Nasty

Sometimes I read old articles from the National Review and I think, where did that spirit of frank, open racism go? Why must John Derbyshire be restrained by political correctness when he "wraps his silk dressing gown tightly about his withered frame and totters onto the balcony to address the Negro Question"? But along comes sweet, sweet Lisa "Clinton really was running drugs through Mena AK" Schffrin to pour some sugar on me. She's got that old-time religion, friends. I wanted to excerpt but it was too good:

Until I came across this article by Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, which I regard as factual — with all that that implies [????] — the questions about Obama's background that should have come naturally never quite rose to the surface of my mind. Barack Obama is the new man, of course. His mixed race is a symbol of that. Just like Tiger Woods — as we have read, endlessly. What's to wonder about?

But maybe it's not so simple. Obama and I are roughly the same age. I grew up in liberal circles in New York City — a place to which people who wished to rebel against their upbringings had gravitated for generations. And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League. Or maybe a different arm of the CPUSA. But, for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics. (During the Clinton Administration we were all introduced to then U. of Pennsylvania Professor Lani Guinier — also a half black/half Jewish, red diaper baby.)

I don't know how Barak Obama's parents met. But the Kincaid article referenced above makes a very convincing case that Obama's family, later, (mid 1970s) in Hawaii, had close relations with a known black Communist intellectual. And, according to what Obama wrote in his first autobiography, the man in question — Frank Marshall Davis — appears to have been Barack's own mentor, and even a father figure. Of course, since the Soviet Union itself no longer exists, it's an open question what it means practically to have been politically mentored by an official Communist. Ideologically, the implications are clearer.

Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama's mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student. Love? Sure, why not? But what else was going on around them that made it feasible? Before readers level cheap accusations of racism — let's recall that the very question of interracial marriage only became a big issue later in the 1960s. The notion of a large group of mixed race Americans became an issue during and after the Vietnam War. Even the civil-rights movement kept this culturally explosive matter at arm's distance.

It was, of course, an explicit tactic of the Communist party to stir up discontent among American blacks, with an eye toward using them as the leading edge of the revolution. To be sure, there was much to be discontented about, for black Americans, prior to the civil-rights revolution. To their credit, of course, most black Americans didn't buy the commie line — and showed more faith in the possibilities of democratic change than in radical politics, and the results on display in Moscow.

Time for some investigative journalism about the Obama family's background, now that his chances of being president have increased so much.

The truly beautiful thing about this is that it incoherently wavers between two poles of repulsive slander: is it Communist Negroes having sex with our white women? Or are Communist Jewesses subverting black Americans who, patriotic though modestly ill-treated, would have been able to resist had the party not offered them the tempting fruits of miscegenation? Whatever it is I imagine it's music to WFB's ears. His trembling hand hoists a generous 7:30am brandy and milk to you, Lisa!

Comments

[Rich Puchalsky]

One thing about those old-time racists like Lisa (or new-time, whatever): they're generous about giving us Jews a race of our very own, as in "half black/half Jewish". No more of this pretending to be a religion or a cultural background or whatever; their world is divided into white / black / brown / yellow / red / Jew. Well, you can see that she tries to make us honorary whites, but it doesn't really hold up.

[Katherine]

I don't know how Barak Obama's parents met.

But let's not let that get in the way of wild speculation!

[ajay]

...interracial marriage only became a big issue later in the 1960s. The notion of a large group of mixed race Americans became an issue during and after the Vietnam War. Even the civil-rights movement kept this culturally explosive matter at arm's distance. It was, of course, an explicit tactic of the Communist party to stir up discontent among American blacks...

So, wait - she's saying that Barack Obama's very existence is part of a Communist plot to overthrow the US by creating a vast mob of exploding mixed-race babies? A plot which may now finally be coming to fruition with the approach of Barack Obama, the Manchuriolatto Candidate, to the White House?

Holy Toledo!

[Dan Hardie]

I fear that Barack Obama's parents were prematurely anti-racist.

