Discriminations

Thank goodness for Maureen Dowd. If she didn’t exist, and the New York Times hadn’t found her, we’d have had to invent her in order to have a proper mouthpiece for the haughtily condescending, superior, superciliously snide view our bi-coastal betters have of us benighted (and if conservative, evil) middle Americans who live in small towns.

But she does exist, and her emblematic liberal snobbery is on display in full force in her column today, which discusses Sarah Palin’s selection as worthy of a “hokey chick flick.”

First, note the now seemingly mandatory invocation of “uppity” (as just discussed here):

It’s easy to see where this movie is going. It begins, of course, with a cute, cool unknown from Alaska who has never even been on “Meet the Press” triumphing over a cute, cool unknowable from Hawaii who has been on “Meet the Press” a lot.

Americans, suspicious that the Obamas have benefited from affirmative action without being properly grateful, and skeptical that Michelle really likes “The Brady Bunch” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” reject the 47-year-old black contender as too uppity and untested.

Enthusiastic Republicans don’t see the choice of Palin as affirmative action, despite her thin résumé and gaping absence of foreign policy knowledge...

Query 3: If those who regard Obama as unqualified because of his lack of experience are racist because what they are “really” saying (unbeknownst to themselves) is that he is “uppity,” are those Dowding Thomasinas who regard Palin as unqualified because she is “untested” (everyone knows you can’t be tested in small towns or even as governor of a small state) really sexist?

But let’s move on to Dowd’s cultural critique.

Obama may have been president of The Harvard Law Review, but Palin graduated from the University of Idaho with a minor in poli-sci and worked briefly as a TV sports reporter....

Palinistas, as they are called, love Sarah’s spunky, relentlessly quirky “Northern Exposure” story from being a Miss Alaska runner-up, and winning Miss Congeniality, to being mayor and hockey mom in Wasilla, a rural Alaskan town of 6,715, to being governor for two years to being the first woman ever to run on a national Republican ticket. (Why do men only pick women as running mates when they need a Hail Mary pass? It’s a little insulting.)

Sarah is a zealot, but she’s a fun zealot. She has a beehive and sexy shoes, and the day she’s named she goes shopping with McCain in Ohio for a cheerleader outfit for her daughter.

As she once told Vogue, she’s learned the hard way to deal with press comments about her looks. “I wish they’d stick with the issues instead of discussing my black go-go boots,” she said. “A reporter once asked me about it during the campaign, and I assured him I was trying to be as frumpy as I could by wearing my hair on top of my head and these schoolmarm glasses.”

Her hair doesn’t look to me like a beehive, nor have I noticed her shoes, but what do I know. I do know she took on her own party in Alaska, routed it, and has been cleaning house ever since. She didn’t simply give lip service to “reaching across the aisle”; she all but obliterated the aisle. Which is more than can be said of a time-serving state senator whose only accomplishment after being elevated to the U.S. Senate has been to write the second volume of his autobiography.

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One of the most dramatically ridiculous example of the “race cards” played several weeks ago — or, if you’re a Democrat, one of the most sensitive, perceptive, and erudite deconstructions and translations of evil, dirty, Republican racist code words — came from all-around expert on everything (just ask him), David Gergen, former advisor to everyone.

Gergen, with his uniquely high-powered ability to penetrate the surface of things, looked at the McCain ad “seeking to portray what it says is Obama’s smugness and false regal perception with a new comparison: to Moses” and discovered, hidden in code that only Southerners can really understand, racism:

[On ABC News This Week] longtime Washington hand David Gergen took umbrage with John McCain’s recent attack ads, charging that the Senator was using coded messaging to paint Barack Obama as “outside the mainstream” and “uppity.”

“There has been a very intentional effort to paint him as somebody outside the mainstream, other, ‘he’s not one of us,’” said Gergen, who has worked with White Houses, both Republican and Democrat, from Nixon to Clinton. “I think the McCain campaign has been scrupulous about not directly saying it, but it’s the subtext of this campaign. Everybody knows that. There are certain kinds of signals. As a native of the south, I can tell you, when you see this Charlton Heston ad, ‘The One,’ that’s code for, ‘he’s uppity, he ought to stay in his place.’ Everybody gets that who is from a southern background. We all understand that. When McCain comes out and starts talking about affirmative action, ‘I’m against quotas,’ we get what that’s about.”

Nonsense, however, knows no regional limitations, and so Gergen is not unique in hearing coded racism every time a Republican speaks, about anything. Thus David Shipler, referring in a Los Angeles Times OpEd last April to Obama’s revealing comments about bitter small town whites clinging to guns and God, also discerned accusations of uppityness behind the Republicans’ Obamessiah spoofs:

Whether by calculation or coincidence, Hillary Clinton and Republicans who have attacked Barack Obama for elitism have struck a chord in a long-standing symphony of racial codes. It is a rebuke that gets magnified by historic beliefs about what blacks are and what they have no right to be.

Clinton is no racist [JSR: but presumably “Republicans” are], and Obama has made some real missteps, including his remark last week that “bitter” small-town Americans facing economic hardship and government indifference “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” Perhaps he was being more sociological than political, and more sympathetic than condescending. But when his opponents branded him an elitist and an outsider, his race made it easier to drive a wedge between him and the white, rural voters he has courted. As an African American, he was supposedly looking down from a place he didn’t belong and looking in from a distance he could not cross.

This could not happen as dramatically were it not for embedded racial attitudes. “Elitist” is another word for “arrogant,” which is another word for “uppity,” that old calumny applied to blacks who stood up for themselves.

So, for the benefit of any race-befuddled liberals in the audience, I’ll attempt to go slow here. First, yes, “uppity” was a despicable racial slur, used in the South and elsewhere to keep blacks “in their place,” i.e., down. It was a double-standard attack on blacks for behavior that was perfectly normal, and expected, from whites, as Shipler recognizes:

Black professionals know the double standard. They are often labeled negatively for traits deemed positive in whites: A white is assertive, a black is aggressive; a white is resolute, a black is pushy; a white is candid, a black is abrasive; a white is independent, a black is not a team player....

So, again, yes. “Uppity” is indeed a racial and racist slur. But “elitist” is not, and “arrogant” is not! To argue, as both Gergen and Shipler do, that no black can be criticized as arrogant or elitist — and by extension that no woman can ever be criticized as aggressive — is to insist on a new, politically correct double-standard every bit as restrictive as the old, racist one they properly reject. It is to say that blacks, because they were discriminated against in the past, cannot be treated as equals in the present, cannot be judged by the same standards we apply to “people like us.”

But then, the politically correct double standard is already quite familiar; it is the same offensive double standard, that is, that undergirds and justifies all racial preference policies today.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Say What? (7) | TrackBacks (0)

At the Democratic Convention Al Gore, never given to understatement, compared Obama to Abraham Lincoln.

Gore praised Obama as a great orator with the power to inspire others, and suggested he shared the finest characteristics of another Illinois politician now generally considered to be America’s greatest president.

