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I’ve been annoyed by the opening round of criticism being thrown at Elena Kagan, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court. Apparently, going to an elite high school in New York City (Hunter College), graduating from Princeton, and getting a law degree from Harvard Law School is a problem. If confirmed, the eight of the nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices will have received their legal education at Yale Law School or Harvard Law School (the two best law schools in the country). And the ninth — Ruth Bader Ginsburg — got her J.D. from Columbia.

If I’m understanding the criticism correctly, education of our Supreme Court Justices is a huge problem. God forbid that the branch of government that is granted unelected power for life be filled with intellectual elites!

(Full disclosure: I had Kagan as a professor — while apparently losing touch with the rest of humanity locked inside an ivory tower.)

When we are talking about the Supreme Court, we are talking about a group of people who are in charge of defining our Constitution. That seems pretty important to me. But now we’re going to dog these people for being educated at the best possible legal institutions? Seriously? Isn’t that like bitching that there aren’t enough skinny people in the heavyweight boxing division?

The hypocrisy from the critics of Kagan’s educational background is astounding. But is there any point to it? Let’s clear away the BS and see if there is anything growing underneath…

There are a couple of constituencies that need to sit down and shut up. Yes, I’m looking at people who graduated from other Ivy League law schools or similarly elite institutions like Stanford, Berkeley, the University of Chicago, etc… Just because Yale and Harvard are about to have a stranglehold on the Court, don’t act like throwing in a couple of Duke grads would significantly change the educational make-up of the Court. If you think there is a huge educational difference between Columbia and UVA Law School, you’re forgetting that even Southern casebooks teach you about the 13th Amendment.

I also wish to hear no more complaining about Kagan’s background from Republicans. At least not the Republicans who wet themselves over the sterling pedigrees of Chief Justice John Roberts (Harvard College, Harvard Law School), or Justice Samuel Alito (Princeton, Yale Law School). Liberal elites are to be feared while conservative elites are to be respected? I’m not going to buy an argument so stupid that even the Tea Party people can see through it.

And really, you conservatives had your chance to nominate somebody without an elite background when President George W. Bush (Yale, Harvard Business School) nominated Harriet Miers (Southern Methodist University, SMU Law School). How did that work out for you? Hey, don’t blame liberals, conservatives killed the Miers nomination before the left even had a chance to fully sink their teeth into her.

The question I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer to is: what precisely is the benefit of going to crappier law schools than the ones our current Supreme Court Justices attended? Harvard and Yale don’t have a monopoly on the best legal minds? Well,  I totally agree with that.

So does Obama. Two of the people on Obama’s most recent shortlist for the Court had non-Ivy league pedigrees: Judge Sidney Thomas (Montana State, University of Montana Law School) and Judge Diane Wood (University of Texas – Austin, UT Law). Both of those potential nominees are well educated and extremely intelligent. And it’s not like Obama went in another direction because Thomas and Wood lacked a Harvard degree. Thomas was perhaps a little too liberal, while Wood was a little too old.

But either way, we’re talking about some very elite people. People who are extremely well educated. Again, what the hell is the “plus factor” for judges who happened to receive law degrees from a “non-elite” law school? It’s not like they are dumber. Judge Wood, for instance, is widely regarded as one of the most intelligent jurists in America. But somehow she’s more in touch with “regular” Americans because she went to UT? That doesn’t even make any sense. Wood’s been on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals for almost 15 years. The last time she shared a legal thought with “regular people” she was probably bitching about the O.J. acquittal.

Legal analysis at its highest levels is downright Byzantine. Supreme Court Justices don’t “go with their gut.” They don’t come up with a brilliant legal idea because a guy at the local 7-11 said something insightful. SCOTUS Justices read briefs, they read cases, and they pick apart statutes. They talk to other judges and hear arguments from other extremely well educated lawyers.  They see what their clerks dig up (clerks who, by the way, all come from the same elite law schools or were at the very top of their class at less prestigious institutions). And then they write. All else being equal, at what point in this process are we supposed to value the education at Community College of Law over the best legal institutions we have? What is so laudable about being average when it comes to thinking?

If we really want to shake up the educational background of the Supreme Court, why don’t we put a non-lawyer on the bench? Seriously, there’s no Constitutional requirement stipulating that one has to have gone to law school and received a law degree to sit on the High Court. Put CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, on the bench. I bet he’d have some fascinating ideas about the importance of net neutrality laws. I think he’d make a great Justice (not that he’d take the pay cut). I’m not being facetious, if we want educational diversity on the Court, let’s go out and elect a President that promises to make it happen.

Of course, Eric Schmidt is a pretty elite guy himself (Princeton, Ph.D from Berkeley). Even the non-lawyers we might want to be on the Supreme Court should probably still be very well educated.

The people currently serving on the Supreme Court did very well in school. What a shock. Why would we possibly accept less from the nine people with inscrutable power to shape our system of justice? Why would we want anything less than a lifetime of achievement from people given a lifetime appointment?

So please,  don’t give me this weak song and dance about how choosing elite lawyers from one side of the Mississippi is different than choosing elite lawyers from the other side of the river. The only people that should even be in the discussion for this job are the ones that have consistently risen to the top.

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I don’t know exactly when it became socially unacceptable to harbor racist beliefs, but I know that — at least up north — we’ve been here for a while. Because prejudging a person based solely on the color of their skin is so out of fashion, people who have racist thoughts usually try to hide them from the public view of polite society.

People with controversial views about race don’t want to hide, of course. They think that if they could just explain their point, openly and honestly, everybody would agree with them. Hell, some of these people even think that the minorities they’re insulting would agree with them if minorities could just be honest with themselves. The hubris is astounding. But it’s why the right loves a guy like Clarence Thomas. He’s a walking, talking confirmation that anybody can harbor racist beliefs, if they just try hard enough.There are some people who believe that from behind the veil of ignorance, most black people would end up like Clayton Bixby.

But like I said, it’s impolite to openly espouse racist beliefs. And so society has provided a new, hi-tech method of expressing these thoughts, while still giving people the cover they need in order to function in society: the question.

Now you might think that only a lunatic like Glenn Beck would try to hide racism in “I’m just asking questions” rhetoric and think he’s getting away with it. But you’d be wrong. Last week, this method of racial insult made it all the way to Harvard Law School…

Last week, an email containing a manifestly racist question — intended for the private consumption of a few friends — went public. Then it went viral. We picked it up on Above the Law. The email garnered national attention because the it was sent by an educated and accomplished Harvard Law student. Here’s the pertinent part of the email:

I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level.

I’m not even going to begin to get into the substance of this question. You can’t academically debate a question where every single premise is flawed and poorly (or flat out incorrectly) defined. If you really think that it is “possible” that African-Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level than any other race,  I sincerely urge you to help yourself to a science book.  Please come up with working definitions of “intelligence,” “genetics,” and the difference between “red hair,” red herrings, and human intellectual capacity. Then tell me who the hell you’re talking about when you say African-Americans. I’ll not waste my time arguing with people who won’t even put forth the effort to understand basic evolutionary biology, yet want me to take a CAT Scan to satisfy their curiosity.

