Why Black Women Are Fat? Mere Perceptions?

In yesterday's Best of the Web Today, published by the Wall Street Journal online, James Taranto addresses a new study linking obesity with racial oppression. As usual, his analysis is trenchant and pointed; the study is replete with hidden assumptions and non causa pro causa fallacies where causality and correlation are confused. Mr. Taranto ably points out many of the deficiencies of the study (some of the conclusions drawn from the study are truly laughable).

Ostensibly, the study -- if one can call it that -- proves that black women who are victims of racism respond to such abuse by putting on a few pounds. Mr. Taranto is right to note that the women in the study only perceive that they are victims of racism; the racial component is not actually empirically proven by the study, though it is obviously inferred from the results of a series of questionnaires.

But there are more difficulties with the study that Mr. Taranto fails to note. Obviously he hasn't time to delve more deeply into the study's weaknesses, but we do, and several things seem very much worth noting here.

First, if the women involved in the study infer from their perceptions of being slighted by shopkeepers or dissed by restaurant waitstaff that these improprieties are racially motivated, it must be asked whether such an inference is at all justified. How do these women know that the person allegedly speaking condescendingly to them is not patronizing them solely because they are overweight? Perhaps skin color has nothing to do with any of this; perhaps overweight women become even more overweight in a response to the prejudice other people have about overweight people. And perhaps overweight women perceive slights that are not slights at all, and, believing these perceived slights are real, decide that it is not weight but race that motivates such slights. But why would an obese woman do such a thing? Perhaps because obesity is embarrassing and perceiving racism where there is none keeps the obese person from addressing the real causes of that embarrassing problem. It's all a defensive mode, a shifting of blame. Perception, one must remember, is not to be confused with reality. Hence, perception can be used as a false cover precisely because it is so vague, elastic and subjective. The study in question has NOTHING to say about false covers.

Second, the study fails to explain why white women are overweight and even obese. What social evil pushes white women toward corpulence? Are white women also responding to bigotry as they pack on the pounds?

Black women involved in a study regarding race and weight may actually be victims of a sicker combination of social factors, namely, a complicated paranoia created by social scientists and researchers who suggest to these women that every slight in the world is racially motivated. Perhaps these dear obese black women are not victims of direct racism at all. Instead, they are unable to properly socialize precisely because they've been led to believe that racism is poised to rear its ugly head in every public place and social encounter. Perhaps the actual cause of the obesity in these black women was the latently racist study itself; according to the report all the women -- all 43,000 participants! -- got heavier during the eight-year-long study. And since this study cannot ever answer why white women are obese -- since white women can't perceive racial slights and insults -- it seems that the study's conclusions prove my point: the study itself has reinforced an attitude that leads to unhealthy living. (And what was the control group, by the way, and how did it fare?)

As for white women and obesity, perhaps a study will show that such women who succumb to obesity are victims of a social pressure to be glamorous, lithe and preternaturally sexy. Perhaps that is in some part true; no doubt such women struggle with poor self-esteem. But imagine a study that really makes such a connection, and then note this phenomenon: that the study itself implies that women SHOULD have low self-esteem for the simple reason that women are so easily duped into thinking they must conform to certain images, including, ironically, the image of NOT BEING DUPED, which is the very image latently propagated by the study that proves women are obese because of their susceptibility to being duped. In other words, white women are fat because they can't conform to certain body images portrayed in the media, which proves that such women are too stupid or too intemperate to resist those images.

Really, thanks for the help with the self-esteem.

At the heart of this study on black women and obesity is a fixation on an external locus of control. The problem is "out there." These women are victims to externals. That there is no mention -- seemingly -- of the lack of internal coping strategies or habits to resist the wrong reaction to stress is truly indicative of the world in which we live: you are not to blame.

But the MOST startling thing about this study is that it purports to be SCIENCE. That non causa pro causa fallacies are considered scientific (and they are rather often) is truly disconcerting; this study strikes this writer as so utterly devoid of meaning that one might conclude that the future of science is actually in doubt: this study brings a whole new meaning to the genre of science fiction. But non causa pro causa fallacies are almost de rigueur for our society. Pick your issue -- CO2 levels and increasing average global temperatures; CEO bonuses and job layoffs -- and you'll see that the confusing of correlation with causation is endemic to this era. Being fallacious is utterly fashionable, even for epidemiologists researching the human condition. How sad.

Here's a question: Who can we blame for this?

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Diuguid: The Palindrome's Palin Drone

I just heard about the column by Kansas City Star editorialist Lewis Diuguid in which Mr. Diuguid claims the use of the word "socialist" is essentially a racial slur: it is veiled, or not so veiled, racism. I tracked the piece down, as I had to read it myself. Sure enough. In Plains English, Mr. Diuguid gives us all an incredible history lesson.

"Socialism" is an old code word for "black."

And here I thought George Orwell was white. And Karl Marx. And Vladimir Lenin. And Josef Stalin. And Bill Ayres.

And I thought I was thoroughly white when I talked like a socialist after graduating from college.

I swear, if I did not know any better, I would have concluded that "socialism" is actually code word for "white guys who not only feed on envy, they feed it."

All sarcasm aside (for just a second), I am not really surprised at this great straining of the mind, this great bending off all reason.

But I do think a deeper truth is being overlooked here: the words "McCain" and "Palin" are old code words for radical white supremacists who are damned for what they don't do and what they don't say.

Seriously, say "socialism" to me and all I see is Dr. Zhivago, you know, all cold snowy white...and profoundly unhuman.

"Turn It Up"

From Georgia's Democratic congressman John Lewis:

"Senator McCain and Governor Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.

"There was a Governor of the state of Alabama, George Wallace. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights." [emphasis mine]

When I heard Charles Krauthammer discussing these remarks -- and others like them -- I hit the RECORD button:

"When John McCain runs an ad with a white woman -- Paris Hilton -- in it, he is accused of racism. He runs an ad with Franklin Raines, the former head of Fannie Mae in it, who is African-American, and that’s racist. And then he runs an ad with William Ayers, who is a white male in it, and that’s racist.

"If it weren’t so comical, these promiscuous accusations of racism, it would be tragic.

"The Obama campaign has been playing the race card over and over again. Look, this is a campaign that in the primaries succeeded in painting Bill Clinton as a racist.

"Now, Clinton, with all of his flaws, this is a man who throughout his career from governor of Arkansas to president of the United States and beyond, has been a great and sincere friend of African-Americans who shared and tried to advance their aspirations. So if you can pull off a trick like that on Bill Clinton, you can pull it off on Republicans.

"And look what Obama has said. He’s the one who raised the 'Barack Hussein Obama' a year or two ago in which he said the 'Hussein' is actually an asset and would be an asset in dealing with Muslims abroad. He’s the one who openly said that the Republicans will say I’m black, they will say he’s scary. They will say he’s different. They will say he doesn’t look like the guy on the dollar bill.

"That is Obama preemptively accusing McCain of racism, which is a scurrilous charge. Racism is a serious charge in our country, and a false accusation is doubly serious. As we saw in the Duke lacrosse case, it can destroy lives. Given our history, it ought to be used with great care. And to accuse preemptively McCain of racism even before there is any evidence of it, and there has not been any evidence of it before or since, is scurrilous.

"They say patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Accusations of racism is the last refuge of the liberal scoundrel, and it has been used again and again on the part of the Obama campaign." [emphasis mine]

The only part Mr. Krauthammer gets wrong is that this is not funny at all.

(Guess the reference: From whence the title of today's post?)

A Very Low Threshold

In this morning's New York Times op-ed by Bob Herbert titled "A Gift to the G.O.P.", in which Mr. Herbert chides the Democratic Party for its nasty infighting and protracted primary battles, we find this stunning statement:

But the Clinton and Obama partisans spent months fighting bitterly on the toxic terrain of misogyny, racism and religion. It can only make you wonder about the vaunted Democratic claims of moral superiority when it comes to tolerance. [emphasis added]

It should also make us wonder where Mr. Herbert has been for the past two decades (at least).