Gore also used Lincoln to take on Republican criticism that Obama, who has served just four years in the Senate, is too inexperienced to be president.

Lincoln’s experience “consisted of eight years in the state legislature and one term in Congress,” Gore said. When Lincoln ran for president, he was known – much like Obama – as a clear thinker and great orator.” He said both had the ability to incite passion in others, and that like Obama, Lincoln opposed a popular foreign war – the U.S.-Mexico War.

But the fact that a major party nominating a black candidate for president is noteworthy, combined with my view that Obama’s acceptance speech itself was not one of his best and will not prove to be memorable, does suggest to me that the most apt characterization of the combination of the convention/nomination and the acceptance speech comes from one line in the Gettysburg Address:

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

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There he goes again. Long time, or even short time, readers will know that I often have some fun at the expense of Washington Post affirmative action columnist, and one of MSNBC’s talking head Obamanauts, Eugene Robinson. See here for a recent example, citing a number of earlier ones.

In his column today Robinson replays one of his favorite false facts, that Obama does not support racial favoritism.

.... A recent New York Times-CBS News poll found that 16 percent of white voters feared an Obama administration would “favor blacks over whites.” Obama has taken great pains to reassure voters that as president he would act without racial animus or resentment — that he bears no grudges and intends to settle no scores. His success to date has depended largely on his ability to be seen as a candidate who happens to be black rather than as “a black candidate.”

I admit, however, that I am somewhat mystified by that New York Times/CBS poll (Question 44) apparently finding that only 16% of whites believe Obama supports affirmative action policies that favor blacks over whites. What are the other 84% smoking?

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Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom ask a series of penetrating questions whose answers will determine whether President Obama will work to heal our racial divide ... or exacerbate it.

Sen. Obama’s words were very pretty Thursday — and reassuring. But if believes, as most African Americans do, that American society today is fundamentally warped by racism, he will appoint judges committed to race-conscious policies and propose a host of radical policies designed to promote “racial justice.” Is endemic racism, in fact, the lens through which he views “the greatest country”? Today, he’s a Rorschach inkblot; tomorrow, that inkblot may turn into a message — not so pretty and not so reassuring. To blacks or to whites, or perhaps to both.

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On National Review’s phi beta cons blog, Robert VerBruggen points to a devastating 89 page report by political science professor Tim Groseclose criticizing admissions cheating by UCLA officials.

I shall probably have more to say about this report once I’ve had time to read the whole thing. Meanwhile, here is Prof. Groseclose’s Summary:

A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions. Specifically, applicants often reveal their own race on the essay part of their application. This allows admissions staff members to learn the race of applicants; then, in violation of Proposition 209, readers use such information to evaluate applicants. To the extent that this happens — an extent which can only be assessed with systematic data on admissions — such practices are de facto implementation of racial preferences.

For the past three years I have been a member of UCLA’s Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools (CUARS). This is the faculty committee responsible for oversight of undergraduate admissions at UCLA. Since late April 2008, I have made several requests for data. I wanted to investigate the above, as well as other, suspicions, including possible discrimination based on religion. Without exception, however, my requests for data have been denied.

There is considerable evidence that high-ranking administrators and a controlling block of my committee are engaged in a cover-up — they are preventing me and others from obtaining these data so that the above malfeasance will not be discovered.

Because I cannot properly conduct the duties with which I am charged as a member of CUARS, I am therefore resigning, in protest, from the committee. To do otherwise would condone and make me complicit in what appears to be illegal activity.

Any public policy that cannot withstand openness and transparency should be eliminated, and academics who support denying access to data should be ashamed of themselves.

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Juan Williams has an eloquent — although, I’m afraid, futile — plea to Obama to, finally, “take a stand” on race issues. After paying hopeful homage to the promise he sees in Obama’s biracial background, Williams writes:

Yet given this central racial dynamic, it is incredible that on any issue of racial consequence Mr. Obama has become a stealth candidate. It is arguably smart politics not to focus on potentially controversial racial issues when you are a black man running in an election with an electorate that is more than 75% white. But how is it possible that Mr. Obama, as he rises to claim the mantle of Dr. King before 75,000 people and a national TV audience of millions here tonight, remains a mystery on the most important civil rights issues of our day?

Mr. Obama is nowhere man when it comes time to speak out on reforming big city public schools, with their criminally high dropout rates for minority children. He apparently refuses to do it for fear that supporting vouchers or doing anything to strengthen charter schools will alienate vote-rich unions. His rare references to the critical argument over affirmative action -- an issue that is on several state ballots this fall -- give both opponents and supporters reason to think he might be on their side. He has had little if anything to say about the persistent 25% poverty rate in black America.

The only speech Mr. Obama has given on race came after his minister’s racist rants became public. In that celebrated talk he defended Rev. Jeremiah Wright, while at the same time distancing himself from the rants. That quick escape did not work, because Rev. Wright continued to spew vitriol — threatening the campaign with questions about whether Mr. Obama subscribed to the same angry, anti-American views. It was only rational for voters to ask how he could have kept silent in the face of the minister’s sermons over 20 years.

Time and again, the man who draws so openly on King’s legacy refuses to sacrifice an iota of possible political support by taking a principled stand on matters of racial justice that King said are matters of right and wrong. Instead, Obama makes cryptic or general comments that leave his position on important racial issues ambiguous or unknown.

Williams’ hopes and pleas to the contrary notwithstanding, Obama has been far more clear and uncompromising on this issue than on just about anything else: from his time in the Illinois legislature until today (we’ll see about tonight’s speech), he has never encountered a race preference policy or program that he opposes. And he has supported these programs actively, not passively. For example, he went into Michigan and made an ad opposing the ultimately successful Michigan Civil Rights Inititative, and he has made it clear that he opposes similar initiatives that would prohibit race preferences that will be on the ballots of several states this fall.

One of the reasons Williams’ plea sounds so forlorn is that he’s been making it, to no avail, for so long. Last fall, for example, he endorsed Obama in a New York Times OpEd, arguing, based on his ever-present hope but no evidence, that Obama “is asking voters to move with him beyond race and beyond the civil rights movement to a politics of shared values.” As I wrote at the time, criticizing that piece,

Perhaps Williams is right. Perhaps Obama does represent the Great White, or Black, hope of moving beyond race. But at this point in the race I’m afraid that Obama may be speaking “color lines” rather than providing a bridge across the color line and hence that Williams may be engaging more in wishful thinking than astute analysis....

I believe there is a way that Williams could be right, that there is an opening for a black politician to appeal to blacks and whites to unite around shared values, but so far I have not been convinced that Obama is willing or able to do that, although there have been one or two encouraging hints. One of the most fundamental values that blacks and whites share, at least on one level, is a lingering attachment to the principle that has been discarded both by black “civil rights” leaders and white elites in academia, the media, and large corporations: the old core value holding that people should be treated “without regard” to race, creed, color, or national origin. (I continue to wait, in vain, for the day some brave journalist will ask Democratic presidential candidates whether or not they believe in that principle.)
....
I believe “shared values” do indeed provide a bridge that can unite the races, but, so far at least, it has proved to be a bridge too far for Obama to cross.

