You've probably heard about this one already, so there's little I need to do here in terms of setup. Sometimes I question my purpose in life; at other times it is so very clear why I was put on this Earth. When I first read Richard Cohen's latest, I had one of those moments of clarity. This is my everything.
The day after Chris Christie, the cuddly moderate conservative
When Chris Christie is your cuddly moderate, you need to start asking questions. Start with "Are we a party full of crazy people?" Then say "Yes." and move on to wondering how it came to be that a guy who looks like Kevin James doing a Tony Siragusa impression is your most charismatic candidate.
won a landslide reelection as the Republican governor of Democratic New Jersey, I took the Internet Express out to Iowa, surveying its various newspapers, blogs and such to see how he might do in the GOP caucuses, won last time by Rick Santorum, neither cuddly nor moderate.
"took the Internet Express out to Iowa" is the noblest way ever concocted of saying, "I read some blogs and I'm going to treat them as representative of public opinion, at least inasmuch as I can use it to make my point."
Superstorm Sandy put Christie on the map. The winter snows of Iowa could bury him.
That's deep. This is why he gets the big bucks. Looks like we're all about to get blasted by Tropical Storm Bullshit just as Mount Hackneyed begins to tremble.
From a Web site called the Iowa Republican, I learned that part of the problem with John McCain and Mitt Romney, serial losers to Barack Obama, "is they were deemed too moderate by many Iowa conservatives.
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" The sort of candidates Iowa Republicans prefer have already been in the state. The blog cited Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah (considered to the right of Cruz, if such a thing is possible), Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the party's recent vice presidential candidate and its resident abacus, and the inevitable Sarah Palin, the Alaska quitter who, I think, actually now lives in Arizona. If this is the future of the GOP, then it's in the past.
And what in the ball-jiggling hell is "Iowa Republican"? The linked story has a typo in the headline. Even by right-wing standards this does not seem like a legitimate source. And remember, these are people who found Ahmed Chalabi credible.
None of these candidates bears the slightest resemblance to Christie. And the more literate of them — that's not you, Palin – must have chortled over post-election newspaper columns extolling Christie as precisely the sort of candidate the GOP ought to run in 2016. This is the dream of moderate Republicans, but not many of them vote in the Iowa caucuses or the South Carolina primary, two of the early nominating contests.
And New Hampshire, which people like McCain and Romney have used as a springboard to the nomination. But other than that.
At the moment, it is Cruz, not Christie, who has seized the imagination of Iowa Republicans. Cruz has not only been to the state, but he also was accompanied by his evangelist father, Rafael, a colorful preacher who opposes almost anything, including, of course, same-sex marriage. ("It was Adam and Eve, it was not Adam and Steve," he recently said.)
Boy that's clever. That line is so old, I think the nuns beat Michelangelo's ass in grade school for using it.
Cruz the younger is not merely tea party to the nth degree, he is a Christian conservative as well – and for 22 percent of Iowa's "likely 2016 caucusgoers," polled by the Des Moines Register, that's who they think stands the best chance of winning the presidency. The No. 1 choice (44 percent) was "a candidate focused on civil liberties and a small government rooted in the U.S. Constitution."
Well 22% isn't great, especially when followed by the revelation that twice as many respondents preferred a vague description of someone who doesn't exist to Cruz.
Christie can passably argue that he is that,
As plausibly as I can argue that I starred as Wade Garrett in Road House.
but no one is going to call him a Christian conservative. After all, he opposed same-sex marriage in New Jersey, but he acquiesced. Cruz would not to do that. He’d still be talking – and Steve would still be single.
In comedy this is what's called a "comeback". It's usually only done with good jokes, but whatever.
Iowa not only is a serious obstacle for Christie and other Republican moderates, it also suggests something more ominous: the Dixiecrats of old. Officially the States' Rights Democratic Party, they were breakaway Democrats whose primary issue was racial segregation. In its cause, they ran their own presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond, and almost cost Harry Truman the 1948 election. They didn't care. Their objective was not to win — although that would have been nice – but to retain institutional, legal racism. They saw a way of life under attack and they feared its loss.
