David Brooks: The problem for Republicans is that race-baiters like Limbaugh and Beck own them
By David Neiwert Monday Sep 21, 2009 10:00am
It was somewhat gratifying to see Chris Matthews' right-leaning panel on his Sunday show -- which was, as expected, eager to deny the role of racism in the ugly animus that's been directed at Barack Obama -- at least admit the truth:
David Brooks: What Rush and Glenn Beck are doing is race-baiting. 100 percent. That's race-baiting.
...
Kathleen Parker: What Rush Limbaugh and Beck did in those two clips is to empower racists.
But it was even more interesting to watch Brooks in particular somehow manage to stumble upon the core of the problem:
Matthews: Would the White House like the leaders of both parties to say, 'Cool it'?
Brooks: Well, I think they would. First, I think Father Coughlin was objecting to FDR, and he -- that's what we're seeing, Father Coughlin, that's what these guys are --
Matthews: And he was far right.
Brooks: He was far right. The White House understands, you've got 10 percent of the country over here on the wacky right, 10 percent on the wacky left, that's not what they can pay attention to. And they're not going to pay attention to it. They're sticking with the independents -- that's what the health care, why it's tending toward the center.
The one danger -- the main danger of all this, the Glenn and the Rush and all that -- they're not going to take over the country. But they are taking over the Republican Party.
And so if the Republican Party is sane, they will say no to these people. But every single elected leader in the Republican Party is afraid to take on Rush and Glenn Beck.
Brooks' percentages are off -- it's more like about 5 percent on the left and 30 percent on the right side, and this latter fact is actually what he identifies as the problem; the right has been so overwhelmed by its wingnutty elements that they have largely taken over the GOP at this juncture in time. And there's no prospect of the David Brookses ever getting it back -- in no small part because they refuse to acknowledge the magnitude of what they're up against.
But at least they recognize the problem. That's a start.
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Speaking of the Dallas Morning Nudes letters asking why can't we oppose Obama without being accused of racism line.
Anyone point out the answer? Because they can't complain about Obama without either, 1. couching all complaints in racial terms - either directly or indirectly, and 2. surrounding themselves with blatant racists when they complain.
If you're at a "tea party" and you're complaining about hating the first black president while surrounded by openly racist signs, how stupid are you to whine that you shouldn't be called a racist?
Lay down with dogs.......
Lay down with dogs.......
And wake up with Glenn Beck.
no thanks for that visual
I can't even imagine the amount of alcohol and drugs that are required to fuel a night like that.
Lay down with dogs.......
Wake up in a coo coo's nest
I think you have to head down Tijuana way to see shows like that.
... even TJ has higher standards than that.
San Diego doesn't.
Btw, I am fucking tired of seeing ultra-moderate, careful negroes like Donna Brazile, Harold Ford, Clarence Page, offering typical limp dick disingenuous, I don't want to piss off white viewers and lose my gig, opinions on such a serious matter.
Believe me, these phony black folk have different thoughts on matters pertaining to race in private.
Donna Brazile is disingenuous, she is a concrete float when what we need is a fucking hammer. I think that ALL of the supposed "left wing" commentators on TV are milquetoast scaredy cats.
there are the field ni**ers, and the house ni**ers.
Those in the house with the masters, dressed better, talked nicer, and worked hard to seperate themselves from the field hands, in order to keep their comfy house gigs.
There are masters who own everything and the rest of them that are the overseers which hold and use the whips.
That you point out you're quoting a seminal speech from Malcolm X. (folks can search Malcolm X on youtube to find it). Posting that out of context makes it appear that you endorse talking that way, which I know is the opposite of what Malcolm meant and I assume, you too.