Don’t hold your breath.

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The Associated Press reports that the Obama campaign is trying to force broadcast stations not to air an ad critical of of Obama’s ties with unrepentant 60s domestic terrorist William Ayers.

Barack Obama is striking back fiercely and swiftly to stamp out an ad that links him to a 1960s radical, eager to demonstrate a far more aggressive response to attacks than John Kerry did when faced with the 2004 “Swift Boat” campaign....

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said Obama supporters have inundated stations that are airing the ad, many of them owned by Sinclair Communications, with 93,000 e-mails. He called the ad false, despicable and outrageous.

“Other stations that follow Sinclair’s lead should expect a similar response from people who don’t want the political discourse cheapened with these false, negative attacks,” Vietor said.

Alas, this effort is almost humorous. Here’s the email Helene received:

Yesterday, a right-wing smear group launched a full-fledge attack against Barack, pulling in every baseless lie and re-hashed false assertion in their playbook.

Not only that -- it turns out the ad may be illegal. Campaign finance experts are weighing in about violations of election law. And the ad is so ridiculous that CNN and even Fox News have both refused to run it.

This is exactly the kind of politics Barack is running to change.

Unfortunately, some TV stations in Virginia are running the ad right now.

Contact stations in Virginia and tell them this kind of garbage shouldn't be run on the public's airwaves — no matter how much money they are making to run it.

John McCain claims he had nothing to do with this attack, but a former McCain consultant leads the so called 'third-party' group behind these lies.

The primary funder of the ads, Harrold Simmons, is one of the main culprits behind the Swift Boating of John Kerry and a top bundler for John McCain. The spokesman for the group also has ties to the Kerry Swift Boat attacks.

The McCain camp and the Swift Boaters must be truly desperate to change the subject from John McCain's shocking disconnect with the economic struggles of the American people.

Take action right now to make sure this trash doesn't pollute another election:

http://va.barackobama.com/offtheairVA

Keep fighting the good fight,

Obama Action Wire

what is the smear about? how can I send a message when I don't know what it is about? what am I? a potted plant?

Dear Friend,

Thank you for contacting Senator Barack Obama and Obama for America.

Barack is gratified by the overwhelming response to his candidacy, and we appreciate hearing from you. Please note, though, that we are now replying only to emails sent through our webform....

Posted by John Rosenberg at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Say What? (12) | TrackBacks (0)

Excuses, Excuses, below, has been updated.

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Barack Obama has often been accused of being too full of himself, of looking in the mirror and seeing not simply a future president but a profile for the next carving on Mount Rushmore.

His infatuation with himself, seemingly buying into the myth of Barack as The One, the new Messiah, has been fueled by rhetoric such as the unfortunate example I quoted recently (here), where, referring in a speech to his impending nomination, he stated that he was

absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick, and good jobs for the jobless. This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal....

an incredible opportunity, incredible opportunity, not only to change the direction of America, but literally, literally to change the direction of the world.

ADDENDUM

This hubristic view that the Democrats are on a mission from God, or somewhere else, to save or at least redirect the planet is not limited to Obama and Biden but seems to pervade the party. Note this from ABC News yesterday:

ABC News’ Teddy Davis and Arnab Datta report: Speaking to reporters in Denver, Colo., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended Sen. Joe Biden’s Saturday crack about his wife having a doctorate degree.

“You know what,” said Pelosi “I’m going to tell you something: lighten up folks. We have a planet to save.”
“If Sen. Biden thinks that his wife is gorgeous, that’s a-okay with me,” she added.

Pelosi’s “lighten up” remark and statement of planetary purpose came in response to a reporter’s question about how some of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s disgruntled former female supporters would feel about Sen. Barack Obama’s new running mate jokingly referring to his wife’s advanced degree as “a problem.”

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Here’s another chorus of the liberals’ racism refrain, this time bleated by Jacob Weisberg of SLATE. “If Obama loses,” he wails, “racism is the only reason....” If Obama loses, he repeats, he will do so “for a simple reason: the color of his skin.”

Refuting this myopia by pointing to all the reasons millions of people, of all hues, will vote against Obama that have nothing to do with “the color of his skin” would be about as fruitful as pointing out the various hues in a vista of brilliant Fall foliage to a blind man.

But I do think one point is worth making. This liberal excuse for what might be simply the latest example of the Democrats snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is already so widespread that it may have an unintended but wholly beneficial effect on the outcome of the election. (Have you noticed that liberals often engage in behavior that has unintended but wholly predictable consequences?)

The argument that white (and Asian? Hispanic?) racism is the only reason Obama can lose amounts to saying that the only way to show you are not a racist is to vote for Obama. Some voters will no doubt be cowed by this threat into voting for Obama (or more likely, simply telling pollsters that they’re voting for Obama), but I suspect that it will send many more to the polls to vote against him simply as a way of expressing their justified resentment of this smug, supercilious, elitist attack on their intelligence and character.

UPDATE [25 August]

Maybe I better rethink the argument presented here. After all, how could it be right if virtually the same argument has appeared in a New York Times OpEd?

... there’s plenty of reason to think that Mr. Obama’s race is not the insurmountable detriment to his candidacy that a lot of anxious observers believe it is....

.... While it’s entirely possible that Mr. Obama’s race is costing him some support, it’s also true that the electorate that voted in the last two presidential elections was almost symmetrically divided between the two parties. It would defy the laws of politics if, at this early stage of the campaign, moderate Republicans and conservative independents were to reject Mr. McCain (a candidate many of them preferred back in 2000) simply because they don’t like George W. Bush.

Second, Mr. Obama faces genuine obstacles that are more salient than skin color....

Ever since 2000, a lot of so-called progressives have proudly displayed a healthy contempt for less-educated white voters who cast ballots in defiance of their “economic self-interest,” as Thomas Frank argued in “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” (The widespread acceptance of Mr. Frank’s thesis is how John Kerry largely escaped the scorn that is ritually visited upon losing Democratic presidential nominees; the members of his party directed their exasperation at the voters instead.) [I noted that Obama’s bitter/clinging put-down of small town American was pure Frank here.] But surely caricaturing a large subset of voters as ignorant has made those voters even less inclined to pull the lever for the Democrats this time around. All this talk about racism isn’t likely to help.

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Michael Kinsley opposes “class war,” which he thinks would result from substituting affirmative action based on class for affirmative action based on race. Although he recognizes that “racial affirmative action is ... a raw sore on our body politic,” he does not explain why he believes class-based affirmative action would lead to “blood in the streets resentments” but race-based affirmative action leads only to “a raw sore,” presumably treatable with sufficient applications of liberal rhetorical balm.

Kinsley regards class-based affirmative action as a “terrible idea,” and he makes some good points.

