I’m reluctant to encourage readers of this column to watch cable television clips, because cable television treats politics as a profit source, rather than a civic institution with profound moral consequences.
Nonetheless, I want you guys to please take a few minutes to watch this, if you haven’t already.
It’s the first time in a long while that I’ve seen a television personality confront a political operative in such blunt terms at the level of his sin.
You can tell how unprecedented this event is because of how nervous the other talking heads are. They keep telling Matthews to calm down, to watch his tone. They treat him as if he’s gone crazy. Because, of course, the expression of genuine moral distress has no place on a polite corporate-sponsored television set. The whole point is to sell gourmet coffee, pal, not to save the world.
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But what Chris Matthews is saying, right there on the teevee, is more crucial to understanding this election than the joyless spasm of propaganda that just concluded in Tampa.
The Republican Party, saddled with a stiff, elitist candidate, unable to run on its wildly unpopular policy ideas, and unwilling even to pretend that it cares about the concerns of minority voters, has gone racist.
They’ve crunched the numbers and concluded that the only way to win in November is to drive up the white turnout. And that the best way to do this is to remind white voters that Obama is not white, and that deep down he means to rip them off because that, after all, is what blacks folks do to white people.
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This helps explain a fact that any sensible political observer should find profoundly mysterious: why Romney’s central line of attack to date has been to assert that Obama dropped the work requirement from welfare.
To begin with, why pursue a claim that has been so widely debunked? But even more curiously: why focus on an obscure issue like welfare reform? Why not attack the sitting president on his jobs record? Or the national debt? Or any of the other issues that American voters say they care about?
The answer, of course, is that Romney doesn’t really want to campaign about “a positive vision for the future” as his doe-eyed veep keeps repeating on the stump. He wants a campaign that will make white voters insecure and angry enough to come out in droves.
This is why the Romney welfare ads have been carefully stocked with hard-working, frustrated-looking Caucasians. The embedded message is simple: Obama is going to take your hard-earned tax dollars and give it to a bunch of his shiftless black pals.
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Asked about these bogus welfare claims by USA Today, Romney asserted their veracity while offering no facts to substantiate them. It does not appear to have occurred to anyone at USA Today that they might fact check the matter.
Instead, the paper allowed Romney to suggest that Obama had stripped the work requirement from welfare, which he didn’t do, in an attempt to “shore up his base” for the election. Because, see, the president’s base is welfare recipients. Or, as they are commonly known, black folk.
USA Today: an awesome newspaper, and not at all a dumb tool of propaganda!
The president of the Republican super PAC American Crossroads, Steven Law, put it like this: “You can tell [the ads] are landing punches.”
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Lee Atwater, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, interviewed by the author Alexander Lamis back in 1981, put it like this:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
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I’m not sure I have to mention that Mitt Romney is the first candidate ever to register zero percent of the African-American vote.
And yet, there is this profound expression of his soul.
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I’m making a joke, but only because I find all this so heartbreaking. The Republican Party, after all, was founded by anti-slavery activists. It is the party of Lincoln, the party of the Emancipation Proclamation, the party that saw the Union through the Civil War and fought (though not hard enough) for Reconstruction. The founding ideology of the G.O.P. was “free labor, free land, free men.” Its members opposed not just the moral atrocity of slavery, but the notion that plantation owners should be allowed to usurp the best land and leave independent farmers with the dregs.
The party was founded, in other words, on egalitarian principles.
By the dawn of the last century, the G.O.P. had transformed into the party of business, which is a code word for profit. It drove off reformers such as Teddy Roosevelt, and encouraged the financial speculation boom that led to the Wall Street Crash, and the Great Depression.
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In the second half of the 20th century, Republicans managed to recapture their mojo not by offering a unified vision of the country, but by adopting a strategy to divide the country along racial and economic lines. Richard Nixon was the first candidate to exploit the resentment Southern whites felt at the Civil Rights Movement. He did so using the coded language Atwater notes above.
It has since become a staple of the GOP playbook, from Ronald Reagan’s references to mythical welfare queens to George H.W. Bush’s use of the ominous Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis. Racial incitement has migrated into the media ecosystem via the leering innuendo of Fox News coverage, which specializes in ginned up stories of white victimization, from the New Black Panthers to Shirley Sherrod to Obama’s death panels.
The goal isn’t just to rile white voters up, but to make them feel that their own racist impulses are merely reasonable responses to a culture stacked against them.
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The most despicable and concerted byproduct of this mindset is the effort, launched over the past few years by Republican state legislators, to disenfranchise poor and minority voters. Using fake claims of voter fraud, they have passed laws expressly designed to make it harder for such populations to cast a ballot.