This is what we call some good ol' fashioned foreshadowing! Everyone take a big sip of your drink.
Today's GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled – about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde.
It's not racist, it's just "deeply troubled" about "expansion of government" (READ: WELFARE QUEENS) and immigration (READ: OMG MEXICANS), not to mention secularism and "mainstreaming" of what used to be "avant-garde", which I assume are coded references to the gays.
People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children.
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OK. Wait.
(Should I mention that Bill de Blasio's wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?)
NO, YOU SHOULD QUIT WHILE YOU'RE AHEAD. And by ahead I mean fired. Maybe just sit the next few plays out, champ.
This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts – but not all – of America.
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Pretty sure interracial marriage happens, like, everywhere. Even when I lived in the deep south, where one might expect resistance to be found even if nowhere else, it seemed pretty unremarkable. If there is a bloc of resistance to "the miscegenation" or whatever such people – PEOPLE LIKE RICHARD "GAG REFLEX" COHEN – might call it, I'd like to see some data on who they are.
To cultural conservatives, this doesn't look like their country at all.
Maybe all of their endless rage and wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments is not a result of their country changing but of their delusion that the country is "theirs". You know those black lesbian wiccans with adopted Chinese children and three purebred Greyhounds who live in Dem Big Cities are Americans too, right? Like, they can vote and stuff, and they have an equal 1/319,000,000 claim to ownership of America as does Richard Cohen. Nobody's taking away "their" country; they're just dying off, and not quickly enough if I may say so.
As with the Dixiecrats, the fight is not over a particular program – although Obamacare comes close – but about a tectonic shift of attitudes.
Sounds more like a lack of shift in attitudes, cubby.
I thank Dennis J. Goldford, professor of politics and international relations at Drake University in Des Moines, for leading me to a live performance on YouTube of Merle Haggard singing “Are the Good Times Really Over.” This chestnut, a lament for a lost America, has been viewed well more than 2 million times. It could be the tea party's anthem.
It took a guy with a Ph.D. to find a YouTube video of a popular song by an artist who is nearly a household name? While you mull that over, let's talk about nostalgia for The Good Ol' Days. Maybe flip through a book of Norman Rockwell paintings while we're at it. Ask for whom they were good – white men with money, not unlike Richard Cohen – and you answer the question of who's so desperate to bring them back.
For all his positions and religious beliefs, Christie is too Joisey for the tea party – too brash, as well. He would be wise to steer clear of Iowa lest he lose or, worse, follow Romney and take on the deeply conservative coloration of the state's GOP.
Yes, this man who is running for president will skip Iowa. Richard Cohen has quite the grasp of how the nomination process works. He should skip Iowa, lest he follow in the path of Mitt Romney…who won the Republican nomination I think. Let me check. Yep, he won it. Didn't win Iowa, but neither did McCain. I guess Iowa isn't that big of a fucking deal after all.
That might make him (barely) acceptable to Republican Iowans but anathema to the rest of us.
This is the dumbest thing I've ever read, and one time I read Going Rogue.
Read more from Richard Cohen's archive.
I'll pass, thanks.
J. Dryden says:
Oh, Jesus, Ed. Again, post-FJM, I thank you for what you do for the rest of us, but…Jesus. Don't–just don't force yourself to do another one any time soon, OK? Having to read Cohen, and then…well, really, anything that comes after "read Cohen" is just too much to bear. To quote Lovecraft: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of [Richard Cohen], and it was not meant that we should voyage far." Slight edit on my part, but only just.
Should any of you unwary travelers dare to take Mr. Cohen up on what I can only assume is a Satanic challenge in reading his archives (if you make it through more than three with your soul intact, you win a solid gold fiddle!), be warned: It really doesn't get any better. As in "Zimmerman was totally justified because young black men are scary enough to deserve shooting." I wish I was exaggerating.
My favorite aspect of this column has been Cohen's defense of it. Many many many people–OK, everyone who has read it and who does not include a sheet as part of his weekend wardrobe–have objected to the "people with conventional views" statement. Cohen's response is "Yeah, but that's only one sentence–I wrote a whole column, so you have to take it in context."
