Strib: Aiding And Abetting Racism?

Two weeks ago, when Representative Ryan Winkler shocked the parts of the world that can still be shocked by referring to SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas as an “Uncle Tom” – something even junior-high kids in North Dakota thirty-something years ago knew was a racist slap – the Twin Cities media did what it always does.

Cover for the Democrat. 

(And the Twin Cities leftyblogosphere?  To them, Clarence Thomas, a phenomenally accomplished man, is no different than Michelle Malkin or Star Parker or Alan West; a target for endemic bigotry first, human last, maybe.  When will Eric Pusey condem the racism on his “blog?”). 

Speaking of accomplished people, Chris Fields – a very talented politician who gave Keith Ellison as good a run as any Democrat’s had in the 5th CD lately, and is now the Secretary of the Republican Party of Minnesota and who is a businessman, a retired US Marine and, as it happens, black – wrote an editorial about how very, very objectionable the Winkler flap was.

Now, it’s the mushy institutional left, people like the Star/Tribune editorial board, that constantly remind us we need a “dialogue about race”.  Of course, when they say “dialogue”, they really mean “monologue, with our side doing all the talking and your icky conservatives doing the listening

But in re the Winkler incident, it’s seem the Strib wants no monologue, much less “dialogue”.  Chris FIelds wrote an excellent op-ed about the subject of Winkler and his ignorant racist jape.  It was picked up by other papers – the Pioneer Press and the Mankato Times both ran it (it’s below the fold here). 

But the Strib?  Not so much as an impolite “F Off”. 

Winkler, who represents the lily-white, mushy-left heard of the Strib’s prime demographic, has gotten an unqualified pass from the entire Twin Cities media, which focused on his instant contrition in a way that’d would have seemed less jarring if it were something the Strib, the City Pages or MPR ever did for, say, Todd Akin’s verbal japes or Tom Hackbarth’s post-divorce wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time awkwardness or anything Ann Coulter has ever said, in or out of context. 

But it wasn’t. 

So why didn’t the Strib run Fields’ op-ed?  Is Fields not a compelling commentator on the issue?  Is his perspective not important?  Was his op-ed not well-written and excellent food for thought?  Yes, yes and yes.

Does it afflict someone the Strib’s editorial board and their friends very much want to see remain politically comfortable?  A thousand times yes. 

And so down the memory hole it, and the entire incident, will be shoved. They have their priorities.

Fields op-ed is below the jump.

 

Harvard-educated lawyer and Minnesota State Rep. Ryan Winkler made a statement last week calling U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas an Uncle Tom. He offered the poorest of excuses for an apology and denied that he understood the meaning of the derogatory and offensive term.

Winkler was able to make this comment because Democrats operate under a false sense of security created by their own echo chamber and helped by the extremists in their party.

In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama said in his “A More Perfect Union” speech, “Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.” But by November 2012, African American columnist Clarence Page noted in the Washington Post that Obama went on to “try his best to ignore it.” Page cited research from University of Pennsylvania political scientist Daniel Gillion that showed “Obama talked less about race in his first two years in office than any Democratic president since 1961.”

African American voters have been the most loyal constituency in the country for Democrats. Yet Winkler’s comment serves as a backhanded slap across the face of all African Americans, including mine.

Winkler’s insult and the DFL’s tacit embrace of it are a wakeup call to minorities in Minnesota. And frankly to every other average Minnesotan.

If this comment had been made by Michele Bachmann or Tim Pawlenty, the DFL would have lit a firestorm complete with demands for their resignation.

Today’s

DFL leaders, including Chairman Ken Martin, Gov. Mark Dayton and House Speaker Paul Thissen, must end their deafening silence and call for the resignation of Rep. Winkler if they want to be the party that stands against intolerance and for the people.
Their silence is confirmation that they’re perfectly capable of being oblivious to the sensitivities of their most loyal constituency. It also sends a strong message that they’re perfectly willing to ignore the needs of all Minnesotans.

And they have.

The last legislative session is proof positive of the growing DFL disconnect with average Minnesotans. While claiming to help the “little guy,” they did nothing to expand the middle class. On the contrary, all Minnesota taxpayers will pay more in taxes, more on their energy bills and more in fees to support an expanding state bureaucracy.

The Republican Party is fighting for all Minnesotans and not just on the issues of taxes and spending. It’s Republicans offering real solutions to close the achievement gap between black students and white students by strengthening teacher quality and student accountability programs.

I encourage minority voters and Minnesotans from all walks of life to take a fresh look at the Republican Party. We have a strong field of candidates who are making this case to the voters. They are leaders in business, leaders in local government and leaders in the legislature who are in touch with the people and who know how to manufacture success for the masses. Simply put — these guys are good and they get it.

To accept Winkler’s assertion that he did not understand the full connotation of the Uncle Tom reference is to accept and promote a lie. And pretending the Democrats are still the party of all Minnesotans accepts and promotes another, bigger lie.

