The Right Wing Media (Discussion continued)

In my last post dated June 8^th 2015 entitled "The Right Wing Media (Discussion)" I said: “My response to the one from Albert Nekimken ended up being rather long and so I will save that for my next post." As promised it is set forth below:

Nekimken wrote:

This was an excellent commentary for multiple reasons. You've highlighted a kind of "thrust, counter-thrust" parry of political knives that exposes the underbelly of both political correctness and political incorrectness.

 In the end, it reminds me of Shakespeare, "The man doth protest too much." The more that Republicans lionize Ben Carson, the more he alienates himself from the majority of American blacks--which is unfortunate.

 On the other hand, he does serve to warn Democrats not to take the black vote for granted in exchange for pallid slogans: Most blacks want Sanders-style restructuring of the economic order in order to level the playing field.

And here is the lengthy response, referred to in my previous post:

Thank you for your complimentary response. It is indeed an example of thrust and counter-thrust. But that is not what I was trying to illustrate in posting the two articles.

Most people will read an article, whether from Left or Right, and take it at face value. I wanted to illustrate that this is a mistake. I looked for the article by Cynthia Tucker to which the Newsmax article referred, and upon finding that it didn’t say any of the things that the Newsmax article claimed, set it forth to show how extensive the misrepresentation was.

However, I now find that I found the wrong article by Tucker, and so I must make amends, by setting forth below the correct one, which did use the language claimed in the Newsmax article: I set it forth below:

Ben Carson Is in Danger of Losing All Respect

May 07, 2015 

Over decades of a brilliant career as a brain surgeon, Dr. Ben Carson attracted legions of admirers -- black, white and brown; liberal, moderate and conservative; fundamentalist Christian and agnostic. His story is the stuff of legend, the awe-inspiring tale of a poor black boy in Detroit who overcame daunting obstacles and vaulted to the very top of his profession.

 Given that his profession was pediatric neurosurgery, black Americans were particularly proud. Carson, who was the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins attached at the head, stood as stark repudiation of invidious stereotypes about black intellectual capacity. His memoir, "Gifted Hands," has been passed through countless black households.

 But the good doctor's foray into Republican presidential politics threatens to become his epitaph, to overshadow -- perhaps even to overwhelm -- his academic and surgical accomplishments. He will likely be remembered as the GOP's latest black mascot, a court jester, a minstrel show. He'll be the Herman Cain of 2016.

 Clearly, Carson's chances of winning the Republican nomination for president stand at less than zero. No matter how many cheers he attracts at conservative gab-fests, no matter how many of his bumper stickers appear on the vehicles of true believers, no matter how many Fox News pundits suggest he's a viable candidate, he won't come close to becoming the GOP standard-bearer.

 Nor should he. He is dangerously unqualified for the presidency -- a political novice who is happily ignorant of policy, both foreign and domestic, and contemptuous of religious pluralism and personal liberties.

 Carson catapulted to stardom in the ultraconservative firmament in 2013, when he addressed the National Prayer Breakfast with a speech in which he lashed out at the Affordable Care Act as President Obama sat nearby. Though the breakfast has a long history of nonpartisanship, Carson chose to criticize many of the policies that the president supports, including progressive taxation.

 That was enough to cause conservatives to swoon. Since Obama's election, Republicans have been sensitive to charges that their small tent of aging voters has become a bastion of white resentment, a cauldron of bigotry, nativism and fear of the other. They want to show that their fierce resistance to all things Obama has nothing to do with race.

 That promotes a special affection for black conservatives who are willing to viciously criticize the president. As with Cain before him, Carson garners the most enthusiastic cheers from conservative audiences when he's excoriating Obama, the most rapturous applause when he seems to absolve them of charges of bigotry. Why would Carson trade on his reputation to become their token?

 I've little doubt that his conservative impulses are genuine. He grew up Seventh-day Adventist, a conservative religious tradition. Moreover, he has adopted a view popular among white conservatives: that black Democrats give short shrift to traditional values such as thrift, hard work and sacrifice. (Hasn't Carson ever heard any of Obama's riffs excoriating deadbeat dads and promoting discipline, scholarship and parental involvement in their children's lives?)