Oh.
So in the middle of my next lecture, if I pause and say, "Also, Hitler was right, rape is just what frigid women call getting what they really want, and the 13th Amendment is an insult to the superiority of the white man. Now, on to Book Two of PARADISE LOST," I will be able to inform the administration, when they tell me I am fired, that they cannot find what I said offensive, because the entire lecture is really what's important.
But I would never say that. Because I'm not a monster.
I would, however, say "Richard Cohen is a child molester who funds Al Qaeda when he's not forcing homeless women into sexual slavery." Because, see, IN CONTEXT, that's not offensive, because I'm making a larger point about irresponsible social commentary. Yay!
duck-billed placelot says:
Ok, all I can think about is that pedestrian from the crash gif. Is s/he … alive? Did I just watch a death-loop?
tenacitus says:
Like Duck-billed I keep thinking about the pedestrian not Richard Cohen
Figs says:
Miraculously the pedestrian survived:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/pedestrian.asp
Chris "The Limey" says:
"Richard Cohen's Archive" sounds like either a frightening horror movie, a terrible prog rock band, or a traumatic porno.
Sarah says:
Conventional views. CONVENTIONAL VIEWS. May I point out here that it's been FORTY-SIX YEARS since the Loving decision?
Arslan says:
"I took the Internet Express out to Iowa, surveying its various newspapers, blogs and such to see how he might do in the GOP caucuses, won last time by Rick Santorum, neither cuddly nor moderate."
And Rick Santorum lost the nomination, big time. Are we still not past the point where the Iowa caucus predicts nominations?
"It took a guy with a Ph.D. to find a YouTube video of a popular song by an artist who is nearly a household name?"
Of course it didn't, but if he had found the video himself he wouldn't have had that opportunity to name drop and pretend as though he hangs out with intellectuals.
Talisker says:
Washington Post columnist, based on some combination of half-assed Internet surfing and his own warped imagination, asserts that Real Americans in the Heartland are howling racists who have a "gag reflex" for interracial marriage.
I think we have a new champion in the field of Greatest Contempt for the Rubes.
Anonymouse says:
Last week on the Bill Maher show, some self-righeteous woman from Texas smirked that Chris Christie was too abrasive for a political role in the oh-so-polite south. Really? Has she ever heard of Dick "Go F*** Yourself" Cheney? It seems to be a meme among Republicans that the south is a bastian of gentility and manners and would be AGHAST at anyone who speaks directly (as opposed to the dogwhistles we're all sick of?)
Tim H. says:
I suppose it might be a good sign that the contemporary GOP is aghast at the prospect of an electable nominee, blissfully unaware that conservatism, like many other "isms", is something many will take a little of, but few will immerse in. The bad part is it should guarantee the continued success of "Conservative lite" Democrats.
middle seaman says:
Whoever still reads the media systematically deserves the Cohen abuse. We, me and the beautiful lady, stopped reading papers, magazines and watching their counterparts on TV about 15 years ago. Friedman, Cohen, Will, Ignatius, Cohen NYT, Samuelson should be labeled by the Surgeon General as dangerous to our collective and individual health.
Apart from that, why read a column or an article if you need to take a shower to rinse the crap out of yourself afterwards?
Arslan says:
" It seems to be a meme among Republicans that the south is a bastian of gentility and manners and would be AGHAST at anyone who speaks directly (as opposed to the dogwhistles we're all sick of?)"
Yup. I hear this kind of hypocrisy from conservative family members all the time. If someone outside their "tribe"(liberal, leftist, whatever) says something abrasive, possibly in a heated argument, it means they are rude and anti-social. If a conservative goes off the rails the reaction is, "Wow he is so passionate," or in extreme cases(like cursing someone out), it's "See what these crazy liberals have driven us to?"
Buckyblue says:
Yeah, skip Iowa like Giuliani, the most recent of Nor'easter 'moderate republicans', that worked well for him. Anything that gets Cruz the nomination is a win, in my book.
Major Kong says:
OK, the New York metro area has more population than Iowa plus New Hampshire plus a couple of the smaller southern states – and you can throw in one of those big squares states like Wyoming just for good measure.
