Dr. Laura Schlessinger has finally figured out (or bumbled into) the way to get us talking about her again.

She "articulated the 'n' word all the way out — more than one time." She wasn't calling anyone the epithet or adopting the word as her way of speaking, only referring to the way other people talk: "black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n*gger, n*gger, n*gger." It was really weird to use the word on the radio, and I suspect her of doing what Rush Limbaugh calls the "Media Tweak of the Day," a remark designed to get his adversaries talking about him.

Now, Dr. Laura has apologized, both for saying the word all the way out and for not helping the caller. The caller, Jade, was a black woman married to a white man whose friends and family make "racist comments" in front of her, which her husband ignores. Voicing her suspicion that "sometimes people are hypersensitive," Dr. Laura asked Jade to giver her 2 good examples of these "racist comments." Jade says:

OK. Last night -- good example -- we had a neighbor come over, and this neighbor -- when every time he comes over, it's always a black comment. It's, "Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?" And, "Do black people really like doing that?"

Of course, Laura didn't think that was racist, but instead of inviting Jade to contemplate why a well-meaning person might say something like that or how Jade might take a more active role to get the neighbor to stop addressing her that way, Laura opened up the stream-of-consciousness:

... Well, listen, without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That's not a surprise. Not everything that somebody says -- we had friends over the other day; we got about 35 people here -- the guys who were gonna start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. My bodyguard and my dear friend is a black man. And I said, "White men can't jump; I want you on my team." That was racist? That was funny.

Jade then says: "How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around..." Here, Laura needed to determine whether the husband's friends and family are saying the word. Laura keeps riffing about general things happening out there in the culture:

Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n*gger, n*gger, n*gger.

The friends and family in question aren't black guys (and neither is Jade), so what is the point? That Jade should put up with the n-word, said in her presence? People on HBO say "fuck" all the time too, but if the neighbors come to your house and say "fuck" all the time, you have a legitimate complaint. "Don't be so sensitive" is like saying "Be a doormat." But that lapse of Laura's — the failure to recognize what is special about a person's home — hardly gets any attention, because her saying the word "n*gger" was such an immense distraction. Why on earth would Laura do that? Media tweak. 

Yeah, that makes me a tweakee. But there's no tweakee defense for the blogger. We bloggers live on tweaks. Mmmm. Yum.

Mel Gibson teaches us that Americans are more roused by racism than misogyny (or breasts).

There's so much talk of Mel's "racist rant." I listened. Although he most certainly says the n-word and says it in a line that suggests contempt for black men, the rant is all about the woman's purportedly fake breasts. The hatred is squarely aimed at the (white) woman.

A feminist issue.

Propagating the notion that Tea Partiers must be stupid.

It's the "Teabonics" Flickr set, collecting photographs from Tea Party events that depict signs with spelling or grammar errors. Example:



The first commenter says: "I guess that's why they call it 'fee'-dom." A few comments down someone asks if maybe it's Photoshopping. Yes, it's so easy to Photoshop errors onto people's signs. (I wonder if there are any defamation lawsuits based on the photographic lie that results.)

Via Wonkette, where commenters are having fun mocking someone who wrote "I did’nt serve 22 years for Socialism":

I love the “Did’NT Serve” sign.

Seems the three Rs for Teabaggers is Retardism, Racism, and Recidivism not that librul reading, riting and rithmatics.

Simpleton white dumbfuck retards, all.

So, one man served in the military for more than 2 decades and then misplaced an apostrophe, and another is skilled in the detection of racism and the use of mental disability as metaphor.

"The View" women — joined by Meghan McCain — trash Sarah Palin and Tom Tancredo.

The smugness and condescension of these women is irritating as hell, but please watch, so we can talk about this:



There's no balance, with Meghan McCain in lieu of Elisabeth Hasselbeck. McCain is way too eager to win the love of liberals. She says:

Congressman Tancredo went on TV, and he was the first opening speaker, and he said, "People who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House whose name is Barack Hussein Obama." And then he went on to say that people at the convention should have to pass literacy tests in order to be able to vote in this country, which is the same thing that happened in the 50s to prevent African-Americans from voting. It's innate racism, and I think it's why young people are turned off by this movement. And I'm sorry, but revolutions start with young people, not with 65-year-old people talking about literacy tests and people who can't say the word 'vote' in English.

