A Principled Attack? Hardly

As I’ve mentioned before, there are a gaggle of liberal sportswriters who want to feel like they’ve caused some great civil rights movement. But with black coaches and quarterbacks aplenty and gays in the temple, what’s left? Well, the horribly racist “Redskin” name, that's what! Queue a flood of self-righteous articles about the indignity that anyone in America would dare use such a slur. Well, now they have a problem and that has exposed all their grand proclamations of principle as nothing more than hypocrisy. Typical.

The primary loser beating this tom-tom has been West Virginia lawyer trash Mike Florio, who leveraged insider information from agents into a rumor site that NBC bought to gain an online presence. Florio is paranoid and beyond conspiratorial, almost always wrong, and he's a real ass. He’s Perez Hilton in hillbilly garb. He’s also a massive liberal and he applies all the usual liberal arguments. Here are his key arguments, i.e. the principles he claims must be applied:

● If anyone is offended by a word, then the rest of us have an obligation to conform our behavior to the desires of those people and we must stop using the "offensive" word. Remember this "principle" because it will be key.

● You can’t play the numbers game in an instance like this, because this is about right and wrong. All it takes is one person being offended to require a change. This is how he gets around the problem that the public supports the Redskin name by a 9-1 margin, and he's actually attacked people who claim we should do what the “vast majority” of the public wants. He claimed that (1) 80%+ cannot be considered “a vast majority” (yeah, he said that) and (2) this isn’t about polls, this is about right and wrong, so arguing majority rules is immoral.

● The fact that most people don’t consider this offensive isn’t relevant, because some people do and that is enough to require action. This is how he avoids the problem that a number of teams still use the name, including at least one team on an American Indian reservation. Notice that each of these first three points is the same point restated differently.

● Next, he plays the race card by dismissing the opinions of all those who aren’t American Indian because their opinions are per se inferior to American Indians on this issue. Basically, in his world, each race gets special treatment and a different set of rules. Further, he makes himself the judge of what these people may believe. Indeed, when American Indians agree with the whites, Florio either (1) dismisses them as not genuine Indians or (2) he dismisses them as out of touch or duped. He’s also gone back and smeared the various American Indians who were involved in choosing the Redskin name or logo by questioning (without evidence) their claim to being American Indians. Essentially, Florio takes the position that there is only one opinion Indians may have, and Florio has appointed himself as the man who will give it to them.

● To bolster his case, he highlights every single person who agrees with him as a way to avoid the damning statistical polls, and he never mentions anyone who disagrees with him except for Redskin employees, who he claims are saying what they have been told to say. He also points to his own articles as proof that the public is buzzing about this issue.

Got it? If a single angel cries, then all us devils must change because this is a matter of principle and the principle is determined by the idiosyncratic beliefs of the group doing the whining. It does not matter that no one else sees this as a slur or that the vast majority of the public is on the other side. All that matters is that someone feels aggrieved.

Simple. . . and false. Observe.

Last week, one of the whiners in the anti-Redskin movement made the comment that the Kansas City Chiefs better change their name too, because she considered that just as offensive.

BAM! In races Florio to slam the Chiefs, right? Actually, no. See, all those principles Florio spews against the Redskins apparently aren’t principles after all. Indeed, they don’t apply with the Chiefs because “[t]here are fundamental differences between the Chiefs and the Redskins, especially that dictionaries define ‘chief’ as a term of respect and ‘redskin’ as a slur.” In other words, society doesn’t see chief as an insult, so it doesn’t matter to Florio that this whiner is upset by that word. Do you see the problem? His entire anti-Redskin argument is premised on the idea that if one person is offended, then that is enough. What society wants is irrelevant. But when it comes to the Chiefs, Florio suddenly claims the word needs to be objectively seen as offensive by society before this can be considered an issue. If that’s true, then doesn’t the fact that the public supports the Redskin name and doesn’t see it as offensive by a 9-1 margin pretty much neuter Florio’s argument against that name? Of course it does, but he’s a liberal and he doesn’t care about consistency.

What he’s done is take his own prejudices and turn them into objective reality. He sees the word “Redskin” as offensive and thus, he wants it banned and he comes up with broad ranging "principles" to support his argument and dismiss the desires of the public. On the other hand, he does not see the word “Chiefs” as offensive and thus he rejects the idea that it should be banned, even as that contradicts every one of the broad principles he uses to support his attack on the Redskins. Basically, his principles apply only when he agrees with the outcome they would cause. So much for principles.

So much for the public too. Like most liberals, he only cares what the public thinks when the public agrees with him. Notice also that he’s not speaking for an aggrieved people as he proudly claims, he’s using them to get his own prejudices made a matter of public policy. In other words, they are worth protecting only so long as their desires are consistent with his.

Interestingly, since Amanda Blackhorse said this last week about the Chiefs, Florio has run ZERO articles about the Chiefs and their name. Yet, at the same time, he continues to run attacks on the Redskins using the same false logic he won’t apply to the Chiefs.

Finally, I guess it’s worth pointing out too that once again, when you are dealing with the permanently aggrieved, they cannot be placated. No concession will ever be enough. Give them Redskins, they will demand Chiefs. Give them Chiefs, they'll demand something else. Any concession is just encouragement for them to try the next leg of their journey.

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What's Happened to Halloween?

Boo! Yeah, I said "Boo!" Whaddya gonna do about it? Really, what ARE you going to do about it? Halloween used to be the greatest holiday ever! Now it's just a dreaded day filled with political correctness and warnings of the evils of unhealthy snack foods.

Halloween was the holiday that every kid dreamed about. All you had to do was to drape yourself in an old sheet (well, not so much in the South) or put a patch over your eye and the candy, FREE CANDY! would come pouring into that big plastic pumpkin bucket you clutched for blocks careful not to spill one morsel. All sorts of wonderful, sugary candies like SweetTarts or chocolatey minibites of Snickers or Krackles! The gooey-er and sugarier the better. All free for the knocking and taking. And all you had to do was shout "Trick or Treat"!

And your parents would let you do it! They would actually LET you go begging through the streets to score all the candy you could carry. You could go running through the neighborhood in gangs and groups and gaggles where, let me tell you, that kid-network worked faster than any internet does, to share the 4-1-1 on which house had the best (or worst) candy. It was glorious! Then when you finally dragged your loot home, there was one last hurdle before the fun really started. You know the procedure - dump all that wonderful sugary, chocolatey treasure on the table while Mom and Dad took out all to poisonous popcorn balls and the apples laced with razorblades. [I never personally saw an apple with razorblades, but my parents assured us that they existed] Then and ONLY then could you finally gorge yourself into a beautiful sugar-induced coma.