Given the history of this country—the fact that women were granted suffrage less than a century ago, and that minorities were routinely deprived of the right to vote fifty years ago—it is astonishing that our Fourth Estate has been so quiet in the face of this moral regression.
And that we, the people, have been so meek.
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The sad truth is that for most of us, “politics” is just something we watch on television, a thing to grumble about, to absorb our personal failings and anxieties.
Most of us won’t even see the worst of the racist garbage that Romney will need to get himself elected. It will be aimed squarely at the enclaves of white voters in the swing states he needs to find his 270 electoral votes. Thanks to Citizens United, you can be sure the pitches will be slickly produced and lavishly funded. No one will say the word “lazy” or the word “nigger.” You’ll just hear about “entitlements” and “government spending” and “welfare.”
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Which brings us back to Chris Matthews and his outburst of conscience. What makes the clip so revelatory is the very real sense of anguish amid the “political experts” flanking Matthews. They’ve become so acquiescent to the GOP’s coded race-baiting tactics that hearing them called out feels scandalous, forbidden. Their panic is that of journalistic quislings forced, at last, to face the depth of their collusion.
As for Reince Priebus, the current chair of the RNC, he is no Lee Atwater. Atwater at least had the guts to tell the truth.
Priebus can only muster the petulant self-pity of a guilty man. He knows the jig’s up, that the monstrous cynicism of his party has led to these ploys. He knows that he’s stuck with a dud candidate and a platform that, if honestly expressed, would appeal to one percent of the American people. He knows that this strategy is nearing its end, that white Americans will soon lose their place as the dominant and unquestioned majority in this country, and become just another electoral faction.
But Priebus also knows that this is just television, just another segment on another morning show. The idea in politics is to win, not to be honest or fair or even far-sighted. So he sits there and he takes it.
He’s got a billion dollars in the bank.
He’ll have his say.
30 responses
I sent that Chris Matthews clip around to a few friends the other day, because it was such a comfort to see someone publicly reacting to all of this madness in a real, true way. It’s like his subtext is “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills”, and honestly, I feel like that every morning while reading the news of the day. How much worse is it going to get?
I think the things Mathew said needed to be said, but I always feel that he has a problem with letting his opponents rebuttal. Of course he knows he’ll be able to denounce whatever claims they tout, but if he doesn’t give them a chance to finish a thought, it starts to look like he’s bullying them. It starts to look less like a debate and more like a shouting match (and Mathews will always win a shouting match). I think this would have been more effective if he let Priebus talk, and then ripped him a new asshole from there. Because he didn’t, it kind of gave Priebus an out. Priebus wasn’t really forced to explain himself or his party because Mathews wouldn’t let him. That’s what I’d like to see. I don’t want to see him squirm because he feels intimidated by shouting, I want to see him squirm because he can’t defend his and his party’s actions/ideas.
Every democracy is at risk of being afflicted with the cancer of demagoguery by the elite.
What makes the modern GOP so metastatic is the the vast number of people on the payroll of the demagogue industry that services the party.
These political mercenaries cover their naked hypocrisy with varying degrees of success, but no matter how immoral it may be to sell a bunch of lies and hateful vitriol, to them it’s just all in a day’s work.
Steve Almond is rapidly becoming a hero of mine because of his political commentary. I love that he uses the word “quislings” in this essay, which I had to look up, to find out that it means “a traitor who serves as the puppet of the enemy occupying his or her country”. Way to go, Steve Almond. We need your voice!
At least Atwater repented as his brain tumor was in the process of killing him. As a believer he feared the necessity of meeting his maker, and the believers hold repentance high.
Finally, someone is being honest and telling it like it is. I have long felt that racism is behind much of the dislike of Obama on the right, and frankly, it’s sickening. I’m grateful that Chris Matthews had the cojones to call someone on it.
Look. I don’t need Mr. Almond, or any other person–white or black–to tell me who is a racist, and who is not. I’ve had 47 years as a black man, and getting my ass kicked to be able to know for myself. Democrats have been playing the “Republican Hate” game for a very long time. Mr. Almond needs more practice at it.
Here we go again, claiming the republicans are race baiters while we open the 60’s file and toss in a few N-bombs. Who’s baiting the races here, Romney or you? At best, it’s disingenuous to suggest that every conservative wants to go back to the days before the civil rights movement. At worst, it’s hate mongering of a different kind. In your world, people of color never behave badly, only evil rich white people do. Oh, except rich, white Hollywood liberals; they’re cool, even if they keep all their money and probably invest a good deal of it on Wall Street. At least they pretend to like black folks – heck they even let them play the judge and the police lieutenant in all their movies.