A line from an old film favorite, a true guilty pleasure, comes to mind: "Welcome to the party, pal!"

Welcome, indeed.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

The Worst Of Times Revisited

(Live blogging.)

Barack Obama is speaking to the press right now in a formal press conference. He has again expressed his consternation with his former pastor. He just called Reverend Wright's "performance" (Barack Obama's words) at the National Press Club yesterday nothing but a series of "rants not grounded in truth;" he even calls Rev. Wright's words an "insult" (among many other things).

What we are seeing, I am sorry to say, is something grossly reminiscent of the mid-1960s. The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, Dr. King: these were the backdrop of both Barack Obama's childhood and my childhood, as we are the same age. And, just like the 1960s, we are watching a battle over racial supremacy: which black man -- or black group -- truly speaks for minorities.

Over the weekend, Rev. Wright spoke at length to the NAACP about the different "learning styles" of European whites and African blacks. He defended an evolutionary difference between the two "races," and he went so far as to argue that whites respond to the first and third beats in a musical four-beat measure, while blacks respond to the second and fourth. Related to this, Rev. Wright used the device that blacks are "different but not deficient." Yesterday, in fact, he spoke at length about this very idea, that difference does not imply deficiency.

Most people, most THINKING people, would agree with Rev. Wright that different is not synonymous with deficient. I think his locution odd and unfortunate, and I suspect it is not something that most decent people have ever promoted.

But what I want to assert is that the conflict we see is over what it means to be racist. Traditionally, racism has been attributed to those folks who do not believe that one race is equal to another. If I think being white is superior to being black, I am a racist, because, essentially and unequivocally, I do not believe blackness is equal to whiteness. That is traditional racism, and I believe that is the model of racism under which MOST Americans, including Barack Obama, operate.

Alas, what Rev. Wright has done is to flip racism on its head. His "different but not deficient" slogan now means that the racist is he who believes whites and blacks are EQUAL. Wright's response to this idea is simple: No, no, no. Not equal. Different. To Wright, whites learn in a different way from blacks, and it is wrong of whites to think blacks are equal to the task, whether that task be learning to speak English or to understand European music.

I am inclined to aver that Rev. Wright has actually advocated a type of intellectual and cultural apartheid, American-style. His is a twist on separate but equal. He maintains that the separation is due to the fact that we are all "different."

Hence, what we are seeing is a race war between African-Americans. This is a massive, and truly scary, disagreement. And it is as scary as those sorts of disagreements that led to the sorrows of the 1960s.

Just some thoughts, offered in sorrow with much anxiety.

Peace, pray for peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Simply Sad

For weeks now I have been reticent regarding Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and the allegedly "honest dialogue" on race in the United States. I have had many reasons for being quiet, for suspending judgment, but I will keep those reasons to myself, at least for now.

I just watched, live on CSPAN2, Reverend Wright's speech and Q&A session at the National Press Club breakfast. Last night, I watched a significant portion of his speech to the NAACP. All I can say is that Reverend Wright's opinions, at least to me, are an unmitigated social, cultural, religious, theological, and political disaster. Rev. Wright is wrong in so many ways it is impossible to reply to him in one short blog post. I am simply stunned, to be honest. In fact, I am almost stunned right back to reticence.

Reverend Wright appears to be intentionally fomenting racial hatreds. I am tempted to think he is even provoking assassination. Sorry. I am speaking solely from my heart. The sort of message and the manner in which that message has been presented by Reverend Wright almost seem to be an invitation to raise hostilities to their most feverish heights; to incite even an attack on not only "the black church," which Rev. Wright proclaims the media have undertaken, but an attack on a black leader. I am left feeling -- FEELING -- that Rev. Wright's prophetic message may indeed be naught but a self-fulfilling prophecy: Incited violence and hatred will prove that America is GUILTY, UNREPENTANT and RACIST.

Forgive me. I DON'T WANT these feelings. But I am deeply saddened by a demonstration of a self-righteousness and an arrogance so stunning as to be almost a scripted caricature. One would think this is more like a Hollywood depiction of a crude stereotype of arrogance and self-righteousness than it is a representation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It even feels like Reverend Wright wants to sabotage Barack Obama's candidacy. Seriously, this man is NO PASTOR to Barack Obama.

(I would urge you all to find replays on CSPAN or online of Reverend Wright's complete speeches. Watch them in their entirety. Listen carefully. Be discerning.)

It would be foolish of me to make predictions, so I won't. But I can't imagine that the Reverend's speeches to the NAACP and the National Press Club can be good for Barack Obama, OR race relations in America. I can tell you this: they were not good for me.

Honestly, I admit that I've been jaded by politics in the past, though such hardening was perhaps skin deep. But I would say that this particular narrative, playing out mainly in the Democratic Party's primaries, has jaded me close to the core: I may be jaded all the way through.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Barack Obama: An Affirmative Action Nominee?

_____________________

Without ANY help from the dirty old political machine called the Republican National Committee, the Democrats are doing a fine job wreaking havoc on their own party.

Take Missouri Democrat Emanuel Cleaver, a US congressman. Here's a black man, admittedly loyal to Hillary Clinton, who, without flinching, says he'd be "stunned if [Obama] is not the next president of the United States."

Why does Rep. Cleaver believe Mr. Obama is likely to win? A news report, based on an interview Cleaver gave to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, gives us an answer:

In the interview, Cleaver insisted he would not back away from his endorsement of Clinton. He claims much of the support for Obama is driven by a sense that his election will prove the country has solved its problems with race.

“I think for many white Americans, they are looking at Barack Obama and saying ‘This is our chance to demonstrate that we have been able to get this boogeyman called race behind us,”‘ Cleaver said. “And so they are going to vote for him, whether he has credentials or not, whether he has any experience — I think all that’s out the window.” [emphasis mine]

Cleaver adds this gem about Mr. Obama being an "articulate" black man:

"For white Americans, it’s like, this guy can speak..."

So, WHITE Americans are just fascinated with Barack Obama as he's an "articulate" black man (by the way, Mr. Obama only seems articulate when reading his speeches, at least to this writer), is that it? And WHITE America is going to vote for him -- irrespective of whether he's qualified? All this to show that WHITES are no longer racist, or that America has solved the race problem?

(By the way, much of this sounds EXACTLY like what Shelby Steele said in his engaging books, White Guilt, and, though to a lesser degree, A Bound Man. Steele is a black man born of a white mother -- and conservative.)

Clearly we can conclude several things. First, once again, the DNC is not above injecting race into its own primary processes. Second, once again, someone's suggesting that Barack Obama will likely be president solely because he is well-spoken and black: Qualifications, be damned!

To paraphrase Rep. Cleaver: WHITE America is going to absolve itself by promoting a black man above those more qualified. All this suggests that this is an affirmative action project if there ever was one. (And I do not use the word 'project' without noting its brutal irony.)

_____________________

Alas, there is more. Rep. Cleaver cleaves a fine line between what race-conscious America wants and does not want.

Yet Cleaver asserts that Obama as president could actually hamper efforts to curb racial injustice. He said future concerns about race “would be met with rejection because we’ve already demonstrated that we’re not a racist nation.”

What does Rep. Cleaver mean? Is he suggesting that Americans -- black or white -- also DON'T want Barack Obama to be president? Will his election suggest race is no longer a national issue, and hence RACE as a political leveraging tool will be destroyed? Is he saying that whites will use Obama's presidency against those who still see racial injustice: "We can't be racially divided, we've elected a black man!"

It must be wondered, then, where all this leaves us. It seems to me that Mr. Cleaver is saying that Barack Obama as the nation's first black president will merely be symbolic, token, even, sadly, illusory.

Oiks! No wonder people grow tired of politics!


Peace.

