Obama, Drudge, Rush, and the Final Nail
It’s hard to know what to say in the face of shameless evil. After all, you can’t shame it.
The conservative movement, apparently having reached its end, is going out in a fit of racial ignominy. Despite the fact that many of the president’s proposed policies are unpopular all on their own, leaders of the conservative movement like Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh have decided that what’s needed to bring down this president is to stoke a climate of racial acrimony, racial hatred, racial panic.
This was thrown into sharp relief yesterday, when Matt Drudge chose as his lead story a non-story of a bully beating up a kid on a bus. Of course, the kicker is that it was a white kid getting beaten up by a black bully, with other kids (mostly black) cheering on the violence. The Drudge headline: “WHITE STUDENT BEATEN ON SCHOOL BUS; CROWD CHEERS.” Rush Limbaugh takes it the rest of the way:
It’s Obama’s America, is it not? Obama’s America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, “Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he’s white.
Got that? The president of the United States, because he’s black, is responsible for a black kid beating up a white kid on a school bus. Because this is “Obama’s America.” And usually conservatives complain when a president is blamed/or given credit for everything good and/or bad that happens in a nation of 300+ million individuals… But I digress.
Two questions occur to me: 1) Where does this come from? and 2) What’s the point?
Let’s take the second question first, because that’s a trick writers sometimes use to look smarter. (I could have just reversed the order of the questions, you know, but that would make me look like a simpleton.) What’s the point? The point is to rile up white America — Drudge’s readers, Rush’s listeners, all of their book buyers — with an image that the Black Man is coming for revenge. He’s been stomped down throughout American history, and now that there’s a black president, he’s coming. to. get. YOU!
We saw this narrative in the campaign, and it hasn’t gone away.
But as a friend pointed out to me, there’s also a dual purpose here. By keeping race front-and-center, conservatives can not only whip up white folks, they can unilaterally deflate one of the great hopes of middle-of-the-road Obama supporters: That his election would allow America to “transcend race.” By proving through their own actions that America hasn’t moved past race — and, in fact, that having a black president has made America more race-obsessed than ever — they can essentially make the president a liar. That bastard hasn’t reduced polarization, look how polarized we are!
But this brings me back to the first question (yep, here we are, as promised). Where does this come from? Partly, it comes from a calculated strategy on the parts of people like Limbaugh and Drudge, and facilitators like the execrable Michelle Malkin. But it also comes from the fact that it’s easier to be tolerant when we don’t really have to tolerate each other.
Let me speak from a bit of personal experience.
I grew up in a lily-white small town in Connecticut. I went to a primary school with (I’m pretty sure) not one black student at the time. I went to a private high-school in Connecticut with a few black students, mostly on scholarship, who frankly kept to themselves the way that kids will self-segregate. I knew maybe one black kid in any personal way in high school, a few more from the school paper I edited, and of course a few more than that from classes.
And, yet, I considered myself a 100% tolerant, racially enlightened person at that age. I didn’t (and still don’t) think there was anything much I could be blamed for in terms of where I grew up and who I happened to know. We could all make a better effort not to self-segregate, but you’re born into what you’re born into
And then I moved to D.C. for college…
Interning the summer before college started, I was working at a think tank in Northeast D.C., on the “wrong” side of Union Station. Every morning and afternoon I had to walk through a pretty sketchy neighborhood, one which I was a bit naive to be negotiating as a dorky 18 year old in a blazer. (Why do so many people throw out spoons on the street down here? I wondered. Why no forks?)
Anyway, one morning, I got mugged. And not just mugged, really, but punched in the face and tackled by a group of three black teenagers. Luckily, an older woman drove by in the middle of all this, screamed at the kids to get off me (which they did), and then drove me to the police station. I think I would have sustained a much harsher beating had she not driven by (I had $0 in my wallet — being an intern and all, and not city smart).
Now, it would obviously have been unfair to allow this incident to tarnish my feelings toward all black people, based on three thugs jumping me. And that’s not what I did. But it made me realize that tolerance from afar and living together in a diverse world are very different things. I’d actually walked right by the three kids who mugged me, not wanting to switch sides of the street or do anything else that might make me appear “racist.” I was repaid with a punch in the face — one which I think clearly had racial overtones of its own (here I was, a preppy white kid in their neighborhood). At the same time, the woman who stopped her car was also black, as was the policeman who took my report (which made me feel all the more self-conscious when I couldn’t really give any description of my attackers better than “black” and “teenagers” — but, dammit, they jumped me from behind).
