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1/09/2003 05:01:00 PM | Timothy More Trent Lott, bwawawa!!! Read this well written article by Andrew Hanauer in The Dartmouth today. By the way, for those of you who don't know, Trent Lott might get to keep the tax-provided driver he had as Senate Majority Leader (whom Andrew Sullivan hopes is not black), gets the chairmenship of the Senate rules committee, and gets the President to renominate his favorite pick(ering) for the federal bench. I guess the Republicans truly are principled on race. I wonder what all the conservative commenters say about this now? (By the way, the New York Times has an editorial today referring to all the "moderate" Senate Republicans who spoke out against Lott. Um... didn't they initially stay silent or praise Lott because they preferred areplacement to Lott would be more conservative? And wasn't it staunch conservative Senator Nickles who first publically raised the prospect of dumping Lott? Newspapers have a stupid way of labelling 'moderates') Oh, check out TNR for a great comment about how some Republicans are thinking they can nominate Judge Pickering (who was not confirmed because of accusations of racial issues in the past) because George W. Bush has gained enough racial capital to push it through without seeming bad. They posit nominating Pickering is way for Bush to show. By the way, I haven't looked deeply at what was said about Pickering, more on that later. For now, check out here. Senator Schumer is quoted in the Post as saying Pickering's renomination "shows that Nixon's 'southern strategy' is alive and well in this White House." The conservatives claim that Pickering has really worked for racial progress in Missisippi, which could be true (in which case he's a victim) or smoke or mirrors. More likely it's a mixed past which we can debate about, particularly on how much of the past should be forgotten and forgiven. Pickering does not seem unreconstructed, but neither is he unproblematic, and I'm not certain he's getting a fair shake (of course I could be falling for Republican propaganda) under judgments many would apply to confirmations (though many of these judgments involve standards I think are probably too low). Check out the beginning of the conservative counterstrike in National Review here and here. (These articles are written by Bryan York, who wrote the bogus sensationalist National Review stories about widespread voter fraud on Indian reservations and the like. I didn't help York's case that a Republican attourney general of the state denied this was so. But it couldn't possibly be that some Republicans are attempting to suppress minority registration and turnout, noooo.... ) So rather than York, check out the NR editorial and this article by Deroy Murdock (via dartlog's campanion blog, The Inner Office, which is reserved for national issues, unless Grossman and company feel like bashing FreeDartmouth posts)). The Murdock brings up some interesting examples of 'democratic racism.' Some of examples previously unknown to me seem egregious, some rightly take to task Al Sharpton in well known incidents, but a lot of Murdock's examples involve people making accusations of racism. But I'm sorry, it's not always racist to say others are racist. When Al Gore says we shouldn't we shouldn't look at the strict construction of a constitution in which the founders included the 3/5 clause, that's not racist like Trent Lott's comments were. It may be an exaggeration, but its a perfectly legitimate piece of rhetoric to show that notions of 'strict construction' can hide something else. Nor is being for affirmative action the equivilent of wishing the Dixiecrats had triumped. One questionable example given by Murdock is to equate Helm's infamous 'white hands' ad with Dem. Rep. Charlie Rangel saying when Blacks know they will be discriminated against other white candidates are in the pool. Playing the 'race card' can be legitimate if others are already discriminating. Of course, playing the race card can be illegitimate if that is not the case. But with conservatives proliferating examples of white racists on both sides of the aisle (like Senator Byrd and even Clinton's actions) you'd think they should draw the conclusion that racism is epidemic in our politics if so many people in government actually believe it: if you believe in their premises and follow their logic, you have to wonder why they still say it is racist to cry 'racist'. perma link |
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