So what happened? It used to be so much fun. But lately, you can't swing a dead, black cat without getting ragged on by some prissy do-gooder.

First there's the administrators at University of Colorado Boulder and several other college campuses like Universtiy of Minnesota. LINK The "University Spokesperson" actually explained why dressing like cowboys would be offensive...

'When you dress up as a cowboy, and you have your sheriff badge on and a big cowboy hat, that's not a representation of a cowboy, that's not a representation of people who work on a ranch that's not a representation of people who live in the West, that's kind of a crude stereotype,' Hilliard said.

Really? I wasn't aware that the CowPokes Of America were offended. They always seemed so self-assured and reasonable. I feel so bad now. I dressed like cowgirl with pink boots, fringed skirt and all once, and now I know that I was offending them. I am contrite. [I guess the Watergate Bug costume I wore in 1974 was okay 'cause that only insulted Nixon. Phew]

Then this is what one woman in North Dakota felt compelled to write to drop into all those little plastic pumpkin buckets in lieu of candy...LINK

You [sic] child is, in my opinion, moderately obese and should not be consuming sugar and treats to the extent of some children this Halloween season. My hope is that you will step up as a parent and ration candy this Halloween and not allow your child to continue these unhealthy eating habits.

She is exactly why flaming paper bags filled with dog poop were invented.

But then there is the Mom whose child suffers from Type 1 diabetes. She wanted him to be able to participate, so she bought a bunch of small toys and distributed them to her neighbors with a note attached that explained that her child could not eat candy, but when he knocks on the door, please give him this toy instead. And went on to explained how they could identify him. Now THAT'S a really cool Mom.

Comments?

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Feminism: Hillary-ous

Camille Paglia is the favorite feminist of conservatives, though she’s not a conservative. The reason they like her is that she periodically takes aim at sacred liberal cows and slaughters them with abandon. She’s done that again in a wide ranging interview, which is interesting for several points, including her depants(suit)ing of Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, the headline grabber from the interview is Paglia taking down Hillary: “It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton is our party’s best chance.” She notes in particular that Hillary has no qualifications whatsoever and a history that doesn’t really inspire:

“She has more sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train. And what exactly has she ever accomplished – beyond bullishly covering for her philandering husband?”

She also slams Hillary for failing in the one instance where she actually had some authority, i.e. Benghazi, though her criticism does strike me as a little off in this regard – she says Hillary should have resigned, which seems politically unrealistic. In any event, it’s interesting to see a liberal point out that the Empress has no pantsuit.

Anyway, more interesting was what Paglia said about feminism. Paglia is a feminist, but isn’t a traditional feminist. She’s part of a different group of feminists who really don’t like the people we normally think of as feminists. In fact, when she first appeared on the radar screen, it was in her struggles against the feminists, who were at the peak of their power in the 1990s. And what she notes now is something we’ve pointed out before here: feminism is dead.

“Oh, feminism is still alive? Thanks for the tip! It sure is invisible, except for the random whine from some maleducated product of the elite schools who’s found a plush berth in glossy magazines.”

That is exactly right. The feminism Rush called “Femi-nazis,” which was born in the 1960s and peaked when it dominated academia, Hollywood and the nation’s universities in the 1990s is dead except for a couple random whiners, and the ideology it constructed has been abandoned. I love this quote in particular: “They keep dusting Steinem off and trotting her out to pin awards on her, but she’s the walking dead.”

It’s interesting to have a real insider confirm this and put a reason to it (one of which actually matches my Fifty Shades argument as you’ll see in a moment). So what reason does she give for feminism being dead? Partisanship is the big reason, and puritanicalism.

According to Paglia, feminism got crushed because “[t]heir shameless partisanship eventually doomed those Stalinist feminists.” In other words, they became so aligned with the Democratic Party that they became just another interest group and lost the respect of the public at large. Unions made this mistake too. Both unions and feminists decided they could get what they wanted through the Democratic Party rather than trying to win the public. Thus, they stopped pressuring everyone but Democrats. This destroyed their “moral authority” because they came to be seen as partisan rather than principled. In other words, rather than their cause being about equality for women, people came to see the cause of feminism as being the election of Democrats. So whether or not they were right as a matter of principle no longer mattered.

Indeed, Paglia notes that this is a continuing problem today:

“While it’s a big relief not to have feminist bullies sermonizing from every news show anymore, the leadership vacuum is alarming. It’s very distressing, for example, that the atrocities against women in India — the shocking series of gang rapes, which seem never to end — have not been aggressively condemned in a sustained way by feminist organizations in the U.S. . . The true mission of feminism today is not to carp about the woes of affluent Western career women but to turn the spotlight on life-and-death issues affecting women in the Third World.”

Paglia doesn’t specifically connect this dot to partisanship, but that is the logical cause of what she notes. Since feminists have aligned themselves with the Democratic Party and since the Democratic Party has aligned itself with “people of color” against white males, Christians, and the West, it goes against party politics to criticize things like Muslim atrocities or to point out that the rest of the world is a racist, sexist sh*thole. Hence, feminists have remained deafeningly silent about various atrocities as they instead focused their energies on things like getting healthplans to pay for condoms for rich girls. Because of this, feminists have squandered their credibility because it’s clear they are no longer about “women,” they are about “Democrats,” just like unions are no longer about workers, they are about Democrats.

In addition to the above, Paglia adds the following. First, she notes that old-school feminists were puritanical. Indeed, they worked hand in hand with the Religious Right in the 1990s to try to stop pornography. And in the process, they alienated the vast, vast, vast majority of women because women aren’t actually opposed to sex like those feminists thought they were. To the contrary, most kind of like it. Of this, Paglia says that these “Stalinist feminists. . . were trampled by the pro-sex feminist stampede of the early ‘90s.” This is my Fifty Shades point. Feminism imploded because it tried to impose a condition that ran counter to what women wanted, so they rebelled.

So what are the takeaways? Well, feminism is dead, at least in the form it took until the 1990s. It died because it lost the public through partisanship and it lost women through being puritanical, and those womyn are relegated to history and a few pointless academic posts at this point. It also explains why modern feminists won’t speak out for women today, not in any serious context, and why they are unlikely to regain any influence with the public any time soon. Finally, Paglia confirms that even liberals recognize that Hillary is an empty pantsuit.