(HT: James Taranto)

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY'S MISTAKE

Identity Politics: I, (self-) defined by some particular characteristic of my body or soul, am a political constituency and force demanding legal, social and cultural approval and representation in all matters of this republic (or something like that) on the basis of how I identify myself to you and everybody else. I will brook no dissent: you will accept me on my terms, as I've struggled for approval and representation far too long to stop now.
_____________________

Rather than nominating for their party's candidate for President of the United States the most qualified, experienced person, the Democratic Party has instead essentially nominated two sacred icons, two holy archetypes: a person with dark skin and a person that is not a man. Rather than nominate a talented and skilled executive, like a Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, or Chris Dodd, the party faithful have decided that skin and sex trump achievement, aptitude and competency.

Alas, now the DNC and its members are in a double bind, one they no doubt hoped to wrap around the country in November. Instead, the party itself is trapped: If we choose the person with dark skin, we will be called sexist; if we choose the person with double XX chromosomes, we will be deemed racist. This can't be! Not us! We're Democrats!

Sexist, racist, sexist, racist. Has this not essentially been the heartbeat of the Democratic campaign? Forget the prevarications and postures over "experience." The exchanges that matter -- at least the ones reported by the press and noticed by the public -- are all about "injecting race" or "injecting gender." And what we are witnessing, especially those of us who consider ourselves political independents, is a big-tent party that no longer has a tent. It's a 3-ring riot, and this without the GOP elephant having to do a single trick.

_____________________

In 2006, Markos Zúniga, the founder of the world's largest blog, the incorrigibly leftist "The Daily Kos," said, "Republicans failed us because they can't govern. Democrats failed us because they can't get elected." I noted at this blog and elsewhere how odd a statement is Mr. Zúniga's, for winning elections is in part an indication of being able to govern.

The current Democratic Party imbroglio is largely the result of passion trumping reason, of ideals trumping ideas. Moreover, the Democratic Party's commitment to the role of "super-delegates," a term and role mostly absent from GOP vernacular and praxis, is rooted in a fear that the Democratic electorate might get things wrong. Hence, the super-delegates were designed to act like facilitators in a crisis intervention: they would intervene and set an errant party on the right course, one that would ensure that the most viable candidate (i.e., the person who could win in the general election) would be nominated. I recognize that you've heard this before; I mention it solely to remind readers that the role of the DNC's super-delegates is not, apparently, always that democratic. Really, the irony is almost too much.

All this exacerbates the aforementioned double-bind: if the super-delegates choose the woman, they are racist; and if they choose the black man, well, they are sexist and, possibly, closet racists acting out of "white guilt." What's the best resolution, at least for some? Put the two party icons on the same ticket. The problem? Neither icon wants to take a secondary role.

_____________________

In the 3 years I've been writing at Contratimes, I have written thrice about Rush Limbaugh. Today marks the fourth, and for good reason. Mr. Limbaugh asked an utterly simple yet brilliant question the other day: If the Democrats can't even run their own primaries, how can we expect them to run the country? And indeed it is quite evident that the Democrats can't run their own nomination process, nor can they even remotely unite their own party. Barack Obama is a uniter? Give us a break. Hillary? Are you kidding? Even recent polls show that the Democratic Party is splitting along racial lines: most blacks support Barack Obama over Hillary. This is unity? This is "healing?" [And then, as if on cue, comes these remarks from a black Democrat legislator. -- added 4.3.08]

Read this post-polling analysis from National Review Online's Byron York:

So — [Clinton and Obama are] both down five percent among whites, but Clinton is down 12 points among blacks, while Obama is unchanged. Thus, Clinton's overall positive rating is down more than Obama's. What does that say? It says what has been clear for a while now. The Democratic race is heavily racialized, and is perhaps becoming more so. Party leaders and pundits may be uncomfortable with that fact, but it's a fact nonetheless. [emphasis mine]

In the end, what we are witnessing is the clash of two icons in the mess of identity politics. Democrats were looking for a "winner" rather than a qualified chief executive; they went with persona and personality rather than qualifications and substantive ideas, and they've ended up in a wild mess. Indeed, some even may have hoped to use either icon as proof of America's true evils: If either icon is rejected in the general election, then Republican America is clearly racist and/or sexist.

Ironically, as Mort Kondracke observed recently, the double-bind problems around race and sexism are not the only double-binds facing the Democratic Party. Kondracke recalls that it was the Democrats in 2000 who hooted and hollered that the "popular vote" (which then-candidate Al Gore won in the general election) trumped the "electoral college," which George W. Bush and the United States Supreme Court purportedly hijacked. Now, should the Democrats face a decision at their Denver convention where one candidate holds the lead in the popular vote but the other holds more delegates, one can almost see the paralysis. Hoisted by their own petard as a result of their petulant and indignant reaction 8 years ago, the Democrats will find themselves in a quagmire. In fact, they've led themselves right into one, and this without ANY help from Karl Rove, Fox News, or even Donald Rumsfeld.

And these are the folks who can save us from the "quagmire" of Iraq? Are these the folks Mr. Zúniga believes can govern?

How curious.


©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

What's Been Bred Into YOU?

ABC News' Jake Tapper, senior national correspondent and blogger at Political Punch, recently reported what Barack Obama apparently said in his radio interview when he mentioned a "typical white person," i.e., his grandmother. But there is something deeply disconcerting about Mr. Tapper's blog entry, partly because a correction I submitted was later deleted from Mr. Tapper's blog. Trust me when I say the correction was important.

Here is what Mr. Tapper presents in his March 20, 2008 blog entry, "Obama Talks More About His 'Typical White Person' Grandmother":


In an interview with sports radio 610 WIP in Philly early this morning, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said "the point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person, who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, well there's a reaction that's in our experiences that won't go away and can sometimes come out in the wrong way. And that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it."


I must inform the reader that Mr. Tapper follows this paragraph with a link directing readers to the actual audio clip of Mr. Obama's interview with 610 WIP. And what follows is ACTUALLY what Mr. Obama said (additions/corrections will appear in bold):


...the point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a, uh, typical white person, who, uh, y'oh, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, y'know, there's a reaction that's been bred into, uh, our experiences , that that don't go away and that sometimes, uh, come out in, in the wrong way. And that that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it...


Please note the essential and totally accurate additions to what Mr. Obama reportedly said. Note, also, the potential problem. AFTER calling his grandmother a "typical white person," he sets out to describe her. Notice that he shifts, rather awkwardly, from the third person singular -- SHE -- to the first person possessive plural -- OUR, as he begins to describe his grandmother's typical fears. Hear him stop himself --"uh"-- when he says "...there's a reaction that's been bred into, uh, OUR experiences..."

First, that Mr. Obama stops himself after he says "bred into" is telling, as is his grammatical shift from "she" to "our." It appears he KNOWS he's made a dangerous gaffe. He is about to say that something is BRED INTO a "typical white person." So, stopping himself, he mitigates the effect by saying that "there's a reaction that's been bred into, uh, OUR experiences..."

What is perhaps most telling is that no sane person believes that ANYTHING is ever BRED into our EXPERIENCES. The metaphor is absurd. It makes no sense, and it makes no sense because that is not initially what Mr. Obama was going to say. He stopped himself, and he did so solely to mitigate the damage his words would have on his campaign.

But what is most important is that the quote at ABC News' blog written by Jake Tapper is wrong, and it remains wrong even AFTER I offered a mild correction. On top of that, my comment vanished.

Alas. Perhaps I have overstated it. What is most telling is that this false quote posted at ABC News has been circulated elsewhere (apparently it comes from a Philadelphia newspaper). And, the fact that few are even mentioning the "bred into" locution is most disturbing of all. Had this been a locution uttered -- EVEN accidentally -- by a WHITE or REPUBLICAN candidate for president, he (or she) would be asked to leave the country.

Surely this proves that George Orwell was a prophet.


Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

"GOD" is still speaking?

One of my first essays at Contratimes was titled, "The god of love." It is worth quoting the opening sentences of that essay here, as they still ring true, though perhaps for very different reasons than when I first penned them.

