Here’s a joke that is going around the internet:
A Republican, a Democrat and a person of color were walking down the street. The Democrat looked at the Republican and said “You’re a racist!”
Ha, ha, ha, ha!
OK, I haven’t really heard that joke yet. It does however, describe the Left’s view of Republicans and people of color. It now seems that regardless of the situation, the Left believes that all interactions that Republicans have with people of color are tinged with racism.
The race situation has become so contorted that no matter what Republicans do, they lose on the issue. When Republicans fight for school vouchers, a program that has been shown to benefit students of color often more than caucasion students, Republicans are claimed to be racist for fear of tearing apart highly segregated inner city schools. When Republicans appoint or hire people of color into leadership positions i.e. Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Michael Steele, the candidates are charged with some form of Uncle Tomism and Republican’s are charged with tokenism.
As the debate on Obama’s agenda has escalated, there has been an equal escalation in the claims of racism against those who oppose Obama. The racism claims were initially isolated. In the last week however, hardly any discussion of Obama’s policies or those opposing them is had without overt or subtle claims of racism against President Obama. Most notably this past week was Maxine Water’s demand to know what the tea party participants are thinking and Nancy Pelosi’stearful concern of returning to the 70’s where, incidentally, the culprit was a whacko leftist not a Republican.
Those who know the Left and their unimaginative, repetitive tactics, are not surprised that they have invoked racism nor that it slips off their tongues as easily as raising taxes does as a solution to all budget problems. However, even I am left with my jaw hanging after reading the latest view of the Right’s supposed racism.
After stating that his gut and Maureen Dowd’s are the same (What happens if one of them doesn’t like Thai food?) New Republic writer, John McWorter identifies a new source of our disgust with Obama’s agenda:
And yet, even if Dowd and I are correct that Wilson’s outburst was motivated by dislike for blacks, I’m not entirely sure that I, or anyone else, should care. Consider a hypothetical: Wilson, we can presume, would have been pleased as punch if the new black president were a Republican and were up at the podium singing the praises of small government and sending immigrants back to where they came from. This thought experiment does not exonerate Wilson of the charge of racism; what it does mean is that we are talking about a racism more complicated than the bigotries of old, a racism intertwined with other brands of animus (against liberals, against Democrats, against elites) to an extent we can only speculate about.
According to Mr. McWorter, racism is no longer an issue of intolerance of another race. Rather, racism, in Mr. McWorter’s view, is now the disagreement or intolerance of philosophies held by liberal, Democrats or even self proclaimed elites!
Beyond surprising Noah Webster, McWorter’s new definition of racism is going to come as a surprise to a whole bunch of other folks. Certainly, Abraham Lincoln would be surprised to learn that his opposition to the Left’s support of slavery, was racist. I suspect Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King would be surprised that they were also racists as they opposed policies that had been implemented and institutionalized by Democrats for generations.
According to Mr. McWorter You, I and anyone else who opposes any solitary policy or legislative sentence proffered by a Democrat, are racist. No longer is there any concern for how ill thought or destructive to America a policy is, from now on, all policies from the Left are right. Unless of course you are a racist.
“Jump the shark” is a colloquialism used to denote the point where traditional or commonly understood approaches veer off into absurdity or out-of-the-ordinary characterizations. I suggest that “Jump the shark” no longer adequately defines the extreme to which this phenomena can mutate. From now on “Jump the shark” shall be referred to as “disagreement is racism.” Compared to “disagreement is racism,” “Jump the shark” seems almost normal.