Not all of our readers are old skool enough to remember and unfortunately our system of education has done very little to encourage such learning of that person or time in history. - BG
Bluegal, it has been my experience that whenever I have spent an entire month on black history in my classroom that the black students have little or no sense of their history and have little or no desire to learn. They could care little about Malcolm X or any of the brave, courageous blacks (and whites) that fought for the freedoms that they today enjoy. Too many times historical shortcomings are laid at the feet of educators when the fact is that most educators work above and beyond to provide everything a student needs, the student just refuses to accept it. "Nothing can stop a person that wants to be educated and nothing can help a person that does not." Author unknown.
It is what it is!
less of David Brooks and more of Limbaugh and Beck is what we need. Maybe after the wingnuts exhaust themselves in their opus of ignorance and violence, can we be rid of them for good.
I think a personal interview with Rush Limbaugh's anus could add a new level of depth to this pressing issue, and make for truly entertaining television.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3456/325731717...
?
Mon, 09/21/2009 - 11:13 — Mike in Milwaukee
Maybe less of David Brooks and more of Limbaugh and Beck is what we need. Maybe after the wingnuts exhaust themselves in their (O)pus.
_______________________________________________________________
Don't tell me you've never heard of Billy and the Boingers.
I see the Opus reference. Reminds me of Hunter Thompson. Missing him around here.
I think you're overestimating their capacity for self-awareness and growth.
More likely, if left unchecked, they will devolve into more and more desensitization towards those they already view as "others" and end up getting violent.
Spoiled fucking brats is what they are. They lost but want to whine themselves into some sort of do-over, and if that means they get to shoot their guns - well, hot diggity damn and whoopee!!
"More likely, if left unchecked, they will devolve into more and more desensitization towards those they already view as "others" and end up getting violent."
Maybe we need more than a few of them to get their violent revolution started. Nothing would discredit them faster and truly show who they are and what they want to do. People didn't take the anti-civil rights workers seriously until they started mixing their violence with their politics. I, you know, don't want people to die, but then again, I'm not the one on the radio calling democrats radical communists and the president a Marxist.
"What?!" "What's wrong?!?" "What did I speak but the truth??"
The Angry Group is heavily skewed toward hate mongering and rabble-rousing, something that is PROVEN to result in violence.
When was the last time you read about a liberal shooting up a church, a school, OR a clinic?!?
Sigh... How do we cause mass cognitive dissonance and pull these poor slobs into the light?!?!
Intelligence has limits, but ignorance and voluntary stupidity is one bottomless pit. So that won't work. The idiots have an endless supply of idiocy, and they're like somebody I know with a cognitive impairment: Letting them vent doesn't really get it out of their system, it only winds 'em up worse and escalates the froth and vituperation.
Unfortunately that is like Freud thinking the unconscious will just be emptied out after enough analysis. Not so it is an ever burning fire and it is highly profitable, welcome to late capitalism.
unfortunately we will always have ignorance!! On both sides of the fence!
They handed the reins to rush and beck and now they are driving the cart straight to hell.
I'm not sure I know what the crazies on the left have to do with this. I haven't heard any lefties make racist comments. So what is it they should stop doing?
I didn't hear anyone on the right complaining when the people at the Palin rallies were making the comments they were making. Why is it only now the right seems concerned and why are they still in love with Palin? She sure as hell didn't make things any better for the saner right.
Calling liberals crazies and lumping them in with the secessionist terrorists on the right is what passes as "balance" in today's media.
of false equivelancies.
As if the left has propagandists from coast to coast spewing violent rhetoric and lies 24/7 on TV and radio. Explain this to a wingnut and then observe the drool dripping from their chin. Clueless morans all of them :P
caught between the rock and hard place of the ignorant and the criminally insane.
best description of them I've seen!
There is nothing I can add to that. LAP, you nailed it.
The wisest comments I have ever heard about race was the speech the President made himself. He opened it up and looked at it with a wise and calm eye. He spoke to everyone with that speech and it's too bad more people didn't hear it and listen to it and learn from it.
Accept wisdom from an uppity black man?
That's sweet, and hopeful, and pretty much oblivious to how truly hateful racists are.