Permit me to announce my rejection of Christ. For if Christianity is as the United Church of Christ (UCC) suggests in its recent TV commercial, then I have no interest in being a Christian. Such religiosity is anathema to me; and I'm anathema to it.

I have indeed renounced the Christ that is not the Christ, if you will. For I do not recognize as divine the voice of the Christ presented in the various churches I used to frequent. So I not only renounce that voice, I denounce it in total. It is to me an ugly voice.

Why, on this April Fools' Day, should I return to the United Church of Christ and its rather ugly message? Well, perhaps I do so for two reasons. The first is because the "Christ" voice I hear in the UCC is remarkably similar to the voice I hear in the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire (I am an Episcopalian in exile), which is identical to the voice I hear in the Unitarian Universalist society which I often frequented, which is identical to the voice I hear daily in the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party. It is, in the end, a political voice, not a divine one, and not even a truly religious one.

But most important, I mention this UCC voice because my hypocrisy alarm has sounded. Again.

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Let it be known that the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ is Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Let it also be known that said church is the largest fiscal donor to the United Church of Christ's "Wider Mission." (see UCC press release here)

In other words, the church in which the revered though wildly controversial Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. presided is the capstone congregation of the United Church of Christ. It is in this church, one that sits atop a particularly liberal religious denomination, where Barack Obama worshiped for 20 years. It is also the church to which Mr. Obama gave over $20,000 -- no casual sum -- in 2006.

But where is the hypocrisy in all of this? Well, perhaps it all begins years ago (1993) in the UCC's denunciation of the Boy Scouts of America (many BSA troops once used UCC church facilities). One can read the UCC's resolution, found here in PDF form, which pronounces judgment on the independent and private Boy Scouts of America's position on homosexuality.

What perplexes me, as it probably perplexes you, is how a Christian denomination could ban from its function rooms and basement dining halls, a private club known for doing good works that also happens to take a traditional view about sexuality and marriage; and yet, that same denomination has no problem accepting funds from it largest single congregation wherein is propagated blatantly racist and anti-Semitic junk -- all in the name of "the Bible." The Boy Scouts of America hardly make a peep about sexual morality; they are curiously silent, by and large, about homosexuality in particular. It's not Boy Scouts marching against gay marriage; the Scout Oath says nothing about denying gays the right to protection under law.

And yet from its most esteemed and successful pulpit, the UCC has accepted, without blushing, the sort of pornography that has come to be known as the Gospel. Bill Clinton was "ridin' dirrrrrty" on black people; Hillary Clinton ain't never been called a "n------r!"; whites rule the United States of KKK America; it was whites who killed the black Jesus (actually, it was the "garlic-nosed" Italians who did it); AIDS was invented by the white man to kill blacks. THIS is the Gospel presented in the flagship pulpit of the United Church of Christ. You know, the very church that bans Boy Scouts for their quiet discrimination.

Of course, it only gets worse when we think of the tolerance of those great men of faith lauded by the UCC's gemstone pulpit, men like Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam (a quick web search shows that Mr. Farrakhan holds some very "intolerant" views on sexuality). The Trinity United Church of Christ even published in its church newsletter an op-ed (see page 8ff here) by a man demonstrably anti-Semitic; he accused Israel of having worked with the "white supremacists" of South Africa, detonating nuclear bombs on a whim off the South African coast, and developing a bomb that would kill Arabs and blacks.

All this makes sense in a perverted way when we admit into our discussion the UCC's motto, "God is still speaking." And our reply to this God, I am sorry to say, should really be "Please, shut up." For this sort of stuff pouring from the pulpits of the UCC is not God's voice at all.

Amazingly, the UCC itself is hardly mentioned in media accounts and analysis of Reverend Wright's work (and those who echo his angry and racist beliefs). But the UCC should be held to account.

Consider this my meager start.


Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

What IS This Day About?

Today, America celebrates Martin Luther King's birthday. In honor of such an inspiring man, I direct readers to this 2006 essay.

Also, I think this quote from Reverend King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," first published in The Christian Century, is worth posting here:

'…though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime -- the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. …'

Peace this day.

Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All rights reserved.

The Pain Of The Obvious

The linguistic-forensic specialists have unanimously concluded that a crime has been committed. Well, maybe only I have reached that conclusion. But it’s still unanimous.

Though it was a brain jarring slip-of-the-tongue moment, Hillary Clinton somehow managed to escape the watchful eyes of pundits everywhere. But I, your ever-vigilante sleuth, was not lulled into inattention by Mrs. Clinton’s performance on Sunday’s Meet the Press†. Of course, it was easy for me to be ever-vigilante: Mrs. Clinton’s misstep was the very first answer she gave in her conversation with MTP host Tim Russert.

MR. RUSSERT: When we arrived in South Carolina yesterday this was The State newspaper, and the headlines agree to this. And let me share it with you and our viewers: “Clinton Camp Hits Obama, Attacks ‘painful’ for black voters. Many in state offended by criticism of Obama,” and ‘remarks about’ Martin Luther King. Bob Herbert, in The New York Times, columnist, weighed in this way: “I could also sense how hard the Clinton camp was working to undermine Senator Obama's main theme, that a campaign based on hope and healing could unify rather than further polarize the country. So there was the former president chastising the press for the way it was covering the Obama campaign and saying of Mr. Obama's effort, ‘The whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.’ And there was Mrs. Clinton telling the country we don't need ‘false hopes,’ and taking cheap shots at, of all people, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We've already seen Clinton surrogates trying to implant the false idea that Mr. Obama might be a Muslim, and perhaps a drug dealer to boot.” What is this all about?

SEN. CLINTON: Well, beats me, because there's not one shred of truth in what you've just read. And I regret that, because obviously a lot of people have been, you know, given information or an impression that is absolutely false.

Had I been sitting in Mr. Russert’s stead, I think Mrs. Clinton’s comments would have given me more than a moment’s pause. For what I hear is Mrs. Clinton regretting that there was not one shred of truth in the statements Mr. Russert cited; she would have NOT regretted things if they had been true. Perhaps if I parse her statement with a little more assiduity I will find some clarification:

GNADE: Why do you have regrets, Mrs. Clinton?

MRS. CLINTON: “…because obviously a lot of people have been, you know, given information or an impression that is absolutely false.”

GNADE: Do forgive me, Mrs. Clinton. But am I hearing you correctly? It sounds like you are saying that you would have no regrets if the impression, i.e., that Mr. Obama is offering “false hopes,” that Dr. Martin Luther King was essentially impotent without the help of a white president, that Mr. Obama is a Muslim or a former drug dealer, and so on -- you’d have no regrets if these were true? Is that what you are saying?

MRS. CLINTON: There you go again, Bill, putting words in my mouth and ripping what I’ve said out of context. I am tired of you people putting –

GNADE: With all due respect, Mrs. Clinton, but “you people”? Are you sure that such language is fitting? THIS interview IS the context of the words you just uttered. And rather than putting words in your mouth, I am taking them out, as you just offered them freely; they’re your words, not mine. And it sounds to me that you are saying you’d have no regrets if these things were true.

_______________________

SHE COULD NOT HAVE MEANT IT

In the past few days, I have heard pundits and press tell me that what Mrs. Clinton essentially said about Dr. King was entirely true, harmless, and not one whit racist. Fred Barnes, conservative commentator for Fox News and editor of The Weekly Standard, announced that he had no problem with what Mrs. Clinton averred. Conservative radio oracle Jay Severin stamped his imprimatur on Mrs. Clinton’s words. And the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page states that

“On the merits, Mrs. Clinton obviously is correct. It did take a President’s signature to bring the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to fruition. And the idea that saying so takes anything away from King’s legacy is absurd.” (WSJ, January 14, 2008)

To me this is so much pedantic affirmation. I am left with the sense that such pundits and opinion-makers think that it is OK for Mrs. Clinton to state “what every one knows.” For if that is indeed the case – if Mrs. Clinton was merely offering us a moment of historical clarity in pronouncements of the obvious – then we are still left wondering why she should be given a pass. Clearly she knows we “ALL KNOW” this historical fact; clearly we do not need her to suddenly turn into a school teacher with a Cliff Notes lesson. She’s not running for presidential pedagogue; her comments are indeed unnecessary if we are all well aware of the monumental importance of LBJ and his liberating pen. Surely Mrs. Clinton knows two things when she teaches us the plain history of the Civil Rights Act: First, that we all know Dr. King did not sign the Act; second, that many African-Americans will NOT respond kindly to the reminder that their liberation did not ultimately come from themselves. The Great White President set them free; HE granted their petitions.