I will deal with the coverage of this story. After Above the Law ran the email, the story was picked up by Gawker, the Boston Globe, the National Review, the Huffington Post, and simply every legal blog I can think of. The debate has centered around not the substance of the email (because again, the actual suggestion proffered in it is absurd — does this person have any idea how long it takes for evolution to act upon an organ like the brain?) but on whether asking the question is itself racist.

Many commentators said that the question was “not racist” and therefore appropriate in an academic setting. Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA and a legal scholar that I respect (though often disagree with) said this:

One should not rule out possibilities in the absence of conclusive evidence, for the simple reason that one then has no factual basis to rule out those possibilities…

Now some claims may be so contrary to our current understanding of the world that we might say something like this: We shouldn’t rule out the possibility in principle, but in practice the probability is so vanishingly small that we should exclude it from our analysis. That, for instance, might be one’s view about claims that werewolves exist. First, it’s just hard to imagine, given current science, what possible mechanism there might be that would turn humans into wolves every full moon. Second, one would think that if werewolves existed, we’d have good evidence of them, since proving their existence would be pretty easy.

But we still know very little about which genes produce intelligence, how exactly those genes operate, and even how intelligence can be defined. We obviously have vastly more left to learn about this.

via The Volokh Conspiracy

My own managing editor, David Lat, whom I’ve worked closely with for almost two years now, offered a similar opinion:

Let me play devil’s advocate for a second…. If we accept “race” as a biological concept — which I realize is questionable, becoming diluted through intermarriage, etc. — is it really so insane to suggest that some races might, ON AVERAGE, possess certain qualities to a greater or lesser degree than other races?

For example, would it be racist to say that, ON AVERAGE, African-Americans are taller than Asian-Americans? Or that Caucasians are more likely to have blond hair than Asian-Americans? Or is the issue that we don’t think intelligence is at all tied to genetics?

via Above the Law

Many people supported these viewpoints. In an Above the Law poll, 57% of respondents said that the initial email was not racist.

It’s disappointing that so many people think it’s possible that something as basic as human intellectual capacity can be influenced by something as fleeting as skin color.  It’s disappointing that so many people want to believe it’s a fair question for academic inquiry. It’s disappointing that so many people are waiting for science to prove a negative, and simply won’t “rule anything out” until it does.

The fact that all men are created equal is not debatable, it is “self-evident.” To formulate the question in your mind, you have to be open to the possibility that an entire race of humans might just be intellectually inferior to an entire other race of humans. We have a word for people who think it is even possible for one race to be inferior to another.

Look at the convoluted knots the above commentators are tying themselves into to make the question sound plausible. Volokh is saying that the question is reasonable for academic debate since it’s not as improbable as the existence of werewolves. Is that the new standard for the world’s top universities? Lat’s telling us that anecdotal observation of height among different populations suggests an open academic question as to whether an entire ethnic group of humans is genetically dumber than some other ethnic group.

And yet I’m the non-intellectual in the room if I think the question is racist? I’m the one standing against serious academic inquiry because I’m saying “blacks might be genetically dumber than whites” is just as stupid as saying  “Yao Ming can only be killed by a silver bullet”?

Is it not textbook racism to believe one race to have immutable characteristics that make them substantively inferior to another race?

White people really, really piss me off sometimes. But I’m not open to the possibility that white people have a genetic predilection for oppressing others, raping the Earth, and hoarding wealth. I don’t dismiss the possibility because I’m unwilling to engage in vigorous academic debate, I dismiss the possibility because I’m not a goddamn idiot.

Now, is it possible to debate racist beliefs in an academic environment? Sure. Why not. If I ever had Louis Farrakhan or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a class about human evolutionary biology, I’d freaking destroy them.

But don’t tell yourself that by virtue of asking a question in an academic manner and setting means you are engaged in anything approaching intellectualism. The question format isn’t a prophylactic against ugly, demeaning and racist statements. “Are gay people more likely to rape children?” Ugly. “Are women too emotional to engage in rigorous logical thought?” Demeaning. “Is it possible that Latinos need more sleep, on average, than the Japanese who appear to be able to work like robots?” Ugly, demeaning, and racist to two races at the same time.

For some reason, the people defending this student have lost faith in the power of deductive logic — but apparently only when the subject turns to race and intelligence. Science doesn’t have to prove or disprove every inane theory a person can articulate. Our shared human ability to reason far outstrips our scientific ability to explain. A common example of that ability is our Theory of Gravity. Our best scientists still can’t explain precisely what gravity is, or exactly why it’s so powerful over long distances yet so weak that living organisms with a fraction of the mass of our Earth can easily overcome it long enough to dunk a basketball. “We obviously have vastly more to learn about this.” Is it possible that people who can dunk a basketball have brains that emit a special electromagnetic pulse that allows them to repulse from the Earth more easily than people (like me) who can’t dunk?

Thanks to deductive logic, I don’t need to know everything about gravity or everything about physics or everything about how the brain works to know that the human brain cannot make me fly. I can dismiss the possibility outright. Some questions are just dumb.

It’s the height of intellectual laziness to throw out a poorly conceived, stupid question and yet hide under the apron strings of “honest debate” when somebody tells you that the premise of your question is flawed and offensive. At the Harvard I went to, intellectualism wasn’t something we were taught to hide behind. Debate was not the appropriate forum to expose ignorance. Every student that has ever gotten into Harvard has learned the value of homework. You came to class, prepared, or you kept your mouth shut when adults were talking. This ridiculous universe where even questions from the slow witted and lazy are respected under the guise of academic debate doesn’t exist.

It pains me to see so many people trying to twist the free exchange of academic ideas into something that supports not-so-thinly veiled racism. Universities are supposed to be places where people learn to overcome the nascent prejudiced beliefs that they harbor without an iota of hard evidence. Not places where people are rewarded for couching racist beliefs in the language of academia. “Are black people intellectually inferior, genetically, to white people” is not an open scientific question, it’s a competing (and wrong) theory of reality. A reality which presupposes that: A) there could be a subclass of humans living among us, B) I could be one of them, C) As long as we don’t stop people from “asking tough questions,” science may one day “prove” that I’m subhuman.

Is there anything more racist than that?

I don’t know what racial minorities have to do to “prove” that they have the same capacity for human intellect as everyone else. 200 years ago, whites thought we had smaller brains. Today, some are open to the possibility that we’re genetically inferior. 200 years from now, I’m sure there will be some other ridiculous bastardization of science people go with. Maybe they’ll find that blacks don’t have as many dark matter particles energizing the electrons in their fingernails. Who knows? I’ve given up trying to anticipate how people will insult me and my entire race next.

While the reasons change, the fundamental racist insult never does. There will always be people who look at the color of another man’s skin and assign some kind of meaning to it, beyond the simple concentration of pigment.

The silver lining is that the people who hold these beliefs still can’t actually manage to hide the racist overtones in polite society. They can dress it up as science and biology. They can cloak it in the sphere of academic debate. They can phrase their answer in the form of a question. But at the end of the day, either you believe in fundamental human equality or you don’t.

Throughout history there have been a long line of people that have resisted the theory of fundamental human equality. But history favors those who embrace equality, not those who keep trying to find an intellectual way around it.