[Kenny Easwaran]

"the very question of interracial marriage only became a big issue later in the 1960s" - what exactly is that supposed to mean? That interracial couples everywhere got married just fine all the way up to 1963, until everyone noticed the laws on the books banning it? Or is it that there were no interracial couples until the later 1960s, except for communist plots to hurt the purity of our precious bodily fluids?

[Hogan]

I grew up in liberal circles in New York City

Which, as everyone knows, has a political milieu exactly like Hawaii's.

[fred lapides]

why does this stupid crap get published and the writer paid for this garbage?

I have a son married to a Korean woman and another married to a black/american indian woman,and I find crap like this very offensive.

["Q" the Enchanter]

"Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama's mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student."

Not a very narrowly-tailored strategy, if you ask me. Plus, how did we get a hold of the time machine?

[Helen]

Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama's mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student.

In MY day [pouring an 8:30 gin and tonic with trembling hand, drawing my silk dressinggown tighter], when the phrase PC wasn't yet invented, we used to have a concept called None of Your Bloody Business, girlie.

[Adam Rice]

I hope that this line of attack gets tied in a sack and drowned along with the "Obama is a Muslim" canard and all the other kittens of fearmongering.

But if it is not, I hope that "Manchuriolatto Candidate" becomes the go-to put-down for it. Well played, sir.

[Saheli]

I don't know how Barak Obama's parents met.

Yeah, b/c God knows he didn't write a WHOLE FUCKING LITERARY MEMOIR ON THE MATTER.

Belle, I think you've given me a premature aneurysm

[Scott]

(via Making Light)

Saheli... the idea that Lisa would read Barack Obama's memoire is pretty ridiculous. After all, it's ignorance that breeds hate, and if you willfully learn something, you lose some of your hate. And with your hate, your one true love in life.

As Yoda would say, if he were out of breath and needed to cut to the chase, "understanding leads to utility." Lisa cannot abide utility.

[dr.hypercube]

"with the approach of Barack Obama, the Manchuriolatto Candidate, to the White House?"

@ajay - don't forget the role played by that sleeper agent, Tiger Woods! Ah, the International Commie Misegenation strategy - nothing if not subtle. Now, where's my rainwater and everclear?

[Serge]

One thing about those old-time racists like Lisa (or new-time, whatever): they're generous about giving us Jews a race of our very own, as in "half black/half Jewish". No more of this pretending to be a religion or a cultural background or whatever; their world is divided into white / black / brown / yellow / red / Jew.

Well, in fairness: no, she isn't. She's remarking on Jews as a cultural group, whether as an ethnicity, group of friends, bowling team, or whatever.

Armenians, Greeks, and Swedes don't divide the world into white/black/brown/Armenian, etc., either. Yet they do sometimes allow as how they cohere as communities.

Lisa's taking a wild stab at describing a particular milieu she thinks she knows. It's a pretty piss poor stab. But it doesn't help to heap strawmen atop it.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Oh yeah, Serge, that's why we regularly see such descriptors as half Greek/half black, or half white/half Chinese, or half Episcopalian/half Indian. People just use any race, national background, ethnicity, or religion word that comes to mind and mix them up to describe people, and having Jewishness be a special category has nothing to do with it. It's like being on a bowling team!

According to someone in comments at the Poorman's (so it must be true) Lisa also wrote Quayle's Murphy Brown speech. Now that takes you back.

[phosphorious]

And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with. . .

"Some of my best friends are mixed-breed communist moles. . ."

[phosphorious]

And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with. . .

"Some of my best friends are mixed-breed communist moles. . ."

[Serge]

Oh yeah, Serge, that's why we regularly see such descriptors as half Greek/half black, or half white/half Chinese, or half Episcopalian/half Indian.

I don't know who this "we" is. The third example sounds, as you say, unusual -- you are describing one marriage partner with regard to their religion, and the other with regard to their ethnic/national communities. But what is odd about the first two examples, big, fat, or otherwise?

