A looming presidential race between a black guy and a Mormon is creating a major quandary for America’s bigots, a new poll reveals.
According to the poll, conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, a broad majority of likely bigot voters “strongly agreed” with the statement, “If it winds up being between a black guy and a Mormon I don’t know what I’ll do because I don’t know which I hate more.”
Tea Party activist Eldin Brazelton of Oak Park, Illinois, expressed a frustration typical of the bigots surveyed: “We’ve spent the last three years stirring up anger towards a black guy, and that’s all going to go to waste if we just up and nominate a Mormon.”
According to Mr. Brazleton, a presidential choice between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney would be no choice at all: “For the life of me I don’t know why we can’t just have a regular President.”
Mr. Brazleton, who considers himself a sexist as well as a bigot, said that the doomsday scenario unfolding for 2012 offered one small silver lining: “At least we know it’s not going to be a woman this time.”
That’s supposed to be satire.
sat·ire
noun \ˈsa-ˌtī(-ə)r\
Definition of SATIRE
1: a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn
2: trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly
If that is satire then so are racist jokes that use demeaning stereotypes.
Notice that the only alleged bigotry is contained within the Tea Party. If you want to see some serious Mormon hating check out Romney threads in the progressive blogosphere. And if Herman Cain becomes the GOP nominee it will be because the Tea Party voted for him.
As for that last little dig about sexism, I’ve never seen anything in the right blogosphere comparable to the sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin on the left side. Not to mention the fact that Sarah, Michele Bachmann, Nikki Haley and several other women have been supported by the Tea Party.
What might have been funny is an article claiming that a Cain candidacy would leave progressives confused as to which black man to vote for to relieve their white guilt.
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently …”
— Steve Jobs
Crazy people make better bloggers.
Heather Armstrong parlayed postpartum depression and a stint in a mental institution into a cash cow blog.
Penelope Trunk grew her blog to over 750,000 page views last month as someone willing to write about stabbing herself in the head, smashing herself in the head with a lamp, and having a miscarriage during a board meeting while dispensing career advice.
James Altucher shares with his blog readers a history of suicidal ideation, depression, and going broke with a manic frenzy that inspires others to buy his books.
In the Forever Recession, we are all entrepreneurs, and everybody knows the best entrepreneurs are crazy.
1. We’ll say what you won’t.
I started blogging in 2002. Over the years, as a blogger and journalist, I’ve written about developing PTSD, the time I wanted to kill myself, and why I loved writing about the adult movie industry. After I got downsized, anyone who Googled me about a job I had applied for could find these stories online. This probably didn’t help my chances of getting a job. It’s probably part of what led me to conclude I’m unemployable.
But that I had been working and living outside of the box for so long — bending the rules or refusing to admit they existed — is what helped me go from unemployed to self-employed in a matter of months.
[...]
2. We speak the truth.
Crazy people are constantly in conflict: with themselves, with the world, with the voices in their heads. Want to know why no one reads your blog? You’re boring. You’re not in conflict, or you have no ability to articulate your conflict, or, more likely, you’re unwilling to share your conflict. That makes you boring and cowardly. A blog isn’t something you write when you feel like it. It’s the digital representation of who you really are. No one wants to read a blog by a boring coward. Because no one wants to be a boring coward.
[...]
3. We’re more entertaining.
Armstrong danced on her roof for free shingles. Trunk wrote about what it’s like to have sex with someone who has Asperger’s. Altucher threatened to drive a rental car off a cliff.
[...]
People like to say the internet makes us stupider. It doesn’t. It makes us all writers. What people chronically fail to understand is that writing is entertainment. We are 21st century entertainers, endlessly tap dancing for an audience we can neither see nor touch, all in hopes of getting something that used to sound like applause.
Only crazy people are willing to play this game, to keep dancing, praying for a fleeting moment they will be seen as they truly are, warped minds and all.
I’m not really insane. That’s just a dirty rumor started by my court-appointed psychiatrist.
I’m not terribly familiar with this firm, Poll Position, and they’re using automated voice survey techology (robo-pollsters, like Rasmussen) but their new survey result is worth mentioning because of the tidal shift it might represent: Herman Cain beating Barack Obama in a head-to-head matchup.
Yes, that Herman Cain, the widely-liked former pizza executive who most folks didn’t take seriously because he had never been elected to any public office before.
They find Cain with 43.3 percent and Obama with 41.3 percent. In their results, Cain takes 24 percent of the African-American vote.
24 percent of the African-American vote is nearly two and a half times what a Republican would normally receive. If this poll is accurate then Obama could be in deep trouble.
