Almost.
I wonder if Sharpton et al have listened to the misogynistic lyrics of some of the rap songs by mostly black groups who regularly refer to women in far more disgusting ways than Imus could even imagine.
It is possible that you may remember Reverend Sharpton as the guy who once taunted Jews by saying, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house"; and who has evolved into one of the formost race hustlers in America. This behavior has not made him a pariah--oh, no! Instead it made him Democratic presidential material!
The political left has managed to elevate race hustling into a moral imperative.
It is a fundamental rule that if you are black, you have absolute moral authority to utter as many racist, sexist, and anti-semitic comments as you like.
David Horowitz once ommented that: “Black studies celebrates blackness, Chicano studies celebrates Chicanos, women’s studies celebrates women, and white studies attacks white people as evil.”
It is just the new multiculti leftist political reality -- a sort of intellectual 'racism' that is perfectly acceptable when a member of the left directs it against anyone not on the left or anyone not a card-carrying member of one of their protected "victim" groups. They reserve the worse bile for "apostates"--believers who leave the leftist fold.
Examples abound. Joe Lieberman is someone who has left the dogmatic fold and he is the recipient of a considerable amount of hate from those who once nominated him as a VP candidate. If Imus had called Ann Coulter (who I don't particularly care for) a Ho', would anybody from that side of the political spectrum have gotten worked up about it? Or, how about if he referred to Condi Rice by that term, would Al Sharpton have heroically risen to her defense? Don't be ridiculous.
Or, in a parallel vein, consider Elizabeth Edwards (who is not black as far as I know) and who, in her latest interview, felt completely free to indulge in a particularly nasty bit of stereotyping and prejudice by attacking one of those 'rabid, rabid Republicans'.
For the political left, it is completely socially acceptable to describe and stereotype Republicans, conservatives, Christians, whites, etc. etc. in this manner. But they are very free with their charges of racism, sexism etc. etc. In fact, the intellectual elites of the left consider it their moral duty to call a 'spade a spade' and 'speak truth to power' whenever the opportunity arises. This we are told is their right to free speech.
Just don't get the impression that you are entitled to free speech--which, by the way, includes offensive and unfunny speech sometimes. There is something a bit contradictory about "free" speech that must rigidly conform to the politically correct and sensitive rules of the left. And there is a significant hypocrisy at play when they can be as insensitive toward you as they like because you don't count if you happen to be one of the "oppressor" groups (like white, male, Christian, Jew etc.).
I live in Ann Arbor-- one of the centers of leftist political thought in the U.S. (and one of the centers of the Marijuana culture--coincidence?). Never in my intellectual life have I felt so much like a minority; a stranger in a strange land, the recipient of angry confrontation because I have a Bush sticker on my car; which inevitably seems to bring out the not-so-latent, socially acceptable form of intellectual racism practiced in these parts.
I have had people who I thought were friends suddenly inform me that they could not associate with me because I was capable of writing a blog like Dr. Sanity; i.e., that I disagreed with them politically. Discussion of the ideas that I presented was not something they cared to do.
Around here, the lawns have had signs prominently displayed since 2001, that demand Bush's immediate impeachment and shout "PEACE!" at the top of their little lawn sign lungs, just to make sure you understand how morally righteous the homeowner is.
Have you ever seen articles written by those on the political left who happen to be living in red states/areas that describe their social ostracization because of their political views? Their marginalization in academia?
No, I haven't either.
Yes, the left whined constantly because they were not in the majority; and they still whine now that they are in the majority; because deep in their little leftist hearts they know that they must continue to claim they are inhumanely oppressed by having to live among such conservative savages in order to retain their claim to moral superiority. But, I would venture to guess that chances are, they are unable to relate a single instance of being excluded; or raged at by colleagues or neighbors; or systematically made to feel invisible because of their political or intellectual views.
Now that they are "the power" to speak truth to, do you imagine that they will gain a little insight into their own intellectual racism? Don't count on it.
Want to know what they think about people on the right? Garrison Keillor captured the essence of the new racism in his book, Homegrown Democrat: a Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America. Republicans and conservatives are:
...hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists,
see-through fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience,
freelance racists, hobby cops, misanthropic frat boys, lizardskin cigar monkeys,
jerktown romeos, ninja dittoheads, the shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax
cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, taxi dancers, grab-ass executives, gun
fetishists, genteel pornographers, pill pushers, chronic nappers, nihilists in
golf pants, backed-up Baptists, Crips and Bloods of the boardroom...
How clever and tolerant! How diverse! How multicultural! How politically correct! How extraordinarily funny! Surely you are able to recognize the difference it makes when someone on the left versus someone on the right is overtly prejudiced, racist, sexist, and insensitive, can't you?
It makes all the difference in the world.
In a previous post, I wrote:
Today’s Left and its antiwar clone army are reduced to reliance on mere Marxist rhetoric and tired, worn-out slogans that are trotted out in every circumstance and situation. They dare not face the real and pressing injustices of the world. No one can reason with them or even agree to disagree. They and they alone know the truth, and if you argue with them you are immediately labeled as a “racist”, or a “sexist”; or identified as “hurting poor people”, “hating blacks”, or “against women”. Every argument is defined in these terms. If they are the champions of “X”, then anyone who disagrees with them must hate/discriminate against “X.”
You hear this bullshit constantly. It is impossible to suggest that there are different ways to approach various social problems or societal “injustices”. Or that there are possibly more effective and less damaging approaches that the same old Marxist formulations.
It is useless to point out, for example, that trillions of dollars have already been spent on helping the poor and the disadvantaged in this country. What has resulted in the long run from that effort? We have given people fish to eat, but we haven’t taught them how to go fishing. And, as proof of that, we have the spectacle and pathos of New Orleans during Katrina; with the predictable reflexive response from the Left that, “George Bush hates black people.”
Perhaps--just perhaps-- it is the Left's own policies that “hate” and discriminate against black people? Perhaps it is their victimization of blacks that “keeps them in their places” and not the horrible "racial prejudices" of those awful Republicans.
As a free country we have much less to fear from a legion of unfunny Don Imuses or Ann Coulters [or even, for that matter, the unfunny Al Frankens, the prototype of which is a leftist hero, running for congress in Minnesota!Just like Al Sharpton, his brand of insensitivity and "racism" is politically rewarded) than we do from the "intellectual racists" of the left who ban any speech they don't like, don't agree with, or that is "insensitive".
And, of course, since they answer to a higher moral authority, the left gets a free pass to demean, stereotype and be generally insensitive to any individual or any group they don't happen to like. What a great scam.
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