Chris Fields is secretary of the Republican Party of Minnesota.

21 thoughts on “Strib: Aiding And Abetting Racism?

  1. It’s kind of like General Mills. They have become heavily involved in Minnesota state politics over the past year. Yet, their silence is deafening about the racism of their state senator that represents their corporate offices.

  2. Not all disparaging comments are racist. I understand why Winkler backed down from his comment, but he was essentially correct. And you leave out that Rep. Pat Garofalo so embarrassed himself he had to remove his tweets after a little twitter war after it made headlines in the City Pages, when he wrongly went after Eric Pusey for something he didn’t write, that I did.

    I used the term ‘Uncle Tom’, in a very narrow and specific application to a single court decision, where Justice Thomas voted against his own experience, correctly. It was intended to be both disparaging and critical, and it clearly did not denigrate anyone on the basis of a derogatory or negative assumption about innate racial differences generally (THAT is what racism IS).

    A disparaging comment may be derogatory, and refer to an issue that involves or includes something related race, without being broadly racist like the ‘n’ word. That is because it refers to an individual’s behaviors, not to all people of any specific race inherently.

    From the Random House dictionary, via dictionary.com:
    noun Disparaging and Offensive.
    a black man considered by other blacks to be subservient to or to curry favor with whites.
    Compare Aunt Jemima.

    and the Online Etymological Dictionary, from Harpers, also via dictionary.com:
    Uncle Tom
    “servile black man,” 1922, somewhat inaccurately in ref. to the humble, pious, but strong-willed main character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852). The image implied in the insult perhaps is more traceable to the late 19c. minstel show versions of the story, which reached a
    far wider audience than the book.

    I narrowed that use and definition further, to curry favor or be subservient to white CONSERVATIVES.

    Justice Thomas was admitted to Yale through affirmative action; he was not a gifted or particularly brilliant student, graduating in the lower middle of his class. When he failed to get hired by a prestigious employer after graduating, he tried to blame it on affirmative action, despite the contradiction that ALL the other affirmative action graduates DID get hired by prestigious employers. Which pretty much gives the lie to his claim, as well as underlining the hypocrisy of his positions about individual merit and personal responsibility. Those failures are all HIS, and he tried to blame affirmative action for his own deficiencies.

    In point of fact, Thomas was pretty much NEVER was hired anywhere on merits as a particularly good legal mind, his hires were political hack appointments where he served as a token black man for the right.

    When Thurgood Marshall left the bench, the right was looking for another black person to replace him who would vote reliably Republican – and that was pretty much Clarence Thomas’s ONLY credentials for that advancement. The American Bar Association gave him one of the lowest ratings on ability and accomplishment of any candidate proposed for that position EVER. He has not followed the legal accomplishments of Justice Marshall with any similarly highly-regarded judicial opinions, and he rarely speaks in court, relatively rarely writes anything either; by and large, he just rubber stamps Scalia and Alito.

    So, when there was a ping back to my original post from here stating “a phenomenally accomplished man, is no different than Michelle Malkin or Star Parker or Alan West; a target for endemic bigotry first, human last, maybe.”

    I would challenge you or your readers to demonstrate the ‘phenomenal accomplishments’ of Clarence Thomas. List them.

    Another example of the right avoiding or omitting or just denying facts when they don’t fit your faux victims narrative. The only real claim that Malkin, Parker or ALLEN West have are they made careers out of being extremists who pander to other extremists.

    Grow a pair; it might help you deal with the terrifying problem that facts are not your friends.

  3. Minor correction to the above; paragraph 2 should have read “I used the term Uncle Tom correctly. Justice Thomas did not rule correctly, (given the claim of the SCOTUS case was factually inaccurate). Some sort of ‘long running script’ prevented me from correcting that before the comment published.

  4. . . . but he was essentially correct.
    Of course, Winkler would have also been ‘essentially correct’ if he had called Thomas a n*gg*r.
    You seem to think that it’s okay to call a person an ‘Uncle Tom’ if you think that it fits whatever your definition of ‘Uncle Tom’ is. It is not. It is a term used to shut a person up, to devalue their opinion, to say that what they believe shouldn’t matter. I have never, ever heard a conservative speak of a liberal SC justice using the hatred and racial insults liberals routinely use against Thomas.
    You are a class-A bigot, Dog Gone. I hope people don’t let you around children. God knows what you would teach them.

  5. DG comes by to explain why she is the Good racist when she refers to a black person as a “Uncle Tom”.

    Sorry DG, it doesn’t work that way, you are unequivocally a racist, no ifs, no ands, no buts. Just absolutely a racist.

    DG in addition to the Cornish Bill could you specify which of the conservative groups targeted by the IRS were convicted or even charged with “breaking the law” or, tired blowhard that you are, were you just lying about that?

  6. So Dog, because justice Thomas as a dark hue to his skin, he is supposed to ignore the laws and constitution, and rule incorrectly? Do you also think he should eat fried chicken and watermelon?

