George Wallace Redux: Bill Clinton Stands Tall For Louis Farrakhan
Patronizing White Liberalism Today,
Patronizing White Librealism Tomorrow,
Patronizing White Liberalism Forever
5/6/2005
Remember the wonderful "In Living Color" skit called the "Wrath of Farrakhan?"
The television screen flashed with a special number that anguished and tormented whites could call for relief:1-900-White Guilt. Upon being connected, the skit went, they could press one button to hear Farrakhan berate them over housing discrimination or some such injustice and another button to get lectured over another kind of discrimination.
Although the show's overwhelmingly black writers and producers found the former Louis Walcott and his white liberal enablers a barrel of laughs, it seems that Bill Clinton takes the Nation of Islam leader all too seriously.
Clinton has quietly endorsed Farrakhan's "Millions More March" which the Nation of Islam leader announced May 2nd press conference in downtown Washington where he was accompanied by special rights leaders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
The Farrakhan slumming by Al Sharpton, "the activist" who apparently never exercises,and Jesse Jackson, who to this day has failed to ever denounce the Nation of Islam commander for anti-Semitism is to be expected. But this kind of endorsement by a former elected official of Clinton's stature, let alone an ex-president, is unprecedented and arguably confers on the minister precisely the kind of mainstream credibility he has desperately tried to achieve in recent years.
Now that the nation's best-loved Democrat has endorsed the Millions Men March who can argue with it? The endorsement from Clinton, who did a homosexual version of desegregating the military is all the more astounding curious because Farrakhan is not particularly enamored of homosexuals whom he has allegedly called filthy degenerates.
The rally, scheduled for October in the nation's capitol is the sequelto Farrakhan's 1995 "Million Man March," which the newly svelte former president also praised during his exclusive interview with the Amsterdam News, a black news weekly whose publisher Bill Tatum has himself been accused unfairly, he has claimed--of indulging anti-Semitism.
Last time around, Clinton, like other political figures, voiced cautious support for the 1995 march made the decidedly curious claim that it was possible to separate the man from the putative message which of black empowerment and personal responsibility.
Interestingly enough, Clinton, usually the master of equivocation and distinctions that don't make a difference but sound convincing, dispensed with such caveats during his interview with the Amsterdam News, a Harlem weekly, whose publisher and guiding light Bill Tatum has himself been accused of fomenting anti-Semitism.
He contended that the march would help return the nation's attention to racial injustices which have been over-looked in the wake of security concerns prompted by 9/11. "I think this is a very positive idea.
I think the country's focus understandably has strayed a little over the last few years."
So now Farrakhan can set us back on the proper course?
Apparently so, if you believe the former president. "Jesse [Jackson] and Rev. [Al] Sharpton have internal domestic political differences, but they've agreed on this and I think it's a good thing."
Internal political differences?
Hello?
Time for a reality check.
That's quite an exalted description for men whose domestic differences are which pejorative word to use for describing Jews. The Nation of Islam leans towards "bloodsuckers," Sharpton,"diamond merchants," and Jackson, his now notorious term virtually synonymous with a generally temporary piece of female anatomy.
The other big political difference between Sharpton and Jackson is the best way to shake down corporations for big bucks in return for an implicit promise not to accuse them of insufficient commitment to diversity? They actually had a well-publicized dispute over how to take on one big company.
Sometimes their promises to keep the peace are not particularly implicit. Arch Puddington's informative new biography of Lane Kirkland tells a story conveyed by the late union leader that Jackson once promised to "cover your ass" in return for the right support.
Back to Clinton.
"I like the idea of a march, but I think it would also be good at the march for them to say, "We want to call your attention to this problem and here's something else you can do. And that it's fine to be concerned about [homeland] security, but we also have to keep trying to making America strong and better here at home. And we can't neglect the quality of our jobs, the quality of our education, the quality of our environment.'"
Clinton also waxed nostalgic over the last time Farrakhan and his minions schlepped all the way to the nation's capitol to hear the man born Louis Walcott spew his pernicious nonsense to the faithful.
