Liberals who love to hate
Anti-racists are the best allies hate groups ever had
Recent days have brought two examples of liberals propping up the specter of racist bogeymen where none actually loom.
EXAMPLE ONE: An hysterical 2/25 Buzzfeed essay written by Andrew Kaczynski: "David Duke Urges His Supporters To Volunteer and Vote For Trump."
This is not the first time the all-around odiferous and bottom-feeding Duke has pathetically scrambled for media gaze by attempting to associate himself with world-class legend Trump. Trump has publicly renounced the support of Duke, and all PACs. But liberal voices like Buzzfeed rush to promote that poverty row-hate profiteer's every asinine utterance.
Again, Trump properly distances himself from right-wing haters, whose advocacy he never requested. It is the click-baiting, liberal press, pretending at racial scrupulousness, that keeps hate groups on life support.
(I have wished that Trump would be more forceful in his denunciations. But I see the argument that further addressing unsolicited paeans would put the subject 'on the table,' and encourage greater attention and conversation. None of which was ever initiated by the candidate, and which would distract from his own messages.)
EXAMPLE TWO: A photo of two hooded "KKK" protesters has gone viral. The pair wave signs outside a Las Vegas Trump event:
But -- a Klansman with a black hand? That didn't give pause to the breathlessly galloping, anti-Trump online crusaders?
The other's placard notes the "New England Police Benevolent Association," which did endorse Trump some time back. Didn't credulous sorts wonder even for one moment why "KKK" protesters in Las Vegas would concern themselves with a New England police organization?
(A spokesman for the Benevolent group stressed to reporters that they were not in any way associated with the alleged "KKK" members. He speculated it might be an attempt to smear policemen and the Trump campaign in one swipe. Perhaps some personal grievance against the New England organization, itself, also figured in.)
In September, 2015, Democrats protesting Trump also donned Klan drag:
Understand this: By promoting rightly marginal haters like Duke, and fraudulently dressing up as the "KKK" out of political and anti-police motives, liberals are giving undue life spark and prominence to a sentiment they profess to abhor.
The good news is that in 2016, hate groups are few. Why ever would their claimed opponents strive to perpetuate them?
Easy: Power.
Media offer glimpses of bias, bigotry
A 2/24 Josh Feldman Mediaite item bore the banner, "Donald Trump embraces his demo: 'I love the poorly-educated!'"
Those who'd heard the full Trump quote, from the speech he'd given following his previous night's landslide victory in the Nevada caucus, knew that headline to be a scissored scrap of the candidate's actual words. And that calculated deceptiveness, worthy of Ted "Voter Violation" Cruz, played into the general media line that voters supporting Trump could properly be dismissed.
Feldman did include the entire quote in the piece, so the headline's intended misleading would be most effective for casual news browsers merely scanning headlines and prejudiced against Trump. Of which there may be many.
"We won with highly educated, we won with poorly educated," Trump had actually told post-caucus victory party goers. "I love the poorly educated! We're the smartest people! We're the most loyal people!"
The counterfeit tactic of headlining a misrepresentingly clipped version of Trump's words, that readers might be deceitfully counseled, was also effected in a 2/24 Quartz website post. "'I love the poorly educated' -- read Donald Trump's full Nevada victory speech."
Like Feldman/Mediaite, Quartz did offer readers the unexpurgated quote. But it artfully contrived to fool with its stunt headline. Only by clicking past the fake tease and viewing the article itself could unwitting readers learn the context, the honest nature.
Mediaite and Quartz weren't alone in this dirty business. CNN, for instance, razored "I love the poorly educated" from the entire quote. The network used that calculated slice as the misleading headline above a video clip of the fuller event.
Other outlets leveraging the "poorly educated" angle included NBC, Yahoo, USA Today, the Washington Post, Gawker, Raw Story, Vox, Salon, and Esquire.
All of which recalls Trump's once castigating reporters as 'taking a half-sentence from here, and a quarter sentence from there' to wrongly convince readers.
The line that Trump voters are of a lesser intellectual class, and that that is just cause to dismiss them, is one much beloved by snooty establishment commentators. And for a time, 'Trump has elementary-grade vocabulary' essays were the rage.
Pompous pontificators' eager employ of the 'Trump backers our inferiors' slur evidences an educational elitism no less despicable than racial bigotry. And it betrays in-the-marrow disdain for the democratic ideal of equality.
Will such finger-wagging brayers of intolerance next propose literacy tests?
Americans of all educational levels, to paraphrase Capra, do the living and dying in this nation. And we have no less right than any of our fellows to help chart government's course.
We heal the ill, and we mop the floors. We fix the televisions, and we design the technology. We build the homes, and we drive the buses.
We are police, teachers, firemen, store clerks, farm workers, mechanics, pilots, waiters, and a million other real-world citizen types.
Electoral participation and the holding of opinions about our country are and should be equally open to all citizens -- regardless of which status they might hold or demographic group they might represent.
