Slippin' Into Darkness

TMR is always over the target: Not misogyny but misandry

Health effects of weed laid bare

As Clarence Thomas faces record unpopularity

A Delta flight was forced into an emergency landing by a passenger’s diarrhea

What's Wrong With The Right & What It Could Be Doing

Behind the "Big Tent" mask the Republicans are desperate to be noticed wearing, are groups who honestly think they don't see race, because they need that psychological cover as a license to thwart history. 

You see, if they don't honestly acknowledge what's happened to blacks, then A) they don't have to do anything substantial about it, and B) they can magnanimously imagine themselves as part of a different and more wholesome, and profitable, future.

The "GOP Hipster" Is a Pampered Babbling Sack of Horse Hockey

But, by directing their attention and ire so vehemently on blacks - and especially on this President and his policies - it's painfully obvious to everyone watching, the Republican Party is, culturally, still firmly stuck in America's rearview mirror. And with their image fading fast:

Endemic Corruption: The Ukraine Is Ex-Soviet, But What Excuse Do Black American Politicians Have?

Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, they're blacks of a different era - one the rest of us, now, only want a peek at on film, and not in our daily lives.

“You know what they say: 50th time is the charm. Maybe when you hit your 50th repeal vote, you will win a prize. Maybe if you buy 50 repeal votes, you get one free.” 

And yet, it's here. Dr. Ben Carson - and the adulation he receives from conservatives - could be replaced by Booker T. Washington without even squinting our eyes. American culture's that real. Right down to the Southern backdrop of strange fruit. 

That's because we're a country, with a character, and the sooner we start acting like it, the better. There is no escaping our history. The most we can hope is to learn from it.

None Of These Men Will Ever Be President

How the Republican Party thinks a traumatized and terrorized people - who've never had what they needed - were somehow going to collectively beat the odds, is a question I may not be equipped to answer because, frankly, I don't understand it. But then, I'm not willfully obtuse, as well. 

Unlike the Republican Party (and the other blacks momentarily still in it) I can not look my people in the face and not acknowledge their struggle as a moral one, or frame their plight as undeserving. When it comes to their concerns - vs. the major concerns of even "mainstream" America - theirs wins, hands down, every time. Partially because, as we've seen, freedom and justice for blacks has always had a profound influence on loosening the parameters limiting other's lives as well.

"Where [Mitt Romney] lost was on the question of, ‘Who cares about you?’”

Those slave ships left a lot in their wake. TMR has been calling for reparations and it's time that's on the table. But even more than that, it's the Republican Party that should be calling for a Truth & Reconciliation commission, not only in order to (cynically) assess if, why, and how money to blacks would be warranted and/or distributed, but also so we can get the story in the open and, finally, walk together as a nation.

It is worth noting that it was [Henry] Ford's picture that had pride of place in Hitler's study and not Heidegger's: the origins of nazism and the ideological motives inspiring it were not exclusively German.

The Republican Party freed the slaves.

Ted Nugent Loving Republican Tom Tancredo Getting Crushed in Colorado Governor’s Race

The Republican Party should see to it, as their civic duty, that ignorance on this particular subject will no longer be an excuse for anything.

How the civil rights movement changed black gun culture

There's A New Anita Hill Documentary And Just In Time

It's nice to see Clarence Thomas, who just claimed race wasn't brought up in the past (and is discussed too much today) wasn't shy about bringing it up - himself - when it came to saving his neck.

The great black conservative hero of the "colorblind",...

 

Ron Christie Is An Uncle Tom & Paul Ryan's His Massa

Other than the fact they usually look like Clarence Thomas' big-headed love child, you know how blacks spot an Uncle Tom? Find the black guy who writes a column defending Paul Ryan's "lazy" blacks statement:

  "In Defense of Paul Ryan: He Isn’t Racist, He’s Right”

So what about Ron Christie screams "Uncle Tom"? I'll tell you:

Never once, in Christie's entire piece, does he mention Charles Murray - the acknowledged white supremacist whose ideas Paul Ryan said justified his claims. 

“We call it a poverty trap. There are incentives not to work, and to stay where you are. That’s this tailspin or spiral that we’re looking at in our communities. Your buddy Charles Murray or Bob Putnam over at Harvard, those guys have written books on this.”

So why would Christie leave Murray out? Because he's a Tom. Only a Tom suffers from the sort of cognitive dissonance that would allow him to "overlook" Ryan's mentioning of Murray. 