But why? Why are students and professionals in business and law and medicine obsessed with how a for-profit magazine ranks their institution of learning? To be clear, this isn’t the college rankings, we’re not dealing with 18-year-olds looking for good place to get laid and study the philosophy of thinking for four years. We’re talking about trained professionals and would-be professionals. Doesn’t the working world value performance over prestige?

As a twice-minted Harvard graduate that has benefited from the status of my educational history more times than I probably know, I can tell you that performance wins in the end. Trust me, if performance didn’t matter I’d be rich and dictating this post from Maui to my busty, yet grammatically impeccable, secretary.

But performance is the love-child of confidence and talent, and prestige is the sexiest confidence man you’ve ever met. All U.S. News does is tap into that in order to sell magazines…

The real career enhancing treat that the Yales, and Oxfords, and Sorbonnes (and so on), give you is measured in self-confidence. On the job, everybody eventually confronts a problem that they have no clue how to handle. You get put into a situation where all you have to rely on are your instincts and your training. Some people, naturally, think they are right all the time and just plow ahead into the unknown based on their best guess. We call these people “egomaniacs” and generally hate them.

But most people have to make a calculated confidence check (a “saving throw” against confidence for the D&D geeks in the audience) before they proceed. If you went to a great school there’s a greater chance that you will stride confidently into the unknown while thinking “This is the best I can do, and my best has always been good enough.” If you went to a so-called crappy school, you might dip your toes into the unknown thinking “I really hope this is right,” and back off your considered position the minute you meet resistance. Right or wrong (over time there is no substitute for talent), the talented person who goes for it performs better than the talented person who doesn’t trust their own talent.

Before U.S. News, a few global universities had a monopoly on this “instant confidence” market. What U.S. News did was to open up the prestige market to institutions beyond the ones most steeped in tradition. Quick, which is the better business school, Kellogg or Stern? Never heard of them? Okay: Kellogg is the Northwestern business school and Stern is the NYU business school. Which one is better? Tell me. Tell me now or your resume is going into the fire!

Well, if I reference the U.S. News Business School rankings, I could tell you definitively that Kellogg is a better business school than Stern. Is it true? Doesn’t matter. It’s a fact. I just linked to it on U.S. News itself. The wonderful thing about circular arguments is that they are perfectly circular!

And that means that every NYU business school student now has to justify why they went to NYU instead of Kellogg. Oh, there are many justifications: “I wanted to stay in New York,” “I thought NYU’s emphasis on [whatever] was really important,” “My scholarship made going to NYU a better economical decision than going to some of these other schools.”

The bitch of it is that NYU M.B.A. candidates have to justify the U.S. News difference to themselves long before they are mind-f***ed by: employers, drunken bloggers, or feeling-good-about-life Kellogg students. I’ll give you an example from my own life: I got into Harvard and Yale for law school. But according to U.S. News, Yale is clearly #1 and Harvard is clearly not #1. And damned if I don’t occasionally wonder whether my aborted and soul-crushing legal career might have turned out a little bit differently had taken the offer from Yale instead of Harvard. A decade removed from the decision, I still shudder at the mere thought of the road not traveled. It’s silly, but I get angry when somebody suggests that I couldn’t get into Yale Law School. People assume that you went to the best U.S. News ranked professional school you got in to and it’s almost impossible to convince them otherwise without sounding like you have something to hide.

Sadly, U.S. News has made this kind of stupid prestige whoring accessible to anyone who buys the magazine. Back in the days before U.S. News, employers and colleagues might have cared about where you went to school. But U.S. News allows clients and customers to judge you based on nothing more than where you got your degree. Never forget, finance, law, and medicine are service industries. U.S. News gives information — sometimes dispositive information — to your customers who don’t know whether to trust you with their money.

Don’t believe me? Let’s say you have a choice about which brain surgeon has the authority to crack open your skull. All I’ll tell you about choice A is that he/she went to Johns Hopkins and finished at the top of the class. All I’ll tell you about choice B is that he/she went to medical school at UC San Francisco and finished at the top of the class. Not UC Berkeley, not UCLA, or USC, I’m bringing up UC San Fran-effeing-cisco. Who do you chose?

U.S. News makes money off of everybody that chose the Johns Hopkins doctor. But the magazine makes significantly more money off of the people who chose UC San Francisco. You see, UCSF is ranked fourth, just one spot behind third ranked Johns Hopkins. In primary care UCSF is ranked fifth while Johns Hopkins is tied at #25. Who knew?

If your brain was on the table, you’d make it your business to know; which makes U.S. News very happy.

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I’m a bit of a Civil War buff — which is to say that I needed to check off the “knows about war” box in the manship handbook and I picked this one. I’m no Shelby Foote (R.I.P.), but I’m conversant in most of the military and political history surrounding that war. Hey, it’s the war that (indirectly) set me free, and it’s easily the most interesting war America has ever been a part of.

I love and respect the history on both sides of the conflict. The Confederates fought with courage, pride, and tactical brilliance. Their fight is something to be remembered, something to be studied, something that deserves its place in the annals of American history.

It is not something to be proud of. Sorry Confederates (and modern sympathizers), you were on the wrong side. Not just on the wrong side of history, but also on the wrong side of morality. The often heroic deeds undertaken by Confederates on the battlefield were in furtherance of an evil cause. I repeat, an evil cause. Let’s not forget that Southern hero Robert E. Lee fought for a pro-slavery state. Sure, he seems to have been really uncomfortable with slavery, but when the chips were down he chose state over morality. Can we respect the man as arguably the best American general? Absolutely. Should we be proud that our greatest general chose the morally reprehensible side? No we should not. Love of country cannot and should not trump love of your fellow man. Unless you are an asshole. Lee, for all of his laudable qualities, failed the crucial moral test of his life. I respect him, but he was a dick. There’s a difference between respect and pride.

That difference is apparently lost on Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell…

When Virginia declared April “Confederate History Month,” I didn’t have a problem with it. On it’s face, it’s just about respecting history. I mean, I probably would have called it “Civil War History Month,” but I’d also call February “American History Not Made By White People Month.” Whatever. I wasn’t going to let Virginia’s insistence on pandering to angry white people obscure the fact that Civil War history is something we should all know something about.

In a Huffington Post poll, I joined a minority of people who said that it was okay for Virginia to make a Confederate History month, so long as “they do it objectively.”

But then I read McDonnell’s proclamation; the man couldn’t get through one sentence before making me wish U.S. Grant would rise and beat the bag out of the whole damn state, again:

WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse;

Look, I know that wealthy Southern slave holders sold the War as a “fight for independence” to the poor Southern soldiers who had no slaves. But it’s 2010. Do you really need to use an antebellum talking point in the first line of your message? Why would you do that? You want to talk about history, just say that Virginia “joined the movement to make slaveholding safe for rich people.”

And as long as we’re here: it was a freaking rebellion, Bob. A dirty, dishonorable, bloody REBELLION. Virginia couldn’t win the argument using the political structures of its day, and instead of working within the process (like civilized people) they went outside of the political process like a violent and petulant child. Own it. The Founding Fathers did.