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Intellectuals Are Sad People

Which is weird coming from me, having chosen a profession that pretty much wrote the book on "intellectual." But I've always been leery of the term. I certainly hope to call myself an intelligent person, but an intellectual? Some of them aren't so sharp. Or pleasant.

Of course, this raises the question of what the difference is between the two. Hard to say, except that intellectuals generally wear sweater vests and corduroy pants and most other smart people don't. (Or at least, I don't.) But at bottom, I'd suggest that what makes this group stand out is its determination to make the world fit into whatever version of reality its members cherish. They seem to live by a wise man's motto, "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of wacky and well-nigh malicious interpretations of innocuous things. Exhibit A: This recent gem from the Guardian, one of whose contributors, Mike Power, apparently felt the need to condemn, of all things, outdoor barbecues. Not because they deliver heart attacks--yummy, yummy heart attacks--but because it's a lingering symbol of patriarchy. "What really drains the joy from the summer breeze," Power harrumphs, "is the assumption, and the practice, that this is Man's Work. All over the UK, probably the world, the barbecue is now one of the last places where even normal blokes become sexist." Apparently it brings out some primal urge to hunt and kill in men, or it reinforces traditional gender roles (as if no woman ever barbecued in her life), or who knows. Anyway, this particular "bloke" thinks it's just terrible, continuing "How - and why - do men continue to claim this sacred fire-space as a male-owned sanctuary where women are not permitted?"

I'm not going to bother refuting this turd of an article, as its foolishness should be self-evident to all. But even if it were true--if this were indeed a conscious male domain--would it matter? There's still no law saying women can't barbecue. And also, it's barbecue. As important as it might be to folks down South, it's just not that big a deal. It's not a central enough facet of society to ever constitute oppression, and so for a guy like Power, who seems to want to tackle big social issues, it's just not something to get worked up about, ever.

And of course this is far from an isolated incident. Indeed, it seems to be a thing among academics, journalists, etc. to criticize anything, no matter how small, that doesn't match their standards of how people should behave and express themselves. For another example of this, a few years ago a columnist at Salon.com wrote a piece denouncing Taylor Swift's song "Mean" because of the representation of femininity it provided. For example, she claimed that Swift's lyrics "You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter" presume that "the female character defines herself through the men in her life and has to be shown by them how to live in a proper manner." And on and on. It's kind of amusing, really, because anyone would lay cash money that such a consideration never entered the musician's head, and that she wouldn't even understand it. God knows I barely do.

It's kind of sad, really--this inability by very accomplished, very smart (in a technical sense) people to take some joy in things that don't have to do with politics, like a cookout or a song. Maybe it's because they adopt ideologies that seek to explain literally everything as the product of someone being mean. Or maybe it's because they feel all they have is their smarts and that they need to show those off in whatever circumstances. Either way, it makes it hard to enjoy the little things.

Oh well. Just be glad you're not them. (Not that I'm saying you're stupid.)

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Female Teachers Are Sexist

One of the more interesting facets of political correctness is the number of contortions the politically correct must go through to avoid stating the obvious. The latest example involves a study which dances around the question of why girls do better than boys in school, but then do worse than boys on standardized (objective) tests and once they leave the school environment. The obvious answer from their study is that female teachers are sexist, but saying so is taboo.

Before we delve into this, here’s a quick reminder of how political correctness works. The politically correct separate people by race and gender and then assign goodness/badness based on those groups or genders. If you happen to be in a “good group,” then nothing bad may be said about you. In fact, to say bad things about you would be labeled racist or sexist. And if you happen to be in a bad group, then nothing good can be said about you or that would be labeled racist or sexist as well. Girls are in the good group. Boys are in the bad. Hence, thou shalt not criticize girls or praise boys. If there is a gap where girls do worse than boys, that is the result of bias. But if there is a gap where boys do worse than girls, that's because boys are bad students.

So what am I talking about?

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development just completed a study of 17 countries and they discovered something interesting. For quite some time now, it’s been true in most countries that girls get better grades in school. They graduate in higher numbers, get more degrees, and generally have better grades. Hence, girls appear to be better students. BUT there is this pesky problem that boys routinely beat girls on standardized tests and in the real world of employment. In fact, this study found that if you compare standardize tests to grades, the boys grades are way below what the standardized testing would predict. Up to now, the explanations offered by feminists have been to assume that the grades must be right because girls are good and thus a result which shows girls being better must be right, and they've explained away the standardized test problem as the testing being biased in favor of boys. They also claim that income disparity is the result of sexism.

Well, this study has uncovered a wee bit of a problem with this. According to the study, the gender divide in grades is the result of the teachers judging the girls to be better behaved... not better students. This is purely a subjective measure and the study actually termed this "bias." That's a huge step toward truth. Of course, they did their best not to call this gender bias/sexism, but that's what it is. Instead, they said it was bias toward the well-behaved and against the not well-behaved, but that's nonsense. For one thing, the label of which was well-behaved and which wasn't was subjective and is a tautology, i.e. circular reasoning: teachers favor the well-behaved, who are girls, because we have defined girls as well-behaved. Break that down logically and you will see that "well-behaved" is just another word for "girl" and you get "teachers favor girls."

And this is borne out by the standardized testing because it shows that boys do better than the girls in terms of what they really learn. That means that when the students are tested objectively, i.e. in an arena where the teachers cannot warp the grades, the girls do much more poorly than they do when the teachers are able to warp the grades. Logic tells us this means the teachers are favoring girls unfairly. Basically, women teachers favor female students because they like girls better even though the girls are not better students.

Moreover, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The study found that because of this bias, the girls benefited from better grades which meant better opportunities and the boys were harmed because they were denied the opportunities and they were told to lower their expectations. Thus, the teachers set the boys up by giving them worse opportunities and then held that against them when they graded the boys. This, frankly, calls into question the validity of the entire system.

Think about this in terms of race because that will clarify this. Imagine if black students sat through classes taught by white teachers and they were marked down repeatedly, consistently and across-the-board by those white teachers on the subjective scoring system used by the teachers. But once those black students were allowed to take standardize tests, i.e. tests that do not know if a student is black or white or male or female and which the white teachers cannot grade in a way to favor the white students, the blacks suddenly did much better than the grades they were given and in fact outperformed the higher-graded white kids. How fast do you think everyone would start yelling racism? And don't you think they would be right?