Where are the pictures of Reginald Denny? You remember him, the white, elitist rich dude who was dragged from his Bentley, oh wait; he was a truck driver, brutally beaten and left for dead while oppressed gang members laughed and danced around him, posing for the cameras and spitting on his body. Did you read this story? – http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-06-02/news/27065932_1_investigator-trafficking-prostitution
It’s a story of greed you will never discuss in this series. $500 a day or you get beaten, nice. It’s from 2010, well within the term of our current president and long before the election. I suppose the Blood-member pimps were fighting back against Dubya’s policies or perhaps were channeling their anger at Bain Capital. Are you kidding me with this? You don’t even back up any of your assertions with facts, just hyperbole. You say Romney’s policies are “wildly unpopular” but never say with whom or how you arrive at the claim. You say his policies if honestly expressed, would only be popular with one percent of Americans, and again, present no facts to back that up. You can actually speak for 99% of Americans? Jesus Christ, that’s quite an accomplishment (oops – sorry Mitt).
You’re right, no one will say the ‘N’ word, because it’s another assumption of yours, backed up by one 30-year-old article, apparently though, it’s OK for you to toss it around, wantonly. You’re like a kid who knows he can’t curse, so he says, “Mommy, guess what, today at school, Billy said ‘shit’ in class. I know you don’t want me to say ‘shit’ ’cause it’s a bad word, but Billy said, ‘shit,’ not me.”
I actually don’t like republicans any more than you do, well maybe slightly more – I’m more of a libertarian, Ron Paul type. Republicans aren’t true conservatives as they claim. They lie, there’s no doubt, but so do democrats. They all suck. But that aside, the reason Romney will get no black votes is because of articles like this which seek to show all white people as hateful and vicious. It’s so predictable that you would whip out the German shepherd pics for this post. You have no scorn. Nobody wants a return to that except for a few gap-toothed hillbilly klan members. Although, a few shepherds may have saved Mr Denny a horrific beating – oh but that probably didn’t happen anyway. It’s probably some doctored footage clipped together by Fox news.
You know, I don’t disagree with everything you say here, and it was fun to watch Matthews spitting, but politics is cynical on both sides. My main reason for bothering to write this is that I believe it’s a disgrace that you would use this forum to foster more enmity, to re-open old wounds and blithely suggest that all white people want to see people of color dragged down the street by police dogs. It’s simply not true. It’s flagrant hate-mongering. It’s divisive, and insightful of violence.
Am I crazy to want to live in a country where this isn’t a topic of discussion? Is your only argument the same boring, “Run, they hate black people” divisiveness? When does it end? Yes, yes, yes, there are white people in this country who don’t like and some who hate black people. It’s a shame, and sad really; there’s no need for that, but when Chris Rock says black people hate white people, that’s considered funny, edgey, hip, urbane, justified. It’s all the same. It’s hatred. I have a 9 yr old son whom we adopted from Vietnam. He’s rather on the dark-skinned side and wholly beautiful, sweet, charming and caring. Do you think I don’t lose sleep worrying about him being bullied? Well, you’d be wrong, again. I don’t preach hatred and neither should you, but I do defend your right to express your opinion. I just think you should be more responsible in the way you do it. Yes, no doubt, someone will write that I’m deaf to coded messages from the RNC and some shrink will apologize for violent gang behavior… and blah, blah, friggin’ blah.
Jeez are the Olympics over already? Where’s the brotherhood and sentimental videos? I miss it badly. And btw, on that note, my family cheered just as loudly for our black athletes as we did our white ones, maybe even more so, because I was damn proud of Allyson Felix and the other women of that relay team. They brought me to my feet with teary-eyed excitement and I was very, very proud to be an American then, but today, reading this? Eh, not so much. Every athlete there was proud to compete for America. This is their country too, don’t try and take it from them by making them feel they don’t belong. Racism exists, but this doesn’t help.
I enjoy these pieces because they are written well and I get to learn the true feelings of a far left liberal. I would love to see what your facial expression will be when Romney wins in a historic landslide. “Entitlementsâ€, “Government Spending†and “Welfare” is not talking about black people. It’s talking about our country going broke with trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars in debt, and America needing to cut back in order to survive in the long-run. But anyone who thinks that is obviously a racist. You should listen to Condi Rice’s convention speech about rising aboving race to accomplish whatever your desires are in life. That’s what America is all about.