People just use any race, national background, ethnicity, or religion word that comes to mind and mix them up to describe people, and having Jewishness be a special category has nothing to do with it.

Not religion, no. Our Murphy Brown friend certainly wasn't interested in religious practice. But, this was about ethnic and national and racial communities, sure.

I'm not quite sure what you're asserting: that there is no Black community in the U.S.? No Jewish community? That we must more rigorously police the boundaries to ensure that communities organised around ethnicity and around race are not spoken of in the same breath?

It's like being on a bowling team!

Well, no, it's not. The cultural milieux that the Murphy Brown lady (!) was describing had to do with a community organised around ethnicity, on one hand, and race, on the other. Neither of those are like bowling teams. But, like bowling leagues -- well, okay, that was in jest; bowling leagues are rarely such totalising (sociologists: "institutionally complete") communities -- they are ways of organising communities.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

Huh. My SOuthern WASP mother, later married to my Arab father, went to jail during her senior year in a Virginia college for trying to integrate a lunch counter - first integrated sit-in in the South. This was Dec. 1960 & she served her sentence in Feb. 1961.

The local papers made much of the "discovery" that her lawyer and that of the other female student HAD REPRESENTED COMMUNISTS IN A MATTER IN FLORIDA. Also, my mother's friend was taking a course in Russian history or something and requested her textbooks be sent to jail. Among them was a copy of a book BY KARL MARX. The local newspaper put this on the front page.

My mother and her friend were horrified and frightened and even ashamed. They were not Communists by any means -they were Methodists who had learned at summer camp that Jesus wants the South to integrate.

A few months later, just after graduation, my mother married my father, an ARAB WITH A LAST NAME THAT SOUNDS ISLAMIC. (He was a Catholic but so what) My dad was never a Commie either but he did later befriend MORTON SOBEL, NOTED COMMIE SPY, while doing pro bono work in the Lewisburg penitentiary.

People often ask me how my parents came to meet. I always tell them about the Valentine's day mixer at my mother's college, in which international students from Virginia Tech mingled with the cream of the South.

Clearly I have the story wrong. Clearly it was that Communist connection. Clearly my late father was part of a secret cel I never knew about, looking to undermine OUR AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE. Because only Communists could have possibly accepted an Ay-rab with olive skin and a funny name marrying into a family of 350 years' residence in Virginia.

I dare Lisa Schiffrin to say her trash to Obama's face.

[p.a.]

Lisa completely fumbles the other blockbuster implication of her commentary; Tiger Woods may be a mixed-race communist agent seeking to weaken white *ahem* culture by a) dispiriting white golfers worldwide and b) encouraging multiculturalism in countryclub America by popularizing golf among minorities. We've already lost tennis, by God don't let golf be next!

[Dabney Braggart]

According to something I read while back, "politically correct" was first used in mockery of Stalinist aesthetic and cultural judgements...by Trotskyites.

Then again, given that some of them eventually became some of the neo-conservatives, it's not surprising that it entered right-wing discourse.

I'm fond of saying,

It might not be "politically correct" [airquotes] to say it, but I think we all know that married women shouldn't own property and black people should _be_ property.

Remind me not to do this around the irony-impaired.

[Dabney Braggart]

Incidentally, the mention of the Negro Question forces me to put in a good word for Stew and his group The Negro Problem and My Robot Friend:

http://www.stewsongs.com/

I was initially going to put this in because I had the impression that Stew was half-Black/half-Jewish, but I can't verify this...but "Rehab" (not the Amy Winehouse vehicle) and "Why Won't You Call Me Back" just rule regardless.

[sherifffruitfly]

LOL

Yah - black folks had no reason to be discontented - they needed the commies to stir them up.

Gotta love racists.

[Wayne]

LisaSchiffren.com

[Max Renn]

I don't know how Barak Obama's parents met.

But let's not let that get in the way of wild speculation!

Posted by: Katherine | February 21, 2008 at 12:52 AM

Why, it would be irresponsible NOT too