So why exactly should I care if the Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce gets its collective panties in a wad over interracial marriage?
I'm getting tired of hearing about this supposed "Real America" where NOBODY FUCKING LIVES!!!
c u n d gulag says:
He ain't goin' nowhere!
Sadly, Cohen's not going to get fired.
His Editor just said that this column was "brilliant!":
http://www.mediaite.com/online/tweeted-too-soon-wapo-publisher-declares-richard-cohen-column-brilliant/
Brilliant?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
OY!
OY!!
OY!!!
TEH STOOOOOOOOOOPID! IT BURNS WITH THE HEAT OF 10 TRILLION SUNS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By that measure, Sarah "The Whore of Babblin'-on" Palin, is MENSA material – not DENSE-A.
And even if Cohen DOES get fired, he'll fail UP – not down!
FOX will hire him in a nanosecond – at 10 times what the WaPo used to pay him.
He'll replace Juan Williams as their token "Liberal." Wait, no he won't – Williams is also one of their token black people – so, Cohen will become their token "Liberal" Jew. Look for FOX's new evening news show: 'Hannity and Cohen.'
And Cohen will gain 50 pounds giving speeches and telling his beyond-lame "jokes," on the Wingnut Welfare rubber-chicken after-dinner speaker circuit.
This is one of the problems with today's MSM:
If you fail "Liberalism" (and, for FSM knows for what reason – except maybe for some handful of Cohen's columns from the late 70's – 1970's, btw, not 1870's – he's been placed in there), you fail UP!!!
FOX, or Wingnut Welfare, will reward you!
Talk radio, may beckon.
You'll get a column on the Op-ed page of the Washington Times!
All that'll be required, is that you bash Democrats, Liberals, and Liberalism!
But, if you fail CONSERVATISM, you are royally screwed and truly totally fucked!
At best, if you fuck-up as a Conservative – like, let's say, get caught plagiarizing, like Rand Paul just did (over and over again, apparently) – you'll end up at either MotherTucker's, or (Not at all, and never was) Breitbart's, combo's of internet outhouses and mental asylums.
Conservatives take care of their own.
But only if they stay true to Conservatism! Whatever that may be, from one day to the other. Policy position may vary, but the core fundamentals are always racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, and Jesus-grifting – Cohen fails here, but for some extra pieces of silver, I'm sure that he'll sell-out, and talk nicely about Christianity (if not go whole – completely non-kosher – hog, and become one of the "Jews for Jesus" people).
And Conservatives also take care of failed "Liberals!"
(See my earlier paragraph above, about why Cohen is mysteriously placed in this camp).
Besides, Cohen probably has some killer-videos of his Editors schtupping some young children, and/or some farm animals – like some soon-to-be veal chops, or spit-roasted piglets, or curried goats.
Maybe some chickens', too – or roosters.
Hell, it could be anything, including the rake.
But definitely not the thresher – his Editors may be stupid, but they're not crazy.
wetcasements says:
Richard Cohen is the epitome of the token librul.
Hope his sorry ass gets fired but I'll never read the Washington Post again. Haven't for about ten years, and it's my hometown paper.
Anubis Bard says:
I really could have done without the car crash gif. It wasn't funny, and if someone ever decided to do a FJM treatment of this post, that would sit front and center. Richard Cohen has never not been an ass, but apparently wandering into the cesspool of Iowa Republicanism gave him the mistaken idea that his own brand of xenophobic contempt was all moderately mainstream by comparison. Oops.
In Hell's Kitchen (NYC) says:
Cohen is just one more sign of the severity of the troubles to come now that the Santorum Prophesy has been fulfilled:
http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2013/09/fulfillment-of-santorum-prophecy.html
doug says:
well, I liked the car crash gif, and yeah, Mr Cohen is really lame.
Paul says:
Great post, Ed. Made my morning.
Jacquie says:
Excellent takedown as usual, Ed, and +1,000 for the Intolerable Cruelty GIF. No one loves that movie like I do.
cromartie says:
This isn't the defense of the guy, because the next two sentences are pure idiocy. But does the sentence:
People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children.