Next up from Bingo Bob:

WHEREAS, Virginia has long recognized her Confederate history, the numerous civil war battlefields that mark every region of the state, the leaders and individuals in the Army, Navy and at home who fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth in a time very different than ours today;

I. Am. So. Sick of people telling me that it was a “different time,” as if that somehow made it okay to be a racist slaveholding jackass. There were a lot of people living at the very same time who knew full well that slavery was morally reprehensible. It’s not like any of these Confederates were unaware of the concept of equally created men — they just didn’t agree with it. Again, even the greatest Confederate General knew that slavery was wrong. Lee said “There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil.”

So please don’t give me this different time BS. Confederates knew, Lee knew, that slavery was wrong and they all defended it anyway. As if the rights of any state, any country, could justify enslaving another human being. Slavers knew what they were doing was wrong, they just didn’t want to put an end to it on their own. There was too much money involved. Would you willingly give up free labor that also happened to be the backbone of your economy, or would General Sherman have to come and burn it out of your cold dead hands? That’s the history.

Why is it so hard to say “it was a different time, when many in our own state were morally misguided, or at the very least confused by their lust for riches.” It’s entirely possible to highlight the good without ignoring the evil.

WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to reflect upon our Commonwealth’s shared history, to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War, and to recognize how our history has led to our present;

Sigh. Virginians fought and sacrificed in the UNION Army too. General George “Rock of Chickamauga” Thomas springs to mind (because I wrote a paper on him in high school). He was a Virginian. Is his history not also to be recognized?

I thought Bob McDonnell was supposed to be the Governor of the whole state, not just a pandering jackass to the part that elected him.

It’s such a simple fix, honor ALL of Virginia’s sacrifices during the Civil War. Honor the War, not the ideals of the losing and incorrect side.

WHEREAS, all Virginians can appreciate the fact that when ultimately overwhelmed by the insurmountable numbers and resources of the Union Army, the surviving, imprisoned and injured Confederate soldiers gave their word and allegiance to the United States of America, and returned to their homes and families to rebuild their communities in peace, following the instruction of General Robert E. Lee of Virginia, who wrote that, “…all should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war and to restore the blessings of peace.”

… And then those returning soldiers promptly instituted Jim Crow laws to ensure that the recently freed black people would suffer at least another 100 years of oppression at the hands  of pissed off white people.

But, so long as we are on the subject of allegiance, would it be possible for Virginia Congressman and Republican Whip Eric Cantor to actually work with the (gasp) black dude that just happens to be President of the Country instead of vowing to not lift a red finger to do anything to help govern? Bob McDonnell, would you like to swear allegiance to the United States of America right now, or are you afraid that would hurt your street cred with the Tea Party thugs in your party?

I expect to hear you remind all of your supporters that Obama is an American born citizen. Otherwise, kindly STFU and leave the word allegiance to people who know what it means.

Sorry, I’m getting angry now:

WHEREAS, this defining chapter in Virginia’s history should not be forgotten, but instead should be studied, understood and remembered by all Virginians, both in the context of the time in which it took place, but also in the context of the time in which we live, and this study and remembrance takes on particular importance as the Commonwealth prepares to welcome the nation and the world to visit Virginia for the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of the Civil War, a four-year period in which the exploration of our history can benefit all

See Governor, this was really all you needed to say. If you were genuine about the need for Virginia to remember its history, this is all you would have said. The Civil War should be studied, understood, and remembered not just by all Virginians but by all Americans … in context. The context of a great evil, the context of a changing American economy, the context of moderate politicians (like Lincoln) who didn’t really like the old institution, but didn’t have a damn clue what to do with a suddenly free minority population, the context of new weapons of war and old tactical strategies and generals who don’t lead from the front. Does any of this sound familiar?

Even if you can’t see the parallels between the Civil War and our modern day conflicts, it’s still worth understanding: because we are still fighting it. Ultimately, that’s the problem with Virginia’s Confederate Month. Instead of a solemn and needed look at the history of events which still shape our lives, McDonnell’s version of it reads like the latest attack. The proclamation is the latest tactical maneuver from a polity that still thinks it can win this thing.

At least Bobby Lee didn’t use the great conflict between North and South for personal self-aggrandizement. Bobby McDonnell is trying to use it so white Virginians think he is a good Governor. Lee didn’t want to fight, McDonnell is spoiling for one. Lee is one of the most respected Americans in history despite being an asshole. It seems that all McDonnell learned from that great tradition is the asshole part.

Image by Beyond Forgetting via Flickr

I suppose there comes a time in every man’s life when his faith is tested. As a secular individual, that time came for me when I was about seven years old. That’s when I learned that Jesus could not have possibly hopped on a freaking dinosaur.

Obviously, the more I learned about physics and chemistry, the more I viewed the Bible as nothing more than a guidebook for living as a decent person. But I used to really love the Church. Not the “going to Church” part (c’mon) but I enjoyed being a part of the community of Catholics. I enjoyed the tradition. And until I made the mistake of leaving the New York tri-state area, I enjoyed the kind of theological conversations I’d have with other big city Catholics. I even got married in the Church (which is pretty damn expensive), I went through pre-Cana and everything.

Like so many “lapsed Catholics” before me, as I became an adult I began to pick and choose which church teachings I paid any attention to. No sex before marriage? Whatever, just because you can’t get any doesn’t mean you have to cock-block me, Padre. But there was that one time my girlfriend and I had sex on Good Friday (the most awful day on the Christian calendar). Not good times. It’s all fun and games until you and your lady friend spend Easter weekend doubled over a toilet puking your guts out thanks to some mysterious “stomach flu” that afflicted you only after you climaxed while Jesus was dying. I’m not sure if God exists, but he scares the f*** out of me.

But you know who I’m not afraid of? The Catholic Church. Not anymore. They’ve lost their moral authority.

In fairness, the Church probably lost the right to tell me how to live my life a long time ago: you know sometime between the Crusades and its tacit consent to slavery and the Holocaust. But I wasn’t alive for those atrocities. Instead I have had the misfortune of being a Catholic during this period of global boy raping. And it is simply too disgusting, too sad, and too evil to tolerate. You hear that, Pope Cover-Up? You’ve just lost another Christmas and Easter Catholic! St. Peter, please debit my lost soul against the Pope’s account.

And I don’t think I’m alone.

But the real sad thing is that the Church doesn’t even want me, or people like me. Intelligent people who have an education and would like to believe in something are turning away from the Catholic Church, and Church leaders don’t even care. I mean, did you see Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s Psalm Sunday homily? He compared the criticism being leveled at Pope Benedict XVI to the torment suffered by Jesus. Having your hands and feet nailed to piece of wood until you bleed out and die v. being castigated in the media: boy I can barely tell those two things apart! When the Church starts speaking to educated adults like they are five years old  — intelligent people tune out and turn to Star Wars movies for spiritual guidance.

Granted, I’ve got issues with Archbishop Dolan that don’t even involve his defense of a man who couldn’t bring himself to punish child rapists. Dolan is the Shepard of the New York City flock of Catholics, yet all he’s done is spew Vatican hardline dogma since they pulled him out of Wisconsin to teach us city boys just how 5th Century God can be. Somebody needs to take that dude to Chelsea and make him chug whiskey sours until he chills the hell out.

But he and Pope Rottweiler himself are just the latest manifestation of Catholicism’s ancient problems. The larger issue is that the Church has systematically refused to make any sort of peace with the modern world. This isn’t at all new: if Galileo had a blog (and the protection of the First Amendment) he’d have told Pope Urban VIII to come over to his lab and suck on his telescope.