Now, the funny thing to me about that is, if you think racism is bad, you should also reject the idea that ideas are inborn. And you should reject categorizing people by groups like young and old. People are individuals, and they are what they develop into as they live and act in this world, not what was programmed into their genes. Maybe McCain doesn't know the meaning of the word "innate." Maybe she meant something like "ingrained." She's borderline incoherent, and that's almost as annoying as her need for liberal love (which she's not going to get!).

And, by the way, I think it was foolish of Tancredo to bring up literacy tests. They were used in some parts of the country in the past to keep black people (and poor white people) from voting. There are better ways to say that people were dumb/uninformed, and that's why they voted for Obama, if that's what Tancredo meant to say. Maybe he did intend to resonate with racism, or he has fond feelings about the bad old days. Who knows? In any case, in complaining about people being dumb, he was dumb. Whether he's also suffering from racism is another matter. But if he is, it's not innate racism — which makes him more responsible for it, not less.

Is Harry Reid a racist? It depends on what the meaning of racist is.

"It was all in the context of saying positive things about Senator Obama. It definitely was in the context of recognizing in Senator Obama a great candidate and future president." So said Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine, about Harry Reid saying that Obama would be a fine candidate because he's "light-skinned" and has "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

Is Harry Reid a racist? It depends on what the meaning of racist is:

If by "racist," you mean somebody who feels antagonism toward black people, then Harry Reid isn't a racist. Harry Reid thinks we are racists.

If by "racist" you mean somebody who would use other people's feelings about race in a purely instrumental way to amass political power, then Harry Reid is a racist.

ADDED: To fight the charge of Type 1 racism, the Democrats are rolling out their Type 2 racism in all its virulence.

AND: Eugene Volokh responds to this post:

Does the term “racist” indeed normally mean “somebody who would use other people’s feelings about race in a purely instrumental way to amass political power”? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used this way; and while I certainly recognize that words can have multiple standard meanings, I’m skeptical that the second meaning Prof. Althouse suggests is indeed standard.

The reason why I put it that way is not because I saw that as a standard meaning. It is intended to express what I think is exactly what Reid was doing. The clause begins with "if." Seen that way, I'm saying: If what Reid did is racist, Reid is a racist.

Now, it's a separate question whether racism should be defined like that. Perhaps a narrow definition of "racist" is desirable. The word is so inflammatory, you might want to reserve it for those who think people of a particular race are inferior and deserve to be treated differently. But maybe our understanding of the word should be refined so that it covers those who use race in other ways that we disapprove of. My post was intended to offer the suggestion that we ought to disapprove of what Reid did with race and for that reason we ought to adopt it as the definition of racist.

Volokh says that if my proffered use of "racist" isn't "standard"...

... then it seems to me a bad idea to try to redefine “racist” this way, because of the substantial possibility that (1) listeners will misunderstand...

I disagree. I want to challenge people to think about what is "racist," not save the word for the meanings that have already been established. Let's use it in ways that are useful. And let's talk about and develop the meaning of this powerful word, not just try to make life easy for listeners.

... and (2) will misunderstand in a way that is unfair to Sen. Reid, because it might lead listeners to think that Reid is actually being called a definition-one racist (a normal meaning of “racist”), since that’s a more standard definition.

I'm not willing to dumb down the conversation like this. I said quite clearly that Reid wasn't a Type 1 racist. I think there is something else he was doing that was bad, and I'm using a proposed redefinition of the word to inspire critical thought about how bad it is.

"We apologize if you've had an upsetting experience using Google."

But Google will not take down an offensive, racist image of Michelle Obama that comes up first when you do an image search on her name.

UPDATE: The blog that hosted the image has removed it.

