Hues on First

What we really needed was "Freckle".

We really didn’t want to get involved with the Skip Gates mess because, well, it wasn’t a mess. In fact, if you set your Crayolas aside, it’s very straightforward: neighbor suspects guy of breaking into his own house, calls the police, who visit the guy, who gets somewhat pissed that he’s suspected of breaking into his own house, so the police haul him in for talking back at them on his own porch.

Even wingnuts should understand that one. Heck, place it in Texas, and they’d be ranting about the government harassing godfearing homeowners, and blaming President Mombasa for not doing anything about it.

But it does involve Crayolas, and it happened in Commiebridge, Massachusetts, and the Reality Inversion that is 2009 continues apace.

When we last left the scene, Barry was going to have a pint with his old pal Gates and his new pal Arresting Officer, and we thought that would be the end of it. But we, as has been amply documented, are hopelessly naive.

What kept the issue brewing Monday (we have no shame) was a resolution introduced by Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Faulkner), who swore to Firedoglake he was too busy being “focused on health care issues” to answer silly Birther questions, then demanded that Congress force Obama to “retract his initial public remarks and apologize.”

Even that we may have let pass — except it brought to mind a curious story posted Sunday night by Oregon’s own WorldNetDaily, which longtime readers will know as our favorite canary in the septic tank for wingnut issues.

The WND headline pretty much covers it: “Shock video: Professor Gates goes on N-word rant”.

The story wraps around a C-Span video of Gates in 1996, speaking at All Souls Church in DC. Promoting his book The Future of the Race (with “radical black professor” Cornel West), Gates talks about the role of affirmative action in integrating “racist historically white institutions in American society,” using his own early-’70s admission to Yale as an example:

And in his relaxed, informal talk to a church audience — no god damn America here — Gates indeed indulges himself in a little Richard Pryor:

“We’re also trying to end what we used to call the one-nigger syndrome — you know, this place ain’t big enough for more than one of us.”

(We had to transcribe that from the end of the clip, by the way — WND’s quote of the passage curiously omits “used to”.)

WND’s attempt to smear Gates with his own “clearly racially divisive remarks” only highlights what we already know: this this, like the Birther movement, has everything to do with Crayolas. But even they have to engage in Racism By Other Means instead of playing it straight, which suggests that we as a nation have made some progress in the past couple of generations.

After all, we did elect a half-Haole as president.

18 Comments

At WND, the stupid is slow and deep.

TJ/ Speaking of stupid:
Last year’s “astounding” conclusion that oil price spike of 08 wasn’t caused by speculators replaced by this year’s “No shit” conclusion that it was. Reason for the change? Hold onto your hats, folks. It was a change in admins and the “realization” that the Bush “Admin” used “flawed” data.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124874574251485689.html#mod=rss_Politics_And_Policy

Maybe we should all just dress up like Peter Pan. Reading stuff like this sure makes me want to fly away.

@ManchuCandidate: But… but… surely not!!! That would be dishonest. I am shocked. Shocked!

That’s called “hapa haole” in my old hood. Ironically, the racism and aggression toward black folks in Hawaii is far greater than anywhere I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve lived in 24 states from Washington to Florida in addition to Hawaii. I haven’ t been there in years, though; I wonder if anything’s changed now that President Obama is from there. I doubt it. Shaka, brah!

@hunkamonkiman:
Is it the variety of idiots among the tinted hating on each other? Seems that way where I live.

@nojo: the Reality Inversion that is 2009 continues apace.

As we watched Lawrence O’Donnell’s grinning farewell piece on the Talibunny last night, I remarked to Ma Nabisco that precisely because we elected a half haole to the White House makes it entirely reasonable to assume that Sarah Palin will not only run for but stand a decent change of winning the nomination in 2012. All bets are off when they can play the “reverse racism” card so frequently and gets days worth of media coverage.

I remember how crazed with irrational fury and venom my Barry H2O mother was after Clinton was elected. And that was only because he was a horndog, hillbilly Democrat. Put a smart, halfrican Democrat in the Big House and they just pull out the same playbook from 1994, tear out the pages marked “rational emotionalism” and go straight to the appendices marked “WARNING: Consult only in the event of the election of a Kennedy”.

Small correction, Nojo: All Souls is the Unitarian church on 16th & Columbia Rd. N.W., which has a fairly diverse congregation, and played a huge role during the civil rights era, but nobody would ever call it a “black church.” Like all good UU churches, you’ve got many lapsed Catholics and Episcopalians hanging out with Jews. For Professors West and Gates, there may have been a large contingency of African-Americans in the audience, but most probably weren’t members of the All Souls congregation.

@blogenfreude: I was hoping the Cambridge cops would sue Obama for mental abuse and emotional trauma. I think Crowley caved quickly because he didn’t want people talking about the fact that he drinks Blue Moon, a beer rumored to be consumed with twists of lemon, yeah, a cop who drinks fruitee beer. Every bar he goes into, shitfaced guys staggering up to him and giving him a hard time about drinking fruitee beer and swinging at him.

@SanFranLefty: There are so many churches at that intersection that I had to Google map it to even be sure about which one we were talking. National Baptist Memorial is my fave, architecturally speaking.

@mellbell: Don’t make the mistake a friend of mine did when she was trying to get to a wedding at All Souls with a group of us and by mistake she went to the Universal Life Moony church across the street.

@chicago bureau: awesome, except it gives too much credit to the author as accidental poet.

@chicago bureau: It’s the bongo drum that makes it something special.

@Nabisco: A three-way debate between Palin, Mittens and Huckabee would be awesome.

And while it’s certainly conceivable that she could win the nomination, we have no idea how she would perform in a national competitive setting on her own, without McCain’s handlers trying to muzzle her, and with some very ambitious opponents. Biden had to be polite. They don’t.

She’ll always have her 15-20 percent of the GOP base. The rest is up for grabs.

@ManchuCandidate:

Good catch. Another tarpit left by the knuckleheads, huh?

@chicago bureau:

Thanks although I think I just got it from elsewhere. Timely post.

Over here, everything is blocked, so I linked straight to the TS website.

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