Why would you consistently alienate the smartest members of your faith? ‘Cause let me tell you it, it’s not what the Jews do. No, in reformist fits and spurts, Judaism generally finds a balance between the traditions of the faith and the desire of humans to learn things and progress. You can’t do X or Y after sundown on days A and B. The rest of the time, you’re free to fly your rocket car around the freaking moon and get some spacebabe action if it suits you. And you’ll note, Jews have been able to keep the faithful away from delicious combinations of meats and cheeses for centuries without any kind of outsized concept of eternal suffering in a hellish afterlife.

Meanwhile,  Catholic leaders are perfectly happy to let women and men die from sexually transmitted diseases because apparently our God can have his omniscient plan easily flummoxed by a film of latex.

As a Catholic, I was willing to put up with it. I was willing to feel guilty about using marital “crazypills” (my Priest’s word for birth control) and at least tried to be as faithful as I could without giving up my subscription to National Geographic.

But I can’t get over the kiddie rape. I just can’t. If Jesus walked for 40 days in the desert and saw priests raping children in his house and yet still had faith in his path — well, that must be what makes him Jesus and me just a guy destined to live in Hell with all my secular friends. Because I cannot defend this clergy.

I can’t even conceive of how I could respect — let alone worship — a Pope that did nothing to expose and defrock these pedophile priests when he saw them for who they were. And this recent scandal isn’t even the first time we’ve caught this Pope walking down moral easy street. When we found out that, as a boy, then-Joseph Ratzinger was conscripted into the Hitler Youth, a lot of people defended him. Not me. I thought that if you are going to have the moral authority to lead all of the world’s Catholics as a man, you should’ve had the moral backbone to stand up to the Nazis when you were a boy. There is a long line of Catholics who would sooner die than befoul their spirit. Ratzinger does not belong to that lineage.

You want to call the Nazi thing a youthful indiscretion of epic sin? Fine. But what did he do when he found out (after the fact) that this monster in Wisconsin diddled 200 deaf children? It appears all he did was try to shield the Vatican from further embarrassment. He thought it better to let the man die as a part of the Church instead making a statement that child rapists would not be tolerated? Jesus went apesh** on a temple because people were gambling there; Ratzinger went deaf-mute when he learned priests were molesting children. There isn’t enough Kool-Aid in all of Christendom to wash that taste out of my mouth.

This Pope has a pattern of not standing up to moral leadership when moral leadership is his only job requirement.

I think Kevin Spacey said it best in American Beauty: “No, no, no. You don’t get to tell me what to do … ever again.”

The importance of the Census cannot be overstated. Watch, I’ll try: the 2010 Census is the most important civic activity you will do this decade.

It’s vastly more important to fill out your Census form than to vote in an election — at least if you fill it out, others can vote for you. But if you don’t submit your information, you might as well not politically exist. I know people, mainly recent immigrants (more on them later) who vote regularly but don’t fill out the Census. That’s like playing craps and putting money on the pass line but not taking any odds. It’s dumb to not fill out the Census. Come on people, it’s only ten questions.

But make no mistake, each of those ten questions is hyper-charged, politically speaking. If you look closely, you can see the partisan fighting and tortured logic between every line. Democrats almost always have an interest in encouraging people to fill out the Census, Republicans do not.

And so we play our game. Let’s give the Census a close read (“close read” is the liberal arts equivalent to “actual research and knowledge”) of the 2010 Census. Tell your government what it wants to know, but know why it is asking you in the first place.
Really, it is a testament to our political vitality that ten seemingly innocent questions could be so loaded with subtext.

Question 1: How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010?

The Census Bureau gives reasons for asking its questions:

We use the information to ensure response accuracy and completeness and to contact respondents whose forms have incomplete or missing information.

Don’t give me that “accuracy and completeness” crap. It’s a fact that a statistical sampling Census would yield a more accurate result than a direct headcount. If you do a headcount, you miss people; some people will simply never fill out the form. For any number of reasons direct headcounts undercount populations — especially urban ones. But if you did a survey, you can estimate the amount of people in the country far more accurately than you can by going around and counting door-to-door. We have the technology. Gallup could do the Census for a fraction of the cost. It would put the Census in the hands of math.

Question 1 puts the Census in the hands of man. How many people are living in this home? Well, what if you don’t have a home? You could sample the amount of homeless people, or you could go and try to corral them one at a time. Good luck with the latter.

It’s worth noting that the Supreme Court also suggests putting the Census in the hands of math would be unconstitutional. Go figure, and I thought Jefferson and them were such enlightened guys that embrace reason over obsolete traditions.

Question 2: Were there any additional people staying here April 1, 2010 that you did not include in Question 1?

This question clearly could lead to an overcounting problem. But hey, when you do a direct count, you have to make sure you account for people that are extremely dumb.

This question is a redundancy plan for stupid people who didn’t know that their own children counted as “people.” But it doesn’t help stupid people who are afraid that their 80-year-old illegal alien father will be hunted down and deported by Homeland Security. Nope, those people aren’t going to avail themselves of Question 2’s catch-all claims.

Of course, one could argue that children under the age of 10 shouldn’t count at all. Why should you get more political power than me just because you couldn’t successfully operate a condom? But I digress. Eventually taxpayers will have to provide education and open spaces for your brood, so we mind as well count and know what’s coming.

Question 3: Is this house, apartment, or mobile home: owned with mortgage, owned without mortgage, rented, occupied without rent?

How many people do you know who “occupy without rent” really want to put that on some scary government form? I know college graduates who thought that they were excluded from the Census because they were living with a roommate but their name wasn’t on the lease.

This question is most likely to discourage young adults who are living with roommates or relatives and think you have to contribute in order to be counted. But making young people feel like they are not part of the political system is one easy way to have a public policy that is geared towards the old and soon-to-be-dead. Stick it to grandpa and make sure you ask your roommate for the Census form.

Question 4: What is your telephone number?

This isn’t politically loaded so much as it is ridiculously stupid. I don’t give out my phone number when I’m buying porn, why in the hell would I give it to the U.S. government?

And what phone number? The hard line that does not exist? Or the cell phone I lost in the cab yesterday? Maybe I should just fill in my Skype name and call it a day?

Question 5: Please provide information for each person living here. Start with a person here who owns or rents this house, apartment, or mobile home. If the owner or renter lives somewhere else, start with any adult living here. This will be Person 1. What is Person 1’s name?

And now the fun begins. The next five questions are the kind of basic demographic information that politicians and political scientists crave.

But this extremely useful identifying information comes at a cost. Each question increases the chances that somebody will get paranoid, bored, confused, or find some other reason to not complete the form and wind up overlooked. These issues are all heightened in our modern age where we are now conditioned to protect our identity from thieves — to say nothing of the fact that many people don’t trust the government. People are afraid that giving the government even something they already have (the government knows your name, buddy) flags you for government oversight or harassment.

This question is entirely fair, but it suppresses participation in the Census. And the kind of people that don’t want the government to know their name are exactly the kind of people that are easily disenfranchised in other areas of American political life. It’s a necessary evil of a direct headcount. We probably can’t change just because Nixon and Bush ruined our faith in our government.

Question 6: What is Person 1’s sex?

