The Rude Pundit - Tweets About Elaine Chao: On the Left, We Treat Our Screw-Ups with Honor

[meegbear]

Here in Left Blogsylvania, we give a fuck. We give a fuck because we believe it matters to give a fuck. When someone on our side fucks up and fucks up badly, we don't automatically circle the wagons. We want punishment. Look at Anthony Weiner versus, say, David Vitter. We want apologies - real apologies, not apologies that go something like "I'm sorry if I offended you when I murdered your dog. It wasn't my intention to offend you but rather simply murder your dog."

So when an offensive tweet from Progress Kentucky, a not-really Super PAC devoted to defeating Senator Mitch "What the hell is that between your chin and neck? You should get that tumor checked" McConnell, was brought to everyone's attention nearly two weeks after it was sent out to the 2000 followers of the account, Left Blogsylvania went all Twitchy on its own. (If you understand what that last part of the sentence means, the Rude Pundit feels your pain. Let's jab needles in our eyes together.)

The tweet was about McConnell's wife, George W. Bush's Labor Secretary, Elaine Chao, whose record is worthy of criticism. But she's Chinese-American. And you can't link to an article about her, identify her as the Senate Minority Leader's wife (must...resist...urge to joke...about "Minority Leader"...), and say, "May explain why your job moved to #China!" See, that shit's just racist, whatever you intended, and we on the left understand that if we're gonna go nutzoid when someone on the right does it, then what's good for the motherfuckers is what's good for the progressives.

Left Blogsylvania and the actual liberal media condemned it thoroughly. Salon, Think Progress, Wonkette, Talking Points Memo, even Huffington Post, taking a break from all Anne Hathaway's nipples all the time, and the New York Times all posted variations on "That's some bullshit."

You know what you didn't see? You didn't see any of the major voices of theleft leaping in to defend Progress Kentucky. You didn't see Daily Kos writing posts about how, of course, Progress Kentucky didn't mean anything racist; they just meant to point out that Chao's tenure as Labor Secretary saw a shift in American jobs to China. If this had been someone on the right saying it? If it had been one of Karl Rove's Super PACs? The wagons would have circled like they were protecting American Jesus from the Lamanites. Rush Limbaugh would have devoted half a fuckin' show to blowharding about liberal political correctness. Bill O'Reilly would have blamed Obama. Laura Ingraham would have had Michelle Malkin on as an honorary Asian to talk about how it wasn't offensive at all, just true. They would have gone all Todd Akin. They would have gone all Richard Mourdock, trying to say what's wrong is the attempt to silence it. Somehow, guns would have been mentioned, for sure.

But we're not them because we're generally not dicks about such things (we're dicks about other things and have blinders on many more, but that's not what's being discussed today). We call out racism, sexism, and homophobia. We hope that those being called out will do the right thing. In this case, potential McConnell opponent Ashley Judd condemned the tweet, as did the Kentucky Democratic Party.

In fact, after at first trying to say it wasn't racist, Progress Kentucky issued a full apology: "We apologize to the secretary for that unnecessary comment and have deleted the tweets in question." You see how easy that is?

Now, Progress Kentucky is a tiny, mostly worthless organization. It's easy to pile on it. But time and again, the left proves that it demands a devotion to truth and fair discourse.

Which, by the way, is why the right is able to walk all over us all the time.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2013/02/tweets-about-elaine-chao-on-left-we.html

[seabeyond]

1. ah, well, come on over to du and you will find plenty defending our sexism, racism and homophobia

And see plenty jump on others ass as poutage if some of us do call it out. On du, we hear the good progressive ALLOWS the freedoms and defends the 'ISMS.

And this is the fuckin' rude pundit? I didn't read the article for clarification, only the excerpt.

[truebrit71]

4. ...

[seabeyond]

8. some embrace hypocrisy. i call it out. oh wait... just like the fuckin' article says we

progressives do.

what a hoot, your rollin' eyes.

[truebrit71]

9. ....I find your poutrage amusing, but ultimately quite boring...

:yawn:

[seabeyond]

10. lol

[bluedigger]

6. meegbear usually publishes the RP in full.

That's the whole thing.

[seabeyond]

7. thank you. nt

[Sekhmets Daughter]

2. Which, by the way, is why the right is able to walk all over us all the time.

Agreed ...but can truth ever be a bad thing? Perhaps we need to scream louder than those on the right.

[JaneyVee]

3. 100% accurate. The Left continues to ALWAYS have the moral upper-hand over the RWNJs.

[KoKo]

5. Mr. and Mrs. Washington Insider: Mitch McConnell and His Wife

Mr. and Mrs. Washington Insider: Mitch McConnell and His Wife
By: Dennis S

The guy is a United States Senator. He’s been fouling up the chamber’s air for 27 years. He’s married to Elaine Chao, a reasonably bright and attractive Taiwanese immigrant (most likely Han Chinese) with a heavyweight CV that includes an 8-year stint as U.S. Secretary of Labor where she spent considerable time leaning on unions. She was also the Director of the Peace Corps and CEO of United Way. She earlier had been a VP of two huge banks. Before her labor gig, she was with the Heritage Foundation; she returned to Heritage in January 2009.

One might ask what a gal like her sees in Mr. Crepey. It seems the attraction is in their mutual sleaze compatibility.

Heritage opened an office in Hong Kong in 1996 and hired Chao to supposedly serve as Heritage’s academic liaison, passing on valuable cultural and scholarly matter for a better understanding of China and the region. In truth, Chao’s apparent lone responsibility was to grease the skids for U.S. manufacturers to cut deals to bring American jobs to non-union cheap labor plants in China. WorldNetDaily reported that she was also a director of an Alabama-based Insurance Company that partnered with the Chinese government. I’m sure she received a handsome stipend for her connections with a U.S. Senator – her husband. And this union-hating, American job exporter becomes U.S. Labor Secretary?

Any thoughtful Republican would consider most of the above to be a conflict of interest, not to mention her board membership of the National Association of Security Dealers. As Church Lady would say – “Isn’t that special.” For Republicans, it’s just another day at the office. Just like Clarence and his Tea Party wife, Virginia (Ginni).

The Senator married this accomplished lady after getting rid of the woman who helped him through law school. Don’t they all?

If you haven’t guessed by now, the object of my disaffection is Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell. He’s my human equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. While the media concentrates on the madman menagerie that is the U.S. House of Representatives, almost no attention is focused on the equally whacked out Republicans in the senate; every bit as Tea Party-possessed and Obama-hating as their house-bound colleagues.

MUCH MORE of the article at:

http://www.politicususa.com/washington-insider-mitch-mcconnell-his-wife.html

[alp227]

11. Think Progress article

Liberal Super PAC Sends Racist Tweet About Mitch McConnell’s Chinese Wife

Sadly, this Super Pac has confirmed the fallacious "liberal racism" beliefs among right wingers (I know what they are going to say, ESPECIALLY with their Asian spokesperson Michelle Malkin, so I'm going to do better things than peak at their gutter web spaces).

[DallasNE]

12. As A General Rule

I see no reason to drag the spouse of a candidate into the discussion and that is where I see the issue. There is certainly nothing racist about the comment. Besides, it conflates Taiwan with the Peoples Republic of China, meaning it even misses it mark.

Now if you want to discuss racist comments turn your attention to what Justice Scalia said today regarding the Voting Rights Act being a "perpetuation of racial entitlement", meaning blacks are not entitled to vote apparently.

[ellisonz]

13. Leave the spouses and kids out of it!