.... People with better qualifications would still lose jobs and university slots to people with worse qualifications, and their resentment probably wouldn’t be mollified by the fact that the beneficiaries of this policy might be white. Moreover, it would put America in the business of labeling people and rewarding them according to a criterion--social class--which would be a nightmare possibly even worse than race.

Although most African Americans are actually of mixed blood, defining who is black for purposes of affirmative action has not been very difficult. (Grotesque sometimes, but not difficult.) Defining concepts like “working class” or “rural poor” and then assigning individuals to their appropriate class would be far more challenging. And deciding exactly what degree of reverse discrimination each allegedly deprived social class is entitled to would be even worse. Today’s affirmative-action battles, and the deep resentments they stir up (reasonably or otherwise), are nothing compared with the blood in the streets and the bitterness in the hearts of Americans denied a promotion after some tribunal ruled that they were upper middle class when the guy next door (who has a pool in his backyard, for crying out loud) got a precious “lower middle” classification and a handsome raise to go with it.

Opponents and supporters of affirmative action all carry a picture in their heads of how things should work. In this picture, everyone in the world is lined up, from No. 1 to No. 7 billion, in order of their qualifications for a job, admission to a university or whatever. The job goes to the first person in line who wants it. Opponents of affirmative action say it’s unfair to let anyone jump ahead because of his or her race. Supporters say, Unfair? Are you kidding? Affirmative action just gives people the same places in line they would have had if there had been equal opportunity.

This picture is wrong in many ways. What makes someone good in a job depends on a variety of factors that are hard to define or measure. They can’t be used to line people up on the basis of a variable called “qualifications.” Furthermore, race, or at least a diversity of racial backgrounds, often is a qualification. Finally, the benefits of affirmative action sometimes go to people who have already had equal opportunity and more.

The most fundamental reason it is “unfair” to reward someone (and thus punish someone else) because of race is not that doing so violates the “principle of merit.” It is that it violates a principle much more deep-seated in American history and in the American system of values, that each individual has a fundamental right to be treated “without regard to race, creed, or color.”

Merit is nice. Sometimes it’s very important. But sacrificing it for something else (often a different kind of merit, as when academic standards are lowered for athletes) does not violate what Gunnar Myrdal called “The American Creed.” As the eminent social scientist James Q. Wilson once wrote (quoted here):

we did not fight the Civil War to make sure the University of Mississippi would admit good quarterbacks, we fought it to make certain it would admit blacks. To say that racial and athletic classifications are similar or that one can reason from the latter to the former is foolish. No court has ever held, or is likely to hold, that being able to throw a football 60 yards (or to have a father who gave the school a million dollars) places you in a class whose rights are protected by the barrier of strict scrutiny. Of course, one could argue for making both race and athleticism the same, by getting the Court to say that race is no longer a suspect classification. But that would mean reversing 40 years of desegregation. ["Symposium: Is Affirmative Action on the Way Out? Should It Be?" COMMENTARY, March 1998]

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While the Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative is headed for ballot approval (see post immediately below), the struggle continues in Arizona, where BAMN, ACORN, and others have engaged in a massive, paid effort to disrupt the signature-gathering process “by any means necessary.

In addition to physical intimidation and disruption, some of those means involve outright fraud. As a result, the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative is now offering a $10,000 reward for evidence that leads to arrest and conviction for some of these tactics. From a recent ACRI statement:

Based on preliminary investigations, the American Civil Rights Coalition (ACRC) believes that a systematic, deceptive effort, led by the group By Any Means Necessary, was attempted to sabotage Civil Rights Initiative campaigns. Jennifer Gratz, ACRC’s Director of State and Local Initiatives, stated, “BAMN is a radical, thug organization that has proven time and time again that they are willing to live up to their name and use ‘any means necessary’ to stop voters from deciding if race and gender preferences policies should be legal.”

ACRC has announced a $10,000 reward to anyone who brings forward information that leads to the arrest and conviction of anyone who engaged in such efforts in the state of Arizona.

During the Arizona signature gathering effort – especially during the month of June, the last month of signature collection – rumors were confirmed that the group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) engaged in election fraud. BAMN perpetuated this fraud by offering to purchase signatures from petition circulators and then BAMN members attempted to submit the signatures that they bought or coerced from circulators to organizers of the signature effort. Knowing that this type of activity occurred, it would not be surprising if rumors were validated that BAMN members were signing petitions with ficticious names and falsely signing circulator affidavits.

“It’s the same tired tune -- in every state in the last decade where Civil Rights Initiatives have been introduced BAMN has attempted to smear the campaign, its proponents, and signature circulators in an attempt to sway voters. Since BAMN has lost in every state where Civil Rights Initiatives have been introduced, now BAMN has raised the stakes and, we believe, is committing outright election fraud,” continued Ms. Gratz. “Anyone who stands by silently and lets these actions continue is simply condoning the anti-democratic tactics of BAMN.”

The American Civil Rights Coalition is confident that the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative was committed to gathering the required signatures in an honest and straightforward manner. Based on the over 300,000 signatures collected, we also believe that there is a strong interest in the issue of race preferences and that the voters of Arizona have a right to vote to end the government’s practice of discriminating against some while granting preference to others based on race and sex. The integrity of the democratic process must be upheld and individuals like Candace Young and Alejandra Cruz from the group By Any Means Necessary who have been videotaped purchasing and/or attempting to coerce signatures from circulators should be prosecuted for election fraud. We encourage anyone who has additional evidence of an effort to sabotage the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative campaign to bring such evidence forward now and if it leads to an arrest and conviction for sabotaging the AzCRI signature gathering, a $10,000 reward will be awarded.

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The Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative has been informed by the Secretary of State that it submitted “more than enough” valid signatures to qualify for the November ballot. The formal announcement should come this afternoon.

Congratulations, Doug Tietz, director, and everyone who worked on the petition drive. “Blocking” failed in Nebraska, and democracy succeeded.

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Every since Watergate it has been a truism that the coverup is worse than the crime. But I wonder if now we don’t need an Obama/New York Times (ObamaTimes? The New York Tobama?) corollary: the coverup of the coverup is even worse than the coverup of the crime.

I use “crime” loosely here, although there are certainly many who regard Obama’s role in killing Illinois legislation to protect accidentally born-alive survivors of failed abortions (a position taken by only 15 left-wing members of the U.S. House of Representatives) as criminal. As most of you have seen, this issue has recently been revived, and it has now even been sanctioned as an actually existing controversy by being recognized in yesterday’s New York Times.

I’ll have more to say about the NYT article below, but first here’s a cogent summary of the issue by Rick Lowry:

In 2000, Congress took up legislation to make it clear that infants born alive after abortions are persons under the law. The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League opposed the bill as an assault on Roe, but it passed the House 380-15. Back in the Illinois state Senate in 2001, Obama spoke out against and voted “present” — effectively “no” — on a similar bill, aligning himself with the tiny pro-abortion rump of 15 congressmen.

