For decades – until the larger movement started wising up just a tad, within the past decade or so – one of the standard gun control advocates’ lines usually went like this:

“Guns may be fine in rural America, but in the city – in urban America – guns are a plague that needs to be controlled”.

“Urban”, in this liberal context, meant “black people” pretty universally. Given gun control’s universally racist roots, it’s understandable.

Likewise on tax policy; tax cuts proposed by suburban and rural interests were seen as a dagger at the heart of “urban” American – meaning “America of color” to the left.

“But wait, Mitch”, you might respond. “Where is that written down?”

The Urban League; Urban Studies programs; Urban issues. All of them are code words of the left. All of them are, to one degree or another, code words for “black”.

To the right? True conservatives don’t focus on race – but “Urban” is a code word as well. It means “bureaucratic”, “dominated by lefties and their visions”, “a net tax suck on society”. And judging by the lilywhite (albeit impeccably-far-left) makeup of most “urban” governments, it’s – to be charitable – color-blind. Being less charitable, it means “white-as-the-driven-dandruff”.

Of course, we have other code words on the right. “Journalistic Code of Ethics”, to a civilian, means “rules”. Not so, to “journalists” and the conservatives who watch ’em; for them, it means “framework by which “journalists” rationalize unethical behavior”.

Steve Perry – former journalist, now kommissar of the Minnesoros “Independent”, plumbs the left’s bottomless well of callow racism in this bit of yellow flakkery, about a recent speech by Rep. Michele Bachmann:

“This is their agenda,” Bachmann states bluntly. “I know it is hard to believe, it’s hard to fathom—but this is ‘mission accomplished’ for them,” she asserts. “They want Americans to take transit and move to the inner cities. They want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, [and] take light rail to their government jobs. That’s their vision for America.”

The context is fairly clear: Liberals want cities to be centralized; they see our future as high-density, connected by rails and bikes and scooters, shopping at vegan corner delis selling only locally-produced goodies; above all, they see us paying taxes, directly and indirectly, to The Man. The Democrat, Liberal Man (race irrelevant).

Can anyone see, by any rational measure supported by any sort of context at all, any other meaning to Rep. Bachmann’s statement?

Outside of the projection of insecure liberals, I mean?

Of course not. There is none.

Which doesn’t stop Perry – Soros-employed rentablogger – to make some up out of whole cloth:

Inner cities. Urban core. Tenements. Here, in a nutshell, is one explanation for Bachmann’s urgency in spreading the $2-a-gallon gospel: To save her sort of people from living in close proximity to, um, Negroes.

Note to Mr. Perry: Look up the term “projection”.

No, really. Your publications have always wallowed in it.  But it’s OK – it’s not original.  It’s a pattern.  The people that pay Perry’s salary want callow racemongering, so they’ll get it.

Why would that be?

UPDATE:  Commenter Master of None notes that code words are, indeed, everywhere.  Say “suburb” to a real lefty – for example, this old, deranged colleague of Steve Perry’s – and see what happens.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 7:00 am and is filed under Ebony And Ivory, Minnesota Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.