Senator Robert Byrd, one of the biggest embarrassments of the Senate, recently mouthed off about “white niggers.” I’ve read several stories about this but I still haven’t been able to deduce what he meant. I’m assuming he isn’t referring to Norman Mailer’s famous disquisition on the “white Negro,” meaning the desire of some trendy whites to revel in what they regard as authentic black culture. Or is Byrd’s colloquialism a version of Charles Murray’s recent lament about the ‘proletarianization’ of elites? Or is it a comment on the close parallels between black underclass culture and white trash culture, illustrated daily on any cheesy talk show you happen to watch? But whatever Byrd meant, it was surely racist – certainly more racist than David Horowitz’s ad about slavery reparations. The phrase requires you to believe that there is some uniform way of life that defines ‘niggers’ and that some white people, who should know better (Byrd implies), are copying this. If by racism, you mean a derogatory generalization about all people with a certain skin color, then this seems to me to be a pretty easy case of out and out racism. But so far, only Kweisi Mfume has spoken out about this. Where are all the other Democrats? Where’s Jesse Jackson? Oh never mind. It strikes me that, in this respect, conservative paranoids are right. There is a double standard between Democrats and Republicans on the racial gaffe question. If Jesse Helms or Rick Santorum had said this, there would be hell to pay. Or am I missing something here?
CONFESSIONS OF A CLINTON-HATER: Perhaps the most common explanation of loathing for Bill Clinton, at least among the Clintonistas, is that many of them want to undo all the good that Clinton did. John Podesta described them on one of the Sunday talk shows recently as “people” who are “ever present” and who want to “destroy and undermine . . . all the good things [Clinton] did as president.” So where do I fit in? I loved a lot of what Clinton did as president. I supported him on free trade, welfare reform, deficit reduction, to name some of his most notable accomplishments. At the very beginning, I was hopeful he would help gay civil equality and women’s rights. I even think his foreign policy was defensible. I admired his ability to relate to African-Americans. I drew the line at his compulsive lies, betrayal, and sleaze. Can’t Podesta understand that some of us just loathed the man – and what he did to our public culture of civility, honesty and dignity? To be sure, some were out to get him from the start. I wasn’t – and many others wanted the best from his talents. Our dismay and outrage is not because he pursued goals with which we disagreed, but because he betrayed so many of his accomplishments with sociopathic behavior that he should have found a way to control. Clear now, John?
The Dish 