"There is no level of achievement sufficient to escape the stultifying bonds of bigotry." - Herbert

[WillyT]

The Howls of a Fading Species
By BOB HERBERT
Published: June 1, 2009

<snip>

One can only hope that the hysterical howling of right-wingers against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is something approaching a death rattle for this profoundly destructive force in American life.

It’s hard to fathom the heights of hypocrisy currently being scaled by the foaming-in-the-mouth crazies who are leading the charge against the nomination. Newt Gingrich, who never needed a factual basis for his ravings, rants on Twitter that Judge Sotomayor is a “Latina woman racist,” apparently unaware of his incoherence in the “Latina-woman” redundancy in this defamatory characterization.

Karl Rove sneered that Ms. Sotomayor was “not necessarily” smart, thus managing to get the toxic issue of intelligence into play in the case of a woman who graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, went on to get a law degree from Yale and has more experience as a judge than any of the current justices had at the time of their nominations to the court.

It turns the stomach. There is no level of achievement sufficient to escape the stultifying bonds of bigotry. It is impossible to be smart enough or accomplished enough.

The amount of disrespect that has spattered the nomination of Judge Sotomayor is disgusting. She is spoken of, in some circles, as if she were the lowest of the low. Rush Limbaugh — now there’s a genius! — has compared her nomination to a hypothetical nomination of David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan. “How can a president nominate such a candidate?” Limbaugh asked.

Ms. Sotomayor is a member of the National Council of La Raza, the Hispanic civil rights organization. In the crazy perspective of some right-wingers, the mere existence of La Raza should make decent people run for cover. La Raza is “a Latino K.K.K. without the hoods and the nooses,” said Tom Tancredo, a Republican former congressman from Colorado.

Here’s the thing. Suddenly these hideously pompous and self-righteous white males of the right are all concerned about racism. They’re so concerned that they’re fully capable of finding it in places where it doesn’t for a moment exist. Not just finding it, but being outraged by it to the point of apoplexy. Oh, they tell us, this racism is a bad thing!

Are we supposed to not notice that these are the tribunes of a party that rose to power on the filthy waves of racial demagoguery. I don’t remember hearing their voices or the voices of their intellectual heroes when the Republican Party, as part of its Southern strategy, aggressively courted the bigots who fled the Democratic Party because the Democrats had become insufficiently hostile to blacks.

Where were the howls of outrage at this strategy that was articulated by Lee Atwater as follows: “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff.”

Never a peep did you hear.

<snip>

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/opinion/02herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

:mad:

:wtf:

:banghead:

[muntrv]

1. Hey Tommy Tancredo! How many white people did La Raza kill?

[WillyT]

2. What's Both Funny And Disturbing...

Is...

How many white people are currently killing the Republican Party ???

The self-induced cancer of the Southern Strategy.

A couple of decades ago... you could have a decent debate on the issues.

Not anymore.

:shrug:

[MadMaddie]

3. And the racist continue to blow their cover

You see the hate mongers relied on their rhetoric minorities, poor, women are shiftless, lazy, uneducated etc....

Then when highly accomplished minorities start taking leadership positions in predominately older white male dominated fields all of a sudden that advanced education is meaningless. That minority (black, hispanic, woman, poor) couldn't have achieved those top grades by themselves.

This was the racism behind the attacks on President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Sotomayer, and others not of the accepted circle.

<snip>
There is no level of achievement sufficient to escape the stultifying bonds of bigotry. It is impossible to be smart enough or accomplished enough.
<snip>

[WillyT]

4. Exactly !!!

:applause:

:hi:

[malaise]

5. It's called projection

A complete inversion of reality. Rushicans are very good at this.

[WillyT]

6. Kick !!!

:kick:

[TexasObserver]

7. Herbert hit that one out of the park. Very true.

I recall a cartoon in TIME magazine from almost 40 years ago. It showed a young black man, in his college cap and gown. He was shining the shoes of an elderly white man sitting in a shoe shine chair. The old man was saying "Just what is it you people want?!"

No matter what minorities do, they are damned by the racists who loathe them. If they go to college, go to professional school, graduate with high honors, and make a real impact in life, they'll be attacked. If they do anything less, they'll still be attacked. There is no making the racist happy for any minority who succeeds in traditional areas where white men have ruled.

The GOP is the party of white racists, and that's simply that.

[Karenina]

8. "It turns the stomach..."

There is no level of achievement sufficient to escape the stultifying bonds of bigotry. It is impossible to be smart enough or accomplished enough."