I’m really surprised by what’s missing in this question. They ask about the sexual genitalia, but do not ask about genital preference. I don’t think executives at Bravo are the only ones who care about how many gays and lesbians are living in the country.

Maybe we just don’t want to know just how flaming we are. We gotta look tough in front of the Chinese. Whatever, gays will be coming (openly) to a military theater near you. And by 2020, I’m sure they’ll be able to self-identify on the Census form if they choose.

In any event, the sex question has an almost immediate impact on your day-to-day life. Have you ever been watching, say, a football game, and then a tampon commercial comes on? Every wonder what ad genius at Tampax thought that halftime was the right time to talk about feminine hygiene? A genius that reads the Census data, that’s who.

During campaign season you’ll see all different kinds of targeted ads. If you know a person’s address, and you know the gender breakdown of a household, you have a pretty good idea of where there soccer moms are in your district. Let the 3:00 a.m. phone calls begin.

Question 7: What is Person 1’s age and Date of Birth?

And now you know where the old people are. The Census Bureau doesn’t even hide the ball about why it wants this information:

Federal, state, and local governments need data about age to interpret most social and economic characteristics, such as forecasting the number of people eligible for Social Security or Medicare benefits. The data are widely used in planning and evaluating government programs and policies that provide funds or services for children, working-age adults, women of childbearing age, or the older population.

But this kind of information governs so much more than forecasting. Where are you going to build that hospital? Where are you not going to build that prison? Old people vote. Young people — not quite as much. Plan your governing strategies accordingly.

Question 8: Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin?
Question 9: What is Person 1’s race?

You’ve really got to look at these questions together to understand their full force and effect. Why are Latino’s separated out from every other race on Earth? Here’s the government’s answer for why they ask Question 8:

Asked since 1970. The data collected in this question are needed by federal agencies to monitor compliance with anti-discrimination provisions, such as under the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. State and local governments may use the data to help plan and administer bilingual programs for people of Hispanic origin.

Does the government not have an interest in administering bilingual programs for Japanese people? Or Iranians? Of course it does. So why separate out Hispanics?

Well, one reason is to scare the s*** out of them. Remember, we live in a country where some people talk about erecting walls on our border. No, not our porous northern border which is the longest undefended border on the planet. The people I’m talking about are the ones that want a wall in the south. And we know why. Some people have a real problem with illegal brown-skinned immigrants.

By separating out Hispanics, the Census creates an additional barrier to participation — not just on the part of those who are here illegally, but those who are here legally yet don’t want to be hassled by the government. If you are legal, but have a parent or a relative who is not, why would you risk anything bad happening to a loved one for the sake of filling out a government form? Question 8 is designed to make legal people think twice.

And let’s remember that illegal immigrants are supposed to be counted in the Census too. There’s nothing wrong with filling out the Census if you are here illegally. If you think about it for two seconds, illegal immigrants should be counted in the Census. Illegal immigrants live here and work here and have babies here. They use government resources and — much as some would like to change this fact– actually take up space and consume goods and services while they go about their lives and jobs. It’d be stupid — and incredibly damaging to states in the South and West especially –  if these members of the community were not counted. Wherever you stand on immigration reform, the solution isn’t to ignore these people.

The question is subtle, but if you are here illegally and live in terror of being deported back to wherever America thinks you belong, the question looks like it’s in big red letters. Some of us hope that illegal immigrants can overcome the fear and stand up to be counted. Others are banking on the fact that they won’t.

For every other race, they started asking Question 9 back in 1790. It’s obvious why. Remember, black people used to count for a whole 3/5ths of a person — that’s more than half!

Nowadays, getting an accurate picture of racial breakdown is crucial as states try to gerrymander districts to elect a “representative” slate of legislators. I’ve been in the room during a redistricting meeting and it is amazing how quickly the conversation focuses on the Census data.  There are different theories: lump all the minorities together so they can have a Congressman who looks like them. Or split them up to drown out the minority agenda. Or move them into or out of the district of a particularly powerful Congressman who happens to live in a district that is creeping right or left. Once you lock people down into a race, you can move them like pawns on your identity chess board.

Question 10: Does Person 1 sometimes live or stay somewhere else?

Holy God, it’s like the Census Bureau knows that the public is too stupid to accurately respond to a direct head count, yet insists on doing it this way anyway. At the end of the day, this question is  just one last opportunity to confuse those who do not live in traditional homes. If I’m living in a college dorm room, do I fill out the form, or should I be counted as part of my mother’s household? If I’m living with a girlfriend, do I fill out as part of her household? What if we’re not going to get married, but it was cheaper for us to live in sin?

What if I still live in New Orleans and am still trying to put my life back together?

At almost every point, a traditional, 1950s-style living arrangement is emphasized over the fluid and casual living arrangements that are a natural part of city life. Estimates say that over 6.4 million Americans were not counted in the 2000 Census. That’s about 2% of the total population (which is terrible on it’s own) but it was a loss disproportionately felt by large urban cities and states. Does Wyoming really need any more political power at the expense of Florida? They’ve already got two U.S. Senators that represent more cows or sheep or whatever than people.

Fill out the Census. I know it’s annoying. I know it’s considerably more annoying than it has to be. But it’s probably the most important national responsibility you’ll fulfill all decade.

Image by SuperFantastic via Flickr

This post is dedicated to a brother I passed on the street this morning. A green-clad man said: “Happy Saint Patrick’s Day” to which the brother responded “Yeah, you know, just trying to not get beat up.”

It’s kind of like that for black people on St. Patrick’s Day.

364 days of the year, I’ve got no problem with the Irish. But I don’t mess around and leave my house on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m too old, I’m too black, and no longer willing to risk bar brawls on a holiday. Don’t worry about me, I’ve still got Cinqo de Mayo and Purim and a host of other holidays that I can use to hide my alcoholism.

I don’t want to rain on anybody’s good time. If you love St. Patrick’s Day, keep right on loving it. No worries. Just don’t expect many of your black friends to join in the fun. As a “friend” told me on SPD-1996: “Everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Except you, Elie, ’cause you’re black.”

Don’t I know it.

If you watched Gangs of New York and didn’t notice how Martin Scorsese glossed over the horrible racism blacks experienced at the hands of the kinds of people he portrayed in his movie, you’re probably don’t understand the deep, historical tensions between the Irish and the blacks. It’s really not the fault of either group. 19th Century Irish immigrants belong to a long line of groups that have come to America only to be pushed to the lowest rungs of society. That’s where you’ll find black people, and it’s only natural that blacks and Irish would fight amongst each other for low-end jobs.

African-Americans are kind of used to it. It happened with the Irish and the Italians when they first came here in numbers. It’s happened with Mexicans in California and Puerto Ricans in New York. It’s happening with Koreans now and soon enough, Iranians and Iraqis will be coming here in significant numbers and it’ll happen again. Hell, even Caribbean and African immigrants are quick to distinguish themselves from African-Americans. Recent immigrants get crapped on and slightly less recent immigrants crap all over black people. It’s like you can’t be a “real American” until you develop some kind of general animosity to America’s indigenous black population. Meanwhile, somewhere “The Man” laughs and lights up another cigar with a wad of cash.