In 2002, Congress considered the legislation again, this time adding a “neutrality clause” specifying that it didn’t affect Roe one way or another. The bill passed without any dissenting votes in the House or the Senate and was signed into law. In 2003 in Illinois, Obama still opposed a state version of the law. He long claimed that he voted against it because it didn’t have the same “neutrality clause” as the federal version. But the National Right to Life Committee has unearthed documents showing that the Illinois bill was amended to include such a clause, and Obama voted to kill it anyway.

Confronted about this on CBN, he said the pro-life group was lying. But his campaign has now admitted that he had the legislative history wrong. Obama either didn’t know his own record, or was so accustomed to shrouding it in dishonesty that it had become second nature.

The presumptive Democratic nominee responded sharply in an interview Saturday night with the Christian Broadcast Network, saying anti-abortion groups were “lying” about his record.

“They have not been telling the truth,” Mr. Obama said. “And I hate to say that people are lying, but here’s a situation where folks are lying.”

He added that it was “ridiculous” to suggest he had ever supported withholding lifesaving treatment for an infant. “It defies common sense and it defies imagination, and for people to keep on pushing this is offensive,” he said in the CBN interview.

The dispute flared again last week when a leading opponent of legalized abortion, the National Right to Life Committee, posted records from the Illinois Legislature showing that Mr. Obama, while chairman of a Senate committee, in 2003, voted against a “Born Alive” bill that contained nearly identical language to the federal bill that passed unanimously, including the provision limiting its scope.

The group says the documents prove Mr. Obama misrepresented his record.

Indeed, Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday when he said the federal version he supported “was not the bill that was presented at the state level.”
His campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate....

(c) Nothing in this Section [the bill] shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being born alive as defined in this Section.

By now you’re wondering why I began by mentioning the New York Times. I did so because it reads like a strained and unpersuasive attempt to defend Obama’s strained and unpersuasive attempt to explain why he killed legislation to protect survivors of botched abortions, especially in its closing paragraph:

A year later, after Mr. Obama had moved on to Washington, the Illinois legislature approved a “born alive” law. But that statute, as the result of a compromise meant to avoid the standoff that led Mr. Obama to oppose the 2003 version, added language specifically stating that it should not be construed “to affect existing federal or state law regarding abortion” or “to alter generally accepted medical standards.”

There are thus three issues here, and I think it useful not to conflate them: 1) The substance of Obama’s position on protecting abortion survivors; 2) The nature of his various explanations of his position and attacks on his critics as liars; and 3) the way this controversy has been both ignored and covered in the Obama-supporting mainstream press such as the New York Times.

Whatever one thinks about any or all of these three, it is becoming increasingly hard for Obama to portray himself (or to be portrayed by his media supporters ) convincingly as a thoughtful, moderate, unifying, post-partisan candidate.

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Caltrans, the California state transportation agency, remains addicted to quotas, even after the passage of Prop. 209 a number of years ago should have forced it to go cold turkey.

The agency tried to do without quotas for a couple of years but went into a deep funk when a “disparity study” purported to reveal “underrepresentation” of, for example, certain subsets of Asian American contractors (actually, it found only an “inference of disparity,” but that was enough for government work), and it consequently asked the U.S. Dept. of Transportation for permission to resume its quota habit.

I discussed this request about a year ago, here. An excerpt:

With respect to this request, AsianWeek (“The Voice of Asian America”) predictably declares “CalTrans Needs More APA Contractors.” Let us pass up the almost (but not quite) irresistible urge to ask “Why?” and move on. (For those of you not completely conversant with the jargon of “diversity,” “APA” means Asian-Pacific Americans.) But a closer look, which AsianWeek happily provides, reveals that Caltrans doesn’t need just any APA contractors. Indeed, it already has too many of some and not enough (for whom?) of others. Referring to the “diversity index” of underrepresentation in a Caltrans study, AsianWeek noted:

Hispanic-owned firms showed great improvement. Some APA firms, those owned by South Asian Americans, were actually overrepresented.

The study used a disparity index, where a score of 100 constitutes parity. Indian- and Pakistani-owned contractors rated 124. Latino firms rated 81. An index below 80 is considered “substantial disparity.”

Even among those groups underrepresented, the range was huge. African Americans were the most disadvantaged, scoring only 15. Chinese- and Filipino-owned firms fared little better with a score of 31.

Presumably a close look at other categories would reveal similar “disparities” within groups — too many Mexicans, not enough Guatemalans; too many Carribean blacks; etc. In short, as AsianWeek astutely observed, simply

[i]nstituting an across-the-board policy to hire more minority contractors would not be an improvement, particularly if the same minority contractors ended up being hired over and over, simply to fill artificial quotas.

Alas, AsianWeek did not inform us how to distinguish “artificial quotas” from genuine, legitimate quotas.

Caltrans bases it request to be excused from complying with the California constitution, in part, on its fear of losing federal funds if it is not allowed to revert to its quota habit, although, as the Pacific Legal Foundation has pointed out in a devastating critique, there is no basis for this fear. But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Caltrans actually believes its funding is at risk if it does not award 13.5% of its business to DBEs, and that half of that “goal” must be met by race-based contracting.

If that is the case, or the belief, could someone explain to me the difference between these “goals” and a quota? If there is no difference, could someone then point me to the criticism of the Caltrans proposal from all those politicians who loudly proclaim their undying opposition to quotas?

Finally, one other interesting aspect of Caltrans’ request for permission to discriminate. As stated in its report cited above, Caltrans announced that

For FFY 2009, Caltrans will limit race-conscious measures to African American, Asian Pacific American, Women, and Native American-owned firms.

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Liberals like nuance (“a refined or subtle distinction in ideas”), in part, I suspect, because they think they are smart enough, and conservatives too dumb, to appreciate it. Sally Quinn likes nuance; she swoons over Obama because she thinks he is “nuanced.”

She suggests that Obama provides “nuance” that is adult, “unclear,” “complicated,” while McCain offers clear but childish certainties.

By the time McCain finished his interview with pastor Rick Warren at the Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, Saturday night, part of a forum that also featured Barack Obama, I was curled up in a fetal position in my chair, wrapped in a mohair throw, practically sucking my thumb.

But I hope she’s right about Obama, since most people prefer clear, straight talk to “nuance” like his that is often “unclear, complicated.” Quinn, however, puts all pretense of “nuance” aside when she bluntly plays the race card by asserting that those of us who fail to appreciate what Obama offers do so at least in part because “Obama’s world can be scarier. It’s multicultural.”

Clarity and uncomplicated values, apparently, are white.

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Drop whatever you’re doing (well, finish this post first) and proceed post-haste to read this fine article by Michael Paul Beran on some truly scary aspects, dimensions, implications of what he identifies as Obama’s charisma. (It was reprinted on the Wall Street Journal site over the weekend, here.) I think it’s the most profoundly conservative critique I’ve read of Obama, but a deeply philosophical conservatism — not the conservatism of partisan politics, talk shows, etc. It’s the sort of article that Andrew Sullivan would write if he were several orders of magnitude smarter than he is ... and if he were still a devotee of Michael Oakeshott. (For a summary of Oakeshott’s views, look here.)

