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Jewish World Review June 1, 2010 / 19 Sivan 5770 Bill Maher's ‘Black’ President By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"I thought when we elected a black president, we were going to get a black president. You know, this [BP oil spill] is where I want a real black president. I want him in a meeting with the BP CEOs, you know, where he lifts up his shirt where you can see the gun in his pants. That's -- (in black man voice) we've got a 'motherfu**ing problem here?' Shoot somebody in the foot."--Bill Maher
Ordinarily, I wouldn't bother wasting a column on a pipsqueak like Bill Maher. His track record of contempt for ordinary Americans--which dovetails quite nicely with his elitist sense of superiority--is long and well known. Yet the above remark is both so utterly racist and so wonderfully revealing with regard to the liberal mindset, I couldn't resist.
First context. Imagine Rush Limbaugh saying the exact same thing. Can you imagine the very same Bill Maher among those leading the charge against Limbaugh for his "vile, racist" remarks? Can you picture him and other liberals foaming at the mouth, demanding Limbaugh be fired, or insisting that advertisers boycott his radio show? Sure you can. Can you imagine liberals turning on Maher for same remarks? Of course you can't.
Why is that? Because liberals can never be racists. Even when they make obviously racist remarks, their fallback position is the idea that they were illuminating something that forever lives in the minds of other people: Republicans, conservatives, red-necks, Christians, and every other "racist" group in a "hopelessly racist" country.
A perfect analogy for such a blatant double-standard can be found in the usage of a single word: nigger. It is a word for which context is everything. It is the word which banishes a Caucasian to the depths of hell for a single utterance, yet remains in regular use among blacks themselves. And if one takes the teaching of radical leftist professor Cornel West seriously, blacks get the same dispensation as liberals: they too can never be racist under any circumstances.
But what picture is Bill Maher painting? Does the word "stereotype" ring a bell? According to Maher, a "real" black is a street thug with a foul mouth and a gun in his waistband to back it up. A real black is someone which requires Maher to change the inflection of his speaking voice in order to make sure people understand what a "real" black man sounds like.
Get it?
Despite the denials of our leftist elitists, racists come in all shapes, sizes and ethnicities. Those who harbor genuine prejudice in their hearts are not limited to any specific group. But every dubious aspect of human behavior has its strains, ranging from moderate to virulent.
Liberal racism is the most virulent racism on the planet.
Why? Because liberal racism is papered over with a patina of legitimacy based on "good intentions." It doesn't matter that the emergence of the welfare state, aka LBJ's Great Society, virtually destroyed the nuclear family in the black community, which now "boasts" an illegitimacy rate of nearly eighty percent. All that matters is liberals made a "valiant" attempt to lift black America out of poverty. It doesn't matter that the essence of affirmative action is the idea that blacks are inherently inferior to other minority groups. All that matters is that America's involvement with slavery--over one hundred and thirty five years ago--be "counter-balanced" with preferential treatment. Make that preferential treatment to the point of absurdity, as in the University of Michigan adding 20 points to a minority applicant's college admission ratings, simply for being a minority--or the city of Hartford Connecticut's attempt to invalidate a promotional exam for firemen because no blacks passed the test.
At the center of liberal racism is the most pernicious idea of all: black America is mired in perpetual victimhood which can only be alleviated by massive government--run by liberals. Maher's description of a real black man is directly attributable to liberals' determination to spread the message that life is so hopeless, becoming a street thug is a perfectly legitimate response to such despair. In fact, for Maher and others like him it is much more than that: it is apparently one of the prerequisites for "authenticity" among black males.
The results of buying into such authenticity? Nearly 25% of black males in their twenties are in jail, on parole, or on probation.
There are millions of liberals just like Bill Maher. It is the liberal media machine which ignores intellectual blacks like Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams and elevates racial hucksters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to the level of "community spokesmen." It is our leftist-dominated entertainment complex which continues to glorify black low-lifes and gang-bangers in music and on film. It is the liberal academics who continue to insist that America is a fundamentally racist nation, and that "reparation" must be made to peole who never experienced slavery by people who never engaged in it And it is virtually all liberals who believe that anyone daring to question their interpretation of, and "solutions" for, racism must be racist themselves.
Such an assessment also applies black Americans who dare to stray from the liberal plantation. Other than perhaps Robert Bork, I can think of no Supreme Court nominee who was treated more reprehensibly than Clarence Thomas. His nomination process was every bit the "high tech lynching" by liberal Democrats as he so aptly described it. Since then, he has been characterized as a "house nigger," pictured as a lawn jockey on a magazine cover, and prompted Julianne Malveaux, a black woman and a college president, to "hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease...."
The perpetrators of such overt hatred? Liberals, one and all.
Bill Maher may get criticism for the above remarks from those on the right, but he'll get the same free pass from liberals who routinely forgive one of their own for "mis-speaking," no matter how offensive. Yet what's more interesting is Maher's thought process itself. The bet here is it either never even occurred to him what he was saying was racist--or that the effort to be amusing confers an automatic exemption from his bigotry, as long as one is liberal. It would be fascinating to know what the president himself, whose first impulse was to accuse the Cambridge police of "stupid" behavior with regard their handling of Louis Gates, would have to say about Maher's assessment of a"real" black president.
We'll probably never know. Our "unbiased" media has never demonstrated much of an appetite for pursuing racism whenever it emanates from the left side of the political spectrum. It has taken more than forty years to grudgingly admit that fellow liberal Daniel Patrick Moynihan might have been onto something when he warned that the destruction of the black nuclear family would yield disastrous consequences. And yet even as liberals finally acknowledge Moynihan's prescience, they continue to insist the expansion of the welfare state and the inculcation of the victimist mentality among blacks has nothing to do with it. Such an admission would be fatal for leftists who have come to take the support of black America completely for granted. Those who believe in ever-expanding government recognize the need for a steady supply of "beneficiaries"--no matter how destructive ongoing dependency on government is for the beneficiaries themselves.
Better a black victim who votes Democrat than a self-sufficient human being who might not. Better a man convinced that being judged by the color of his skin is better than being judged by the content of his character. Better hordes of restless young men being ministered to by bureaucrats than raised by their own fathers. Better lousy, unionized, inner-city public schools than school choice. Better institutionalized despair than individual hope. Better quota systems than level playing fields. Better equality of outcome than equality of opportunity.
Better to be a "real" black--right Mr. Maher?
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