Yet, because of political correctness, women are per se considered incapable of being sexist. Thus, even though the obvious answer to the facts presented above is that female teachers (who make up 84% of teachers) are systematically lowering male grades because they don't like the males as much as the females, no one is talking about that because they don't want to raise the issue of gender discrimination by female teachers. But that is exactly what is going on.

And to be clear, sexism doesn't even need to be intentional to make this happen. As has been shown in any number of contexts, bias can take many forms, including a simple lack of empathy or devaluing of traits that are more common with the other gender/race and overvaluing traits that are more common with your own race. Thus, for example, a creative writing teacher might grade a lousy essay on a subject they sympathize with higher than a brilliant essay on a subject they care little for. That's human nature, and study after study has shown that people do behave this way, even if they don’t think they do. So why do we ignore the obvious effects of bias when a system where 84% of teachers are females uses subjective criteria (like classroom participation) to determine that girls are better than boys even as objective criteria expose those subjective criteria to be wrongly applied?

If you want to improve the education system, the first thing to do, honestly, is to stop avoiding the obvious problems just because it's politically correct to do so. The problem isn’t that boys are somehow incapable of learning as well, it’s that female teachers favor girls. And the way to fix that is either to hire more male teachers and to make sure kids get both, or to separate kids by sex... or start using standardize tests to set grades (hint, hint).

Thoughts?

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Dealing With Morons

I’m sometimes asked by people who know me why I’m so intransigent toward liberals. (Actually, they don’t put it in those terms; what they ask is, “Why do you have to be such a jerk on Facebook?”) I often don’t know how to answer them…and then along comes a reminder of how idiotic liberals can get.

There was a small dust-up this week in the proud city of Columbia, MO (my current place of residence). It appears that the police department was asking the city government to purchase an armored vehicle for its use; Columbia has a population of 100,000+, and some neighborhoods are better than others, so this wouldn’t exactly be an idle investment. Anyway, for whatever reason someone in the city’s Police Officers Association decided to strengthen their case by posting an appeal on their Facebook page.

Here is the wording they used:

CPD wants a new armored vehicle. Partly b/c when you drive up in one, people surrender and come out of the house. BUT….if CPD rolled up in the new Mercedes 6x16, you KNOW all the boys in the hood would come running out the house – just to admire your ride! I say we ride up in style.

I don’t really get the humor and the grammar leaves a bit to be desired, but whatever. Worse pitches have been made, I’m sure. I only heard about this, though, because of the “controversy” that arose over the post. The Association quickly drew attacks because their statement was apparently—wait for it—racist. The Huffington Post (because why not) put the “story” up on their front page as an example of bad race relations among cops, and our dear mayor denounced it as “breathtaking racial insensitivity that cannot be tolerated,” further demanding a formal apology from the group.

Grrrrrr.

Okay, first off, this is not racist. I don’t know the feelings of these police officers, and I don’t care. It’s what they said that matters, not how they feel, and what they said isn’t racist. I did a quick info check; Columbia is maybe 11% black, and it’s not like they’re all either lower-class or the ones committing the crimes. And there was zero insinuation from these cops that that was the case. I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but “the hood” is hardly a single-race category, and using the phrase does not automatically imply a black neighborhood. So I’m not even going to suggest that maybe they could have “chosen better language.” You know who’s at fault? The left-wingers at HuffPo, in the city government, and elsewhere who decided they were talking about black people.

More broadly, I wish to make a point about society in general. There are many things wrong with the world today, which I’m sure I don’t need to tell you guys. But if I could name one that really irks me above most others, it’s this paranoia we have about not hurting other people’s feelings. Truth is, I don’t think the race-baiters on the Left are really responsible for this or similar so-called controversies. These things happen because there’s a larger group of people who buy into oppression theory, multiculturalism, and whatever else that wing cooks up, and overreact to everything that might conceivably be construed as racist or sexist or homophobic or otherwise intolerant. These people—mayors, school board members, public advocacy groups—are enablers, and practically every lawsuit or instance of hand-wringing you can think of happens because of them, not because of the initial agitators.

I’d like to think I’ve correctly identified the problem. Even so, that doesn’t mean I know what to do about it. I would say, though, that you can’t really wage a “campaign” against these people. Rather, I think it’s more a matter of just refusing to play their game from the outset. If you say something that you know you don’t mean anything by, but someone says you’re being insensitive against whoever, reply with “Shut up, no I’m not.” Or better yet, “Who cares?” And no, I can’t say I always practice what I preach (in this or other matters). But maybe if more people start acting this way, those enablers will think twice before making reflexive denunciations like this one against the police. I guess what I’m saying is, this country needs more people who are just callous, unfeeling jackasses.


Note: As for the requested armored vehicle, that issue was tabled at the last city council meeting, held just after all this made the news. They’ll deny that the two are connected, but surely some felt they couldn’t just grant the request after all this came out. So a few shrill cries of racism against a group not even an active part of the police department trump a request for official equipment. Nice.

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Of Liberals And Redskins

One of the sites I follow is a football site. It’s unfortunate that this site has such good information because I really despise the guy who runs it. He’s paranoid. He’s a rumor monger who is prone to fantasy. He’s a lousy human being. And he’s liberal. His latest blast of liberalism involves the Washington Redskins and is worth discussing.

The guy’s name is Mike Florio and he’s a barely competent (I’m begin generous here) West Virginia lawyer who converted connections to NFL agents into a rumor site that NBC eventually bought. The guy is a real piece of work. Basically, he spends his days trying to spin everything he can into paranoid fantasies and worst case conspiracies. He’s also barely literate, which is why it’s good he’s got assistants because they’re the only ones worth reading.

Like many other liberal sports “writers” he’s also a race baiter extraordinaire. To give you an example, he “wrote” a book about a talented black quarterback and an average white quarterback who get sent back in time and discover just how racist football was in the past – writing books on racism in sports is apparently the easiest way to become a “journalist” in the sports world and you’ll find that most of them have written such a book. Moreover, every year, once the NFL season ends, Florio dives into the issue of how many black coaches there are in the league – he uses the word “minority” but he only counts blacks... Asians, pacific-islanders, women, Hispanics, Muslims need not apply. And no matter how many black coaches he finds, he always finds the number to be shockingly lacking. He’ll then typically pimp for some black coach who didn’t get enough interviews in Florio’s mind. This year, it was Lovie Smith who was fired as the Bears coach after not winning a playoff game in 7 seasons... gee, who wouldn't want to hire him?