Joe, clearly you’re upset. I don’t think Steve was accusing you, personally, of racism. I don’t think he is accusing all conservatives of racism. He is simply talking about the political strategies of the GOP.
It may be worth asking yourself, though, why an article such as the above provokes in you such a strong impulse to defend yourself against accusations of racism (the bit about the Olympics), or to point out equivalent instances of greed perpetrated by people of color. I don’t think this is the conversation Steve intended to start above. Why is that the one you feel you need to have?
Clint Eastwood puts Oblabber in his place:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0yaUXQadBg
Funnily enough, I was just reading your little hate-mail book this afternoon. I rather imagine you can expect a few more, now; so be prepared. I do agree with Ariel that it’d be more rhetorically effective for Matthews to let his interlocutor respond. But his indignation is also bracing. Thanks for writing this—
I wasn’t defending myself against racism. I have no need to. The ‘bit’ about the Olympics was simply to point out that this idea of all white people being wild-eyed racists is absurd and that we all have more in common than pundits would like us to have. I think racism exists on many levels, for sure, I just don’t think it’s appropriate or helpful to pit people against one another and fuel racial hatred to help sway an electorate. Gee, isn’t that what Mr Almond is saying the GOP does? Same tactic, different audience.
I disagree that he does not accuse white conservatives of racism. He says the only way for Mr Romney to win is to drive up the white turnout, then Mr Almond clearly states that Mr Romney needs racist garbage, aimed at white enclaves, to drive up that white vote get elected. What part of that isn’t accusatory of Romney supporters and not just the ‘strategies of the GOP’? I also did not say he accused me, personally, of racism, because I’m not a Romney guy.
I did go on a rant, maybe I’m just, as Corey Booker recently said, nauseated by the nonsense of both parties. One way or another, I’m voting for Ron Paul, mostly because the two-party system has turned into a UFC cage match with no winners, only losers, mainly us. I’m simply as tired of tactics like Steve Almond’s as I am of other political ads. Another commenter above, Milo, stated, “Democrats have been playing the “republican hate” game for a very long time.” I just think this is more of the same. I’m bored with it.
You’re obviously a smart man, so let’s not play games here. Posting pictures of black people being attacked by German shepherds in the same article denouncing Romney and the GOP is an obvious and purposeful attempt to link Mr Romney with these events, and I think that’s despicable. It’s a reverse Willy Horton move.
And on a lighter note, Reince Priebus is a buffoon. Also, I’m watching Louis CK on youtube and he’s totally hysterical and now I don’t feel the slightest inclination to continue this.
Joe, if you can point to where Steve said or implied “simply to point out that this idea of all white people being wild-eyed racists is absurd and that we all have more in common than pundits would like us to have,” then go ahead, but until then, try arguing against what Steve actually said instead of what you wish he’d said.
Steve Almond does write incredibly insightful pieces that are illuminating to read. The corporate medial is so focused on repeating the talking points of the Republicans even when they have been proved over and over to be wrong. Mitt knows Obama is not stealing 716 million from Medicare, harming our grandparents in the process, as he alluded to in his speech and elsewhere. There is a projected savings of 716 million at the expense of providers not recipients, and it is the same method of reducing expenses that Ryan has proposed in the past.
There has been a minute percentage of voter fraud ever documented, but Republicans have spent millions purging voter roles of registered Democrats and minorities. The life experience gap shows itself when white people resplendent with ID question how someone could not have sufficient documentation to prove who they are. They cannot entertain the idea of being born black and at home, and making your living being a maid and raising someone else’s children and not having the paper trail that comes from white privilege. But if someone actually calls the Republicans on their odious tactics they are booed from the room.
Don’t be mistaken. Since Lyndon Johnson passed all those historic social bills in the mid 1960’s, the South has turned Republican. There is a reason for that happening. Want to make a guess why? The Republican Party has played to that “turned” audience since then and no one can convince me otherwise. Maybe Steve has been heavy handed including some strong photos in this article, but my experience living on the Gulf Coast in Alabama for 20 years has been eye opening in terms of racial matters. The other thing that struck me was watching the video clip Wooly Bully posted. Clint Eastwood said “…we Own this country…” to huge applause. Own? Own??? WTF does that imply?
Welcome to post-racism. How do the chairs feel?
These invisible chairs in this non-existent living estate we call post-racism.
Anyone who cannot participate in American society enough to produce a photo ID has no business voting.
The only reason the Demorats want people with no ID to be able to vote is so the 20 million illegals can vote for more Demorats. This is about as treasonous as it gets. That’s probably why Oblabber was elected in 2008.
