[Peace-discuss] Commentary from Rahul Mahajan

[David Green]

Weekly Commentary -- Hey, Hey, Ho Ho, Joe Biden's Got to Go   
Hey, Hey, Ho Ho – Joe Biden’s Got to Go

Say it ain’t so, Joe. Surely, even with a firmly established reputation as the man in Washington with the biggest disjunction between his perception of his intellect and his actual intellect, there is some limit to the idiocies that will issue from your mouth?

Surely you learned your lesson after plagiarizing a biographical passage from Neil Kinnock in your 1988 presidential campaign? Or from your nonsensical comment last year to Indian-American supporters that you need a slight Indian accent to shop at a convenience store in Delaware?

Apparently not. And, sadly, the only lesson you are likely to learn from your gaffe regarding Barack Obama is to be more careful in expressing the pearls of wisdom constantly being generated in your oyster-like head.

Instead, how about this lesson: withdraw from the presidential race and try shutting the hell up?

You are an embarrassment, even to a hard-to-embarrass Democratic Party, which boasts such luminaries as former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, whose great experience with corn has enabled him to divine that the Iraqis have a “culture of dependence,” or Hillary Clinton, who had a position on Iraq before she didn’t, and until recently was emphasizing that President Bush should clean up the mess before she takes office in 2009, because she doesn’t want to have to concern her beautiful mind with it.

Let me count the ways, starting with the comment about Obama. It is true that the audio was mis-transcribed – you said he was “the first mainstream African-American” (meaning presumably the first who is running for president) and then, separately, that he was “bright, clean, and articulate” – indeed, a “storybook.” You didn’t mean to suggest that other African-Americans don’t shower. Not exactly. And I’m sure you have respect for Obama – if only because he is incredibly good at making white people respect him.

But this doesn’t mean that your comments were anything but deeply racist. This is a difficult point to communicate – obviously, you’re no Trent Lott, pining for the days of segregation. In fact, the racism on display is more endemic to liberal white America and less specific to you.

All of us “people of color” who are capable of putting words together to make sentences – unlike you, Joe – have been called “articulate” so many times that it’s an inside joke between us. You expressed perfectly the still lingering incredulity of the typical white person that we can actually speak coherently.

At least when people express anti-Semitism by generalized praise for the abilities of Jews, they do it in superlative terms – brilliance, genius, ability to control the world. We get damned with faint praise. Yes, Joe, Obama is “bright” – about 10 times as bright as you and your sorry mess of colleagues in the Democratic presidential campaign. And, from Frederick Douglass to Malcolm X to Martin Luther King, even down to Jesse Jackson, when he ran for president in 1984 and 1988, few in American history have matched the eloquence of African-American political leaders.

“Mainstream,” of course, means “supported by white people.” I think everyone understood that.

As for “clean,” although the word surely wasn’t deliberate, it was no accident either. The “dirty n---,” the “dirty Arab,” are still hardly effaced from popular culture and mass consciousness in America.

But you said it aloud, and you should pay for it.

And what about the neglected rest of that New York Observer interview? You were dead on in your criticism of the still superficial and ignorant John Edwards and the radically equivocating Hillary Clinton.

But you have absolutely nothing to offer instead. On the Daily Show, you said that Ms. Clinton is wrong to suggest that we “cap and draw down” the very troops we need to exert leverage in Iraq – the correct position is to “withdraw” troops in order to exert leverage. Huh? As for your support along with Leslie Gelb of a faux partition plan – well, the Iraqis are doing that without your help, thanks very much. The ethnic cleansing and balkanization of Iraq needs no U.S. imprimatur.

Actually, you do have something to offer – the prospect of more occasions where you stick your foot in that mouth that is so sadly disconnected from anything resembling a brain. Or you could just do us all a favor and get the hell out now.


 
---------------------------------
Cheap Talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/private/peace-discuss/attachments/20070209/3908be49/attachment-0001.html