If Cain is the GOP nominee he will effectively neutralize the race card – Obama’s strongest weapon.
I predict an all-out offensive (and it will be very offensive) against Cain in the next few weeks. If there is any dirt under his rug or any skeletons in his closet we’re going to find out more than we ever wanted to know about them.
Second prediction – African-American members of the media will get unprecedented air time as they get the assignment of chopping down Cain. Obamanation can’t let the white guys do it because that might spark a backlash.
If you want to build a movement you claim represents 99% of the people it’s not a good idea to alienate a big chunk of them by waving the Soviet flag.
Conservatives are generally patriotic. Some are hyper-patriotic. While many people on the left are just as patriotic there is a significant group that is not. Their attitude towards the United States ranges from sneering contempt to outright hostility.
Both the left and right have their fringe elements, but the ones on the right tend to look normal while the ones on the left seem to go out of their way to look and act different. You don’t see a lot of piercings, tattoos and nudity at Tea Party rallies.
People can do what they want, it’s a free country. But if you want to attract mainstream voters to your cause you need to appeal to mainstream values.
People might watch a freak show, but most of them don’t want to join it.
Michael Moore galvanized the Occupy Wall Street mob last week in an “address” amplified for the mob by means of a “human microphone.” The human microphone has caught on like a sold-out Christmas toy with OWS mobs across America, from Atlanta to Chicago to Riverside, California (the closest OWS mob to me), where a small but doughty group of Hoos hollered with all their might last Saturday night.
The human microphone idea is simple. The crowd repeats each phrase uttered by a speaker, in order to amplify the sound and ensure the message gets across. If you’re not alone in being reminded forcibly of kindergarten, wait, there’s more. Check out the Chicago link above, and scroll down for the links to photos of “spirit fingers,” “peace guns,” and “point of process” triangle hands. These methods of communication remind me of nothing so much as the cues used by grade school teachers with their young charges.
[...]
People used to get their buzz over responsive yelling by attending football games. Communicating in code, with hand gestures, was something that was fun for a while if you were a Boy Scout or a Campfire Girl, earning badges and learning special, secret things. Bird calls, writing in hieroglyphs, spelling out cuss words in American Sign Language – kids can have a lot of fun with codes.
But we have no tribal memory, as humans, of a time when it might have been a good idea to give a say over our lives or our government to people who adopt the communication modes of childhood. That would just be stupid. The kid-level communicating is cute when kids do it. It’s creepy and weird when the people doing it have the bodies of adults – and aren’t in a comms-challenged combat situation like a SWAT Team, a SEAL team, or an infantry patrol.
The “creep” factor is the one that struck J. Christian Adams, who posted the video of the Atlanta human-microphone incident for Pajamas. (Jazz Shaw today highlights the same mob’s ignorant dismissal of John Lewis.) And there is definitely an element of mindless invigoration to it. It’s one thing to listen to a demagogue (or even just someone giving administrative instructions), registering the message in your brain but not doing anything about it, at least for the moment. It’s another kind of action altogether, to vigorously repeat everything a speaker is saying. Doing so generates a powerful sense of noisy assent for everyone involved. You’re not just there listening and thinking: you’ve sold out your critical thinking faculties, and agreed to convey automatically whatever the speaker wants to say.
Most of us have been to church at least once. Think about a typical service.
You sing together. You bow (or kneel) and pray together. You recite scriptures together. There is a reason for that.
Humans are social animals. We naturally congregate together. We are hardwired to submit to peer pressure. That’s why fashion trends and fads come and go.
Some people are more susceptible than others, but if you change groups don’t be surprised to find yourself changing the way you dress, talk and behave.
The “people’s microphone” and the hand signals are a way to get people actively involved instead of just passively observing. Once you do that the hardwiring in their brains starts to do the rest. You’re not selling out your critical thinking faculties, you’re bypassing them.
That’s why people go to a OWS protest and come back as a member of the borg. They let themselves become assimilated. That’s also why they’ll urge you to go too.
“Just come to a rally with me, and you’ll see what it’s all about.“
BTW – They used the same techniques at Obama rallies. (Hint, hint)
I thought this would be interesting to talk about. When Sarah Palin said she would not run for the GOP nomination, she also said this:
I believe that at this time I can be more effective in a decisive role to help elect other true public servants to office – from the nation’s governors to Congressional seats and the Presidency.
The Dem party is beyond redemption, in my opinion. It remains to be seen if the Tea Party can reform the GOP. How they do in 2012 will be a big metric.