Anyway, this year, he came up with a new way to race bait. See, it turns out that the name “Washington Redskins” is offensive to some people. Hence, the dictates of political correctness tell Florio that something must be done to eliminate this evil.

Now, before we go further, let me say this. First, I don’t doubt that the name is offensive to some people, though I know it was never meant to be offensive. . . team names are always meant to honor something. Secondly, I firmly believe those people have the right to be offended and to demand that the Redskins change their name. Third, I firmly believe that the Redskins have the right to use the name even if people are offended. Fourth, I honestly don’t care. This is the great thing about America. Everyone has a right to be upset about whatever they want, and the rest of us have the right to ignore them. If you can get enough people on your side that a business or sports team thinks it’s smart to change, then more power to you. . . just don’t use the government. Indeed, this is exactly what freedom is about: the right to insult, the right to be insulted, the right to not care, and the right to bear the consequences of your words and deeds.

Now, back to Florio. Florio is a typical liberal and this issue really highlights what is wrong with liberal thinking.

First, like all liberals, Florio pretends he’s nonpartisan even though he’s a heavy partisan hack. He’s like another idiot sports writer (and friend of Florio) Peter King, who claims to be nonpartisan and then goes on anti-gun rants, pro-Al Gore rants, pro-union rants, etc. So realize that he starts by lying about his biases.

Secondly, like liberals who seek to “raise awareness” and that garbage, Florio doesn’t actually take a stance himself. Nope. He doesn’t decide not to use the name or to stop showing the team logo. No, sir. He’s not a man of principle until he can get someone to force everyone else to stand on principle with him. It’s like a vegetarian who eats meat until everyone else is forced to give up meat as well. So much for principles.

Third, like all liberals who love to use other people to achieve their ends (see e.g. taxing the rich so liberals can spend their money and feel smug about helping people), Florio doesn’t even undertake this crusade himself. No, sir. Florio tries to force Washington Redskin quarterback Robert Griffin III to do it. Indeed, that’s what got this issue noticed. Rather than saying “the Redskins should change,” Florio takes the position that RGIII need to be advocating for the change.

How nice is that to dump this on a kid who is new to the NFL and tell him that he better be out there running your crusade for you? Indeed, what a typical liberal ass to (1) try to hijack someone else’s popularity for his own cause, and to (2) dump his own responsibilities onto another person – responsibilities Florio himself won’t even partake in until RGIII changes the world so everyone needs to do as Florio wants

Moreover, did you notice that Florio simply assumes RGIII must agree with him? Indeed, it never occurs to Florio that anyone could disagree except for the Redskins’ owner who must be a racist. Let me suggest that there is actual racism in Florio picking RGIII. RGIII is black and it very much strikes me that Florio assumes that blacks must have solidarity with this issue because political correctness and identity politics assumes groupthink among minorities. In other words, because RGIII is black, Florio assumes he must be a fellow traveler.

Fourth, when Florio started drawing heat for this, he started phrasing his articles in the third person to suggest that this wasn’t an issue he had made up, but was instead an issued which everyone was already talking about. For example, if he asked person X about this in an interview, he wouldn’t say that he asked person X, he would instead describe it as if “people” were talking about this including person X. This is the same garbage leftists have been doing for a century – pretending that groups of people are clamoring for something they aren’t.

Fifth, the Washington Redskins responded by pointing out that a great many high school teams across the country use the same name and logo and that none of them have ever had a problem with it. Florio pounced on this by claiming it doesn’t matter how many people find the name non-offensive since that defense is “the equivalent of saying, ‘Well, some of my best friends are Redskins.’” See what he did there? He’s implying that if you agree with the Redskins, then you’re a racist. Further, think about this point. Florio claims that it doesn’t matter how many others aren’t bothered, so long as someone is bothered. If we take this at face value, then it’s a ludicrous position to take. All anyone needs to do is claim offense then everyone else would need to adjust. Essentially, Florio is advocating a world where we can all hold each other hostage by calling ourselves victims. This, of course, is exactly what political correctness is all about. It’s about letting tiny minority groups terrorize and demand concessions from whomever they want. It’s about letting the hypersensitive control the language and the culture.

Moreover, let me assure you that Florio’s position is disingenuous. In his world, he’s the arbiter of what is offensive and what isn’t, a right he denies the rest of us. If I contacted him tomorrow and I said that I found the name Florio offensive because it reminds me of hillbilly rapists, I can assure you he would not say, “well, Price is offended and it doesn’t matter how many people aren’t, the name needs to change.” No, he would say, “I’m not offended and I don’t believe other people will see the offense either, so I’m not changing.” But Mike, that’s like saying, “some of my best friends are Florios.” Assh*le.

Anyway, I expect this campaign will continue to go nowhere, but I thought it was worth pointing out this turd’s thinking because we see it over and over across the liberal spectrum. Liberals really are vile people who lie, distort, mislead and try to use others for their own purposes, all in the name of forcing others to “do the right thing,” a thing they don’t feel obligated to do themselves. Don’t ever believe it.

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Fighting Fire With Fire

ScottDS and I had an interesting discussion yesterday, related to the Andrew Breitbart’s Bigs. Later in the day, Rufus at Threedonia, posted some similar thoughts. So this is probably worth discussing. Right now, the Bigs are kind of annoying. . . BUT here’s why they are actually doing a good thing.

The reason the Bigs are annoying is because they are jumping on minutia and mercilessly pounding it into the ground. Game Change had some inaccuracies, but is it worth 500 articles calling Tom Hanks everything from a truth rapist to the last American communist? Tom Hanks also appears in a video with someone in blackface. Is that worth pounding away? Bill Maher says much worse things than Rush ever said, but do we need to hear about it 10,000 times? Etc. All of this seems petty and it’s somewhat hypocritical in the sense that the Bigs are judging these people under politically correct standards which conservatives don’t accept. And frankly, I don’t personally like it. I don’t find this interesting and I would rather they were more constructive.

So it’s bad, right? Well. . . no.

Here’s the thing. For at least two decades now, the left has worked to isolate conservatives from the culture and make them pariahs. Every time a conservative spoke their mind, the left attacked them using some faked-sleight invented by the left. They would feign offense at some non-offensive word or act and then smear the conservative as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. It didn’t matter that leftists routinely said the same things, they still attacked. In fact, they would hound these conservatives until the conservatives either left the public sphere or surrendered to the mercy of their persecutors. In this way, they made it impossible for conservatives to have their voices heard because every time a conservative got noticed, they were destroyed personally and professionally. The idea literally was to make sure conservatives were afraid to speak.