But the Irish were different, because back in the day a lot of them became cops. And let me tell you something, making your new immigrant class the muscle as your regime attempts to retain control of a minority population during a period of social change is a bad idea. You’re just asking for animosity.

So I do not enjoy hearing stories about the glory of the Five Points any more than I enjoy hearing about the heroic deeds of the Confederate captain in your family. I respect the history, I don’t necessarily want to celebrate it.

But I’m not here to just talk about the past. Modern day SPD isn’t all about ancient conflict between two ethnic groups. Instead, my current issues with the holiday has less to do with history and more to do with physical and mental safety.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell many black men this, but when a girl says “kiss me, I’m Irish” she’s not talking to you, bro’. I made that mistake once (SPD–1999), and I’m still shocked I got out of that bar alive. The Boston bar I was in became so silent you’d think I’d raped a hockey team full of red heads with one stroke. One time then-girlfriend (now wife) said she wanted to go to South Boston to see the parade. All of our white friends looked at her as if she had just said she planned to sever an artery to see how long it took to bleed out. They left it to me to politely say “baby, I don’t think your plan maximizes our long term survivability.”

Even when I’m not worried about physical danger, walking around while black on St. Patrick’s Day is kind of like being in that Paul Mooney skit: “Ask a Black Man” on the Chappelle Show. Here are some questions I’ve been asked on this holiday:

“Elie, why don’t black people — sorry, some black people — like to work?”

“The penis thing, that’s a myth right? Right?”

“Hey, I’m Irish, I can drink, just like you can play basketball. … Bollocks, of course you can play basketball.”

“I wouldn’t have a problem if my sister dated a black. It’s not brilliant, but it’s not like she’s going to marry one.”

I could go on and on and on. And sure, I could hear these kind of questions any day of the week. But I do hear them on SPD. All the freaking time. Do you know what’s fun about waiting for a friend to get drunk enough on one specific day to ask you something that he’s clearly been thinking about since he met you? Nothing. There’s nothing festive about that. Why would I want to sit around all day waiting to get offended or assaulted or both?

I get why Saint Patrick’s Day is fun for some people, but it’s not fun for me. Too much history, too many opportunities for drunk people to show their ignorance of my history. In my twenties, I’d get out there and try to fight the good fight. But now I’m old and tired. I don’t mind staying out of the way so other people can have their fun tonight.

That was a long time ago. So long ago that now I fear we will soon live in a world where T.V. shows and movies construct alternate realities as if 9/11 never happened. [SPOILER ALERT: We already live in such a world.]

And that would be fine if we had truly moved on from the tragedy. You grieve, you remember, you move on, it’s a natural part of life. But we haven’t moved on. Despite all of our sacrifices in blood, treasure, and liberty, all we are left with is our grief. Osama Bin Laden still limps around free. The TSA could demand rectal probing to get on an airplane, and we would submit “just in case.” And oh yeah, we’re apparently out of money — which is kind of exactly what the terrorists were trying to accomplish.

And there’s still this big, gaping hole in the middle of the city. Can we get anybody interested in doing something about that?

Yesterday, there was a rally at Ground Zero:

Construction workers hoping to speed up the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site chanted “Build it now!” at a rally Tuesday to urge quicker movement on the project.

Construction is under way on 1 World Trade Center, a memorial and a transit hub, but the building of other planned towers has stalled as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey battles developer Larry Silverstein.
via The New York Post

The dispute between Silverstein and the Port Authority is complicated and messy and the kind of thing you’d expect to be cleared up if there was a single adult in the room. Let me explain how this could be solved if New York was run by average New Yorkers instead bureaucrats and corporate interests who are more concerned about their asses than the city:

Issue #1 Port Authority wants Silverstein to put more private funds into the project. Silverstein does not.
Resolution: Silverstein needs to kick in some extra dollars. Right now he owns a hole in the ground. Soon he’ll own the most important building in America. My buddy Vinnie could make money with a front like that. So can Silverstein.

Issue #2 Port Authority wants construction to be delayed until the real estate market rebounds.
Resolution: When I want advice on the best way to get to New Jersey, I’ll ask Port Authority. When I want real estate market advice, I’ll ask just about anybody other than somebody who runs a bus station.

Issue #3 Unions want to play a big role in constructing the new towers.
Resolution: The original World Trade Center was built in under five years. Can you do it in under five years? You’ve got the job.

Issue #4 New York State has been run successively by: George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer, and David Paterson.
Resolution: One guy was a lame duck milquetoast, the other guy couldn’t keep his pants on, the current guy is just … well … totally incompetent. Until further notice, the only politician allowed to talk about the Ground Zero project is Michael Bloomberg. This isn’t America, this isn’t a democracy, this is New York freaking City. Shut up and do your job.

See how easy that was?

There is literally no excuse for politics and money to be screwing up our expression of national pride.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Over a year into the first presidency by a black man in the history of the United States, we’ve learned one thing about race in America: Bill Maher is the only white man in the country that can make a quality racial joke without sounding racist. I don’t know how we got here, maybe white people who listen to Rush Limbaugh honestly don’t know the difference between edgy commentary and racism Limbaugh spews on a daily basis? Maybe conservative media outlets have convinced white people that talking about race respectfully means the terrorists win? Who knows?

But here we are, living at a time when white people open their mouth to say something “clever” about race, they end up sounding like John Mayer instead of an intelligent human being.

Maher’s show is back after hiatus. And once again, he’s seemingly the only one that can find the humor in having a black President (the same way he saw the humor in having a retarded President) without actually offending people with a basic sense of humor. In fact, he’s the only white person that can find the humor of having black people and white people live together (as they do here and no where else on Earth) without offending people.  On last Friday’s show, one of Maher’s “new rules” was: “No black people in the Winter Olympics.” It was a funny bit. He’s not “pushing the envelope” with racial humor, he’s just not afraid of it.

Maher does such a great job, initially I thought more white people should come out of their shell and give it whirl. [Memo to SNL writers: aside from "The Rock Obama," your Obama sketches are stilted, flat, and make me worried that Fred Armisen is going to suffer a crippling identity crisis. Please hire the staff writers from the Chapelle show and get your act together.]

But after watching general white people (talking heads, journalists, celebrities, average people on the street) stumble through racial humor for a year, I now live in fear that some untalented white comedian (think: Dane Cook) will try to get on the trail Maher blazed and inadvertently start a full scale race war.

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility, Bill Maher. You can’t just sit in your plush, HBO studio and watch as white America mumbles incoherent fried chicken jokes in their sleep. So I’m calling you out, Mr. Maher. I’m asking you to teach what you have learned to the younger generation — as you are so fond of saying, America really is all about the children.

Your first assignment, should you choose to accept it, isn’t that far away. Just hop on I-5 and head south until you hit the campus of UC San Diego. You can’t miss it. It’s the school that has a noose hanging from its library door. That’s right, I said noose. Some UCSD student thought it was a good idea to hang a noose on the door to the school library.

