Saturday, October 17, 2009

Pandagon Watch: Raaaaacism Is Everywhere! Edition


Whenever someone I know expresses surprise at the bizarre naivete of the Left regarding Teh One, and the unbridled hatred the Left holds for anything conservative, I simply tell them to spend a few minutes at Pandagon and they'll learn all they need to know about the stupidity masquerading as political thought by leftwingers.

Granted, it's probably a little unfair to tarnish all liberal sites with the mouthbreathing Pandagonistas (take, for example, this site, with which I disagree quite a bit but tends to be less noxious than most feminist sites), but given the echo chambers easily found, I might be excused for assuming that all liberals (or at least a large number of them) are every bit as batshit crazy as the Pandagonistas.

Take the assumption that all Republicans are raaaaacists, and that good, upstanding people believe America isn't a fair and decent country. Not that this belief should be, in any way, construed as "hating America," because, as we all know, thinking your country is a terrible place is the height of patriotism, right up there with calling the president a liar and fantasizing about assassinating the POTUS.

Here's some slop from Amanda:

The only possible answer is that many Americans have opposed President Obama’s policies. But why would that cause African-Americans to think that our society is “discriminatory” rather than “decent”? No mystery there: in a well-coordinated campaign, the Democratic Party has relentlessly portrayed all disagreement with the Obama administration’s policies as “racist.” That contemptible and divisive tactic had seemed to produce no results, but we now see that it had one consequence: alienating African-Americans from their country.

The only theory he’ll accept is that there’s been a campaign to trick black people into assuming that there’s racism where there isn’t. And that they’d be so easily fooled. Not that what he’s saying doesn’t fall right in line with the usual conservative mythology that presents black voters as sheep that follow white liberal shepherds, because conservative literally cannot accept that black voters who vote for Democrats might do so because they want to. This assumption is 2 parts racism and 1 part unwilling to admit that the racism of Republican politics drives off black voters. But it’s 100% offensive, because the assumption is that black people are feeble, or they’d be able to see through the evil lies spun by the Liberal Mafia of Hollywood Elites.

The weird part about this argument--that Republicans are racist and think black people are gullible, voting for Democrats because they're "sheep"--is exactly the same argument liberals made back in 2004 with such scholarly works as What's the Matter with Kansas? Indeed, those voting for Republicans because they did not see themselves as victims were considered, well, gullible and stupid. Amanda's hypocrisy knows no bounds, of course, but it's still amazing to watch.

She buys quickly into the Sadly, No! idiocy, where a Tammy Bruce post titled Nobel Committee Announces Another Peace Prize Winner with a raccoon rifling through a Cracker Jack box, is raaaaacism.

Because, you know, it's a raccoon and that's short for coon which is a slur against black people. So, obviously, the headline ("Nobel Committee") doesn't really mean that the Nobel committee is the one sifting through a Cracker Jack box looking for a new peace prize winner. In that clever, clever skullduggery of the Right, the raccoon is President Obama, because, I guess, he's now a Norwegian on the Nobel Peace Prize committee. Or something.

And just to show how very subtle this raaaaacism is, many commenters to Amanda's post missed it until Amanda pointed it out. I mean, that's subtle, designed to infiltrate even the battle-hardened, racism-finding everywhere folks at Pandagon!

Of course, the opposite conclusion, that finding raaaaacism in a joke clearly not raaaaacist just emphasizes the raaaaacism of the left, is really just too subtle for these guys. Or that the reason black people might be thinking America isn't fair and decent has more to do with false raaaaacism charges from Democrat demogogues than actual racist statements and behavior. Nah. If we believe that Democrats are just using stupid raaaaacism charges to tar their political opponents, that would be impugning their motivations. Because, you know, only white Kansans can be "gullible."