And how did conservatives respond? Most cringed and did nothing. And when they saw leftists saying or doing the exact same things the left had attacked conservatives for doing, they remained silent. Why? Because they decided to take the high road. They reasoned that if it wasn’t fair to attack conservatives because of X, then it wouldn’t be fair to attack liberals for X either, so they refused to attack. This was stupid.

For twenty-plus years now, conservatives have let the left destroy conservative after conservative with hypocritical attacks without a peep of challenge except to whine about the hypocrisy. Public life became intolerable for conservatives (look at what they did to Palin for example), while liberals got to skate through saying and doing anything they wanted, secure in the knowledge that conservatives were unwilling to attack them.

No more. The Bigs have declared war. They have taken the same pathetic, petty attacks the left has used to smear conservatives for years and they are now applying those same attacks to leftists. They are fighting fire with fire, because that's the only way to stop what the left is doing. When someone has a weapon they can use with impunity, they will. But when they suddenly realize that others will use it against them, they will stop. Think of it as the cultural version of Mutually Assured Destruction: if you want to try to destroy a conservative as racist/sexist for using a particular word, then we will destroy every liberal who uses that word. This may not make for a pleasant world in the short term, but it is the only way to put an end to these attacks.

Indeed, fighting fire with fire is the only technique which works against the left because they win through incremental progress. In other words, they can win by getting a little bit at a time each time they come to power unless conservatives roll back their gains. For example, for decades, the left concentrated power in the executive branch and the courts. They used that power to force leftist ideas onto businesses, schools, state governments, charities, churches and individuals. When conservatives came to power, they would stupidly declare that they would take the high ground and not use the powers created by the left. The left laughed. And once the conservatives lost power again, the left picked right up where they were before and kept right on pushing -- secure in the knowledge that conservatives lacked the will to use these instruments of power against them.

All of that changed under Bush, particularly in education where Bush used the levers of power liberals created to push liberalism onto schools as a means to impose conservatism instead. Suddenly, the left started howling about state’s rights and attacks on personal freedom and they did their best to strip away the powers they had created. Ditto in the courts, where the left now squeals about legal principles like stare decisis, binding precedent and judicial restraint. . . things they ignored for fifty years while the courts were pushing the country to the left.

It’s the same thing here. Taking the high ground equals surrendering. Conservatives must learn to make the left pay for creating these weapons. This means using the government to bring lawsuits against liberal businesses that violate the laws, sending the IRS after liberal churches, unions and charities which engage in politics, going after race hustler groups and black racist organizations under the civil rights laws, targeting Obama-crony companies like GE with the environmental laws they demanded. . . and making life hell for liberal celebrities who step into the traps liberals have set for conservatives.

That’s what the Bigs are doing. And while I don’t personally enjoy it, I absolutely recognize the value of what they are doing. They are firing back the same nuclear weapons the left has been lobbing at us, and they’ve been rather successful at it. And when the left starts to realize that they are living under an unfair microscope of their own making, they will surrender. . . just as they have every other time conservatives have fought back.

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Don't Label Me Bro!

You’ve probably heard about this “No Labels” garbage the left has come up with? Ostensibly, the idea is that if we can keep people from labeling each other “liberal” or “conservative” or “communist” or “RINO” or “idiot” then we can end the horrible partisanship that keeps “us” from getting things done. What a load. This is nothing more than an attempt by RINOs and leftists to make it hard for the public to spot them.

This laughable idea was created by two failed political consultants. On the left, you have Nancy Jacobson, a former finance director for the Democratic National Committee and a Hillary Clinton-campaign creature. On the other left, you have Mark McKinnon, who once worked for arch-conservative John McCain (**snicker snicker**) until he decided that he “[didn’t] want to work against an Obama presidency.” Poor dear.

Politicians who have outted themselves in favor of this idiocy include Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Evan Bayh (D-Ind); RINOs Mike Castle (RINO-Del), Charlie Crist (RINO-Fla), and Tom Davis (RINO-Va); and a slew of leftist hacks from MSNBC. “Labels get in the way of getting things done,” whined RINO Tom Davis, who spent his time in Congress pushing for DC statehood and federal pay raises.

So what are these groups after? Let’s look at each group.

The RINOs want a home. Their repeated betrayals of the Republicans have worn thin and Republican voters are done with them, but Democrats don’t want them either. They are hoping that by getting rid of labels, they can hide in the squishy middle while getting re-elected on personality and favor trading. In fact, their ideal world would be one where there are no parties and, thus, no primary voters to answer to.

The Democrats want a lifeline. They blew it with Obama/Pelosi. The voters hate them and the Republicans are ready to be as aggressive with them as they were when they were in power. So they are now pushing the idea of being bipartisan in the hopes that the Republicans buy into this and they can sneak through their policies despite the growing Republican majority.

The left wants a way to hide. The left has a long history of spoiling any label they tried to adopt. Their policies are poison. They destroy economies, they endanger people, they create poverty and make existing poverty more intense, they encourage crime, they encourage racism, they encourage violence, and their ideological compatriots have been directly responsible for killing millions of people. Thus, it’s no wonder they’ve worn out their welcome wherever they’ve been. Therefore, they’ve had to change their labels every couple of years as the latest label gets disgraced, so that people don't realize who or what they are.

Indeed, they went from progressives to populists to radicals to socialists to liberals and a dozen more, each time trying to choose a name that sounded like a good thing and eventually disgracing that name through their actions. If they could create a world where politicians and ideology bore no labels, then they could avoid being found so easily. Instead of people saying, “watch out for the progressives,” and everyone knowing exactly who and what that meant, they could hide among us in plain sight, pretending to be just concerned politicians. . . part of the generic establishment as a whole. It’s the political equivalent of camouflage.

These are the people who make up the “No Labels” coalition, a collection of losers looking to deceive the rest of us about who they are. Sad.

Finally, let me ask this. What exactly is wrong with partisanship anyway? Partisanship is what gives the voters a clear choice of ideas. Should we complain that McDonalds doesn’t also offer a Whopper? Or that Long John Silvers doesn’t offer tacos or winter clothing? No. That’s ridiculous. We want clear choices that let us decide what we are in the mood for, with each restaurant specializing in one type of item rather than all restaurants doing a little of everything because we know that promotes better quality and cheaper prices. So why is it, when it comes to politics we’re suddenly supposed to want politicians who offer fish-taco-hamburger jackets?

