Category: 
by Obama Pundit
I think it’s worthwhile to highlight liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias’ rather extraordinary column today called ‘Here Come the Racists‘ as a great example of how the Left operates these days. Call it a ‘teachable moment’.
I hope that wasn’t too condescending. If so, I’m only repeating one of the President’s favorite phrases.
Let’s start with how Yglesias distorts what happened last week with the Gates Affair.
How else to explain the firestorm of controversy set off by the president of the United States offering the banal observation that there is “a long history” of “African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately,” and that a police department that arrests a man inside his own home and winds up dropping the charges has acted “stupidly”? But as soon as the president spoke, the right wing pounced, smelling blood.
This might work as a rhetorical question if it actually bore some relation to what actually happened. Indeed, there was zero controversey over his ‘banal’ statement about disproportionate treatment of blacks and latinos. The real controversey was over him saying that police acted ’stupidly’ while at the same time admitting he didn’t have all the facts about the case. The buzz was over the President of the United States inserting himself into a local matter during a press conference on health care. This was why there was a firestorm, not because Obama said anything about how minorities are treated.
And since when are the Cambridge Police the right wing? All of them–regardless of race or political affiliation–supported Officer Crowley.
But the reason for Yglesias’ distortion quickly becomes apparent in the next graph:
Since the campaign ended, we’ve been seeing the extreme racial paranoia that has characterized the American right for decades.
Got that? Making a fuss over the President of the United States blurting out a snap judgement when he admits he didn’t have the facts is a sign of rising racial paranoia by the right wing.
Well, he might be right that there is extreme racial paranoia out there, except it seems to be coming primarily from people like Yglesias. How else to explain the title of his column (Here Come the Racists!). Does that sound appropriate for a column claiming to decry paranoia? Yglesias clearly insinuates that the Grand Wizard himself, Britt Hume, is one of these racists for having the nerve to point out those occasions when non-whites make racially insensitive statements.
What’s Yglesias’ motivation here? Is he merely adhering to the old left-wing saw that minorities, by dint of their lack of political power, can’t be racist and therefore to accuse them of racism is itself a racist act? But if the President doesn’t have power, who does? Is it wrong to hold him accountable for the content of his statements? Should we have just laughed off Sonia Sotomayor’s racially-tinged words?
After glossing over that whole issue, Yglesias then goes on to hit all the Lefty talking points of late: something about Michael Savage (is he even on the radio?), the Birthers (naturally) and, in order to appear serious and high minded, he also voices a faux concern for the future of the GOP for associating with such bigots.
For good measure, he throws in a poll that says that 23 percent of the public is uncertain whether Obama was born in the U.S. (clearly because they are all racists). Of course, he rather approvingly assumes that this group is all right wing, too, except that at least one-fourth are either independents or Democrats.
Let’s not forget that 61 percent of Democrats are uncertain over whether Bush knew about 9/11 beforehand or not, so when it comes to kooky conspiracy-theorist types, neither party is clean.
But Yglesias won’t let all that stuff get in the way of his column’s ultimate goal: To bludgeon people he disagrees with politically with the ‘racist’ label.
Much more fun to do that than talk about how Obama’s health care plan might create more racists–er, Republicans–in 2010.