Whoa Joe, don’t be a schmo.
Romney and by extension the GOP’s contempt for the lower class is at best thinly veiled. 27.4% of blacks and 26.6% of Hispanics qualify as impoverished, while only 9.9% of whites do. (http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/)
Obama Gutting welfare work requirements? Creating a two tiered tax system 10% and 25%? Whose side is he on?
Wooly Bully, can you please email me directly via my website? I’ve read your comments and wanted to ask you something.
Thanks, Steve Almond
My grandmother (French Canadian, 3rd generation in U.S.A.) never learned to drive (no photo license), never traveled abroad (no passport photo), didn’t use a credit card, but VOTED until she died in 1997. My father’s mother (Armenian, 1st generation) had a similar experience except that when her husband died, she had to learn to drive and had a non-photo licence, and she VOTED before and after getting it. By implication, this process happens with every LEGAL immigrant group that is just starting in the U.S.A. More up to date, I have friends of different races in N.Y.C. (lived there 15 years) that don’t have a photo I.D. of any kind (don’t drive, don’t have passport), but they vote and they have family trees that go back generations. There are many CITIZENS that live in major cities (public trasportation) that have NO photo I.D. Further, if anyone believes that an illegal alien living a shadow life anywhere in the U.S. would dare to go to a public polling place to vote is a fool. The Republican tactic is simply and blatently to suppress the poor working class and unemployed vote, and THAT is treasonous.
Only 9 states currently require photo ID in order to vote. California, the most populous state in the country (in both legal and illegal residents), is not one of those states. In fact, 4 of the top 5 most populous states do not require ID to vote. Furthermore, there have never been 20 million illegal immigrants in the country. So, excuse my rudeness, but to suggest that we Democrats are against voter ID laws as part of some subterfuge to allow illegal immigrants to vote, is frankly bullshit.
Steve,
Not interested in email. Keep it where the sheeple who frequent this website can read it – maybe they’ll learn something.
Harry and Nathan are in dire need of some education as are many others on this website. Clearly and without argument if no ID is required at the polls, then any illegal can vote.
Well friend, if I am in need of some education you have done nothing to present a facts based argument. I’ve given you the factual numbers, I can even throw in a little anecdotal evidence and tell you that I have voted in every election I’ve been eligible to vote in and I have never once been asked to show any ID. You may be right that without ID any undocumented person could potentially vote, but the numbers don’t support that being a reality. If voter fraud was the great conspiracy you claim it to be you can bet that California and Florida would already have this type of law in effect. In the last twelve years there have been 2068 cases of reported voter fraud and 46% of those cases have either been dropped or lead to acquittals (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/election-day-impersonation-an-impetus-for-voter-id-laws-a-rarity-data-show/2012/08/11/7002911e-df20-11e1-a19c-fcfa365396c8_story.html) This is, clearly and without argument, a solution looking for a problem. Which only serves to further disenfranchise poor and largely minority voters because they routinely vote Democratic. So, unless you can educate me with something factual, you should probably keep your rhetoric to your “sheeple.”
Actually, Wooly Bully, what I’d like to do, if you’re willing, is to interview you for my column, for us to have a dialogue. You clearly want to be heard, and I’d like to give you that opportunity. So please write me: stevealmondjoy AT gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks. Steve
Holly tactical move, Steve. You clearly want to be heard…..
Quote from Nathan: “You may be right that without ID any undocumented person could potentially vote,…”
At least Nathan is honest and admits it could be a problem. If a person WANTS to vote more than once in an area that does not require photo ID to vote, then there would be nothing to stop them.
It is pathetic to admit this could even possibly be a problem and to say you don’t want to do something simple about it!!!!! I think it may be treason – at best it’s poor judgement…….
You understand the world of difference between “could” and “is” right?
And you’ve stated another inaccuracy about voter ID laws. I doesn’t matter how much a person wants to vote more than once in an area they can’t, you still have to sign your name in the voter registry log.
Again, this is only a problem or a potential problem in your imagination. The treasonous part is that this requirement is akin to a poll tax which is wholly unconstitutional, much like the literacy tests of the old South.
Wooly Bully: you clearly want to be heard by the readers of the Rumpus. I’m offering you that chance. Not in the comments section, but the site as a whole. Why are you not getting back to me? I’m genuinely confused about this. Do you think it’s some sort of “trick.” No trick. I want to engage in a genuine dialogue, so that our readers might come to know who you are, and what you believe.
Isn’t this what you want?
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