And only a Tom thinks blacks would be distracted enough, by Christie's black skin, to miss it - in order for his black ass to mount a sorry "defense" of Ryan nobody was asking for. Despite his "academic" appearance, Christie's not too bright.

On the other hand, I've seen what can happen to the Christies of the world - on the conservative plantation - if blacks don't play along,...

There's Stuff Whites Don't Mention In CPAC Brochures

Conservatives - wondering why others say they're racists - it's the company you keep:

"White nationalists attending the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) are planning to gather discreetly this evening at a steak house,…"

You can keep 'em:

And that goes double for Condi and Clarence, who're probably having dinner with them, too,...

Clarence Thomas Heard Talking About Race Before 2003

I know why conservatives accepted Thomas's claim there was no talk of race during Jim Crow - it's comforting - but their critical thinking skills should've still kicked in and told them it was impossible. Here's Thomas 11 years ago, to the other justices, sounding like me or Obama:

“Aren't you understating the effects of the burning cross? Now, it's my understanding that we had almost 100 years of lynching and activity in the South. The Knights of Camellia and the Ku Klux Klan. And this was a reign of terror and the cross was a symbol of that reign of terror. Isn't that significantly greater than intimidation or a threat?”

When whites twist this narrative, blacks get antsy, and Republicans - especially - should be ashamed for claiming to have been in the trenches before, yet trying to push lies about our country on us today. Lies also about ourselves. You should stop these lies even when a black person tells them. Make a coherent narrative. Like, to keep pretending this all occurred a long time ago, as opposed to it began a long time a go, and only (maybe) ended recently? 

Such a ploy's not helpful.

It's obviously a lie - and truly unworthy of Americans,…

 

Why Clarence Thomas Can't Fight Being "Uncle Tom"

“My sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school,” Thomas said. “To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up.”

How a man as educated and supposedly aware as Thomas can make such an absurd statement is beyond me.

We remember some of those incidents; the burning of the Freedom Riders bus in Anniston Alabama, the baring of James Meredith from the University of Mississippi, the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing in which four little girls going to Sunday School were murdered, the brutal attacks on protestors in that same city that sent Dr Martin Luther King to jail, the murder of Medgar Evers, the murder of the Mississippi Civil Rights Workers, Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. We know about those, well at least some of us do. They all occurred in my lifetime and certainly if Thomas didn’t know about them as a child he either chooses to ignore them now.

But for each of those incidents there were many more, some very bloody which have been forgotten,...

Forgive - But Never Forget (Forget - But Never Forgive)

Speaking before a group of college students at Palm Beach Atlantic University on Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas bemoaned how “sensitive” Americans have become over issues of race and other markers of social “difference.”…

That’s not to say that Thomas has forgotten those who have abused him, however,...

“The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites,” Thomas said. “The absolute worst I have ever been treated. The worst things that have been done to me, the worst things that have been said about me — by northern liberal elites,....”

"This is the point where he is coming to kill me, coming to beat me. He made it quite clear what his intentions were."

"Drapetomania is from draptise. A runaway slave is mania mad or crazy. It is unknown to our medical authorities, although its well known to our planters and overseers. The cause that induces the Negro to run away from service is curable as a general rule. With the advantages of proper medical advice strictly followed, this troublesome practice can be almost entirely prevented,...."

The Great Migration: Creating a New Black Identity in Los Angeles

"In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate."

My Idea Of "Jesus On The Mount" Is A Bizarre Sex Act

Nice chat with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas today - and a reminder of why Catholicism can be so attractive:

“If the founding fathers came back and saw what we have today, would they be surprised, pleased?”  Malecha asked.

“I think most of what they say would be bleeped out,” Thomas answered.

Between jokes, Thomas talked about his life. The road from tiny Pin Point, Ga., where he shared a one bedroom with his grandfather and brother, to the highest court was long and hard, he said. But he drew strength from the Irish nuns who taught him school, who told him that African-Americans were inherently equal to white people.

“I read these narratives about the South, and they all have us crawling through dirt, and when we’re not crawling, we’re running from the Klan,” he said. “I lived with people that were positive and reinforcing and directed us in a certain way.”

Because of the nuns’ influence, Thomas said he has spent his life trying to similarly inspire “kids from modest backgrounds, kids whose parents had to decide between the rent and braces.”

“They are the people who reflect the American dream,” he said. “They don’t need you to carry them. They just need a part of your life to give them guidance.”

