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Jewish World Review August 8, 2000/ 7 Menachem-Av, 5760

Kathleen Parker

Kathleen Parker
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Consumer Reports


Outreach: Good strategy and long-run policy

http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
PHILADELPHIA | In the interest of full disclosure, I admit up front that I do not hate white people. I don't even hate rich white people, some of whom have managed to achieve enviable lifestyles without genetically superior athletic skills.

Not that all those blandly similar faces pooling into a Caucasian sea on the Republican convention floor are all rich. Except for a few oil barons at the top, most of the folks wearing funny hats and dancing badly to salsa music are notably middle class, their fashions so unhip as to be unacceptable in the circus-sized news-media tents virtually billowing with cynically good taste and just the right attitude.

Which is: Been there; done that; seen it; hated it; spun it; named it.

They named "it" hypocrisy. And, yes, hypocrisy is not only ubiquitous here in the freedom city, it is, like the new-improved Grand Old Party, inclusive. As in the blindfold game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, it's hard to know on which ass to pin the label.

By turns, critics (read: the news media) have said the Republican convention is a masquerade, a charade, a ruse, a Potemkin village, a fake city of diversity erected to fool the electorate into believing that the GOP loves, oh, just everybody.

The convention podium is more diverse than the convention floor, everyone asserts, as though this were the sort of revelation that leads millions to slap their foreheads and exclaim: "I just knew it!" Of course everyone knows it.

Is it possible that television viewers, those insipidly stupid American voters, could fail to note that only two of the 18 speakers opening night were white, Christian males while the cheering audience was mostly just that? Does the idiot populace fail to observe that the GOP's parade of Latinos, blacks and gays is contrived to send a message?

Not likely. And, so what? What is the message? That Republicans are hypocritical or that Republicans are trying to convey an intention of inclusiveness? Hypocrisy, or legitimate outreach?

Let's pretend for a moment that we don't hate Republicans or white people or "rich" white people. Let's pretend for a moment that the GOP wants to change its face and advance some ideas that cannot in any way be construed as "white" ideas.

Fundamentally, those ideas include:

Government botches nearly everything it touches; less is more.

People deserve to have choices when educating their children.

Americans deserve more freedom from government micro-management.

Voters, regardless of race, gender or quota, are smart enough to figure this out.

What about those ideas benefits whites more than blacks and other minorities?

Nothing. Nada. In fact, one could argue that minorities would benefit more than whites from some of the Republican proposals. When it comes to education, whites already have more choices than, say, African-Americans. The very people who want to give minorities educational options already have their kids in private schools.

For the record keepers, Bush's educational programs have significantly improved test scores for minority children in Texas. Since taking office, 13 percent of Bush's appointments have been Hispanic, including Secretary of State Tony Garza; 9 percent have been black. Bush earns 40 percent of Texas' Latino vote. Maybe, just maybe, what Bush's party is presenting on the convention stage isn't a Potemkin village but a projection of how the GOP envisions a new party and a new administration. In the short run, Republican diversity may be a strategy, but, in the long run, it's good policy.

The hypocrites, meanwhile, may be the news-media folks who for years have criticized the GOP for ignoring non-whites and now criticize them for trying to do better. As veteran White House reporter Carl Cannon put it:

"You can't beat the crap out of these people and tell them to do different, and then attack them when they do it. What does the criticism really mean?

"It means they don't want the Republicans to have a successful convention."


JWR contributor Kathleen Parker can be reached by clicking here.

Up

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