So, what is up for 2012 apart from the White House?
Gubernatorial races. There are 11 States electing a governor in 2012. Wikipedia sums them up here. Of the 11, these are the ones which so far look like they may go either way: Montana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Washington, West Virginia. The impact I think, for all 11 states is voter turnout on election day. Voters who may feel unenthusiastic about the Presidential election may vote for the governor they want, and therefore have an up-ticket effect.
Senate races. There are 33 Senate seats in play in 2012 – 10 GOP, 21 Dem, and 2 Independents (Sanders & Lieberman). Jim DeMint has a handy interactive map here.
House races. 435 House Representative seats are up for election in 2012. The Cook Political Report predicts that of these 435, the Democrats have 24 seats and the Republicans have 32 seats in play (aka Lean or Toss-Up). A further 19 Dem seats and 35 Republican seats are not sure things (they are only listed as “Likely.”)
Tell us what you know or think of about these incumbents.
Herman Cain doesn’t fit snugly into the usual narrative about race and American politics.
It is not merely that the African-American businessman is coming on so strongly in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination.
It is that the bedrock of Cain’s support comes from demographic and ideological groups that are sometimes accused — falsely, they would say — of harboring racist tendencies.
Polls in recent weeks have indicated that Cain has conspicuously strong backing among Republicans in the states of the old Confederacy. He has been a Tea Party darling virtually since the movement’s inception. And, as recently as Friday, he was cheered to the rafters by the deeply conservative, and almost uniformly white, attendees of the Values Voter Summit in Washington.
Has Cain achieved this measure of support by sidestepping issues of race? Hardly.
In his speech announcing his candidacy, back in May, he invoked Martin Luther King Jr. Were he to become president, he said, “we will finally be able to say, ‘Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, America is free at last.’”
The line deftly combined a nod to King’s legacy with the suggestion that true freedom for African-Americans would involve shaking off their resilient attachment to the Democratic Party.
Cain made that point more explicitly, and more controversially, when he told CNN late last month that black voters had “been brainwashed into…not even considering a conservative point of view.” A furor ensued.
At Friday’s Values Voter Summit, one of the lines in his speech that attracted wild applause came when he related how a reporter had asked him whether he was “angry” about America, given the historic injustices meted out to African-Americans.
“I said, ‘Sir, you don’t get it,’” Cain told the crowd. “‘I have achieved all of my American dreams and then some because of the greatest nation, the United States of America.’”
It is no surprise that Cain’s candidacy is seen in fundamentally different ways, even within the ranks of black political commentators.
According to radio host and Tea Party activist David Webb, Cain’s candidacy has already made it easier for African-Americans to see the appeal of conservative ideas. Webb asserted that people like Cain and himself “help open up the discussion and bring down the stereotype” of unstinting allegiance to the Dems.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, the author of several books on the African-American experience, has a very different interpretation.
“The GOP has over a long period of time developed a very articulate handful of black conservatives – to, firstly, pound not just civil rights leaders but liberal Democrats generally; and, secondly, to create the illusion that there is a huge capacity among African-Americans to embrace the tenets of conservatism,” he said.
If Cain were to go on and win the GOP nomination this could be very interesting. Obama and the Democrats will have difficulty playing the race card (even though they’ll still try) and if Cain breaks the Democratic stranglehold on black voters then Donna Brazile’s dream of a new coalition will go up in smoke.
I’m not endorsing Herman Cain. He’s a conservative and I’m not. I don’t like any of the current candidates in either party. There are only two people I would actively support but neither of them is running.
So unless something changes one cf the current candidates is going to be POTUS for the next four year term. Since they are all far more conservative than me (including Obama) I am looking past their ideology and judging them on character and competence.
Based on what I have seen so far I think I could hold my nose and vote for Cain. And an Obama vs. Cain match-up will be far more entertaining than Obama vs. Romney.
Herman Cain is now saying the fact that he exists means racism isn’t holding minorities back. It’s all in your head.
When asked by CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley if he thought African Americans had a level playing field, Cain said he thought most of them did, using his own experience in corporations as an example.
“Many of them do have a level playing field,” Cain said. “I absolutely believe that. Not only because of the businesses that I have run, which has had the combination of whites, blacks, Hispanics – you know, we had a total diversity. But also because of the corporations whose board I’ve served on for the last 20 years. I have seen blacks in middle management move up to top management in some of the biggest corporations in America.”
As for African Americans who remain economically disadvantaged, Cain said they often only had themselves to blame.