To suggest otherwise, to imply that a candidacy or popular movement is necessarily of less legitimacy because of educational or any other concern, is flatly anti-democratic.
It might seem a fetching notion, in a strange and terrible land made up only of identity-obsessed campuses, talcum-powdered editorial boardrooms, and sour-charactered political careerists. But America is not such a land.
Fund the power
Spike Lee's 1989 film, "Do the Right Thing," was satirized in a sketch on the 80s show, In Living Color.
In that sketch, an entrepreneur was shown exploiting icons for commercial gain. One purported product was a "Malcolm Ex-Lax Dispenser."
Filmmaker Lee popped up before reporters at the time, decrying light use of touchstones.
Times, and Lee, have changed.
According to recent news accounts, a new Bernie Sanders radio commercial features Lee promising that, "When Bernie gets to the White House, he will Do the Right Thing!"
This time, the revolution will be monetized.
Why second in Iowa could be best news for Trump
Donald Trump's second place finish in the Iowa caucuses is generally considered bad news by mainstream pundits (the majority of whom have for months been attacking him, and surely crossing fingers, wishing for his ruin).
A dispiriting outcome likely to enervate his supporters in subsequent states, they grin. But entirely the opposite may unfold.
Consider: First-place in Iowa would have put Trump in pundits' crosshairs more than ever. Already jeered by establishment media and philosophically calcified career political sorts as merely an over-the-top, boastful entertainer, he would become the target of still-greater scorn. Hopes for his fall would be even more pronounced.
His numerous opponents for the GOP nomination would likely focus intensified assaults on him, requiring him to devote precious time to substantive responses.
Besides, it is hard for rank-and-file onlookers to pull for someone who's already in the winners circle.
But, given Trump's second-place Iowa end, he is now positioned as an underdog. And his story has become the heroic one of a people's champion striving against a larger and established foe to come from behind.
Surely, that will fire his supporters in New Hampshire and beyond with renewed determination, energies, and sense of historic purpose. That's how long-term triumphs are germinated.
Besides, think in practical terms: In the Iowa caucus, Trump garnered 7 delegates to the eight won by Cruz.
A difference of only one. Hardly significant.
Roger Stone, dumb out loud
Following his very narrow (four points) second place Iowa finish, Donald Trump was both gracious and appreciative of the hard work of his Hawkeye State supporters.
"My experience in Iowa was a great one," he tweeted, the day after. "I started out with all of the experts saying I couldn't do well there and ended up in second place. Nice."
Also, the same day: "I will be talking about my wonderful experience in Iowa and the simultaneous unfair treatment by the media - later in New Hampshire. Big crowd."
But the class demonstrated by Trump was not shown by former Trump advisor, now ubiquitous cable news irritant Roger Stone.
"Iowa hicks choose wrong, consistent with their history," was how Stone tweet-slurred Iowa voters once caucus results had been tallied.
Let's now cast our gaze backward.
In August 2015, the Trump campaign had announced its firing of Stone:
"Mr. Trump fired Roger Stone last night. We have a tremendously successful campaign and Roger wanted to use the campaign for his own personal publicity," a statement read.
(Stone maintained that it was he who had chosen to sever relations. But his recent promoting on Trump's Twitter feed of a show the dispatched advisor hopes to launch is in keeping with the campaign's complaint that Stone was exploiting Trump for personal publicity.)
Roger Stone does have a fetid history of half-witted smears, stereotypical brickbats, and imbecilic observations, only a few of which I'll detail, here.
A 10/12/2011 essay Stone penned for his Stone Zone site, "Hicks in Iowa shouldn't pick next president," decried the state's ethnic homogeneity. "I don't know why we should abrogate our right to choose the next president to a bunch of hayseeds because of some quaint notion that 'they should be first,'" he sneered.
That would conflict resoundingly with Trump's recent assurances to Iowa crowds that, as president, he would ensure the state retained first-in-the-nation status.
Also among Stone's 2011 complaints: Iowans are "stout and a lot of them smoke;" Iowa restaurant food is "awful" ("one cannot possibly find edible linguine in white clam sauce," Stone sniffed, perhaps holding a pinky in the air); and the state's hoteliers jack up room charges for "them Jew-boy reporters from New York."
That last inference of nasty antisemitic attitude was, of course, not attributed to any actual Iowan. It sprang instead from Stone's own distasteful fancying. Make of that what you will. It is what passes for wit in the ugly world of Roger Stone's brain.
(The prejudice Stone expresses -- against average Americans/Iowans and for upscale, metropolitan sensibilities reminds forcefully of the Clinton/Sanders liberal bias against traditionalism and in favor of a sissified progressivism that reviles the established and common.)
Now, all that having been said, here's a point worth remark: Roger Stone has a considerable background in national political campaigns. And he might in some circumstances be an effective operative.
I recall that Trump often tells crowds he would, as president, draw on the talents of acquaintances "some of whom are nice people, others are nasty people you wouldn't want to have dinner with."
Roger Stone - table for one.