Is "The White House Butler" an outrageously racist headline?

There's been some discussion here in Madison, Wisconsin, where former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler is a visiting professor at the law school, about whether that headline, on a Wall Street Journal editorial, is racist. The editors begin:

As consolation prizes go, Louis Butler can't complain. After being twice rejected by Wisconsin voters for a place on the state Supreme Court, the former judge has instead been nominated by President Obama to a lifetime seat on the federal district court. If he is confirmed, Wisconsin voters will have years to contend with the decisions of a judge they made clear they would rather live without.

Judge Butler served on the state Supreme Court for four years, enough time to have his judicial temperament grow in infamy. Having first run unsuccessfully in 2000, he was appointed by Democratic Governor Jim Doyle to the seat vacated by Justice Diane Sykes in 2004. But after serving four years, voters had seen enough of his brand of judicial philosophy, making him the first sitting justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in four decades to lose a retention election last year.

The editorial proceeds with a few paragraphs about how liberal Butler supposedly is and concludes: "Mr. Butler's nomination shows the dominance of liberal ideology in Mr. Obama's judicial selections, and especially a contempt for Wisconsin voters."

Now, my position is that the President of the United States, under the U.S. Constitution, has the power to appoint federal judges, and therefore he can choose liberal or conservative judges as he sees fit. If they are well enough qualified — which includes the requirement that they have a judicial temperament and are committed to legitimate legal methodology — the Senate should confirm them. This is why I supported George Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito:

Those Democrats who are already insisting that Judge Alito's record on the bench makes him unacceptable should keep in mind that someday they, too, will have a president with a Supreme Court seat to fill, and it would serve the country well if that president wasn't forced to choose only among candidates with no paper trail. To oppose Judge Alito because his record is conservative is to condemn us to a succession of bland nominees and to deprive future presidents of the opportunity to choose from the men and women who have dedicated long years to judicial work.

So Louis Butler has a liberal record as a judge. Obama is the President. I don't see the problem with confirmation.

But are the Wall Street Journal editors to be condemned as racist? I guess I need to nail down the point that Butler is African American. That's never mentioned in the editorial. Some of the people I have heard from are absolutely committed to the conclusion that the headline "The White House Butler" is undeniably and outrageously racist.

Now, it occurs to me that the person who came up with that headline may not even have known that Butler is black. It's not in the editorial, and I think headline writers tend to work with what's in the article. Here, the headline writer might have simply tried to come up with some play on the last name and didn't have to go very far to come up with the idea of a butler serving in the White House to insinuate that the judge would be doing Obama's bidding — carrying political ideology into the court.

The conventional image of a butler is quite white:

Those who see racism in the headline — because of the juxtaposition of "Butler" and "House"? — may perhaps be thinking of the idea of the "house negro and the field negro," as famously explained here by Malcolm X:



(Written text here.)

But there is nothing about Louis Butler's position in relation to Barack Obama that is at all like the "house negro" that Malcolm X opposed. And you'd have to stretch to say that the editorial insinuates that he is. You'd have to portray Obama as "the master" and the people of Wisconsin as the "field negroes." It's just too much to read into the editorial. You sound silly even saying it.

But that's not to say that the Wall Street Journal didn't lay a trap for Madison liberals. Maybe they knew they were putting in just enough resonance with racism to bait university types into crying racism. And if they do, as noted, those professors will sound silly, because there is nothing racial in the entire text of the editorial. And what will the people of Wisconsin think — those voters who twice rejected Louis Butler as a state judge — if they learn that Madison professors find outrageous racism in that headline?

What will the Wisconsin voters think?
	Thank you for opening my eyes about racism.
	One more reason to see Madison as a lefty enclave.
pollcode.com free polls

"Parakeets cull is racist..."

According to Matthew Frith, Deputy Chief Executive of the London Wildlife Trust":

"Parakeets are birds from the Indian sub-continent that came here is the last century and are doing very well. Just like curry... There are concerns that species from other parts of the world are scapegoated but we have been bringing different animals here like rabbits and hares since Roman times. The biodiversity in our country is a mix of native and non-native just like the social make-up of this country."

