From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Liberal
Racism: A Little Perspective
Both before and after her elevation to secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice
has been the target of a series of racist caricatures by liberal cartoonists.
Rush Limbaugh points out three: a Doonesbury strip by Garry Trudeau that refers
to her as "Brown Sugar," a Jeff Danziger cartoon that portrays her
as Prissy from "Gone With the Wind" (also the topic of a Wall
Street Journal editorial last month) and, most recently, a Tuesday political
cartoon from Pat Oliphant that depicts the secretary-designate as a parrot with
enormous lips. (This seems to be a running feature; yesterday's
Oliphant cartoon does it also, this time with President Bush as a pirate.)
Blogger Winfield
Myers catalogues other examples.
Limbaugh is incensed by these displays of bigotry and hypocrisy (emphasis his):
It is grotesque. It is insulting. It is vile. It is angry. It is childish, and it is typical I think of what the left has become. They claim to be holy [sic] than thou. They claim to be above all of us when it comes to understanding the downtrodden and minorities. They claim to be the only ones that have the ability to have the compassion and understanding, and yet they get away with racism. They get away with bigotry. They get away with sexism, and they get away with homophobia--and in the case of Condoleezza Rice, they get away with an attempted character destruction of a truly brilliant and accomplished woman who came from nothing to become the first black female secretary of state.
Myers echoes the point: "This is part and parcel of the left's embrace of moral and intellectual nihilism, which in turn has led to a belief that the ends for which they labor justify the means."
We don't really disagree with any of this, but it strikes us that the outrage, while understandable, is perhaps a bit overwrought. It's not as if the works of Trudeau, Danziger and Oliphant are going to provoke an outbreak of lynching or cross-burning. These expressions of racial prejudice don't actually diminish Rice's accomplishments, and they are not going to prevent her from becoming one of the most powerful people in the world. These cartoonists have merely proved to the world that they are prejudiced against blacks who don't share their views--and that's good to know.
The absence of outrage from the liberal sensitivity police, who would be up in arms if a conservative cartoonist committed a similar offense (cf the reaction to National Review's 1997 cover depicting the Clintons as Asians, second item), shows that liberals are hypocrites when it comes to race--and that, too, is useful to know.
We got an insight into contemporary liberal attitudes toward race on a taxi ride not long ago. We were en route to Shea Stadium along with fellow conservative commentator Joel Mowbray, and our driver was a youngish Haitian woman who had her radio tuned to Air America. Mowbray started a political discussion with her, and she told him that she doesn't like Republicans because "they hate black people."
"Does President Bush hate Condi Rice and Colin Powell?" Mowbray asked, to which she replied that Rice and Powell aren't "really black" because they "don't think like black people."
The idea that black people are supposed to think in a certain way is, of course, a racist assumption in itself. But what's most interesting about this exchange is that our driver had in effect redefined race so that it has nothing to do with race. When she said, "They hate black people," she meant merely, "They disagree with liberal ideology."
The charge of racism carries a certain sting because America has a long history of real racism. But the progress the country has made on race, especially over the past 40 years, has been nothing short of stunning. Here we have a president whose detractors describe him as a "radical conservative" appointing a black woman to replace a black man as the most senior member of his cabinet.
Even the liberals who attack Rice on racial grounds don't have anything against black people in positions of power per se. They're just desperately upset because those on their side of the political fence no longer have a monopoly on the belief in racial equality. They're lashing out in an ugly way because they've lost the moral high ground.
It's good for the country that no one occupies that high ground anymore--or, more precisely, that virtually everyone does. Secretary of State Rice will stand as an example of the greatness of America, a country where, after much struggle, people are judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their character. We're confident that one day even liberals will appreciate this.
The Platzer Effect?
Our item
yesterday on the Roe effect prompted this comment from reader Steven Platzer:
So OK. Your yahoos have more kids than those of us who try to provide a quality education and the advantages that result from it to our offspring. Of course this has nothing to do with abortion, but what makes you so sure a lot of those yahoo kids, growing up without those advantages, don't decide their parents are nuts to place fundamentalist Christianity over all other things and vote Democratic seeing that party's policies as better suited to their non-otherworldly needs?
The stereotype of culturally conservative voters as impoverished "yahoos" who devalue education and "place fundamentalist Christianity over all other things" strikes us as a dubious one, and opinion surveys back us up. A Rasmussen election-night poll of 1,000 voters found that "ten percent (10%) named cultural issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion" as most important in determining their vote:
Fifty-two percent (52%) of Cultural Issues Voters are under 40 and 61% are women. Those over 65 were least likely to name cultural issues as important.