Moreover, Mrs. Clinton was undeniably contrasting herself as the president who could deliver; she would be the (white?) executor of the sort of hopes that Mr. Obama could dream about but never fulfill. He offers mere hope while she offers action. He has visions; she makes decisions.

You get the picture, and it should not be a pretty one. Mrs. Clinton actually WAS playing a race card in her seemingly innocuous statements. (This all reminds me of a talk radio discussion I commented on regarding “racist facts.”) It means nothing to me that Mrs. Clinton was stating the truth, for the truth is, as we all know, often brutally painful. One recalls the biblical exhortation that we are to speak the truth in love. Telling one’s lover the truth – “Geez, you’re fat!” – may be a truth “everybody knows,” but sometimes love (and political wisdom) urges us to suppress the obvious. "The truth hurts" is no cliché. It is instead a reminder that we all need to be a little more circumspect when we speak, Mrs. Clinton included.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

†See transcript here.

Right? You Can't Make This Stuff Up Indeed

An anonymous comment was posted here this morning, though the person who penned it hid behind a pseudonym, Robert Throckmorton (the comment seems to have come through a server in Ames, Iowa, caucus country). And the comment suggested that I was paranoid and full of something like digested hay for thinking (see my essay here) that the Imus story was much bigger than race and sex (and that these were even distractions). The issue, I augured, was that this is about who will be the next president. (And I augured even more than this.)

Let me remind readers that Don Imus constantly referred to Hillary Clinton as "Satan." As wrong or as unfortunate as this may be, Mr. Throckmorton thinks that I am paranoid for thinking that Ms. Clinton benefits -- supremely -- from Don Imus' silence.

Now note this: Ms. Clinton is going to speak at Rutgers on Monday. Yes, I know. Paranoid delusions on my part.

This is all about winning -- for Ms. Clinton. She is, in her own words, in the presidential campaign "to win." As if there is any other option. So, desperately seeking affirmation and the prize, Ms. Clinton is going to steal the limelight -- steal it from a Rutgers women's basketball team, from Al Sharpton, from Don Imus and from Barack Obama. No doubt Ms. Clinton can exploit commiseration to great effect, for she -- all female -- has also been the victim of Don Imus' sexism. That this whole story used to be about a runner-up basketball team whose achievements were overshadowed by the easily ignorable comments of an old white guy is worth noting, particularly since it is no longer about that at all, proving, at last, that it never was. Surely Ms. Clinton has heard that the Rutgers team has accepted Mr. Imus' apology, and that they'd like to move on and get on with living -- and on with the celebration the team still richly deserves. But that has no place in her campaign, for the limelight she is going to steal is about to be rather large and rather bright: the media presence at Rutgers will be so overpowering that it will be hard not to believe that Ms. Clinton already is president. Perfect.

Of course, no one dare suggest that Ms. Clinton is going to exploit the misfortunes of a group of women who have accepted an apology. After all, it may be the case that the Rutgers team has given Imus some sort of absolution, but that does not mean all other women have to follow their example: Other women can still hold a grudge against the I-man.

It's funny. I have been apologetic to Contratimes readers for speculating beyond the prima facie evidence of this whole story. Clearly my paranoia is rooted in some shallow soil. The soil of reality.

But I may still be wrong.

Alas! One more paranoid tidbit: Hillary Clinton, according to the report cited above, has had a longstanding open invitation to speak to the "The Eagleton Center for American Women and Politics" at Rutgers. Can anyone say "motive?" I can.

Odd that I should have been speculating that the machinery behind Don Imus' sudden fall was larger than Al Sharpton. I now see why.

I wonder, Mr. Throckmorton, what you see.

Peace.

(Still experimenting, so bear with me.)

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags:
Don Imus, Racism, Rutgers Basketball, Al Sharpton, Language, Censorship, Hillary Clinton, Reparations, Sexism, Bigotry, CBS, MSNBC, Presidential Politics, Barack Obama, Charles McCord, Bernard McGuirk, Al Sharpton, Sid Rosenberg

The End Of Reason: The Mad Are In Charge - The Firing Of Don Imus

[update: This post was written in haste. I have emended it at 5:29 pm EST]

Breaking news is sometimes breaking. Sometimes it is broken.

Moments ago I heard on the radio that Don Imus has now finally lost his radio program. CBS has fired Mr. Imus. It is broken news. Desperately broken. And to think he has been fired for calling one women's basketball team "cute."

I wonder, have you ever read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged? If you haven't, you are missing one of the most prescient books ever written. In brief, the villains of Atlas Shrugged, all with the noblest intent, steal the wealth of those who actually produce wealth. By the latter I mean that there are indeed folks who generate enormous wealth -- for themselves and others. Exxon-Mobil, for example, is a wealth producer, as is General Motors or Ford Motor Company or Microsoft. For all of these companies generate massive payrolls; they employ hundreds of thousands of people.

Compared to these wealth-makers, there are indeed those who are essentially the parasitic villains who resent and envy the success of those who, practically speaking, are infinitely capable of making wealth for others, of turning healthy profits. Such parasitic villains protest and legislate and gesticulate to much public notice; and they succeed in extorting wealth from the wealth-makers and, finally, forcing the wealth-makers to withdraw from society. The result? The parasites die helplessly and desperately, for they do not know how to make money for themselves.

In the Ayn Rand sense, Al Sharpton is an economic parasite: he, and his minions, have forced a wealth-producer out of business. For Don Imus generates massive wealth for many people; not just for him and his aides, but for the company he worked for and those companies who advertise their wares on Imus' program. Millions and millions of dollars, doled out in payrolls, health care, and property taxes, are produced by Mr. Imus and his work. From the books peddled by Mr. Imus and the music he has promoted, Don Imus has proven that he contributes enormously to the economic vitality of many.

On top of that, Mr. Imus generates massive amounts of cash for all sorts of charities. He has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for all kinds of incredibly important causes.

Al Sharpton is exactly the opposite of Mr. Imus. Mr. Sharpton is an extortionist and hanger-on; he is economically parasitic. He does not generate wealth. None at all.

Even Shame has turned his back on all of this.

This, believe it or not, is not the end of Don Imus. He is too big to be lost in this controversy. The losers here are going to be race relations in America, and Al Sharpton.

But the biggest loser is freedom. For now.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Imus, Racism, Sharpton, Don Imus,
Rutgers Basketball, Language, Censorship, Charles McCord, Bernard McGuirk, Al Sharpton, Sid Rosenberg

The End Of The Imus Controversy? He Called Them "Cute"

To those of you who are paying attention to the Imus/Rutgers controversy, I must ask this question: Is not the story already over?

Let me point out something I noted earlier today: During the moments of great offense when he besmirched the Rutgers women's basketball players, Imus called the OTHER basketball team, the University of Tennessee Lady Vols (the women's team that defeated Rutgers for the NCAA national championship) something that was not one whit racial. He called them "cute."

Why make this point? Because if you look at the UT Lady Vols team photograph, you will see that seven of the eleven teammates are of African-American descent. How, then, is Imus being racist if he finds one predominantly black team cuter than another? Does his "cute" remark not immediately re-frame the whole issue: that Imus was talking about a masculine-looking, tough-looking team that was facing a cuter, more feminine team? It's hard to think otherwise, especially since he affirmed what Sid Rosenberg, Imus' guest sports commentator, said during Imus' offending moment: that when he (Rosenberg) saw the Rutgers team step out onto the court he thought they looked like "the Toronto Raptors", you know, a MEN'S professional team. All this, as is well-noted, was done amidst laughter and adolescent goofiness.