A true racist would be even more enraged that any black man would so presume to lecture whites - enraged enough to drive them to public displays of their rage.
But that was the wisdom and beauty of his speech. He didn't lecture anyone instead he tried to see the problem from both sides and deal with the reality of it. He approached it as an adult speaking to other adults. He taught me things I didn't know and made me think in ways I hadn't thought before. Too bad more people didn't put down their old ways and perhaps see that new ways could be better for everyone in the long run.
and so do I. But at the heart of American racism is the belief that blacks are not equal to whites, so there can be no honest adult to adult communication. That would imply equal status.
The president is a father figure to many - and they can't accept a black father figure speaking to them as one adult to another..
I don't think they even admit to themselves exactly what it is that has them so enraged, because it's coming from inside themselves - and they aren't ready to see this truth about themselves. It's easier to just hate that black man.
Exactly and like sociopaths they are convinced of their sanctity which means NO CHANGE.
and all the GOP heard were the words "typical white woman" and that was enough for them. They had their sound byte.
limpballs and becky are master baiters.
Will David Brooks, or one of the other right-wing apologists who insist there is some kind of even distribution of crazy on a political affiliation, point out to me the left-wing Jim David Adkisson? When Bush was president, where was the Pittsburgh cop-killer's concerns that his guns were going to be taken away? Was there an unreported Holocaust Museum murder by a suspicious loner quoting Dennis Kucinich? Does Brooks still think that a real person cut that backwards "B" in that one fraud's cheek?
It's not necessary to give sympathetic attention to a person's view when it is just plain WRONG. Cut the horseshit and accept that the right-wing is the new Klan, and there are far less progressives than conservatives(if any)that care to join in the union of thuggery and lunacy.
Note: Sorry for the many edits. I'm just not worth a lick on typing after lunch.
It's more more like orcs and smurfs. They are saying in effect that extremes in either direction from a mean are much alike, like idiots and geniuses, like anorexics and the morbidly obese, like black and white. The political mean, in spite of the pundits insistence, is center-left, and the extreme left (which is not numerous really) is way closer to the actual mean than the extreme right is. That being said, the extreme left is far less extreme than it once was, IMHO. I myself am so far left that 50 years ago, I would have have been an Eisenhower republican. I could argue that the progressives now are actually the true conservatives. Not movement cons, of course, but the traditional ones with old-fashioned American values.
... that David Brooks doesn't?
Because it's so obvious. I think they have a hard time admitting it because they see it as a reflection on them and that's a mistake. For instance, Louis Farakan was a race bater but, as an African American, I never felt that he spoke for me. It seems to me that many whites are offended at the mere mention of racism when in fact, there are clear examples. I also don't understand why the pundits always feel the need to give us the whole "both sides are guilty" bullshit! Personally, I think that the reason some whites have trouble admitting this is because they may feel guilty. While they had nothing personally to do with slavery, they probably feel that it's an inditement of their entire race. This is wrong. Let's put the blame where it belongs. In the past but, you can still call it when you see it today.
Not my words. I'll cite the source when I can dig it up.
Brooks' problem, and that of the Republican Party, is that those rightwing extremists are the Republican base and they cannot even begin to win elections without them. They are now caught in the catch 22 that the shock troops they rode to dominance over the past 30 years have scared off all the moderates (and sane people), so that they are left with the rich and the crazy. I doubt that either of these wings of the party will embrace the reforms needed to make the Republicans viable again.
Every time Scarborough calls out the right for their dumb fu*k stuff they do and say, he always feels the need to say there are people just as nuts on the left. What he fails to do is give an example of what the nuts on the left have said and done. I mean I try my damnedest to figure it out and I just can't. I mean seriously, what the hell is he talking about?
You can't have a pretend balance is there is no true balance there. Reality isn't about balance, it's about the facts and truth.
is obviously a left-wing kook.
Perhaps the dead albatross, that is the crazy right, hanging from the republicans' neck is beginning to smell a bit putrid. To late though because they hung it there themselves and it's going to stay there.
