Howard Kurtz: You're All Racist Because No One Ever Attempted to Delegitimize a President Before

I'm sorry, for a moment I thought you were speaking English. Now I realize it was Gibberish.

Is it racial?

Are the protesters, tea-partiers, birthers, deathers, doomsayers and hecklers motivated, at least in part, by a distinct discomfort with the country's first black president?

There is no definitive answer, of course, since we are talking about millions of people, from Joe Wilson, the disrespectful congressman who's now raised $700,000 for his "you lie" outburst, to the woman who told Arlen Specter that Obama is trying to transform the US of A "into Russia, into a socialist country."

But I began to suspect that race was a factor for at least some critics when I heard them shouting about "the Constitution" and "taking our country back."

Um, yeah, because conservatives never cite the Constitution as our guiding document and we never speak of taking our country back. Unless there's a black guy in office. First time "the Constitution" has really come up in presidential politics, really.

Maybe Obama's health-care plan is an awful idea and his budget is way too big...

Maybe.

...but how exactly is any of this unconstitutional? Clearly, for some folks, there's a deeper rage at the man occupying the White House.

How's this for a deeper rage: It was obvious Obama was a man of the left who always intended to take the country in an unprecedented veer to the left, but for two years he ran as a "moderate" and the supposedly nonpartisan media covered for his constant transparent lies.

Maybe that accounts for the "deeper rage."

I do think we all need to be careful about tarring the critics with a broad brush....

And so I will now tar his critics with that broad brush. But carefully.

Dissent is an essential element of America's DNA. Civil rights protesters transformed the country. Protesters helped turn the country against the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The majority of those digging in against Obama's policies sincerely believe that he is moving the country in the wrong direction.

Still, there is an ugly undercurrent out there. Yes, some on the right tried to delegitimize Bill Clinton as well -- remember the garbage linking him to drug trafficking and murder? -- but this is dark and personal in a much more unsettling way.

Dark and personal in much more unsettling way?

What?

More unsettling than accusing Bill Clinton of multiple murders?

More personal than accusing Bill and/or Hillary Clinton of murdering their friend and confidant Vince Foster?

Darker, more personal, and more unsettling than that?

Are you sure, Howie? Or are you so protective of Captain Wonderful you cry like a bitch when someone doesn't cover his mouth quickly enough when sneezing in the presence of His Worshipfulness?

What other president -- with a Hawaii birth certificate, no less -- would be subjected to conspiratorial doubts about whether he was born in this country?

He focuses on the particulars of delegitimization there. Obviously, the Birth Certificate thing is new, and, by definition, a new thing is new and hasn't been tried/theorized before.

But what he's really saying -- minus the particulars he carefully adds in to claim an unprecedented reaction -- is that no other president has been subject to such a brutal campaign of delegitimization before.

He mentions Bill Clinton.

Is there someone he maybe forgot? Maybe someone a bit more recent?

Someone, maybe, of whom it was claimed he had "stolen" not one but two elections, the first time through some kind of covert Republican operation in Florida to strike black voters from the polls and befuddle Jewish voters into voting for Pat Buchanan, the second time through rigging the voting machines in Ohio?

Really, Howie? No previous sustained efforts at delegitimization you can recall off-handedly?

Ah, well. If you can't recall previous efforts, then these efforts are unprecedented and it must all be about, as Jeneane Garafalo says, "hatin' on a black man as president." "Racism straight-up."

Just like with that schvatze George Bush and his "uppity" Vice President Dick-Jamaal Cheney.

It was entirely predictable we'd come to this pass, because the media has played the race card on Obama's behalf at every previous moment he was in political trouble.

This is the second stage of dealing with loss: Anger. First came denial, simply pretending that Obama was as beloved in the country as he was in the country's newsrooms, and of pretending the Tea Parties didn't exist.

Now they at last begin to apprehend they can't just wish the Bad Men away, and they get predictably, and puerilely, angry about it, and out comes the race card, yet again.

Speaking of delegitimization -- has anyone ever noticed that when someone challenges a liberal, the media immediately begins savagely delegitimizing that challenge? They don't rebut the opposition -- they claim the opposition is motivated by hateful motives or is crazy or ignorant/stupid and therefore their claims needn't be addressed.

We go through this every year or two. The moment the left begins to worry about its position in the country, the media wakes up and goes into a flood-the-zone 24/7 camapaign of not responding to/answering/rebutting/reporting the claims of the conservative opposition, but of delegitimzaing them as based on hatred or insanity or some other corrupt motive.

And, the motive having been fashioned from thin air and swiftly chased away (as phantasms are easily dispelled, being nonexistent), they then pretend the opposition's actual arguments and facts have been rebutted and rubbished.

Every two years, every year, every six months... depending on how much trouble a liberal is in. The media savages the right constantly, impugning motives and claiming, essentially, they have no right to say these things or think this way. First, before you will be recognized as full-fledged citizens, the media insists, you must prove to us you do not suffer from unapproved thought patterns, and as our evidentiary bar for that is very high, you can never satisfy us and thus never enter the public arena as full citizens of the United States of America.

To be sure, they always claim the right too has the right to dissent -- in a "to be sure" paragraph -- after which they straight away say, as they always say, "But not in this particular case. This particular case is a special case, and you have no right to dissent in this case."

Of course, they always feel that whatever situation we're in constitutes one of those special situations where the right cannot dissent legitimately.

In theory, we have political rights. Hypothetically, we have the right to dissent. In a perfect world, we're permitted to speak.

But in actual practice, whenever we attempt to exercise these rights, these rotten leftist bastards claim that in this particular case, we actually don't have that right.

I'm still waiting for a choad-toking bastard like Howard Kurtz to say, "Generally, of course, the right has the right to dissent, and this case is no exception."

But he never says that. They never say that. Every time we're beating the liberals -- and even when we're not beating them, but just making futile cases for ourselves -- it constitutes a Special Exceptional Case where we have no legitimate right to do so.

Pic from Ed Driscoll, who has a new Silicon Graffiti video out, on the topic Is Conservativism Dead?

PS: Whenever the Past-Tense Media wants to make the case that the Tea Party movement is racist, they start citing the signs.

As they can only find one or two signs that are even arguably of a racist nature, they never fail to start including Obama=Hitler signs as proof of "racism."

Every time. You can check and everything.

Now, Obama=Hitler violates Godwin's Law, and it can be said to be too strident, but... racist? Racist how, precisely? Hitler's white. (And Obama's half-white.) Is the claim being made that to compare Obama to a white man is racist?

Gee, that's funny. Because when we link him unfavorably to a black man, too -- such as his 20-year best friend and preacher of hate, or with his Truther Czar -- we're told that's racist, too.

Is there anyone of any race whatsoever we're allowed to link Obama to in a disparaging manner without being called racist?

How about Lenny Fuckin' Kravitz? He too is "post-racial." Is that the one guy we can link Obama too, or is that racist too, as it's too "on the nose"?

posted by Ace at 12:55 PM

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