Not that any of this absolves Imus of the fact that he hurt people with his words; that his words were ill-chosen, mean, and degrading. But many of his words are demeaning; nay, most of them are. But that is his whole gag: as I said before, he and his team are the bawdy bad-boys holding court on America's loading dock; they are the loudmouth bullies at the back of America's bus. Imus "hurts"† me nearly every hour he broadcasts; he berates many of the values I hold dear. His "Jesus God" profanation occurs dozens of times per show, and it offends my religious faith. But can I divine that he is ruthless at heart, or that God is damning him? I am not in a position to divine that at all. Sadly, many people are suddenly able to damn Mr. Imus to hell; and yet, in the midst of it all, they do not notice that he called the national champions "cute". They hear only what they want to hear. They cannot hear his compliment and, because of their hair-triggered hearts, they cannot possibly understand the context of Mr. Imus' words.

My sense, in light of Mr. Imus' efforts at reconciliation, is that he is an inherently decent albeit flawed human being. But I am also very flawed; I am more flawed than anybody else. So I will not damn him. It is not what I am permitted to do.

Peace, always.

†I am not so fragile.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Imus, Racism, Sharpton, Don Imus,
Rutgers Basketball, Language, Censorship, Charles McCord, Bernard McGuirk, Al Sharpton, Sid Rosenberg

On Culture: The Four Essential Contradictions Of The Don Imus Story

[Let me get right to it. You already know the story at hand. I do not usually condone Don Imus' use of derogatory language in general, so I do not condone his use of such language in the particular issue dominating the news. His work is fraught with ridicule, mockery, and iconoclasm. He and his team are the crude guys hanging out on America's loading dock during coffee break; they are the bullies in the back of the bus. Sometimes even the dopey bullies can be funny; and sometimes they are not. I will not now analyze what Mr. Imus said or meant, though I think there is much to be said about the context of his remarks. Instead, I want to note the nearly invisible things I have seen and heard in the last 48 hours.]

Contradiction #1: Self-disrespect and outrage

Yesterday, while the Reverend Al Sharpton was interviewing Don Imus during Sharpton's radio program, Mr. Imus referred to himself, facetiously, as a "cracker." The context of Mr. Imus' self-referential remarks came at the close of the interview.

Immediately Mr. Sharpton interrupted his guest. He wanted listeners to understand that Mr. Imus was using the term "cracker" on his own, that he, Sharpton, had not called Mr. Imus any such thing. To this Mr. Imus responded that he was using the term of himself.

Suddenly Mr. Sharpton got very, well, officious. Here is the exchange in total (quoted from the show's transcript):

IMUS: ...I am willing to participate and look into my heart, first to try to talk to these children, these young women and then to try to make this better and to try to somehow heal what I've done because I really do understand the horrible damage that I have done to these young women because I know even a couple of them are from tough neighborhoods and there's already jealousy and resentment in their neighborhoods and they already -- and now they have some old cracker on the radio calling them some sort of name and they have to deal with that and so I have ...

SHARPTON: The term "cracker" you used on yourself. I didn't call you that.

IMUS: Yes, I know.

SHARPTON: I'm sure some of your supporters will be on TV today saying I called you that.

IMUS: No ...

SHARPTON: And I would appreciate it if you would respect your own race on my show. [my emphasis]

Amazing.

Tuesday morning, on NBC's Today show, in an interview involving Matt Lauer and Messrs. Imus and Sharpton, Mr. Imus said that the "context" of his remarks needed to be heeded and understood. Besides, he added, the words he used were not uttered in malice or vindictiveness; they were meant humorously. More importantly, he continued, the words were words borrowed from Mr. Sharpton's own black community; the word "ho", not only originating in hip-hop but even elevated to a word of distinction, is used viciously and hatefully by [many, not all] black men throughout America.

Mr. Sharpton interrupted Mr. Imus, saying that he speaks against such injurious language no matter where it is spoken; no matter who is speaking it. [Mr. Sharpton made similar remarks in the transcript cited above.]

Now, let me point out the obvious: the word "nigger" and the word "ho" are considered by all of us to be deeply offensive. Mr. Imus only used the latter; I have never heard him use the former. But I hear nearly daily -- if I watch a black comic perform on TV or if I listen to most hip-hop -- African-Americans use these hateful and degrading terms. Of course, they are used by African-Americans, and are used as self-reference or in reference to other African-Americans.

But, and here's the point, one cannot find any evidence that Al Sharpton is out in the "hoods" trying to stop people from using this offensive language. He is not advocating boycotts of radio stations that play abusive hip-hop songs; he is not protesting outside comedy clubs where black men call themselves "nigger." Recently, on Inside the Actors Studio with James Lipton, I heard guest Chris Rock use -- to much laughter by many whites in the audience -- the word "nigger" several times. But I ask you this: If Al Sharpton is willing to reprove Don Imus for disparaging his own race, why is Mr. Sharpton not reproving Chris Rock for the same offense (and nearly every hip-hop artist on the planet)? Where is Sharpton's outrage at those who daily and constantly disrespect the very race they share with Mr. Sharpton?

Contradiction 2: We all, fall, down!

Yesterday, during the Rutgers University press conference called to address Don Imus' remarks, RU Women's Basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer said the following, and I quote from a transcription I made off of a YouTube video clip:

"You know it was amazing because, less than twenty four hours after they [the team] had accomplished so much, and when we should have come back to Rutgers, to have all people exalt and speak of all of the things that they had accomplished and all the hopes and dreams that they gave to so many young girls and to young people, and to people everywhere, all of you, about what it meant to work hard, they came back to this. We have all been mentally, physically and emotionally spent, so hurt by the remarks that were uttered by Mr. Imus.

"But you see, we also understood a long time ago that, you know what, no one can make you feel inferior unless you allow them, that we can’t let other people steal our joy, we’ve always understood that, for a long, long time....

"...We had to experience racist and sexist remarks that are deplorable, despicable and abominable, and unconscionable, and it hurts me. ... you know ... I was a victim of racial discrimination, but you see I had a father and a mom, and a group of people who stood up for me ... and my dad ...said, 'Vivian, if you don’t stand up something you’ll fall for anything.'

"So as I felt what Mr. Imus said, I experienced this not only as a coach and as a mom to them, but as a person who had also experienced the same and I hurt, yes, and I’ve cried, and I’ve been angry, and disappointed because I don’t understand all that and yet to a great extent I do." [my emphasis]

Later in the press conference, one player stood up and shared how, instead of coming home to fanfare at the teams' outstanding season, players came home to scandal and controversy. She said that her entire holiday weekend was centered around Don Imus' hurtful words.

Please note, then, Contradiction #2, for it is subtle: C. Vivian Stringer's message to her team, that NO ONE CAN STEAL YOUR JOY, or NO ONE CAN MAKE YOU FEEL INFERIOR UNLESS YOU LET THEM, has not been heeded, not by the RU team or by Ms. Stringer herself: Some hack radio guy has ruined what should have been an exultant moment -- AND THEY LET HIM DO IT!

Imus' remarks were foolish, and, yes, even offensive -- clearly. But his words DID NOT determine Ms. Vivian's reaction -- she did. She need not let his words hurt her, but she did. She could have stood tall, like her father said; instead she chose to fall, fall into hurt, sadness, anger, and tears. In other words, she empowered Imus by giving him more than he deserved; and, like Ms. Stringer, everyone else is giving him more than he deserved. One wonders who went out of his or her way to tell these girls about what some white guy said -- in coarse and crude jesting -- about them on the radio. Did that person not realize that the very reporting of Imus' sin would steal the team's joy? Egads! Instead of holding press conferences and parades in celebration of the team's achievements, the president of Rutgers, and the coach herself, have chosen to ignore that achievement so they can focus attention on everybody's injuries! For shame. How dare these people encourage their students to be so weak and easily influenced! To hell with Don Imus; who cares what he says?! Get on with living, get on with knowing joy! Celebrate, don't fixate. Stop licking your wounds. Stand up and stop falling down every time somebody says something stupid.

