It’s an inspired editorial decision by Slate to pit uber-realist Bob Kaplan against neo-Kantian Bob Wright in discussing the war on Islamo-fascism. Kaplan’s opener is a corker. The most interesting aside: “Bombing [the Taliban] … led the Egyptian regime to instigate a ferocious crackdown on extremists that was little noted in the American media.” It was certainly little noted by me. Thanks for the tip, Bob.
THERE HE GOES AGAIN: Now Larry Summers has gone and nixed a potential professor for being too old. I’ve heard of ruffling feathers, and Summers gets my vote so far. But this is beginning to look less like a ruffle than a pluck.
RACE AND HONORIFICS: This just got more interesting. Another reader proffers this explanation:
“My initial reaction to the Mr v. Dr. issue regarding Cornel West was somewhat different than the “good friend” you quoted. According to Leon Litwack’s book, “Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow,” which I’m slogging through at the moment, White racist southerners traditionally had more difficulty with the implications of “Mr.” rather than “Dr.” Litwack writes on p. 334: ‘The racial code tolerated – within limits -attaching titles to the names of black professionals.’ He quotes a white person who said how relieved they were when Booker T. Washington was awarded an honorary degree from Harvard. This person thought Washington was a ‘great man,’ but couldn’t bring himself to call him Mr. Washington. When Washington got a doctorate, ‘[t]hat saved our lives! We call him ‘Dr. ‘ Washington now.’ Litwack also mentions a black college president who introduced himself to a white person as “Professor” rather than “Mr.” since, in Litwack’s words, “[t]hat usage posed no problem for whites.” Thus, traditionally, it was more of a mark of respect back then for a black to receive the honorific Mister than a formal title, which, since such titles were possessed only by an elite, apparently posed no threat to notions of white supremacy. (I am wondering whether some vestige of this curious practice explains the “Dr. King” point mentioned by your friend. ) Maybe West does not know that, or maybe knows that yet believes in today’s society the racist impulse is to deny the formal title and not the polite, general one (or maybe he’s just a pompous ass whichever way you slice it). My point is that it is wrong, though, to assume that calling black PhDs “Dr.” is mitigation for some widespread past white discrimination as to professional titles, since that particular aspect of prejudice didn’t occur.”
All clear now? By the way, here’s an official source for the Times policy. This further implies that West and Gates must have insisted on their titles.
RACIAL DOUBLE STANDARDS: Here’s a classic of the genre in – where else? – the Village Voice. It’s in a recent piece analyzing the last Mayoral election. The article discusses the racial appeals of Freddy Ferrer to blacks and Hispanics and Mark Green to Jews and whites. My view is that both candidates deserved to lose in part because of this kind of racial politics, a politics that, I might add, means that the only viable liberal in New York City is now a Republican. But that, of course, isn’t the Voice’s view. Racial appeals were legit for Ferrer but not for Green. Why? Here’s your answer:
“Ferrer’s appeals to specific ethnic groups-arguably contained in his frequent invocations of “the other New York”-cannot be held to the same standard as Green’s, not least because white voters’ priorities tend to dominate the political discussion at the expense of minority interests. ‘Clearly there are incentives for someone like Ferrer to appeal to the specific concerns of Latino and black voters,’ [Princeton politics professor Tali] Mendelberg says, ‘but those appeals are not ‘racial’ in the sense I use for appeals to white voters. They don’t draw on stereotypical anti-white thoughts or on derogations of whites, but rather on notions of what Latinos or blacks need as a group and on a worldview of American society as racist.'”
So Al Sharpton cannot really be racist; while Rudy Giuliani cannot not be racist. Figures that this piece of genius would come direct from Princeton. Maybe Dr. West and Dr. Gates should go there, after all.
SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “And isn’t it all just so much annoying background noise now? The war, that is. How we’re still bombing and still spending millions per day and draining the economy, still blithely massaging the feet of Rumsfeld’s gnarled war-happy ideology with the oily balms of our collective fear and dread and meek lack of willingness to question just what the hell is really going on. We’re just so used to it. Still pumping the GOP-friendly military-industrial complex full of perky aggro attitude and jingoistic testosterone and years if not decades of billion-dollar missile contracts, all to keep us fully engaged and engorged in this unwinnable war until you’ve long forgotten how to spell “Al-Qaeda” and Dick Cheney has had his defibrillator plated in platinum. This much we know.” – Mark Morford, SFGate.com, offering further proof that the anti-war left doesn’t exist.
The Dish 