I wish he'd remind everyone why the nuns had to constantly be reminding proud blacks they're O.K. compared to whites (Was somebody pushing the message we aren't?) but that's O.K.. Thomas takes so much guff from everybody, there's no way I'd add to it. 

It's weird - I'm doing worse than ever, yet I feel like I'm carrying the GOP, all by myself.

Oh well - doing the hard work:

Politics is one sad, isolating business,...

 

When Smart Goes Crazy (The Crazy Might Get Smart)

My dream is that a group with these credentials will call and and ask if I could come by for coffee:

"The media figures involved in this group are mostly marginal and widely disrespected even by conservatives. But that doesn’t mean the group is entirely unimportant."

It just sounds like such a natural fit,...

 

Eat Sky Cake ("What We're Really Good At Is Bullshit")

So, according to the new rules, I am easily one of the biggest criminals in America:

Apparently, racist, sexist or homophobic words themselves do not necessarily earn any rebuke. Nor is the race or gender of the speaker always a clue to the degree of outrage that follows. Instead, the perceived ideology of the perpetrator is what matters most. Maher and Letterman, being good liberals, could hardly be crude sexists. But when the conservative Limbaugh uses similar terms, it must be a window into his dark heart. It's apparently OK for whites or blacks to slur conservative Clarence Thomas in racist terms. Saying anything similar of the late liberal Justice Thurgood Marshall would have been blasphemous. In short, we are dealing not with actual word crimes, but with supposed thought crimes.

 

 Right. Attacking someone for swearing is just an easy-in for the so-called high-tech lynchers, a good cover for what they're attempting to do - shut down debate. If they can immediately seize on how something is said, there's a good chance no one will focus on what the point is. The argument becomes whether or not someone is a misogynist, misandrist (it's funny that spell-check doesn't know that word) or racist, rather than whether the accusers are wrong in the main. A diversionary tactic, it's low as Hell, but effective when used quickly. 

 Personally, I don't know an America without swearing, nor do I want one. From the cacophonous family that finally opens a thesaurus for a change, to the suburban mom snapping out her first "Damn!" that sends everyone else into self-recriminations, it's been there. And fuck you if you didn't hear it. Kidding.

 

Voltaire, on his deathbed, was asked to renounce Satan and embrace God. He declined, saying this was “no time to be making new enemies.” 

Better to be miserable than a hypocrite, nauseated than naive — and far better to be morose than a fool.

Swear. Swear all-the-time. It's American,...

 

Read, White, And Singing The Blues (Which Ann Called "Bellyaching" When Black Folks Do It - But Not Gays,...)

As a blogger, it's comforting to know I can always count on Ann Althouse:

“Selecting that Andrew Sullivan quote for this post, I didn't think about the fact that it's one gay man commenting on another gay man, but I'm thinking about it now,...”

She's really great because, no matter what she thinks she's talking about, there's always that moment - like the one above - where she goes off the rails and (garbage in/garbage out) you know there's no need to read further. 

 See, if I was to write a post on, say, Clarence Thomas, would Ann be like, "Wow - it's a black guy - actually talking about a black guy!"? No, she wouldn't (and never has) because the reality is A) there's nothing particularly remarkable about it - gays have always been Chatty Cathy's - and B) she's only saying it because she doesn't give half-a-fuck about blacks like she does gays. 

Everything they do is reason for her to do some really, really deep thinking.

Blacks, on the other hand, are just here to provide the Civil Rights argument for her kid - we're not actually people, or even a people (as she seems to think gays are) with issues to be respected or even thought about. 

If we were, she'd acknowledge blacks didn't die for homosexuality, and - being a lawyer - come up with some original arguments that don't involve dragging us where we don't belong nor (as every poll shows) want to be. 

    

We all know (from the full-court "Will & Grace" media blitz) everyone will bend over backwards not to offend gays right now. Blacks, not so much. Especially when it comes to gays and their supporters. We have to suck it up - still. I'm sure, subversive little fucks that they are, they get a special thrill from the association - knowing we don't want it made and doing it anyway - but that's not respect either, it's just pervs getting another hard-on and thinking we should be flattered to see it. 

 They never think, how blacks can be so important to their argument, but so unimportant - as human beings - that they'll walk over and/or appropriate our most treasured accomplishment. 

But sadly - when it comes to a certain strain of American - that's nothing new: 

No matter who's doing it, exploiting us is - still - as American as apple pie,...