Make more sense, and have better context if it's presented as:
People with "conventional" views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children.
Because if it's phrased in this latter context, it can reasonably be interpreted as conventional to the Iowa conservatives that are the subject of the column, rather than implying that this is a mainstream view.
Along the same lines, the sentence:
This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts – but not all – of America.
Isn't as inaccurate as Ed or most liberals like myself would like you to believe. Certain pockets of the country remain almost entirely homogeneous and extremely resistant to change. There are no shortage of racists that disapprove of interracial marriage (I can think of two in my family that live in medium blue Michigan, for example), and they almost all are among the group of people Cohen is trying to describe.
So Cohen, in this column, I won't speak for the rest of the rotting corpse of his "body of work", is guilty of bad context and offending the sensibilities of people who think our society is egalitarian. In isolation, this isn't really a fireable offense. Coupled with some of his past writing, though, if you want to kick him out the door, I'm fine with it.
Brian says:
Thank the FSM I read the comments. I was totally thrown off by the car crash GIF. Glad to know it wasn't a snuff film.
Alan C says:
Oh, yeah, interracial marriage is so unconventional. We have a Supreme Court Justice who's a black man married to a white woman! And he's a conservative! Give me a break. How did this guy get a newspaper column in our nation's capital?
Eric S. says:
Back in 2006 Cohen wrote an article proclaiming the uselessness of algebra education. In it he has the following couple of lines:
"Here's the thing, Gabriela: You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it. … If, say, the school asked you for another year of English or, God forbid, history, so that you actually had to know something about your world, I would be on its side."
and
"…sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers."
If there was ever anyone that could use some reasoning skills and a history lesson more than Cohen I would not want to me that person.
Algebra column
Eric S. says:
Back in 2006 Cohen wrote an article proclaiming the uselessness of algebra education. In it he has the following couple of lines:
"Here's the thing, Gabriela: You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it. … If, say, the school asked you for another year of English or, God forbid, history, so that you actually had to know something about your world, I would be on its side."
and
"…sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers."
If there was ever anyone that could use some reasoning skills and a history lesson more than Cohen I would not want to me that person.
Algebra article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/02/15/BL2006021501989.html
Eric S. says:
D'Oh, sorry for the double post.
bb in GA says:
The Hag released that song (Are the Good Times…) in 19 frickin 81….Get with it Mr. Cohen's friend PhD…
//bb
Rich says:
Ironically, Haggard has become a liberal. Cohen's columns have tended toward muddled messes for a long, long time. If you give him benefit of the doubt (i.e., merely expressing what some wingnuts think), the way he does it is just a mess.
mothra says:
I am also relieved to know that I wasn't watching a pedestrian get whacked in that gif. Also, the two drivers had minor injuries, which is utterly shocking. Of course, they only say the pedestrian lived. How he is managing to live (i.e. in a wheelchair) is not mentioned.
And for cromartie, no, the meaning of that sentence doesn't change if you put quotes around conventional. Because the point is that only racists find themselves gagging at the sight of interracial couples. Now, Mr. Cohen could have written that once upon a time conservatives would have found it impossible to accept interracial couples and gotten to some of his point, but honestly if I were his editor, I would have made him take out the entire damn sentence and asked him to make his point in a completely different way. Because he could have.
Scotius says:
I remember when I heard that Jeff Bezos had bought the Washington Post I thought to myself "I'll know he really means business if he fires Richard Cohen." His continued employment is an affront to everyone who actually takes pride in their work. I wonder how many real reporters the Post could have kept on for what they are paying him to squeeze out his columns?
Bernard says:
i've heard Cohen is supposed to be a "liberal." lol
now that is some good Republican PR /Bullshit if i evey heard any. and proof this country aint won't saving. lol i mean how stupid, oh never mind, conservatives "own" America. ever since St. Ronnie.
that we spend time talking about Republican talking points and the stupidity and hatred of them, is.. well.. proof of the absurdity of life.
at least i know when to say when.
and that pedestrian video is Extremely Upsetting!! you could have used "conventional" wisdom not to include it. lol. did he live, is he paralyzed. god forbid, such a scene could be even dreamed up.
noskilz says:
One of the more entertaining treatments I've seen of the Cohen thing.
