May 23, 2008

"Liberal Guilt" - It's a White Thing. You Wouldn't Understand.

Tin-horn intellectuals like Ron Rosenbaumoften rely on the kindness of editors like Long John Silver leans on his crutch. But editors cannot reach in and minister to a mind diseased. If only the afflicted editors of Slate could correct the neurocircuits of his dwindling mind, he might make the All-Stars of the Tin Horn Intellectuals Special Olympics. But this is obviously neither their job nor their desire.

Alas, his mind is inoperable as he proves in his latest dropping, "In praise of liberal guilt" deposited onto the web by Slate Magazine. In this magnum minimus Rosenbaum asks the soul-searing Obama question:

Why delegitimize sincere excitement that his nomination and potential election would represent a historic civil rights landmark: making an abstract right a reality at last.
Rosenbaum's effort unrolls a long self-loathing plaint of ultimate intellectual Geckoisms ('Greed is good. Guilt is better.') that utterly ignores, yet again, that we are having a presidential election in this country, not elevating some kid found cooler than all the others to Senior Class President.

An election for President of the United States is, at some level, an election that runs on "popularity" like high school elections, but there are also deeper requirements that go far beyond making your shriveling little guilty white soul "feel better." Some of those requirements are, to name just a few, a basic knowledge of history, geography, foreign policy, state of readiness of the armed forces, a basic understanding of large economic systems, and an enduring commitment to the survival and continuing prosperity of these states. Obama has demonstrated, where he has demonstrated anything at all, a shocking ignorance of these elements and others. Indeed, his carefully constructed political career and voting record seem, if they seem to amount to anything at all, to represent a long and abiding dedication to take no significant recorded stand on any central issue of the day; lest it come back to bite him in the behind.

Again and again we come back to the plain and indisputable fact that the empty suit leading the current Potemkin Children's Crusade across our media landscape is doing so on the sole qualification that he is sorta-black. Like Blanche DuBois, Obama is depending on 'the kindness of liberal strangers.' These suitors, as Rosenbaum demonstrates, cannot see beyond the color of his skin into the content of his character. In fact, the Obamatrons do not wish to see anything other than Obama's color, lest their dreamboy be revealed as the nightmare he really is.

Obama runs on "race-not-race" confident that he can count on enough white-liberal guilt such as that oozing from Rosenbaum's skull pudding to become a historic "civil-rights landmark" -- the first president elected on race-hustling alone; think Al Sharpton with a better suit and a smoother voice. Quite brilliant when you think about it, isn't it?

If it works, I'm sure Rosenbaum will be short-listed as a speech writer for Obama's Secretary of Education. He's got his chit in early enough with today's bit of knee-pad prose. But he'd better get hip to spell-check first.


HT: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

Email this entry to:


Your email address:


Message (optional):


Posted by Vanderleun at May 23, 2008 7:37 AM | TrackBack
Save to del.icio.us

Comments:

AMERICAN DIGEST HOME
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

I tried to read the Rosenbaum article but couldn't get beyond the first paragraph. It drips with a bizarre combination of self-righteousness, self-loathing and spineless, vapid hand-wringing that is truly revolting. Speaking of revolting, that picture of the transgender driving instructor is just wrong. The things that men do...

Posted by: Kurt at May 23, 2008 8:34 AM

Our Age of Narcissism seems to be hurtling forward, gathering speed as it goes.

Narcissism is at the root of our preoccupation with style over substance, and process over results. The Obamas (yes, I meant the plural, as they absolutely intend to co-rule. Also note I said "co-rule," and not "co-govern") are mega-narcissists, conceited and arrogant to the nth degree despite having the thinnest resumes for governing since Caligula appointed his horse as a Proconsul. The Obamas are only the back end of a horse. They will be worse than the Clintons.

As for Rosenbaum, he's a sissypants bed-wetter.

Posted by: Roderick Reilly at May 23, 2008 12:09 PM

"Again and again we come back to the plain and indisputable fact that the empty suit leading the current Potemkin Children's Crusade across our media landscape is doing so on the sole qualification that he is sorta-black."

Quite right, and the tragedy for African-Americans is that the first credible "African-American" Presidential candidate is not an African-American. Not one of his ancestors was ever a slave in the United States, and he was not even raised in an African-American environment. (Actually some of his mother's ancestors were in fact slave owners.) Barack [middle name redacted] Obama is an African-American by choice and by marriage, and it can be shown that the "conversion" he describes in his autobiography, the conversion that occurred at the TUCC, was not a conversion to Christianity, but a conversion to blackness, what the Franco-African (or Afro-French) intellectuals of the 1950s called "negritude."

Posted by: Punditarian at May 23, 2008 1:11 PM

One thing I've never understood is why. Why feel guilty for something that you yourself have not done? I don't.
I already have plenty of my own sins to account for without looking for someone else's as well. If you haven't
owned slaves, there's no point in feeling guilty about those who have, in my view. If you haven't charged a black
person a higher interest rate on a loan just because that person was black (and not because of an objectively-lower
credit score), then you have nothing to feel guilty about.

Posted by: waltj at May 23, 2008 10:02 PM

No, the general sentiment is correct. All the things mentioned are probably required to do a good job of being President once you're in; but what is required to get in is two things. Popularity, yes; but also enormous amounts of money.

Posted by: Fletcher Christian at May 26, 2008 8:46 AM
Post a comment:

"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.










Remember personal info?