Seems kind of obvious to me.

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What is Political Correctness?

“Political correctness” is a term that gets bandied about. Most of you probably have a really good idea of what the term means, but there appears to be some confusion in journalistic ranks. So as a service to our low-IQ and self-deluding friends in the media, let’s offer a quick tutorial.

“Political correctness” is a term first coined to describe the attempts by the American left to squelch open debate and free speech. The term stuck immediately and has been such a devastating dual description and criticism of leftist actions, that many of the left despise the term more than the speech political correctness is trying to squelch. Indeed, on most left-leaning boards, all you need to do is use the term and you will find yourself treated like a heretic at a 14th Century Cardinal’s cook out.

At one point, several leftists in the media tried to defuse the term by applying it to right wingers who supported policies that the leftist media hacks didn’t like, on the basis that they were just pandering to the voters. But that effort failed, because it ridiculously misunderstood how clearly the public knows political correctness when it sees it.

So what exactly does political correctness mean? Political correctness represents group think at its worst. It is the requirement that people accept as true, certain “facts” that are not true under the threat of significant sanction. In this case, that sanction tends to be a jihad like series of attacks on you by the leftward collective.

The idea behind political correctness dates back to 19th Century socialist movements, which believed that they could make the world a better place if only they could recreate man. Gone would be the man created by an accident of evolution or the design of God, and in his place would stand the new, modern socialist man. But that didn’t work out. It turns out that the whole self-awareness thing stands in the way of rebuilding man as a communal creature.

When the civil rights movement of the 1960s moved away from seeking equality and moral treatment into seeking a share of the spoils in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the age of identity politics was born. This began with blacks and then feminists. Soon other groups were sprouting up everywhere. Soon we had a veritable apartheid rainbow of genders and races and disabilities, all carefully self-segregating.

As these groups grew in influence in places like academia, they re-awoke to the idea of rebuilding man. If there was any morality, logic, or merit to their arguments, they could have succeeded by simple persuasion, but there wasn’t. So, instead, they took an approach right out of the dark warnings of Orwell’s 1984. This time, they decided to change the mind of man first. And the only way they could think to do that was to make people afraid to speak their minds. If people could not say an idea, then they could not have the idea. . . or so the thinking went.

It's a lot like that Twilight Zone episode where young Bill Mumy wishes people into the cornfield when he doesn’t like what they are saying or thinking, only the politically correct didn’t see young Bill as the bad guy, he’s what they aspired to be. Thus, they set about shutting down debate and demanding that people stop speaking truths that didn’t fit their agenda.

Let’s consider some examples. Blacks commit crimes in a much higher percentage than whites. That is an undeniable fact. There are many causes, almost all of which point the finger right back at the black community. But black groups have been some of the strongest purveyors of political correctness and blacks have been some of the new religion’s most ardent foot soldiers. And the first rule of political correctness is to combat any fact that makes your group look bad. Thus, they decided that these facts were not politically correct and that they should not be allowed to be spoken. So they set about attacking anyone who dared speak them.

Consequently, if you held a debate on the issue of crime today, and you tried to suggest either of these facts, you would risk being shouted down, risk having your black panelist stage a walk out, risk being called a racist, and risk having a jihad declared against you with an army of drones trying to get you fired and ostracized. Why do this? Because if you can’t address the real facts, all that is left to explain the problem is to either deny that such a problem exists or to attribute it to politically correct “facts” like white racism or economic circumstances. Not coincidentally, the solution to those “facts” seems to be legislation. . . and more goodies for the identity camp.

Feminists have done the same thing. They have create a twisted set of assumptions to which you must pledge fealty or you will be labeled a sexist. Chief among these new “facts” is that there are no differences between men and women, except for those that benefit women. Thus, for example, you cannot mention that women are not as physically strong as men or that pregnancy has been a huge issue for military readiness when the feminists question why women can’t be front line soldiers. You also cannot mention that the different choices women make affect their income potential when discussing the issue of pay equality. Indeed, to suggest that women shun the harder professions, like science and engineering, or that they tend to drop out of the work force for a period of years to raise children would be like declaring Christ a myth at a 12th Century Crusade planning meeting. It’s best just to pretend that you have no idea why women earn more college degrees, but don’t make as much money as men over their careers.

Again, the reason is obvious. If you factor out all the things that women and men do that generally lead to different career paths, then the only possible explanation left for why a woman and a man have disparate incomes must be sexism. And that requires legislation, which means more goodies for the identity camp.

And this goes well beyond panel discussions. If you say the wrong thing at work, or at school, or in print, prepare for the modern Inquisition. If you put an ad on television and an identity-group member looks bad in the ad, expect trouble. If you make a movie, you better not make identity-group members the bad guy, and you better not forget to over-include them in positive roles no matter how historically inaccurate. In fact, ironically, they expect you to overcompensate in the other direction. . . for the fact you're not allowed to mention. Thus, if the knock on a group is that they're lazy, then you better make them the hardest working characters on your show. If the stereotype is stupidity, better let them teach everyone else the vital lessons. And so on.

The idea behind the terror is to get you to self-censor. If you are afraid to speak the truth, then the truth may cease to exist. . . at least, that’s the hope.

If you’ve ever discussed this issue near one of these people, before they try to shout you down, you may have noticed that they will make the argument: “how is this different than simple manners.” And they will claim that people have always done what is now being “unfairly” called political correctness. But they are wrong.

First, manners are based on generations of experience about what creates problems in society and what doesn’t. Manners are basically the little things that we need to do to make society flow. These are learned behaviors that are based on observed facts. Political correctness, on the other hand, is not about making society better. It is about one group forcing itself on another. It is about accepting lies as true and ignoring the things we know. It is dogma of the worst kind.

Secondly, unlike manners, which are meant for general application, political correctness is applied unfairly. Political correctness applies only to a protected few. Whites can be fired for using the wrong word, but blacks can’t be fired for using the same word. Minorities are free to complain about anything they want with regard to majorities, but majorities aren’t. And so on. Moreover, politically correct rules aren’t about objective rules, they are about subjective interpretation. In other words, they rely on the “victim” to decide if they’ve been victimized. This isn’t about creating conduct for everyone to follow, this is about giving certain groups the power to attack those with whom they disagree. The last group of people to hold similar powers were the aristocracy under Louis XIV or Nazi party members under Hitler.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a bit of irony. Because political correctness is so subjective, it changes all the time as grievances are expanded and new victims discover their victimhood. Thus, what was politically correct a few years ago may not be so today. Sesame Streets on was one of the first attempts at politically correct brainwashing. But when they released the DVDs a year ago, they actually put a label on them that these were not appropriate for children.