Contradiction #3: What about that other team?

Take a look at any photo of the Rutgers University womens' basketball team. This is the team Imus jokingly referred to as "nappy-headed hos". Despicable as that phrase is, it is clear -- any photo proves this -- that he was wrong. Note, also, that the team is not all black; two of the players are white. Now, I ask you to look at the team photo of the University of Tennessee women's basketball team, the OTHER team in all of this: This is the team that defeated Rutgers for the national title. Note that the majority of them are African-Americans.

Now, I ask: What did Imus say about the OTHER team, the one from Tennessee, during his commentary when he misspoke about the players at Rutgers? Yes, that's right. He called them "cute." In other words, he called a MOSTLY BLACK TEAM CUTE.

No one has said a word about that. Of course, Imus can only be a racist.

Contradiction #4: Forgive first, then stone

When asked by NBC's Matt Lauer whether he, the Reverend Al Sharpton, a man of Christ, would forgive Mr. Imus his many sins, Mr. Sharpton said that he would. But, he added, that would not stop Imus from being punished.

We should all pause at this dulling remark, because it is disgusting. For the one person who is indeed doing the punishing is Al Sharpton. Anyone knows that if a thing is forgiven, it is forgotten. Specifically, what Al Sharpton's forgiveness must mean is that he cannot seek to punish Mr. Imus. Imus could still be punished -- by others. But Al Sharpton, if he truly does forgive, has therefore chosen to free Imus of any charges he, Al Sharpton, may wish to bring forward.

Mr. Sharpton, in defending his position, mentioned that he visited a man convicted and imprisoned for stabbing him. Mr. Sharpton said that he told the man that he forgave him, but that his forgiveness could not stop the sentence from being carried out; punishment must continue. And Mr. Sharpton is absolutely right, punishment will continue. But the punishment cannot and will not be at the hand of Mr. Sharpton, for he has forgiven the man. The state does the punishing, and if that state should forgive Mr. Sharpton's attacker, his punishment will cease.

Let me enlarge upon this a bit more. If I forgive some friend a $2000 debt, I do not then attempt to collect it anyway. If I as a parent forgive my child for breaking my favorite vase, I do not then spank that child. There are no doubt times I forgive a friend his sins that are not sins against me; I tell friends all the time that I forgive them for being sinners. But I do not tell them that my absolution will stop OTHERS from seeking their due. When my child breaks someone else's vase, I cannot forgive her -- fully -- for that act, nor can I spare her the consequences. And I may choose to punish my child for some sin, but I never do so if forgiveness has been offered and received. I may punish my child only if my child refuses to admit guilt: punishment is meant to incite -- hopefully -- a guilty conscience, and to bring that conscience to repentance and forgiveness. But punishment and forgiveness -- once forgiveness is granted -- do NOT go hand in hand. Punishment ends where forgiveness begins.

So, Mr. Sharpton, oddly, has placed himself as both absolver and executioner of Don Imus' career. That this is hardly a Christian role Mr. Sharpton is playing is blatantly obvious. Mr. Sharpton is acting as Imus' judge, not his mediator. He is not offering counsel, he's offering the pillory. That Don Imus has a debt to pay is quite true. But if Al Sharpton has forgiven Don Imus, then Al Sharpton has but one option. He needs to be silent. He cannot seek retribution. If he does so seek it, then he has not forgiven a man who has sincerely apologized to his face -- and to the nation.

One final note: If the Rutgers coach is right when she says that the players on her basketball team are "God’s representatives in every sense of the word," then those players have only one option: they must forgive -- and move on. If they forgive, like God, they cannot then seek punishment. They can't. Forgiveness is that simple. God does not forgive your debts only to shake you down. Imus will surely be punished, but he cannot be punished by those who forgive him.

And that's the whole point of Christian forgiveness: it costs the forgiver something to forgive, namely his or her right to seek vengeance. Forgiveness cost God His life; it costs us all a lot, too. But punishment is reserved solely for those who do not want forgiveness. Imus clearly has asked for it. He has renounced his sin.

How odd then to read this headline: Women's basketball team unsure if it'll accept Imus' apology.

God's representatives? Let's hope so.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags:
Don Imus, Racism, Rutgers Basketball, Springer, Matt Lauer, Al Sharpton, Language, Censorship

Racist Facts: On The Dictionary Of Talk Radio

Hospitality is an inscrutable word. For if someone sends me an invitation to a party and then is rude to me at that party, even to the extent of ignoring me (this indeed has happened), I might begin to think my host invited me to submit to either his sadism or to my own self-abuse. I might even begin to think that hospitality was the sort of kindness that was meant to send me to the hospital, even the psychiatric hospital. I mean, I might think that a host is merely a person who takes another person hostage to inhospitality.

I have invited people here, to this rather sober salon, and I've tried to make them at the very least feel safe. Should a particularly petulant guest insult me to my face in the Comments section of each post, I have promised to treat that person with all due propriety. I am the host after all, and even if it means that as host I must endure my detractor's parasitic prose, so be it. It is what hospitality is all about: You shall be treated fairly, respectfully, and with grace.

But for the life of me I cannot figure out the hospitality of talk radio. Here one finds a host ostensibly inviting people to join him (or her) to "dialogue" and "debate in civil discourse", and yet at the slightest hint of a dialogue between interlocutors holding truly disparate views, the host usually turns dialogue to diatribe, with smatterings of abuse garnishing the canapés: the appetizers turn out, rather quickly, to be quite unappetizing and bitter. Oddly, people keep asking for more.

Last night was no exception as I listened to former Boston-based-now-nationally-syndicated master of soliloquy, Jay Severin, whose recent stint on MSNBC's The Situation with Tucker Carlson brought him some frequent TV face time. Mr. Severin received a call from a young man who took umbrage with Severin's observations around US immigration issues. Particularly, the young man averred that Severin's eloquent (he's always eloquent) litany of facts -- that the inner cities of America are rife with crime, illiteracy, poverty, and other such ills -- combined with the factual observation that such ills plague areas largely composed of minorities, amounted to racism. Moreover, the young man had the temerity to suggest that facts, in and of themselves, can be racist. Needless to say, the sharp-witted and sharp-tongued Severin scoffed at the idea that facts could be anything but coolly neutral, even value-less, devoid of any racial import or overtone. In his rebuttal, Severin cited dictionary entries of the word "racist"; his citations intimating that language was static––"racism" cannot mean anything but what the dictionary says it means (Severin forgets that dictionaries only list how words are used and not how they must be used). Severin also reminded listeners that he was of rather impressive intellectual stock, whereas his caller was not.

As Severin attempted to wrest the conversation toward something resembling a bad Socratic dialogue––where Severin would pose a question and yet would not restrain himself long enough to listen to his interlocutor's rather nuanced attempts to answer with some mindfulness of his own––Severin's scoffing only increased, even to the point where he was speaking over his guest's rather interesting and not at all antagonistic theory. And after the call was over and Severin returned from a commercial break to the blues music he allegedly adores, the scoffing could not be stopped, as he snidely suggested that he needed to be careful when he said that "blacks invented the blues," for such a statement of fact might be racist. Alas, I turned off the radio when Severin began his next segment with the proclamation that the argument facts can be racist is "the quintessence of the domestic threat to the United States Constitution that our Founding Fathers" were talking about.

Now quickly: Can a fact be racist? Well, what if I took five black men and five black women and put them in a cage (please, I am not advocating this), clinically observing them for 30 years, and then I published a factual article in a factual journal wherein I listed that the offspring of these black men and women tended toward incest, would that fact be racist? I think it would be. If I took a hundred thousand Jews and put them in a ghetto, let's say in Warsaw, and then I observed that the Jews seemed to be very shrewd at money-dealing on the black market and conniving in general, would that be a racist fact? I think it would be. What if I was a German scientist in 1944 and I observed that Jewish skin made for good soap, or effective lampshades? Would these not be "facts," and yet would they not also be "racist," making your very skin crawl?