What a terrible analogy! Especially for an anti-racist.

Thanks to all my readers who gave immediate and overnight pushback to a vile new commenter...

... who I assume was pro-Obama and writing under a pseudonym here with the object of making this blog — and more generally, criticism of Obama — look racist. This coward put up his comment on my 9:50 p.m. post — "Should the President be insulting pop stars?" — at 11:52, presumably to maximize the time that it would be up on the blog and that it would sit here as long as possible before I would take it down, which I did as soon as I got on the blog this morning at around 9 (Central Time).

The commenter, Metlife, had never posted here before and had a profile showing that he'd joined Blogger just this month. He wrote — and the asterisks are mine: "can someone murder that f***ing n***** fast? It will be a good day when Hussein is murdered by one of our southern patriots."

The pushback was immediate. Joe wrote at 11:59: "Could the previous comment be stricken and the poster banned?" Just Lurking said: "Is that you moby?" (suggesting, as I am doing now, that Metlife was against not Obama but this blog community). John Stodder said: "Althouse is probably asleep, but if you have her phone number, wake her up and tell her to delete it." (No one did that.)

Seven Machos said: "Okay, first, get Metlife out of here. At least Cedarford is subtle and occasionally witty.... All racist ass clowns and pretend-racist-agent-provocateur ass clowns should take note of Cedarford's work. This is how it's done." (Cedarford is a longtime commenter who writes well but often expresses extreme ideas of the sort that I do not censor).

Peter Hoh said:

I'm guessing that nolife is a plant. A true Southerner always capitalizes the S.

And wouldn't a full-blown racist southerner consider that "southern" is an unnecessary modifier for "patriot"?

Plus he knew how to spell "Hussein."

Good ole boys spell it "Hoo-sane."

Former law student said...

Speak of laying a turd and someone does. Probably an agent provocateur, because he created a fresh identity for the occasion.

Blake said:

Ugh. The Mobys are getting disgusting in here.

Urban Dictionary defines "Moby":

An insidious and specialized type of left-wing troll who visits blogs and impersonates a conservative for the purpose of either spreading false rumors intended to sow dissension among conservative voters, or who purposely posts inflammatory and offensive comments for the purpose of discrediting the blog in question.

The term is derived from the name of the liberal musician Moby, who famously suggested in February of 2004 that left-wing activists engage in this type of subterfuge: “For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you’re an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion. Then you go to an anti-immigration Web site chat room and ask, ‘What’s all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens?’”

The strategy has been frequently attempted on conservative blogs, but has not been nearly as effective as Moby envisioned, since false rumors are easily debunked by fact-checking minions, and cartoonishly extreme commenters often get immediately identified as mobys and banned.

Lucid said:

Actually, Metlife, with his registration [email] and ip address, should be reported to the secret service. Threatening the president is a serious crime, as it should be.

I also wonder if Metlife is actually a lefty troll pulling an Alinsky.

Hey, Alinsky isn't defined yet over at Urban Dictionary. But I know what you mean, and I certainly think he is.

Jack said:

God, what a festering stinkhole of a web site this is. I don't know how you wingnut loons can stand stewing in your own shit like this, presided over by the shit mistress, Ann Althouse.

Of course she's too dishonest to tell you dumb motherfuckers that Obama's remark was made off the record, thus rendering her posed questions ("should the president be insulting pop stars?" and "what business is it of the presidents?") inoperative. And of course you stupid shit-for-brains don't follow the link to find out for yourselves. Maybe the ever-dull Althouse didn't bother reading enough of the story to find out that the comment was off the record, or maybe she's just dishonest.

You're stewing in a cesspool. And you like it!

And that's an example of the sort of comment I don't delete. I'm that into free speech. But Metlife deserves deletion and, as Lucid said, investigation by the Secret Service. I like to think the Secret Service is good enough that they are already on it.