Fifty-three percent (53%) of Cultural Issues Voters are Investors and 83% are White.
The network exit polls found that John Kerry outpolled President Bush among two educational subgroups: those with "no high school" (presumably including high school dropouts) and those with postgraduate education. Bush beat Kerry among high school and college graduates.
Kerry did better than Bush among voters making under $50,000 a year, while Bush won among those making more; and Bush's performance improved with higher incomes in every subgroup, except that he did slightly worse among those making $75,000 to $100,000 (Bush 55%, Kerry 45%) than among those making $50,000 to $75,000 (Bush 56%, Kerry 43%).
Thus it doesn't seem accurate to characterize Republican voters as "yahoos"--and we doubt assuming they are would be a good way for Democrats to win the votes of their children.
Bad-Mouthing
the President
USA Today is trying to start a kerfuffle by accusing President Bush of being
too affectionate toward some of his cabinet appointees:
Bush has bussed two women in public in the past two days. First, Condoleezza Rice, whom he kissed on the cheek twice when he nominated her for secretary of State on Tuesday. He went even further with Margaret Spellings, whom he smacked on the lips when he nominated her as secretary of Education on Wednesday. . . .
Risky business, says Amy Oppenheimer, a California business consultant on workplace harassment issues. Powerful men kissing their subordinates in public can be misconstrued by the kissee or people watching the kiss.
And there's the whole male-female thing, too: Bush didn't kiss his close pal Alberto Gonzales when he nominated him for attorney general last week.
"Kissing is social behavior, not professional behavior, and people have different boundaries about it," says Oppenheimer. "The only person who would know if (a woman is) uncomfortable with it is her--and why would she say anything if she weren't?"
We wondered if Oppenheimer had anything to say about Bill Clinton's behavior toward his female subordinates, and we weren't disappointed. In 1998, when Judge Susan Wright dismissed Paula Jones's sexual-harassment lawsuit, she was quoted in the Houston Chronicle:
Attorney Amy Oppenheimer, an expert on sexual harassment lawsuits, said no one should be shocked by Wright's decision. "It's not surprising that the court would find a one-time incident that was obnoxious and inappropriate wasn't enough to deprive her of her constitutional rights even if it could be proven," Oppenheimer said.
Of course, Clinton didn't actually kiss Jones; he just (allegedly) ordered her to "kiss it." On the other hand, when Kathleen Willey accused Clinton of groping her and the White House tried to discredit her by releasing friendly letters she'd subsequently written to him, Oppenheimer seemed to side with Willey in an interview with the Los Angeles Times:
"On the one hand, she wants to make it clear that she finds the behavior unacceptable," said Amy Oppenheimer, an attorney in Berkeley, Calif., who trains employers and employees and testifies as an expert in sexual harassment cases. "But on the other hand, she needs to make it clear that she's not going to betray him, she's not going to cut off the relationship, and she still wants the advantages of knowing him.
"I think that's a really understandable reaction."
Mr.
Moneybags
The recriminations continue: "Democratic Party leaders said Wednesday they
want to know why Sen. John Kerry ended his presidential campaign with more than
$15 million in the bank, money that could have helped Democratic candidates
across the country," reports the Associated Press.
Here's one possible explanation: Kerry was preparing for a replay of 2000, and wanted the best legal representation money could buy.
Late
Victory
Republican Dino Rossi has been declared the winner of the governor's race in
Washington by a scant 261 votes, the Seattle Times reports. This would give
the GOP a net gain of one governor's seat (they lost Montana and New Hampshire
and picked up Indiana and Missouri) and a 29-21 edge overall.
But it's not over yet; the closeness of the margin means there will be an automatic statewide recount. In the 2000 Senate race, Democrat Maria Cantwell, who was already up by 2,229 votes, picked up an additional 276 in the recount.
Reuters
Blames America
"The global managing editor of British news agency Reuters said today the
US military was entirely to blame for the deaths of three of its employees in
Iraq since the start of the war there in March 2003," reports the Advertiser
of Adelaide, Australia, from Lisbon:
"All of them were killed by the American army," Reuters chief David Schlesinger told reporters on the sidelines of a media conference in the southern Portuguese resort of Vilamoura, Portuguese national news agency Lusa reported.
"There is no understanding on the part of the US military regarding the exercise of journalism," he said, according to the agency.
"We can't run the risk that journalists will become targets (in Iraq). We must learn the lessons from these tragic cases."
Needless to say, we're against killing journalists too, but this sort of special pleading and America-bashing is especially unattractive coming from a "news" agency that refuses to call Osama bin Laden a terrorist.