As blatant a mess as Cohen's column is, it makes me wonder if even the people who work at the Washington Post bother to read it.
John Doheny says:
The problem with Cohen's column is not the content but the presentation. Because the fact of the matter is, an awful lot of "social conservatives" DO gag at the thought of interacial marriage. And it's a huge mistake to think that just because polls show a sizeable plurality of Americans now "approving" of interracial marriage in the abstract that things are cool. Because once you start breaking the shit down, you quickly find that there's a hierarchy to these things.
White guy marrying an Asian woman? Most white people are probably cool with that. White guy with a black woman? Less so. White woman with a black man? Get a rope.
Remember that Cheerios commercial? I listened to a couple of twerps on NPR discuss the "racial topography" of that little brouhaha for half an hour without once mentioning the bleedin obvious; that it was the black man/white woman thing that got the conservo-lizard-brain all twitchy.
http://thegrio.com/2011/09/13/do-americans-unanimously-approve-of-interracial-marriage/
Matt says:
" Their objective was not to win — although that would have been nice – but to retain institutional, legal racism. They saw a way of life under attack and they feared its loss."
Awfully… *convenient* of Cohen to forget that those exact same Dixiecrats are the heart and soul (as much as such people can be said to have one) of the modern GOP. FFS, some of the exact same PEOPLE are still in Congress, now under the GOP banner…
Irena says:
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Surly Duff says:
@John Doheny – "The problem with Cohen's column is not the content but the presentation."
I completely disagree. To paraphrase the most objectionable piece of the column, Cohen makes three totally non-cogent points:
1) The GOP is not racist. They are concerned with many policy issues, including spending, the War against Christmas, immigration and the "mainstreaming of what used to be avant-garde, which, although it makes no sense what-so-ever, I assume he means interracial marriage as this is the next example. Of course, those two issues are primarily about race. But again, totally NOT racist.
2) People with "conventional" views have to suppress disgust at interracial couples. However, vomiting in your mouth a little when you see a white and black person holding hands does not mean you are racist. No seriously, it doesn't because I just said one sentence ago that these people are not racist.
3) The reason these people have to try not to throw up when they see people of two races kiss is because the shift in cultural attitudes that have accepted these interracial relationships does not represent the America that these conventional conservatives used to live in. They just don't know what happened to the America they loved, with its separate schools, water fountains, and bathroom for black people. In that was they are similar to the Dixiecrats, who also had problems with cultural shifts in America – like desegregation, the end of lynching, and equal voting rights. But again, totally NOT RACIST.
I mean, sweet fancy moses, in that one paragraph Cohen contradicts himself and his own points. I have no idea how anyone, even Cohen, could read that after putting it to paper and not saying, "Wait, that is fucking stupid. I need to redo that whole section". It is not presentation, it is content. And how is it even tangentially related to a theoretical nomination battle between Christie and Cruz is beyond me. Only in the fevered imagination of a tin foil hat-wearing moron would Cohen's column be reasonable.
John Doheny says:
@Surly Duff,
Oh I completely agree that Cohen is stupid and contradictory. And of course being inspired to regurgitate by the sight of black-white couples is by no stretch of the imagination "not racist." But the idea that people who feel that way have somehow disappeared in our new Age of Enlightenment is self-congratulatory and delusional.
Has there been progress? Of course. And yes I know we have a black president, something inconceivable back in the day. But the day we have a black president with a white wife is the day I'll accept that all that nonsense is over and done with.
The hot button issue in Interracial marriage has ALWAYS been the black-man/white-woman trope. White guys marrying Korean women didn't get anybody strung from a lamp post with his severed genitals stuffed in his mouth.
Arslan says:
I think delivery certainly IS a problem because he presents this racist demographic as though they are like "soccer moms", NASCAR dads, etc. If you're pointing out that these people still exist in large numbers and that's a problem- it's fine. He doesn't do that. He makes it seem like these racists are just an ordinary demographic group with certain concerns and that the Republicans should appeal to them.