  7. Terry,
    William F Buckley once referred to an opinion authored by Thurgood Marshall as a “gravely mistaken analysis”

  8. It is a racist slur because race is THE essential element of the slur.

    I’m subservient to Conservatives but calling me an Uncle Tom doesn’t work, as I’m not Black.

    Pretending a racial slur is not a racial slur (it’s not rape-rape) is a lame excuse, Dog Gone. Here’s a better one: Yes, Uncle Tom is a racial slur but Liberals are entitled to use racial slurs, just as Blacks are entitled to call each other n****r. No reason for that entitlement, they just are, so Conservatives must shut up about it. That would be illogical, which is perfect for you, and also irrefutable, which is perfect for Democrats everywhere.
    .

  9. Ruth Bader Ginsberg is no-talent political hack who substitutes an outdated ‘progressive’ ideology for legal reasoning. Sonia Sotomayor seems to believe that the Supreme court is a representative rather than a deliberative body.

    See how that works? Short, incisive criticism without resorting to crude ethnic, racist, or sexist stereotypes.

  10. And I can back up my Ginsberg criticism w/o resorting to cheap shots. Here is her dissent in the Ledbetter V Goodyear equal pay case:
    http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/05-1074.ZD.html
    She doesn’t think the law passed by congress and signed by the president, especially its 180 day limit for claims, is adequate to the task of preventing pay discrimination, so she simply wants the court to rewrite it. As precedent she points to other times activist courts and judges have effectively usurped the job of legislators by rewriting discrimination law. She believes that if you were denied a promotion or a pay raise, say, thirty years ago, because you are still being paid less today, a time limit specified in the legislation should be ignored by the court.
    The problem with her dissent isn’t that it is ‘wrong’, it is that, if her opinion were accepted, the court — made up of appointed judges — would effectively replace the legislative branch. The political process requires negotiation and compromise between parties with interests at stake in the legislation. In Ginsberg’s world, judges could overrule and make law as they chose, with no recourse available to the people injured by her judicial activism. They couldn’t even vote her out of office.
    Congress could get rid of the 180 day limit whenever it wants to. Even when the Dems held majorities in the House and Senate, they couldn’t move a bill to remove the time limit to the Obama’s desk (the “Paycheck Fairness Act”).

  11. DG,

    Not all disparaging comments are racist.

    True. But yours and Winkler’s were.

  12. And you leave out that Rep. Pat Garofalo so embarrassed himself he had to remove his tweets after a little twitter war after it made headlines in the City Pages, when he wrongly went after Eric Pusey for something he didn’t write, that I did.

    I “left it out” because it was utterly irrelevant.

  13. I was going to respond at greater length to your screed, DG – and I may do so yet on my main blog.

    But it’s here we really cut to the chase:

    I used the term ‘Uncle Tom’, in a very narrow and specific application to a single court decision, where Justice Thomas voted against his own experience, correctly.

    “against his own experience?”

    Who the HELL are you to tell him, or anyone, what “his experience” is?

    Leaving aside the corrosive racism of the term “Uncle Tom” itself – what you just said is even worse; to you, the collective experience (which the Left has commandeered for political gain) trumps personal experience. It’s dehumanizing, it’s cynical, it’s exploitive, and it’s, yep, racist.

    it clearly did not denigrate anyone on the basis of a derogatory or negative assumption about innate racial differences generally (THAT is what racism IS).

    How many moons orbit the world you’re on?

  14. If you really want to understand what “white privilege” is, Dog’s screed is worth pondering. Consider what her comments mean — by her lights, Clarence Thomas is free to interpret his own experience only in the way she believes it should be interpreted. Any interpretation outside of what Dog deems acceptable is “against his experience.”

    Think about that — Dog Gone gets to decide the meaning of Clarence Thomas’s life. You want to talk about having a privilege — that’s a hell of a privilege.

    I’ve long referred to Dog Gone as Mrs. Teasdale, after the clueless character Margaret Dumont played in “Duck Soup.” I must say that such a reference is far too charitable. I think Madame Mao is closer to the mark.

  15. Clarence Thomas did a very good job of defining his own experience in his 2008 book: My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir

  16. Think about that — Dog Gone gets to decide the meaning of Clarence Thomas’s life. You want to talk about having a privilege — that’s a hell of a privilege.

    Exactly.

    Well, Dog Gone?

    (Not that you’ll acknowledge any responses…)

    This may well be worth a post in its own right.

  17. I guess Penigma’s Chihuahua has revealed her hidden racist. And on a forum, where unlike Rep. Winkler’s tweet, she can’t try and un-write the words.

  18. Wow! We have a winnah!
    Mitch, I think this ignorant, racist cunt* deserves a sidebar badge.

    *term used in a very narrow and specific application QED.

  19. Liberals: “Stand aside, boy; we’ll define “your experience” for you”.

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