Code Pink and PETA.
Organizations that work for peace and better treatment of animals.
Does that compare to the 9/12 dipshits and their goal of taking back the government by force if needed?
Bish, please.
PETA has ruined some perfectly good fur coats! What more proof do you need of their rabid insanity and the danger they pose?? Those coats don't grow on trees, you know.
in fear at the sight of two or three people in pink.
Certain shades of pink get me wet.
Sorrrrrrrrrrry...I couldn't resist! I'm sorry sorry sorry!!
n/t
Then criticize the policy, not the person. Don't say you are "scared of what's going to happen." Point to the portions of the healthcare program that you object to and don't say the president is a communist or socialist, which is name-calling. Don't e-mail the picture of Obama photoshopped onto a witch doctor's photo. William F. Buckley was a very conservative writer, but he never degenerated into name-calling, demeaning or lying behavior. He had such class that is unfortunately now missing from the conservative movement, so no wonder many no longer take it seriously. It's as if all the conservative movement has in its quiver is third-grade, name-calling, demeaning behavior, instead of presenting good reasons to follow the tenets of the movement in a mature, adult way.
using logic.
You can't argue logic with Rush Limbaugh's anus.
Straight from his own pen:
"[T]he central question that emerges... is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes – the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race."
Even at its most civil and coat-and-tails, the conservative movement is rooted in racism.
If you've got a link, I'd love to file that.
The quote was from a 1957 National Review editorial titled "Why the South Must Prevail." I'm not for certain where it can be found in its entirety, but the excerpt I used can be found on Buckley's Wiki page.
"...you've got 10 percent of the country over here on the wacky right, 10 percent on the wacky left..."
And then you've got media turds like David Brooks that can't stop trying to find a "balance" of nutjobs where one simply doesn't exist.
Is it really wacky to want to stop corporations (like the ones that pay David Brooks and Tweety) from perverting our system of government? Is it wacky to want health care for everybody in America, no exceptions? Is it wacky to want to stop killing ourselves with pollution? Is it wacky to oppose endless war for fun and profit?
Gosh, what a wacky lefty I must be. Better ignore me just like the righties that claim Obama is secretly a Kenyan communist who's building death camps for his enemies.
If only we had 10% of the media that were actual journalists.
Glad you noted that Brooks's percentages of wackos on the left and right were WAY off. He's apparently enamored with the idea of making the political spectrum equal, and anybody with half a brain knows that isn't true. There aren't any public figures encouraging the left to get out there to town hall meetings with guns and bully-tactics. And our job is much harder -- it takes a lot of voices (and sometimes war) to stop bullies and gun-toters. The left is generally peaceable, abhorring killing except in self-defense and only after being attacked.
The big difference is not that those on the left are not angry at the right -- many are despicable and hateful. I, for one, certainly hate and have contempt for much that erupts from the right.
The difference is that the left's anger is not "created" out of primal fears by rabble-rousers and hate speech as the anger on the right is triggered, but is rather a natural response to bullying and lies by the right. Another big difference is what the left does with its anger compared to the right. To those on the left, their anger is a signal that something is very wrong that needs to be addressed and solved as peacefully as possible, not a call to take up arms. The left's attitudes are, in many ways, risky and heroic, because violence is the very last option, not the first.
n/t
As usual, the timid mainstream press has to present the radicalization of the American right (Bush, Palin, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, etc.) as a bipartisan problem. There is no left wing equivalent in size or ferocity to the millions of Republicans who reject the science of evolution and global warming, who insist that Obama is a Muslim from Kenya and who believe that magic Jesus will rapture them away to heaven. At this point in time, craziness is largely a Republican problem.