Let me add another inducement to read the Beran article by quoting an important and revealing passage from a recent speech by the Obamessiah that you have probably already read or heard. I quote it here because it is not quoted by Beran, but definitely should have been. Indeed, My only substantial criticsm of Beran’s article is that he inexplicably failed to quote this passage, which provides compelling evidence for his overall argument. (Now that I think about it, another criticism is that “chiliasm” and/or “millenarianism” might be better terms for what Beran sees in Obama than his favored “charisma.” Look up those terms if you need to (I did, here among other places); read the article; and decide for yourself.)

Here’s the passage, from Obama’s speech in St. Paul, June 3, 2008, on the occasion of his finally winning the delegates necessary to assure his nomination. (I was tempted to say, “... speech in St. Paul, on the road to Damascus,” but showed uncharacteristic restraint in deciding not to.)

I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith, in the capacity of the American people, because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick, and good jobs for the jobless. This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal. This was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment, this was the time when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves. [Emphasis added]

ADDENDUM

Beran emails that his article was written and submitted before Obama’s parting of the waters, healing of the planet nomination acceptance speech. So, substitute a commendation of Beran’s perception, even prescience, for my criticism above of his failing to quote the passage that confirms his analysis.

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Some of you may know The Spoof as a site that features (allegedly) funny but entirely bogus headlines and news stories. A recent story, “Obama Considered Ending Affirmative Action in Quest for National Unity, White Vote,” however, makes me wonder if someone didn’t spoof The Spoof, submitting a real story instead of a fictional one.

“We have the black vote in our back pockets. 90 percent plus” a voice distinctly Obama’s is heard stating in an off-the-air but live-microphone moment.

“You know, we need more white vote. I’m gonna throw ’em a bone and talk about abolishing affirmative action” the voice continued.

On Sunday, however, Obama changed his perspective when threatened with McCain camp rhetoric supporting Arizona’s initiative to ban preferential treatment. McCain’s spokesman stated that “regardless of race, ethnicity or gender, the law should be equally applied.”

“Nonsense” responded Obama. “I am a strong supporter of affirmative action”, he then continued, seemingly rudderless in a hard-to-defend racially divisive position.

“We need unity in this country. In order to have unity you must first divide. Divide people by race and gender. Encourage anger, hostility, discrimination. Then everybody can start to come together after learning each others’ differences. And French. We need to learn French.”

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George Curry, a prominent black journalist, writing in New America Media (“Expanding The News Lens Through Ethnic Media”), after quoting one of McCain’s many statements that he opposes quotas, writes that

Obviously, John McCain is ignorant about affirmative action. If he weren’t, he’d know that the concept of affirmative action does include quotas. In fact, Executive Order 11246 outlawing discrimination in federal contracting forbids the use of quotas in affirmative action programs. The original order was issued by President Johnson in 1965 and extended by every subsequent president, including Ronald Reagan and Bush I and II.

But that’s the only bye. Based on this column, and others (see below), I would say that if Mr. Curry wants to stare ignorance about affirmative in the face, he need look no further than the closest mirror.

The “original” Presidential Executive Order implementing affirmtive action was not President Johnson’s 11246 in 1965; it was President Kennedy’s 10925 in 1961. Directly contrary to Curry’s defense of racial preference policies, both executive orders barred the federal government from discriminating against “any employee or applicant ... because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” (11246), and they both required the government to treat all applicants and employees “without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin.”

Curry’s column is a diatribe against the ignorant McCain for seeking “to ban affirmative action in Arizona,” but the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative that McCain supports does no more than restate the principle embodied in the two Presidential Executive Orders. It states:

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting

I discussed an earlier example here (“Currying Favor With Affirmative Actionists”), taking issue with Curry’s false assertion that Executive Order 11246 (he ignored Kennedy’s earlier one here as well) offered no protections to whites, Asians, etc.:

In other words, whites, Asians, etc., need not apply, no matter what “hardship” they have endured or overcome. He acknowledges that

the needs of impoverished whites should be addressed. However, they are not covered by affirmative action and could be helped by antipoverty measures. The presidential debate provided further proof that most of the confusion over affirmative action is because it is too often mis-defined.

It is Curry, however, who has egregiously “mis-defined” affirmative action. In agreeing that quotas are illegal, he quotes President Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 on affirmative action, but if he had actually read it, or remembered it from when he read it long ago, he could never have written that poor (or other) whites or Asians “are not covered by affirmative action,” at least as it was originally understood and sold. I’ve quoted it too many times to cite, but will do so again now, from its Section 202 discussing the obligations of federal contractors:

(1) The contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin.... [Emphasis added]

What part of “any employee or applicant” does Curry not understand.?

Curry did not refer to President Kennedy’s earlier Executive Order 10925, but if he had he would have found that it embodied the same, now abandoned principle.

WHEREAS discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin is contrary to the Constitutional principles and policies of the United States; and

WHEREAS it is the plain and positive obligation of the United States Government to promote and ensure equal opportunity for all qualified persons, without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin, employed or seeking employment with the Federal Government and on government contracts; and

WHEREAS it is the policy of the executive branch of the Government to encourage by positive measures equal opportunity for all qualified persons within the Government....
Again, what part of “all” does Curry not understand? [Emphasis added]

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First, let me say that everything written by Peter Beinart, an Editor-at-Large of The New Republic and currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is not dumb. Second, the advice he gives Obama in a Washington Post OpEd today to abandon race-based for class-based affirmative action is good — good for Obama, good for the country. But third, his argument supporting this sound conclusion ranks among the most egregiously dumb things I’ve ever read.

Beinart begins by arguing that even though Obama “really, really doesn't want this campaign to be about race” (“He wants it to be about change...”), it will be. Why? Because there are so many racists who won’t vote for a black and, perhaps more importantly, he says, “[r]ace will be central to this campaign because McCain needs it to be.”

That’s the lesson of recent weeks, when the McCain campaign brought up race (on the pretext that Obama had brought it up first). The Obama campaign tried desperately to change the subject but couldn’t. Once the chum was in the water, the media sharks went wild.

Moving on:

Already, there is reason to believe that race is weighing Obama down. A survey this year by CBS and the New York Times found that 94 percent of respondents would vote for a black presidential candidate. But when asked if “most people” would, the number dropped to 71 percent. Notre Dame political scientist David Leege estimates that 17 to 19 percent of white Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents will resist voting for Obama because he is black. That’s far more than the percentage of Republicans who may vote for Obama because he is black. And it’s a major reason that this election — despite Obama’s myriad advantages — remains close.

Now it really gets good. Despite the pervasive racism of the electorate Beinart remains an optimist, “because even racists can be wooed.”

Think about it this way: Many of the voters who right now won’t vote for Obama because he’s black would probably vote for Colin Powell even though he’s black. That’s because they don’t see Powell as a racial redistributionist, a guy who would favor his community at their expense.