“They weren’t held back because of racism,” Cain said. “People sometimes hold themselves back because they want to use racism as an excuse for them not being able to achieve what they want to achieve.”
I didn’t honestly think Herman Cain could be any more repugnant, but saying that racism is all in the heads of African-Americans is just ludicrous to the point of self-parody involving what people think about black CEOs running for the GOP White House ticket.
The cognitive dissonance is staggering to me. Herman Cain was in college during the civil rights era in the 60′s. When federal civil rights laws were codified, Cain benefited from them on the way to his lofty perch as Godfather’s Pizza CEO. At no point have I ever heard of Cain saying he was going to pass up civil rights programs or not take advantage of them because he thought the playing field was level. He admits in the interview that educational and economic disparity still exists, and then blames poor minorities for it. How does one escape a hell like that, you wonder? Through a college scholarship, perhaps?
Hell, look at the racism that spewed out when candidate Obama entered the race in 2007. It’s only gotten worse since then, and Cain honestly believes there’s a level playing field? Is he blind to all the assistance he received? Did he ever turn down a position because a company had an affirmative action policy in place? How the hell is he so damn sure that he received zero assistance from any of the civil rights measures that followed on his way to CEO?
I know what you’re thinking – I’m not supposed to talk about this stuff because I’m white and the “national conversation on race” is supposed to be a lecture, not a dialog. I’m just supposed to sit quietly and think about how white privilege has blinded me to how racist I am.
But I was never real good at doing what I’m supposed to do.
Cain DID NOT say that racism was all in the heads of African Americans. Here’s what he actually said:
“I don’t believe racism in this country today holds anybody back in a big way,” Cain said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Are there some elements of racism? Yes. It gets back to if we don’t grow this economy, that is a ripple effect for every economic level, and because blacks are more disproportionately unemployed, they get hit the worst when economic policies don’t work. That’s where it starts.”
[...]
“The gap is due to a number of factors,” Cain said. “One is a differential in education. Two is a concentration of a lot of blacks in certain areas like the city of Detroit, where the unemployment rate there is 14% versus the 9.1% we have nationally. So you have a city like Detroit where they lost 25% of their population, economically they’ve done nothing but go down, down, down.”
[...]
“Many of them do have a level playing field,” Cain said. “I absolutely believe that. Not only because of the businesses that I have run, which has had the combination of whites, blacks, Hispanics – you know, we had a total diversity. But also because of the corporations whose board I’ve served on for the last 20 years. I have seen blacks in middle management move up to top management in some of the biggest corporations in America.”
[...]
“They weren’t held back because of racism,” Cain said. “People sometimes hold themselves back because they want to use racism as an excuse for them not being able to achieve what they want to achieve.”
All my life I’ve been hearing how racism is the reason for all the problems in the black community. Pick a problem. and someone will explain how racism is to blame for it.
Literacy is a basic job skill. Is there any school in this country where a black child can’t learn to read, write and do basic math? I hear people say things like how 100 years ago it was illegal in some places to teach blacks to read and how 50 years ago schools were segregated.
But I’m talking about today. Is racism still an obstacle to any black child receiving a basic education?
Now I’ve also heard people explain how SAT tests are racially biased and how hard it is for people from the lower end of the socio-economic ladder to get into top schools. Fair enough.
I went to a public k-12 school system. I never took the SAT, I just joined the army. When I got out I started working. Then when I was 30 I attended a community college. After that I transferred to a state college. Then I went to a small state-accredited law school. To pay my way and survive I worked, got grants, scholarships and student loans.
All my life I have worked and gone to school with black people and other minorities. I have had black teachers and supervisors. In both work and school the standards were the same for everyone – show up when you’re supposed to and do the work assigned.
I’ve been told that because of my white privilege I can’t see the hidden racism that exists. When I ask someone to point it out for me they can’t.
Herman Cain grew up in the segregated south. He succeeded pretty well, a lot better than I have. Zandar points out that Cain was aided by civil rights programs as proof that Cain is wrong. But those programs were passed to level the playing field.
This part is just ridiculous:
“Hell, look at the racism that spewed out when candidate Obama entered the race in 2007. It’s only gotten worse since then . . .”
Yeah, that horrible racism like Bill Clinton calling Obama’s claims on Iraq a “fairy tale.” It was so terrible it prevented Barack Obama from becoming President of the United States.
Oh, wait . . .
Okay, let’s assume for the sake of argument that Zandar is correct and racism is still a major barrier to black economic success. What should black people do about it?
Should they throw up their hands and say it’s no use? Should they wait for government to do something?