The crazies on the right seem to feed off one another and in the process they get all worked up into a frenzy. Then they have cheerleaders like rush and beck egging them on. Of course when and if the shit hits the fan, the cheerleaders will be no where in sight. That's the frightening part of this, Rush and beck will never be called on the carpet for their part in this if things do go terribly wrong.
and that's a real crime
I agree. There is no way Rush or Beck will ever be actually held accountable for what they are encouraging. I guess that's the consequences of free speech. It's just damned sad and frustrating.
You've hit on it, POP!! Zombies feed on "Braaaaains".
So, if the right wing zombies are only feeding off of one another...
Zombies feed on mush.
Ghuls on the other hand, and some forms of Asiatic vampires do have cannibalistic habits.
You must have been about to pop with all that info in you as you signed up about twenty minutes ago. Feel better now?
I wonder if his break is over yet.
Esp. when they cut and paste portions of articles from wingnut sites?
what the hell are you trying say? talk clearly, instead of using measly irrelevant insults. And do you think that the corporate puppet Obama will get us out of the hell USA is in?
Obama and the Democrats get plenty of criticism here - including from POP.
who left the cage door open?
The hall monitor must have been on her break and the little rascal slipped out of class. He was so excited to find a computer to copy his big boy complaints on for us here at C&L.
oh forget it.
Lenin created the Gulag. Enough said.
So what, US governments since 1800s have killed like 100 million people, have invaded like 100 countries and are still killing people in the middle-east. Not to mention how US cops murder americans every day like Sean Bell in N.Y. Enough said
.
I never realized just how wonderful the gulags were.
BTW, please name about 50 of those countries invaded since 1801. Because I believe you pulled that 100 number out of your, um, imagination.
You've also made a ridiculous logical fallacy commonly used by the Right. Two wrongs make nothing right. Cops killed Sean Bell so the gulags were ok, huh?
...US imperialism and capitalist oppression, as well as Lenin's prolateriat imperialism and communist oppression and any other ideological extremism. Every example of extreme philosophy in economics has historically proven to be non-viable. Only balance of these extremes have proven workable. Think modern Europe or the 'southern cone' before the CIA/Chicago school got a hold.
Less Marx, less Lenin, less Friedman. More Keynes.
the longwinded ranter C. G. was back....??
It's that time of the month when the meds run out and the new Rx isn't quite issuable.
The Reslugs should worry a lot more about their racist, hate monguering, uneducated party, being brainwashed by one king of stupidity, boy stalking and sexual pervertion, Limp-Dick Blimpaugh and crybaby, bedwetting, Peckerhead.
I dont know why Republican Party supporters and the Tea Baggers hate Obama so much, when Obama is doing the same thing that Bush did
you frighten me.
Read leftist and marxist alternative news sites, instead of watching CNN
The key word in Tweety's last question that went unnoticed is ACTUAL. Were people upset at Obama personally or his ACTUAL policies. Well I for one haven't heard a Republican say anything about Obama's ACTUAL policies just a bunch of noise about made up crap from other Republicans.
Indeed, if ultra-right wing capitalist Republicans were really aware that Obama is an ultra-right wing capitalist, they would support Obama
doing as bad a job as someone like you who recently played a pimp on his own TV show.
Racism is unfortunately raised as an issue when it is convenient. Michael Steele calls it racism when, supposedly, Obama asked Patterson, the NY gov, to not run for the office. How is it racism? It is practicality. Patterson has poor poll ratings and certainly could be defeated by Giuliani. Those inflicting name calling into politics do none of us any good. Brooks' observations are good. Rush, Beck and Fox have displaced judgment for the Republicans.
What an ass! THIS IS WHY YOUR PARTY IS AS DEAD AS RONALD REGAN! We've all noted that most of them can't even read. Maybe this guy is from Oklahoma where 77% percent of the highschool kids couldn't name the first President of the United States! They're parents are likely toothless banjo players who couldn't read and write either. We've seen the signs these teabaggers carry and they clearly can't even spell. (Moran? Youth In Asia?) The liberals are far better educated. This is why we feel superior to you inbreds!