If I cared what Beinart thought I would wonder if he believes the inevitable corollary of his almost silly attempt to explain differing white responses to Powell and Obama while continuing to maintain that large numbers of white voters are racist — if Powell is not really black because he doesn’t believe in racial redistribution, then people who look white but do believe in racial redistribution are really black. Beinart, thus, is not only a seer but also the arbiter of blackness in our society.

You’d think that Beinart, already in way over his head, would stop digging (especially because what he’s digging in is not dirt), but no, the hole he’s standing in just keeps getting bigger.

There’s no rational reason to believe Obama would [favor his community at their expense], either. But because, unlike Powell, Obama is a liberal Democrat who enjoys overwhelming black support, that’s what many racially hostile white voters assume.

Can Beinart really believe that a black president supporting preferential treatment for blacks is somehow not “favor[ing] his community” at the expense of those who are denied preferential treatment because of their race? On second thought, after reading this OpEd I’m prepared to believe that Beinart can, and does, believe whatever he wants.

If a peanut-growing president favored federal subsidies to peanut growers but not to others, some liberals and mainstream media mavens (but I repeat myself) might grouse about conflict of interest. But race, we keep being told, is different.

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Roger Clegg points to the very revealing responses from McCain and Obama to a questionnaire from the NAACP.

McCain was refreshingly straightforward, direct, and hard-hitting. Noting that “[t]he affirmative action remedies designed forty years ago should be re-examined,” he identified himself completely not only with the philosophy of “without regard” colorblind equality but also with the actual language of the pending anti-preference state initiatives:

I believe that government should “not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, and individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

Affirmative action programs, when properly structured, can open up opportunities otherwise closed to qualified minorities without having an adverse impact on the opportunities for whites. Given the dearth of black and Latino Ph.D. candidates in mathematics and the sciences, for example, a scholarship program for minorities interested in getting advanced degrees in these fields won’t keep white students out of such programs, but can broaden the pool of talent that need to prosper in the new economy. To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in the socio-economic disparities that we often observe turns a blind eye to both our history and our experience — and relieves us of the responsibility to make things right.

• How can affirmative action programs that treat race in a preferential manner be “properly structured” so that they give additional opportunities to blacks without “without diminishing opportunities for white [or Asian] students”?

• How would “a scholarship program for minorities interested in getting advanced degrees in these fields ... broaden the pool of talent that we need to prosper in the new economy” more than a scholarship program that was not racially restrictive? If such a program were racially restrictive, why would it not “keep white [and Asian] students out of such programs” who could not attend without a scholarship?

It is of course true that “qualified” applicants of all races are quite often rejected ... in favor of applicants who are deemed more qualified. Since Obama obviously believes that less qualified black and Hispanic applicants should be preferred over more qualified Asian, white, Arab, Indian, Pakistani, etc., applicants, he should have the courage to say so.

But that is about as likely to happen as some journalist from the mainstream media pressing him to explain exactly which race preferences he supports and to identify some, if there are any, he opposes.

ADDENDUM

I said in the post immediately below that McCain should “take the initiative” on race preferences —

No, make that the initiatives, as in the initiatives that will be on the ballots of Colorado, Nebraska, and Arizona in November that would prohibit those states from awarding preferential treatment based on race.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:48 AM | Permalink | Say What? (7) | TrackBacks (0)

No, make that the initiatives, as in the initiatives that will be on the ballots of Colorado, Nebraska, and Arizona in November that would prohibit those states from awarding preferential treatment based on race.

As I argued here (and many other places), McCain could gain additional support in several highly contested “battleground” states — including, as it happens, Colorado, as well as Michigan (which passed a similar initiative by a wide margin in 2006) and Virginia — is he would take a strong stand in favor of colorblind equal treatment. (No doubt showing the power of a compelling argument combined with the Internet, several days after my post cited above appeared McCain did in fact come out in favor of the Arizona initiative, and by extension the others.)

Now comes Peter Brown, the assistant director of the respected Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, who suggests that Obama’s continued support for race preferences is indeed likely to hurt him in Colorado.

The success of similar measures in other states and polls showing very strong support for it in Colorado suggest the proposal is likely to pass. Quinnipiac University/Wall Street Journal/washingtonpost.com polls in June and July found that roughly two-thirds of Colorado voters support the proposal, and less than one-fifth oppose it.

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Politico reports this morning that “Race-card flap reopens Clinton camp wounds.”

“I am not a racist,” Clinton said Monday in a testy interview with ABC News in Monrovia, Liberia, in response to a question that wasn’t quite related to that subject. “I’ve never made a racist comment and I never attacked [Obama] personally.”

Obama himself never suggested that the Clintons had harbored racial animus, though his campaign did at least once make that case to the media, and some of his supporters overtly denounced the former president. Former Clinton aides acknowledge that Bill Clinton, particularly in comparing Obama’s South Carolina win to Jesse Jackson’s victory, all but invited the charge from Obama’s allies.

Maybe some angry Obamanaut or guilty Clintonista can explain it to me.

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I always get a kick out of the columns, and now talking head (on MSNBC) commentary, of Washington Post Obamanut Eugene Robinson. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here for some representative examples.) I would say that he’s such a perfect affirmative action columnist (by which I mean, mainly, that he writes often about affirmative action) that if he didn’t exist we’d need to invent him, but that’s not really true since so many other affirmative action columnists say pretty much the same things.

In his column yesterday he weighs in on the “Who’s Raising Race” debate, predictably blaming the McCain campaign for purposefully, and hence nastily, injecting race. Since many voters may be too dumb to see what McCain et. al. have been up to, Robinson generously steps forward to explain it, much in the manner of a college literature professor deconstructing texts. In fact, exactly in that manner:

I’m confident that Sen. Lindsey Graham and the rest of John McCain’s front-line surrogates know full well what messages they’re sending about Barack Obama and race. On the off chance that they — or, more likely, some of the white voters they’re trying to reach — don’t know text from subtext from context, here’s a deconstruction.

On Sunday, the exceedingly thin-skinned Graham was still shocked, saddened and outraged over Obama’s throwaway line, spoken days earlier, about not looking like previous presidents. Graham said on “Fox News Sunday” that “there’s no doubt in my mind that what Senator Obama is trying to suggest — that he’s a victim of something.” Graham later added: “We’re not going to run a campaign like he did in the primary. Every time somebody brings up a challenge to who you are and what you believe, ‘You’re a racist.’ That’s not going to happen in this campaign.”

The key words are “victim” and “racist” — which Obama did not say. Graham puts them in Obama’s mouth because of their power to alienate.

With the first loaded word, Graham is trying to tie Obama to a stereotype: the Great African American Victim. He’s playing to the annoyance some whites feel at being reminded of racial sins committed long before they were born or even long before their families came to this country.

This battle over Obama’s image as a black man is arguably the central front of the presidential campaign right now. Once-sharp lines between the candidates on issues such as withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq or allowing new offshore oil drilling are becoming blurred. The Democratic Party’s structural advantages going into the election are formidable. It’s hard to imagine how McCain could possibly win unless he generates doubt in voters’ minds about Obama.