Thus, to all the politically correct of the world, I say this. . .



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Oh You Dirty Liberal Racists. . .

The New York Democratic Party and its allies in the media are dirty racists who can’t stomach the idea of a black man sitting in the Governor’s chair, or so says New York Democratic Governor David Paterson. No so, respond his liberal critics: the problem is you’re blind. So much for the usual political correctness.

For those who don’t know, David Paterson, who is both black and blind, has been dubbed the “Accidental Governor.” He took over the post when crusading “white-knight” Governor Eliot Spitzer flamed out after consorting with a hooker named Ashley Dupre. (The term “white-knight” was not mine, by the way, it came from the racist New York media.)

And the liberals did cheer when Paterson took over. According to one liberal columnist, “People wanted Paterson to succeed, people wanted to get behind . . . a black, sight-challenged New Yorker.” Because that’s how we move beyond race, by supporting a candidate because of his race.

But since those heady days, the cheering has stopped. Paterson’s approval ratings have fallen as low as 18%, and Democrats have begun to call for him to declare that he will not run for re-election, lest the seat fall into Republican hands. And this doesn’t sit well with the good Governor. Why? Because his critics are racists. That’s right, the New York Democratic Party and their media allies are racists.

Last Friday, Paterson told Daily News columnist (and African American) Errol Louis in a radio interview that a “racist media” is trying to kill his chances of running for a full term next year. According to Paterson, the campaign against him is being “orchestrated” by reporters who would rather make the news than report it: “The whole idea is to get me not to run in the primary. We’re not in a post-racial period.”

Apparently, some people are uncomfortable with too many black politicians in power, Paterson warns us. Said Paterson, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick also is under fire in racist Massachusetts because of his race. Moreover, “the reality is the next victim on the list -- and you can see it coming -- is President Barack Obama, who did nothing more than trying to reform a health care system.”

Yes, we can see it coming David. And all because Obama tried to reform health care. . . and the $9 trillion debt, the $1 trillion deficit, the seizure of GM and the political closing of Republican dealerships, the insulting of America and Americans to Muslims on foreign shores, the commission of the same “war crimes” Dick Cheney used to whip out for fun, the demonization of average Americans, the fishy snitch, calling cops stupid, and a whole host of other non-things.

Paterson’s warning did not sit too well with Team Obama. White House political director Patrick Gaspard called Paterson aide Larry Schwartz to tell him that Obama wants no part of this mess (whew, I almost used the word "tar baby" but then I remember that's now racist). Said Obama spokesman Bill Burton:

“In terms of media coverage of the President, he thinks that there are a lot of people who agree with him in the media, there are a lot people who disagree with him in the media, and there are a lot of folks who play it straight. . . Whether or not race plays into that. . . the President doesn't think it is the case. What he thinks is that there area lot of people with different opinions, and one of the great parts about the American tradition is that people are able to do that freely.”

Obama then “wee wee’d” himself.

With the left wing media going insane, not being as accustomed to false allegations of racism as the right is, and with Team Obama trying to unload this albatross, Paterson tried to downplay his comments.

“I don't think the media has acted in a racist way, but I have felt stereotyped at times. . . At no point did I claim that this media piling-on effect was due to race,” he said, before adding, “What I did point out was that certain media outlets have engaged in coverage that exploits racial stereotypes. The media is trying to control the politics, not reporting it. They're trying to control it. There are some folks in the media who think that it's all right to racially stereotype.” Thus, they aren’t racist, they just make racist attacks.

Surprisingly, this didn’t stem the criticism, particularly as the allegation of racism did not sit well with a Democratic Party that believes that it cannot, by definition, be racist.

Said state Senator Kevin Parker: “He’s given the media more than enough to feed on with the incompetence shown in his administration. To quote Michael Jackson, he should start with the man in the mirror.” Michael Jackson? Some Republican will have to try that line on Obama and see how much blood flows at Huffpo.

Paterson was quick to respond by doubling down on stupid. Indeed, noting that despite New York’s financial crisis, he had not had to write IOUs like liberal California, and the state was not nearly as bad off as Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Massachusetts. Strangely, no comparison was made to Republican run states. He also complained that he was held to a higher standard. “I played by the rules. It was a very difficult position to find myself in and I've given it my best. I've done the best I can under the very trying circumstances the state is facing. It seems I have to work twice as hard as others.”

Then he added the coup de grace: “I have been quiet for 17 months on this issue. . . . Part of what I feel is that one very successful minority is permissible, but when you see too many success stories, then some people get nervous.”

He also pointed out that it bothers him that people refer to him as the “accidental governor.” Whines Paterson: “It was not an accident. It is a constitutional mandate. I became governor by a constitutional mandate.” He then noted that the honkus maximus successors to disgraced governors Jim McGreevy of New Jersey and John Rowland of Connecticut were not dubbed “accidental governors.”

The racists in the media haven’t take this too well. After comparing Paterson to black athletes and suggesting that he should raise the “white flag”, they described his complaints as “self-pitying,” even though we know that allegations of racism cannot be self-pity.

But don’t worry, it may turn out that this isn’t about racism at all. . . it’s about disablism. At least, that’s what Democratic state Senator Diane Savino claimed, when she said:

“We live in a digital age now, with e-mailing and BlackBerrying. He is not able to do that because of his visual impairment. David cannot do those things. Also, he does not read Braille. He has people reading newspapers to him. He listens to tapes of staffers briefing him. All that takes an enormous amount of time. . . In some ways I think that has hindered him, in spite of everything he has accomplished in life. David is one of those people who tends to rely on the staff around him to set policy and make decisions, and then he turns around and undoes things. The messaging and the policy development comes out in various conflicting forms.”

Paterson aide, Larry Schwartz called those comments “insensitive and totally inappropriate.” He then stated that “Diane Savino owes a public apology to Governor Paterson and every visually impaired New Yorker.” He then insulted the non-blind by claiming that Paterson functions “as well, if not better than people without a handicap.”

Thus, we are left with a riddle. Is the New York liberal media and the New York Democratic Party (and their Massachusetts equivalents) a bunch of racists who can’t handle seeing too many black men in power? Are they just biased against blind people? Or has a black governor made false claims of racism to cover his own incompetence?

The ironies here are rich. New York should impose an “irony tax.”

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