Now, if a student at UC San Diego was guilty of a true act of racial hatred, I’d go myself. Instead, I’m asking Maher to go because according the perpetrator of the noose incident, this was a failure of comedy, not of racial tolerance:

The woman, who remains anonymous, claims that the act was an unfortunate and inadvertent mistake. She wrote:

“I found a small piece of rope on the ground earlier in the day [Tuesday, Feb. 23]. While I was hanging out with my friends a bit later, we tried jump-roping with it and making it into a lasso. My friend then took the rope and tied it into a noose. I innocently marveled at his ability to tie a noose, without thinking of any of its connotations or the current racial climate at UCSD … Three days later, on Friday morning, I found out that the noose had been found and construed as another racist act on campus. I felt so ashamed and embarrassed, and the first thing I did was call the campus police and confess. I was hoping to clarify that this was not an act of racism before the incident got a full reaction from the campus.”
Via The Huffington Post

If I had a dollar for every time I innocently lynched my jump-rope partners, I could probably afford to live in San Diego.

This wasn’t the first humor failure at UCSD. Earlier in February, a campus fraternity thought about a really clever way of honoring Black History Month:

A weekend “ghetto-themed” party thrown by fraternity students to mock Black History Month is being condemned by UC San Diego administrators.

The off-campus event, called the “ Compton Cookout,” urged all participants to wear chains, don cheap clothes and speak very loudly. “We will be serving 40’s, Kegs of Natty,” the invitation read.

Female participants were encouraged to be “ghetto chicks.”

The invite read: “For those of you who are unfamiliar with ghetto chicks — Ghetto chicks usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes.”
via NBC — L.A.

See, if Bill Maher had a “ghetto-themed” cookout, it’d be funny. I don’t know how exactly, maybe Chris Rock would show up asking for “just one rib,” Maher would go as a predatory lender, Cornell West would come to drop some knowledge, and everybody would leave high on what we all assume is Maher’s top notch horticultural products?  Somehow, he’d would make it work.

Maher is a professional. These white boys at UCSD don’t have his skill. They were trying to be racially humorous, but they were just racist — and there’s a huge difference, white America. Racially humorous makes me want to laugh (despite myself), racist makes me want to laugh (while committing multiple vigilante homicides).

Clearly, we need to educate white people on the difference between funny and offensive. I understand that the line must seem blurred to many white people — especially the ones that are themselves racist but think they are not because they don’t wear pointy hats. It must be hard for some of them to balance the desire to hide their personal racial animus with their desire to sound lively and interesting at cocktail parties.

So we need a professional humorist to get in there and start teaching white people how to be funny again. Bill Maher, you’re up. Strike now and cement your legacy. Don’t wait too long though, as Bill Clinton could tell you, being an honorary black man isn’t necessarily a lifetime distinction.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

We need a national discussion about racists. We need a very special episode of Oprah Winfrey about racists and how they should be dealt with in polite conversation. We need Obama to call a beer summit with Orly Taitz, Rush Limbaugh, and Tom Tancredo: he should get them together and let them determine what they want to be called.

We need all this because I am sick and tired of white people doing or saying racist things, and then acting like somebody else went too far when they get called “racist.” Last week, Tom Tancredo argued that the right to vote should be dependent upon literacy tests, a racist law people fought and died trying to change within the living memory of many Americans. He then went on to explain that if the racist law had been in place today, then we wouldn’t have an “illegitimate” president right now. He’s probably right, and I sincerely hope that one day Tancredo builds his time machine and is able to go back to the antebellum America bereft of indoor plumbing and modern medicine. Enjoy your truncated life expectancy Tommy, don’t let the flux capacitor hit you on the way out.

In any event, Rachel Maddow called him a racist, she called his supporters racist, and she took crap for it for a week. Unbelievable. When did calling somebody a racist become worse than actually being a freaking racist?

Maybe calling someone “racist” is the new N-word: only racists can call other racists, racist? If this is the case could somebody please forward me the appropriate country music song to illustrate the point?

Nobody asked me for my opinion on this rule change, but I can see why it is in the best interests of racists to make calling somebody a racist a social taboo. Clever plan. And with only liberals standing in your way, it just might work.

On Maddow’s Monday night show, she asked Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree whether he believed that people (birthers, the tea party people) who incessantly question President Obama’s legitimacy were racist. Ogletree said yes — and then went into a litany of policy issues where Democrats and Republicans disagree. In other words, he gave the absolutely wrong answer.

When you merge the racist angle into a general list of political policy disagreements then it sounds like birthers and people of their ilk just don’t like the President, not that they hold any particular racial hatred for him. And since that fits perfectly with what the Tom Tancredos of the world want you to believe anyway — people can act like calling them “racist” is somehow over the line.

Don’t conflate the arguments. There are any number of ways to criticize Obama’s policies — or even his character if you want to go there — that are fair game in American political life.

But this illegitimacy stuff? This need to say that Obama somehow isn’t an American? The desire to limit ballot access to American citizens because they voted for a black guy? These are people who can’t accept that somehow a black man became president on their watch. In their world, Obama cannot be president, not legally. It breaks their carefully constructed — sometimes well hidden — supremacist view, and some people will go to great lengths of self-delusion to keep their world view intact.

Sorry folks, the people who think like this are racist. There’s no other word for it. What do you call people who irrationally fear others and would like to see them excluded from political power?

I call them racist. But now there are some people in this country that tell me that I shouldn’t call them racist. So now, it’s not just that I have to deal with the Tom Tancredos and Rush Bimbos and the “I want MY America back” people of the world, now I’m not even supposed to call them the most appropriate word to describe their particularly mental deformity. Literally, some people will read this post and say that by simply calling racist people racist, that I’m playing the race card and trying inject race into a civilized discussion about policy differences.

For the record, I’m not talking about “policy.” Frankly, I’m not capable of talking to racists about policy. I get too hung up on the “you’re a freaking racist” thing and want to talk about that instead of policy.

But in 2010, I don’t know when you can call a racist a racist. A while ago I wrote a story about a guy who beat up a black woman outside of a bar, because she was black, and his defenders tried to tell me that he wasn’t racist, he was just drunk. I mean, that’s where we are today.

So you know what, fine. FINE. I’m a liberal, which means I fundamentally embrace social change (instead of comforting myself with an illusory tradition that never really existed in the first place). If it offends racists for me to call them racists, then I’ll stop. That’s how goddamn magnanimous I am. I even care about the feelings of idiots who believe their skin tone gives them an evolutionary advantage over me (even though these same people generally don’t believe in evolution). AM I NOT MERCIFUL?

But if I’m going to stop calling them racists, then society needs to give me another word for them. Idiots doesn’t work; it would be offensive to the many kind souls that just happen to be incredibly dumb and uninformed. “Genetically Offensive” has a nice ring to it, but sadly racism is learned behavior — yeah, I know, somebody taught these people to behave this way, shocking — and I wouldn’t want to confuse future generations into thinking that racism can be eugenically selected against. “Behavioral Misanthropes”? Not sure. All racists are psychotic but not all psychos are racist.

See, I can’t come up with a better word or phrase. But then again, liberals have never been particularly good at naming things (if you didn’t see “Republicans use the Snowpacalypse to disparage global warming” coming a mile away, well, you just haven’t been paying attention). You know who is good at naming things? Racists. Seriously. I remember the first time I was called a “chigger” (because I’m part Chinese and all) and I have to admit, I thought it was damn clever.

So, I ask, I implore the racists to get together and come up with a new word for me to call them. Just tell me how to properly label your rank disgustingness, and I will try to oblige.