The point is: Negotiating race became a lot harder when I moved to a black city from a white town. I’ve now lived 12 years between D.C. and New York City, and I wouldn’t go back to a lily white world if you paid me — I’ve adjusted, and the adjustment is no longer novel. But it’s still a truth of human nature that this adjustment exists.
Without somehow equating the president with a group of muggers (that incident was back in Clinton’s America, by the way), it strikes me that this transition from lily-white world to diverse world is a little like the shift America has made. We could ignore race and be post-racial, in a sense, when our politics was lily white. You could criticize the president, Democrat or Republican, on most any issue, and race would be a non-issue. Campaigns would have some racial flare-ups, but when the smoke cleared our politics could be nice and segregated again. Now: There’s a black guy at the center of it all, day in and day out. There’s no avoiding the issue — any criticism of the president is going to be scanned for racial undertones. (And, a lot of the time, those undertones will be found [see: protests, Tea Party].) It’s getting hard not to see all of our arguments through a racial lens — partly because of the cynicism of the Limbaughs and Drudges of the world, but also partly because we’re forced to live together today in a way we haven’t been before.
Which leads, of course, to the question of what we can do about it. Some people will continue to act in bad faith. But what about the rest of us?
I don’t have any answers. (Sorry.) But I have a vague intuition that the situation isn’t helped by calling out every instance of racism — and especially not by trying to find instances of racism that aren’t there. Jimmy Carter’s right (shudder) that racism plays a major role in the opposition to President Obama. But conservatives are intent on hearing that any racism in the anti-Obama movement is equivalent to saying that the anti-Obama movement is all racist. Again, this is a willful mishearing, but it’s what an awful lot of people are going to hear.
My guess is it’s best to change the subject whenever possible — back to policy, back to strategy… heck, even back to the pettiest of politics (so long as it’s not racial). You won’t extinguish racism by calling people racists. But you can counter the conservative strategy by not letting this become about race.
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Its hard to dismiss race when you see some of the signs carried at these tea bagging rallies. They are not critical of policy. I dont see a picture of Obama as a witch doctor as having anything to do with a policy or political disagreement. Jimmy Carter has lived in the South most of the 85 or so years of his life (small town south even) and has seen a lot when it comes to race so you have to give him some more credit for knowing what he is talking about on this one. The lunatic fringe on the right eats this stuff up, but my guess is that they pushed just a little to far right with this political theater…because thats all it is
Nicely done. You really worded it perfectly. I hope that all of this advances our discussions of race, and that the Far White mellow out a bit.
You write:
“My guess is it’s best to change the subject whenever possible — back to policy, back to strategy… heck, even back to the pettiest of politics (so long as it’s not racial). You won’t extinguish racism by calling people racists. But you can counter the conservative strategy by not letting this become about race.”
Are you suggesting “turn the other cheek”? That may well be the right approach, but it doesn’t FEEL right. How do you steer the conversation back to policy (the reality based world) when you’ve got a TV network, a radio blowhard and a popular website all throwing nothing but sucker punches and low blows at you?
Conundrumly yours…
As I said, I don’t have the answer. But does Jimmy Carter help? Does playing the game on the racists’ terms help?
In a decent world, the conservative movement would have to cut Limbaugh loose after this. But have they? Of course not.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’ll use a euphemism from Obama’s Chicago: The neighborhood is changing. Except that there’s no running to the deeper suburbs to escape it.
[...] On: Obama, Drudge, Rush, and the Final Nail [...]
Conservatives are using the race card. Seriously? Are you serious? Democrats are obsessed with race. Jimmy Carter. Nancy Pelosi. Barbara Boxer. Reverend Wright. Janeane Garafalo. Bill Maher. I could go on for hours…. Republicans will stop defending themselves against racism when Democrats stop calling them Racists. Oh by the way, Republicans have done far more for blacks than Democrats. Check the facts. Obama knows this. This is why he is not race baiting. Take the cue from your leader and start debating the issues. Honestly, your party is committing suicide. Republicans need competition in ideas and debate. By the time the race baiters are through they will have killed the Democratic party. Wake up and get real if you want your party to survive.
“Oh by the way, Republicans have done far more for blacks than Democrats.”
Yeah, winning the Civil War and abolishing slavery was pretty awesome. In the 19th century. But more recently, what have they done? Civil Rights? Nope.
