He's ba-ack
I remember back during the cmapaign that every time Dean made a "gaffe" all I could think was "but he's completely right." And he pretty much alwasy was. So now he's back, making fun of conservatives and their token people of color, and the conservatives are getting all huffy. Except, you know the honest ones.
Bless that man.
Bless that man.
4 Comments:
Yeah, I definitely would have laughed out loud if I were in the room when he made this crack. (We should have Dean and DeLay do a traveling comedy show!)
But, there's no denying that it is a slightly racist joke, in that Dean is essentially insinuating that not only are Republicans racists (ugh...that old canard), but that black people are always bellhops. I can only imagine the screaming headlines if a man who happens to be a Republican made such a correlation.
Anyway, I would hardly label black conservatives token. I think they're some of the bravest political voices out there, as they have made a conscious decision to reject the pack mentality and block voting that afflicts many black democratic groups and have instead struck out on their own to champion and form their own "counter-establishment" beliefs.
That said, tokenism *is* a problem in the GOP machinery (watch those godawful conventions sometime), but really, what else can they do? A vicious combination of vicious Democratic/Left stereotypes and the party's own Southward hinterlands have made tokenism the only recourse for at least another political generation.
Tokenism is the only recourse for the party in control of the whole government? Man, you'd think they could get some good policies together and, you know, stop being racists, and get the minorities that way.
That said, context is everything. Dean was implying that black people tend to be busboys and waiters at Washington functions and... guess what, He's Right! I remember seeing all those photos from the GOP conventions in NYC with lots of old white folks being served by almosty entirely minority staff. the thing is that when Dean says it its to point out a problem, not blame the minorities, or to laugh AT them.
Perhaps my reaction was too labored and in-the-box...
NationalReview's Ramesh Ponnuru says this...
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/05_02_13_corner-archive.asp#056397
(Good point about being in control/tokenism. Perhaps tokenism's true crime is that it reflects a complete lack of imagination.)
There is one element of the GOP that is unabashedly diverse: the social con wing, curiously enough.
If we look through the prism of religion, the social cons have acheived some amazing, cross-faith progress. Seriously.
Historically speaking, the fact that the Party's social con wings is uniting Southern Baptists, Episcopalians, and Methodists with Upper and Lower Midwest Protestants, Italian, Irish, and Polish Catholics, and now, a large segment of SW and Western Hispanic Catholics is rather amazing.
Post a Comment
<< Home