 But Carson hardly represents the long and honorable tradition of black conservatism in America. Starting with the father of that movement, Booker T. Washington, its adherents have had a healthy appreciation for the reality of racism in America. Carson, however, thinks Obamacare "really (is) the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And ... it is slavery in a way." Washington and his peers, who knew better, would never have countenanced such nonsense.

 Moreover, black conservatism has promoted self-reliance, but it hasn't been a font of right-wing intolerance and know-nothingism. Carson, for his part, has dismissed evolution (giving his former colleagues at Johns Hopkins heartburn); he has compared homosexuality to bestiality; and he has spurned the First Amendment's separation of church and state.

 Given the ultraconservative politics of GOP primary voters, those extreme positions may help Carson in the early campaign season. But those views also guarantee that mainstream Republican leaders and their donors will flock elsewhere, seeking to find an experienced, broadly appealing and electable candidate.

 Carson can only lose in this campaign -- and more than just the Republican primary. He also stands to lose his place as one of the nation's most admired men.

Thus it turns out that the claim by Newsmax that Tucker said of Carson:

"He will likely be remembered as the GOP's latest black mascot, a court jester, a minstrel show. He'll be the Herman Cain of 2016,” is accurate.

The fury by any African-American at one who betrays his people’s aspirations is understandable - such people used to be called "Uncle Toms”, but that term has gone out of favor. A careful reading of what Tucker is saying reveals that she is not so much denouncing Carson for his views, as she would a white politician with similar views, but describing the attitude within the Republican party toward blacks who are prepared to front for them. The racism within the Right is established beyond dispute, and when they embrace one in black skin, who has nothing but contempt for his own race, they embrace him, to try to show to White moderates that their bigotry does not really exist. But one black face on the platform does not erase the missing black faces in the audience, which invariably shows a sea of White. Thus, when Tucker talks of minstrel shows, she is not saying that she thinks he is that, but rather that to the Republican party he represents “their minstrel show”. She points out that Carson has no chance at the nomination, but if he did somehow get it, he would not get the bulk of the African-American vote, which votes on issues, not on identity politics. Backs voted in no greater numbers for Obama than they did for Clinton, and they have been a reliable Democratic constituency since Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights legislation.

As for the constant reference to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz as Hispanic candidates that is a misnomer that is not challenged nearly often enough. Both of these politicians are of Cuban descent and as such have nothing in common with the Hispanic population that hails from south of the border, other than a common language. They are not traitors to their brethren because they do not hail from the same ethnic background. The media is not doing anyone a favor in putting all who have a common language (Spanish) into one ethnic basket. In fact, the true White colonial Spaniards who owned all the land in the Americas, south of the border, were the privileged oppressors of the indigenous people who represent what is today called Hispanic.

Your comment that "blacks want Sanders-style restructuring of the economic order in order to level the playing field” expresses your views, rather than that of most blacks. I predict that in the Democratic primaries Clinton will draw far more black voters than Sanders, who is considered a fringe candidate by most of the electorate, and that includes blacks.

But returning to the racism of the Right, it reveals itself once again in its concluding paragraph:

After all, it’s easier to attack Carson that admit to the fact that in Baltimore city schools 84 percent of eighth graders score below grade level in reading and 87 percent below grade level in math. That’s not Carson’s fault!

The implication is that there is something inherently wrong with blacks who have not, like Carson, been able to overcome the obstacles that our racist society puts in their path by putting their fathers in jail and giving them inferior schools. From the moment they start out they are born with obstacles that Carson, Oprah Winfrey, Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou have managed to overcome, but that most find insurmountable. Except for Carson, the others are not crowing that if they can do it anybody can. They try to help those who are left behind by supporting policies that will help the aspirations of their brethren.

I am afraid that brevity is not my strong suit.

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