCKED UP. 

And this is while whites rule the roost (don't make me show you the racial map again). We wouldn't have a black president unless whites decided it was time for them to "try" it, never even considering those of us, forced to watch and wait, while rich whites make up their precious minds whether or not they're "ready" to get over melanin in someone's skin. 

They're simply clueless:

While most of us are happy to take the credit when things go well, few of us are willing to take the blame when things go awry.

Now scientists have figured out why. Rather than trying to hide our shame or embarrassment, experts found we are simply less aware when our actions result in a negative outcome.

Our brains take longer to associate our actions with a bad result, according to the study, and our perception of such events are more remote. The research may explain why we often feel it hard to take the blame for our actions.

‘Our result suggests that people may really experience less responsibility for negative than for positive outcomes,’ said lead researcher professor Patrick Haggard of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London.

Things did "go awry":

And, White folks, I think we've got your number,...