One way to do that would be to fabricate the impression that Obama is demanding special treatment and privilege because he is black — in other words, turn a self-made man into a stereotypical beneficiary of affirmative action.

We have to think about affirmative action and craft it in such a way where some of our children who are advantaged aren’t getting more favorable treatment than a poor white kid who has struggled more.

Now, even though you’ve re-read it once, go back and read Robinson’s concluding paragraph one more time. What Robinson says here is that to portray Obama, or presumably anyone, as “demanding special treatment and privilege” based on race is to fabricate “a stereotypical beneficiary of affirmative action.” But what is “stereotypical” about such a portrayal?

Has not every beneficiary of what Robinson regards as affirmative action received precisely that sort of special treatment? Can Robinson point to any beneficiaries of affirmative action who have not received special treatment based on their race? Would he be willing to support Ward Connerly’s effort to bar states from dispensing special treatment based on race, leaving in place all affirmative action programs that do not employ race preferences?

I don’t think so.

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This article by Stanley Kurtz in The Weekly Standard is the best thing I’ve read on Obama anywhere — in papers mainstream and otherwise, magazines, and blogs (including this one). I’ll have more to say about it presently, but since it’s long and since you’re required by official DISCRIMINATIONS edict to read the whole thing I wanted to mention it now so you so you can get started.

I believe it is impossible for anyone to read it and still believe that Obama is a post-racial candidate who will bridge our partisan, racial, and cultural divisions.

If Obama’s opponents in the Democratic primaries and their partners in the press had done the digging that Kurtz has done and made this material public earlier, it is possible (the Democratic Party being what it is today) that Obama still would have won the nomination. But if this information is widely disseminated before the election I don’t see how he can win, unless he finds some way to dismiss it or repudiate his past. He’s dumped Wright, but can he dump or otherwise distance himself from everything Kurtz presents?

We’ll see.

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I’m a big fan of Ann Althouse’s blog, even when I disagree with her, which is about half the time.

This post is a good example, both of her strengths and my reaction to them. Regarding the current “look like” controversy over “playing the race card,” she effectively ridicules the Obamanaut arguments that the Obama campaign is “fighting back” against the Republicans injecting race into the campaign.

Fighting back? He brought it up. He can’t use his race as a factor and disqualify it simultaneously. Pick a position and stick to it. Obviously, the better position for Obama is transcending race, and obviously, if he thinks he can dip gracefully into the subject whenever it works for him, he’s wrong.

Really? How is his doing that different from what civil rights leaders and activists, virtually all elected Democratic officials, and nearly all liberals do every day: proclaim their devotion to civil rights, equal treatment, etc., even as they defend the state and its agencies using “race as a factor” (for them, often the deciding factor) in awarding preferential treatment based on skin color or ethnicity?

In the same vein she concludes:

He needs to stay race-transcendent. Lefties tend to revile race transcendence — to regard it as a kind of racism. I’ve heard that point of view many times, from very intelligent individuals who express themselves quite rationally and persuasively. They don’t shout and point and interrupt. Obama has to resist them too.

ADDENDUM

I don’t see how anyone could read the article by Stanley Kurtz highlighted in my post immediately above this one and still believe that Obama has ever been interested in transcending race.

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According to reporter Michael Powell’s article in the New York Times today, “Senator Barack Obama is a man of few rhetorical stumbles.” Perhaps Powell and his editor were on vacation when Obama described small town whites as “bitter” and “clinging” to guns and God; when he characterized Rev. Wright’s church, with its anti-American and anti-white rants as pretty much like all other black churches; when he described his own grandmother as a “typical white person” because of the racial fears he attributed to her; when he said, recently, that he favored “properly structured” racial quotas; etc.

Now that we’ve established the reliability of Powell’s estimation of Obama’s views, let’s move on to his main topic in today’s article, that “Obama is Careful on Race” and that his campaign,

a carefully controlled lot on the best of days, reacted most cautiously as it sought to tamp down any sense that it was at war with Mr. McCain over who was the first to inject race into the contest....

“I was in Union, Mo., which is 98 percent white, a rural conservative, and what I said was what I think everyone knows, which is that I don’t look like I came out of central casting when it comes to presidential candidates,” [Obama] told The St. Petersburg Times. “There was nobody there who thought at all that I was trying to inject race in this.”

The impossibility of viewing these comments in any other light explains why his efforts to “tamp down” the widespread recognition of the obvious falls so flat. David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, attempted to explain the “looks like” remark Friday morning by saying:

“He’s not from central casting,” Axelrod told a national TV audience Friday [ABC’s “Good Morning America”],”when it comes to candidates for president of the United States. He’s new to Washington. Yes, he’s African-American.”

The effect of all these defensive attempts to put an innocent gloss on Obama’s “look like” comments by repeating, like a mantra, that all he meant is that he isn’t from “central casting” is, ironically, to make Obama, Axelrod, et. al. appear to be exactly that, actors dispatched from central casting desperately trying out for a part by reading the same line off the same script.

And, finally, there is one more delicious irony about all these explanations that Obama’s references to what he “looks like” mean only that he doesn’t look like the “central casting” version of what a president looks like: actually, he does look exactly like the central casting version of two presidents in one of the most popular recent shows on TV (and probably the most popular show among conservatives), “24.”

Here is what President David Palmer looked like. And after he was assassinated, and his evil successor dispensed with, here is what his successor, President Wayne Palmer, his younger brother elected in his own right, looks like.

Barack Obama, a young celebrity candidate with little experience and fewer accomplishments, with little going for him except his celebrity status, does in fact look exactly like he “came out of central casting.”

ADDENDUM

Dan Glickman, a former Congressman and Secretary of Agriculture who has been president of the Motion Picture Association of America since 2004, and thus should know something about central casting, thinks Obama is as much from central casting as McCain. Writing on the Huffington Post, Glickman argues that

[both of] our presidential candidates seem straight out of central casting -- one a decorated veteran and former prisoner of war, the other a Kennedy-esque voice of a new generation, summoning the ‘audacity of hope.’

The Obama children, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, are straight from central casting.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

DISCRIMINATIONS reader and frequent commenter, Michael Bertolone, has an excellent letter in today’s USA TODAY. He’s given permission to post it here:

McCain switches sides for the better
Michael A. Bertolone - Rochester, N.Y.

Barack Obama said he was disappointed with John McCain’s change of heart on affirmative action, but I find it encouraging (“McCain sides with ban on affirmative action,” News, Monday).
McCain said he backs a proposed referendum in Arizona to ban affirmative action. Why is Obama disappointed that McCain has decided finally to back the 14th Amendment‘s equal protection clause, which guarantees everyone equal protection of the laws? Is it because Obama supports preferential treatment for some at the expense of others?
Martin Luther King Jr., in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” wrote: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” That’s good advice.
I’m satisfied that McCain has realized the danger and injustice in favoring or discriminating against a person based on race or gender. Obama would benefit from learning that lesson as well.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)