Yeah but by insulting the Republican Party voters and Tea Baggers, you are just behaving like them. What we need is a revolution based on love not on blaming and hatred of people with different ideologies and views
.
Maybe you ought to read what Marxist revolutions are actually like.
Try googling "the liquidation of the Kulaks as a class" - the rationale for the intentional starvation of millions of Ukrainian peasants by the Soviet state in the 1930s.
Or look up "The Great Leap Forward", in which Mao killed off more than 10 million Chinese.
You're as ignorant as the dumbest Birther.
whadya mean WE?
Listen, I have an appointment to take my dog to the groomers to get his nails trimmed, can this "revolution based on love not on blaming and hatred of people with different ideologies and views", wait until the middle of next week? My social calender is booked solid.
Would that compliment the gold standard?
and I'm thinking that DeBeers might want to jump in and take advantage on the higher end of the economic spectrum.
many angles were covered here but something i want to comment on is what brooks was alluding to. that is rural vs. metropolitan. i think there's some truth to this. many jobs/economies have been lost and/or reduced due to capitalism strategy of "outsourcing"/"cheap labor". of course, both parties are involved in this but i feel the right is all in if you will. instead of remedies/solutions the right is busy trying to lay the blame strictly on the left as a cover/blurry rationale for capitalism. so they blame the perceived elites(educational) and the city dwellers. these are EASY targets because they are different than the rural demographic. it's FOOLish but it's often seen in human behavior. we all can't live or want to live in rural areas or vice versa all live in cities. the truth of the matter is this is the works of CAPITALISM. blame the people not like you or "dualism" and be diverted/avoid real problem solving of real issues. same old story blame someone else to dilute/deflect consequences.
Not by themselves, they're not. The whole party is guilty.
Nixon and especially Reagan played the race card to get the DixieCrats to switch from being the "Southern Dems" to becoming the "Republican Base."
Worked great for the Republicans from 1980 until the present.
this is a very good point in my opinion. it changed/influenced most everything.
Racism, racism, racism. There I said.
Peggy Noonan didn't call Dick Cheney "boorish" when he did his media blitz on torture.
Never in the history of our country have people made an issue out of the President of the United States talking to school children.
And never, ever, has a sitting President's legal birth come into question. All this crap is not just a coincidence - it is RACISM! There I said it again.
...why don't we stop paying so much goddamn attention to these crybabies? Nothing succeeds like success, so let's just get shit done and let 'em whine about "keep your gubmint hands off my medicare" all they want. What is it to any thinking person?
The reason you call these people out is because this government has already had a taste of what it's like when right-wing idiots get control of government.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P8u4fZTPUQ
If the likes of David Brooks (and there are few more like him who are somewhat rational even if they are the wrong side of 99% of the issues as far as I am concerned) if these types cannot get it through to the wingnuts that people like Sarah Palin and Limbaugh and Beck and Hannity are not good for the party or the country then they will never get the party back to.... ah... umm....ah... the normal assholieness of the Republican Party.
is that we are debating the right over racism instead of health care.
Which suits them fine.
Ever since the Republicans have fallen off the right side of the political spectrum, Brooks has been backpedalling with mealy-mouthed equivocations. 10% are far right.... and he has to add -- pro forma -- 10% extreme left....- What? Where is the evidence, the research? The far right is way stronger than anything the USA has on the left, because it has the support of the GOP. The CPUSA is on its own there.
Why hasn't anyone called Mr. Milquebrook out on this?
Chief Nazi racist dobbs their isn't a Latin or Brown Person this anal retentive sellout wouldn't lie, fabricate,twist or just plain ignore the truth of the matter on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_FAJUFutyw
Righties are trying to slowly regain their party. Scarborough lambasted Beck today. Mike Allen was on and he said that, the Becks, Limbaughs and the like, use the "entertainer" cover, just in case their vitriolic words encite violence. Which is why I don't understand why some liberal pundits call them that same thing, assisting them with their bs.
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