I think they would.†

And what if I said that America's inner cities were rife with crime, with illegitimate children, absentee fathers, illiteracy and poverty everywhere, and that these things were mostly the plight of black families––would this, at least possibly, be the recitation of racist facts? Might not my litany of facts regarding the inner cities even begin to lead you to believe that blacks are lost, or incapable of saving themselves? Might my recitation of facts bias you against blacks; and might my recitation of facts also lead you to forget the broader causes of inner-city turmoil, perhaps even blinding you to the fact that inner-city blacks might in fact be living in a Warsaw ghetto, even a cage, surrounded by the barbed-wire of white institutional and political racism?

My broader point is that the caller to the Jay Severin radio program did something for me: he opened my mind to something I've never before seen or understood: statistics can not only lie, they may blind and mislead, and they may even fuel the very thing they were intended to suppress. Facts are not merely neutral, at least not always. When you hear the "facts" (from surveys) that the majority of Americans believed that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and that most Americans who believed such an Iraq connection also watch Fox News, you are not entitled to believe that these are offered in cool detachment: these facts are meant to sway, intimidate, upbraid and even dehumanize. And if a person states that 40 million fetuses have been killed since Roe v. Wade became law, that person surely intends to sway you. In fact, people always use facts in order to sway you, perhaps often ignoring other, broader facts that might help you frame your thoughts more completely. "Facts" of this kind are not neutral, and you know it all too well: it is a fact that John Kerry "voted for the war before he voted against it"; it is a fact that George Bush "was only" in the Air National Guard in Texas. You get the idea.

And while the caller did something for me, he did nothing for Jay Severin, though I think had Mr. Severin actually been a proper, high-bred host (he is from a moneyed family); had Mr. Severin listened, he may have understood something very interesting and important: It is never too late to have one's mind opened; it is a good thing for even a host to learn something from his guests. But sadly the distance between hosting and hostility is not very great. Too bad Mr. Severin (and others of his medium) cannot keep the two words farther apart. But at least one is comforted knowing that Mr. Severin's dictionary is always nearby.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

†Let it be noted that I am even wary of fabricating facts for the sake of hypotheses or analogies. Even repeating news of an old crime might prompt a return to that sort of crime for some sick, imitative mind dwelling among us.

Celebrating The Forgotten Martin Luther King Jr.

I don't really care what anyone thinks about the following statement, so I say it without hesitation: The 1960s in America were pretty sick years. I have no nostalgia for them; no awe of their alleged liberation or romance for their upheaval, no glee over the sexual and drug revolutions. I stand in protest of the 1960s and their legacy.

And one salient feature of the illness of the 1960s was the shocking death of Martin Luther King Jr. It is not shocking in that it was unexpected, for even Dr. King anticipated it, I believe, in his very final speech. It was shocking in that it was emblematic of truly profound social conflicts that marred that decade, perhaps the most vulgar and violent one, in America's history. Dr. King, after all, was a pacifist in a tumultuous and vicious fight for equality among the races. That his death, his martyrdom, may have spurred Americans toward a more just and kind world is disconcerting, as death should not be required for what seems intuitively to be a simple lesson: All men are created equal.

Of course, as a man bent toward the philosophical, I ask myself whether it is indeed true that all men are created equal. Is it? If we are strict Darwinists, if we are secularists without appeal to God or some transcendent force responsible for mankind's existence and equality, then we must concede that equality is not an ontological (metaphysical) reality. Evolution, in its dynamic "natural selection" process, abhors equality, as disparate species fight and morph for dominance and survival, with nary a hint of egalitarianism. To the secular mind "equality" must be a religious fiction created by that secularism, for there is nothing in the entire cosmos that even resembles "equality." As I've stated elsewhere, including here at Contratimes, neither "equality" nor "rights" exist in any place other than the faith-based imagination of secularists.

Unless, of course, there really is a God. Then one can indeed talk, not only of "equality" but of "rights" as well, rights rooted in the imago dei, the image of God. And that is why the concepts of "rights" and "equality" are rooted in theological language in the founding documents of America. If there is no God, there is no equality and no rights, except in that fictive realm wherein the secular mind places them. If there is a God, there is at least the potential for there to be real qualities to equality and rights; a real, ontological quality.

Of course, the philosopher in me also sees this astounding problem: If there is indeed a God, then only humans are equal one to another, for God surely is not equal to His creation. In short, a world wherein God exists is hierarchical, with God sitting in the highest seat. With that said, it is no wonder secularists abhor a theological structure for social governance, as God confounds their love of absolute equality.

While today we celebrate the memory of Martin Luther King, I would like to celebrate what is absolutely forgotten about Martin Luther King. And what is forgotten is that Dr. King held no expertise in social or political scheming; he was not trained to be a rebel or a revolutionary. No, Dr. King was first and foremost a Christian theologian and ordained minister. Sadly, in most celebrations of his life, these seem to be the first things that are forgotten about him. I wonder, how would this make him feel?

Today is really a religious holiday, but you wouldn't know it. It is a holiday celebrating the liberating power of the Gospel, the very power that liberated a young Martin King when he first attended church, and when he first attended college. It is a day, not of civil rights, but of the power of love and justice and this wild notion that God loves ALL MEN EQUALLY, which manifests itself in justice and truth in the Christian Savior walking the streets offering a message of hope to the oppressed and harassed: those persecuted by the powerful; those harassed by the terrors of their own sins. It is right to be civil, and it is civil to be right; but neither truth means anything without the civilizing and righteous power of the Christian God who calls all men and women unto Him: that neither Greek nor Jew, neither slave nor free; neither man nor woman nor black nor white, are to be excluded from His banquet hall. This is not unconditional universalism, but that universalism with a caveat: that all invited guests must first accept the invitation, shedding their filthy clothes for the formal clothes that come as a result of God's sacrifice, with all men and all women attired in the grace of God's forgiveness. Those who refuse the invitation, or the forgiveness, remain, freely, outside to dine alone. The maître d' bids them Bon appetit! if they would just humble themselves and accept their reservations.

But this great day is for me in many ways a day of sorrow, for the great man Dr. Martin Luther King is cheapened, gutted and reduced to something other than he was, for he was not a secular member of the vanguard; his power was not intrinsic to him; his cause was a cause that has nothing, ultimately, to do with him at all. For it is God's cause, and Dr. King knew that, and he embraced that powerful fact. How sorrowful that our schools and culture want to forget what ultimately made Dr. King a great man.†

For me, Dr. King represents the fight to keep the cardinal virtues together in harmonic balance. G. K. Chesterton argued that the Protestant Reformation smashed the union of the cardinal virtues, causing them to run amok, befouling the earth with their zeal. Just think of love, hope, faith, justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude helter-skelter on the earth, unbound from each other. Justice untethered becomes a church or legal fund or race riot insisting on its own verdicts, neglecting the temperance which is mercy. Temperance alone turns into flagellation and legalism. Prudence in isolation turns into the idolatry of caution, dreading the imperfect choice. Love runs to and fro without the truth of justice or the restraint of self-control, and blindly affirms acts and deeds that true love, in balance, would not countenance or so casually condone. Today, I can hear Dr. King call for the orthodoxy which holds all of these virtues together, the orthodoxy of Christ. It is this part of Dr. King's message that I remember today with sadness, for it is the part of his message and his life that is forgotten.

Contratimes

†There are those who don't think Dr. King was a great man, but I think otherwise. His peccadilloes, his sins, do indeed count against him. But all of us have these charges against us. What made him great is that he held to his convictions without being paralyzed by the fact that he was a man of imperfections. Too many of us permit our imperfections to sway us from our course. We fall prey to one of the greatest social evils, which is the fixation on the purity of the messenger rather than on the accuracy of the message. It is the "Who are you?" fallacy. It is the devil's line of discredit.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.