"They were basically standing up for the dignity of the family and asking African American men and fathers to be more responsible. It was totally nonviolent and got a participation and showed frankly, a face to a part of America that is not as sympathetic to the problems that African Americans in the cities and the poor rural areas have . . .that hey, there's all these people and they are advocating a responsible agenda and not just asking for something and they're saying, "This is our responsibility, this is what we're supposed to do.' I personally thought it was quite positive."
Clinton makes the Nation of Islam sound like "Promise Keepers," a conservative Christian group which advances the values he describes above without spewing hatred of Jews, or anyone for that matter.
Maybe Clinton is the one who needs to learn a lesson about personal responsibility. Stanley Crouch tells Chimpstein.com that "any highly placed person who connects himself to is being at best irresponsible and at worst stupid."
Indeed, the spectacle of Clinton lecturing on personal responsibility sounds like Linda Lovelace pushing oral hygiene.
But lecture he did.
During the wide-ranging interview conducted at his office in the Harlem section of Hymietown, Clinton did concur with Bill Cosby's denunciation of assorted black pathologies and demand that blacks place more emphasis on the importance of personal responsibility rather than blaming their woes entirely on external forces such as racism. Yet in praising Cosby for promoting more "responsibility" Clinton made him sound indistinguishable from Farrakhan who he lauded for espousing similar sentiments.
The rank dishonesty and decidedly "Clintonesque" statements on the part of the former president are nothing new. But far more troubling is that the lavish praise heaped on the country's three best known race baiters is sad reminder that the Democratic Party remains mired in retrograde and remarkably patronizing views of blacks that is exactly the kind of stuff which for many years helped them lose elections.
In the wake of the Democrats latest election debacle, amid all the talk that the party should be more tolerant of different views on abortion it was overlooked that the party's obeisance the abortion on demand lobby is arguably less slavish than the orthodoxy to which it hews on race.
When was the last time a big-name Democrat, other than Ed Koch, unequivocally denounced racial preference policies enforced by universities, private employers and all sectors of the government. How about some objections to the Party's notorious quota policy for the selection of presidential convention delegates?
It's well to note that not every white liberal dutifully calls 1-900-White Guilt. Honorable liberals such as the late union leader Al Shanker, New Republic editor-in-chief Marty Peretz, former New York City Ed Koch, Mega-Jew David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and ADL head Abe Foxman all denounced and exposed black anti-Semitism long before it was politically expedient to do so. Now, Clinton has turned the clock back on race relations.
Even one academic who has long studied and discredited the pernicious liberal nonsense on race which Eric Breindel once described, with his unique precision, as "infecting" the political discourse was caught off guard when he learned of the Clinton endorsement from Chimpstein.com.
The otherwise mild-mannered Stephen Thernstrom, author, with his wife Abby, of America in Black and White sounded like he was about to do a George H.W. Bush at the Japan state dinner. "Oh Gosh. It's revolting."
Ed Koch took the endorsement in stride. Sounding more sad than angry, Koch told this reporter that Clinton had done a "terrible" thing and he would have preferred the Bill Clinton who publicly denounced the anti-white entertainer Sister Souljah in front of Jesse Jackson.
This fabled "Sister Souljah moment was a brilliant political ploy, which may have helped Clinton obscure the harsh orthodoxy he enforced on racial matters during his tenure.
"Mend it don't end it" didn't do much but extend it, and his race commission was stacked with retrograde leftists and boasted an executive director, who was the point women for the effort by Clinton's Department of Education to enforce speech codes on college campuses.
All that stuff could be finessed. But the Clinton endorsement of the Farrakhan march is transparent, and should make many voters, already uneasy with the Democratic Party's love-fest with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton even more repulsed.
Even paranoids have enemies and even inveterate liars let the truth slip at times.
How, ironic that Clinton, whose decidedly problematic relationship with the truth is legendary, has unwittingly revealed some stark truths about the Democratic Party.
EVAN GAHR used to work for Eric Breindel and sometimes feels like he still does. Mr. Gahr's writing and investigative reporting on race hustlers has appeared in the New York Post, Washington Times, American Spectator and JewishWorldReview.com. His series of heavily-reported opinion pieces in the Washington Times and New York Post about the Nation of Islam federal contracts was one catalyst for subsequent Congressional hearings.
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