The
Latest Conspiracy Nut
"Fidel Castro says the emergence of an Osama bin Laden videotape just ahead
of the U.S. presidential election seemed to have been 'arranged' to help President
Bush," the Associated Press reports from Havana:
In his first public comments about Bush's re-election, the Cuban leader said, "We have seen too much . . . trickery and shamelessness to sustain the belief that this wasn't something arranged."
We never thought we'd say it, but this Castro guy is as nutty as Walter Cronkite.
It's
About Time!
"Clarke: Clinton Worried About al-Qaida"--headline, Associated Press,
Nov.18
Beyond
Parody
When a vagrant in ultraliberal Berkeley, Calif., abandons a stolen shopping
cart filled with junk, the local government doesn't just throw it out, reports
the San Francisco Chronicle:
Not only does the city pack carts and other belongings into a huge container in case folks want it back -- it also deep-freezes them for as long as 90 days.
About a year ago, Berkeley bought a 40-foot-long, 8-foot-wide refrigerated container for $8,200 after public works officials complained about vermin infesting carts stored at the city's outdoor corporation yard. . . .
Deputy Public Works Director Patrick Keilch said very few items from the hundreds of carts picked up annually are retrieved. He estimated the annual cost of refrigerating the stuff at 0 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit at about $3,000.
It turns out the city doesn't even bother letting bums know about the program:
A homeless man who lost his cart holding blankets and new shoes a month ago, when he left it to go to Oakland to face charges of public intoxication, said Monday that he did not know about the storage program.
But George Williams, 60, said it would have been a lot of trouble to find the right city officials and get to West Berkeley to retrieve his stuff.
"I never followed up," said Williams, who was pushing a different cart full of blankets, some food and a bottle of vodka.
The paper adds that "Robert Long, coordinator of the Multi-Agency (homeless) Service Center in downtown Berkeley, said he was 'conflicted' about the storage program, but he knows that one person's trash is another person's treasure." If he ever gets tired of social service work, he's got a great future ahead of him at Reuters.
What
Would We Do Without Groups?
"Governments Blow Billions, Groups Claim"--headline, San Mateo County
(Calif.) Times, Nov. 17
You
Don't Say
"Prince Charles's Household 'Hierarchical and Elitist' "--headline,
Times (London), Nov. 17
What
Would We Do Without Studies?
"Republicans Outnumbered in Academia, Studies Find"--headline, New
York Times, Nov. 18
What
Would Pakistan Do Without Experts?
"Mush in Uniform Not Good for Pakistan: Experts"--headline, Asian
News International, Nov. 18
Uncle
Yasser
"Creating an out from a sticky diplomatic problem, French authorities said
Thursday they would release Yasser Arafat's medical records to his nephew, which
could help demystify the cause of the Palestinian leader's death," Israel
Insider reports. Of course, there's no guarantee that the nephew and the Palestinian
leadership will make the information public, though the Jerusalem
Post suggests they may:
"The full medical report of President Arafat is a historical document for the Palestinian people," said Hassan Abu Libdeh, the Palestinian Cabinet secretary. "We will get the report and the Palestinian Authority will take the necessary decisions including informing the Palestinian people about the full details of the report."
Arafat is in stable condition after dying in a Paris hospital.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports from Cairo on the search for what caused the death of another famous man: "The mummy of King Tutankhamun is to be X-rayed in an attempt to solve the mystery of how the teenage Pharaoh died at age 17, Egypt's chief archaeologist said Sunday."
Unlike Arafat, who was born in Egypt, King Tut emigrated from his native Arizona.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Allen O'Donnell, Tim Graham, Rosslyn Smith, Cliff Thier, Robert Johns, Bridgett Wagner, Michael VandeKerhof, Thierry Wuilloud, Rosanne Klass, Ed Lasky, David Cooper, Tom Linehan, Darin Zimmerman, Bob Batts, Brent Silver, Michael Hopkovitz, David Merrill, Jim Purky, Ethel Fenig, Drew Anderson, Barak Moore, Paul Sisco, Daniel Goldstein, Ivan Osorio, John Williamson, Michael Siegel, John Sanders, Dawn Eden, Gena Binkley, Anne McCaughey, Scott Offen, Ron Ackert, David McMahon, Rod Pennington, Thomas Majdanics, Tony Booth, Michael Segal and Sam Wakim. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: The story of Fallujah isn't on that NBC videotape.
- Peggy Noonan: Condi Rice! Porter Goss! Arlen Specter! Ssssshhhhhhhh . . .
- Anne Bayefsky: The U.N. discovers the cause of anti-Semitism--Jews.