In response to another comment. See in context »Limbaugh, Drudge, Coulter, Hannity, Levin, Schmidt, and the new low, is this thing named Beck are speaking for your party. The tea baggers, birthers, health care “grass roots” crazies. They are financed by corporations. They are becoming a larger part of your party every day. When some form of Obama’s plan passes, you will see these people screech even louder…..just like the wicked witch from the wizard of Oz, at the end of that film, melting in to a pile of goo. The percentage of people calling themselves Republicans is getting smaller every day. It’s all in the recent polling. These are crazy nut-jobs who talk about Texas seceding from the Union, (Their Governor wants that) I’m not worried at all about 2010 or 2012. It might wind up Dems vs. Independents at the rate the Repubs are going.
We have Rachel Maddow, a P.H.D. in polyscience. She is all we need. Watch her on MSNBC if you want to see who financially backs most of the crazy-right organizations. The well meaning, informed Republicans who I know, the ones who Nixon called, “The silent majority” HATE the people who I mentioned because they are wrecking your party. The ignorant, and uninformed listen to them, believe every word that they say, then show up in lock step with guns within a few hundred feet of the President. It is absolutely DISGUSTING that Glenn beck would use 9-11 as a launching point for his 9-12 rally. That kind of crap will finish the Republicans once and for all.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] from the obvious targets of a Joe Wilson or Rush Limbaugh, the problem of racism infests every facet of the American experience, including the ongoing health [...]
For the life of me I don’t know why anyone hasn’t called the networks out on this one. Is there anything about this story that warrants national attention? Journalism at worst.
I get you, but let’s not act like a group of Black kids beating on a White kid because he moved a backpack is an everyday occurrence. That was a severe attack, and should not be excused or tolerated in any way.
In response to another comment. See in context »I said nothing about excusing the innocent, I said it’s not a story that warrants national news scrutiny. I think the ugly fire storm it’s generated proves my point. Kids get beat up everyday in school, it’s not right but it happens. The real story here is the jackass bus driver, not some pubescent teen losing it. If there’s a teaching moment here it’s that MSM shouldn’t be taking it’s marching orders from the likes of Matt Drudge.
In response to another comment. See in context »incident, not innocent.
In response to another comment. See in context »In the age of the “viral video,” along with the obvious racial dynamic present, and the brutality of the beating (over a backpack…), this IS news today, and that will not change anytime soon.
Anybody with kids in today’s schools (I have three…) knows that if you’re child even points their index finger the wrong way, it could be interpreted as mimicking “a gun” – an act worthy of an immediate suspension for the student. So when a bus camera catches an act like this (this is not the first one to make the news or YouTube…), its news.
My beef is that when we shrug off this type of violence as it is to be expected, it escalates. Over twenty Black, Chicago schoolchildren have been killed this year amidst neighborhood violence. Not in one “blaze” of school shooting “glory” — but as part of a pattern of environmental violence that we tragically accept for these children.
The kids who do the “beatdowns” today, without intervention, do the drivebys tomorrow. That cannot be ignored.
In response to another comment. See in context »Nice story about your background and I agree that living in a de facto segregated town or city isn’t normal. One quibble: Drudge appears, at least to me, to be on auto-pilot and out of the ballgame. There have been a number of stories about that, including one in the rancid Columbia Journalism Review, but it’s finally true. I don’t use Drudge as a first-in-the-morning portal anymore, but Real Clear Politics instead.
Drudge has been putrid, auto-pilot or no. I support replacing him with the fine folks over at RCP. But, honestly, out of longtime habit, I’m not going to claim I’m not addicted to the ugly over at Drudge. In fact, for all I hate his site, I have a hard time picturing a day without Drudge. It’s a compulsion.
In response to another comment. See in context »The recent spat over racism has me laughing, many years ago the fight was in the street with dogs and shop owners with axe handles and buses bombarded with eggs and threats, it wasn’t too funny. Now we have two groups integrated standing in the school yard shouting, “You’re a racist!”…
“No…you’re the racist”
“What I’m black!”
“You hate white people”
“What! I got a white guy right here and he says you’re racist!”
“Yeah…I got a black guy here and he thinks you’re racist!”
“You’re just a big stupid white elephant!”
“You’re a stupid black jackass!”
“You stink!”
“No you stink.”
As long as the dialog like this continues we are in pretty good shape.
I think that’s good perspective. I think this sort of fighting was eventually going to have to happen, whenever we got our first black president. As heated as we can all feel about it, perhaps it will mostly be pretty mild (in a historical sense).
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] if we can just get the White House to scold news organizations that spread the virus of RACISM. Is there a Sesame Street/Elmo video about [...]
[...] play the Eagles. St. Lunatics, if you want your city pulled even deeper into race war than Rush has already tried to drag it, please let him buy your [...]
[...] from the obvious targets of a Joe Wilson or Rush Limbaugh, the problem of racism infests every facet of the American experience, including the ongoing health [...]