The media loves a good “politician calls out extreme faction of his own party”—they want to see McCain stand up to that dumb lady who said Obama was Muslim, they want Biden to call out the Bernie faction—but it’s not clear moderate voters really react to these things as opposed to just liking an overall image. Clinton called out Souljah, rushed home to watch a brain damaged man get executed, and promised a tax cut, but his southern accent and “aw shucks” country boy image (you had to remind yourself he was a Georgetown and Yale grad) probably had more to do with his moderate image. And what really drive voters that year was be No tired of 12 years of Republicans and a sense that Bush wasn’t handling the recession well.
McMorrow I think would do better to ignore her primary opponents and attack the Republicans with newsworthy viciousness that drives eyeballs and gets voters ranging from left wing drum circle inhabitant to moderate wine mom to martini drinking businessmen to all agree “this lady is the one who speaks to my rage at the GOP.”
Very good piece. And perhaps we can have a "George Will Moment" or a "Brett Stephens Moment," in which a powerful left-centrist says, "It sounds like George/Brett is having uncomfortable feelings about someone else bringing attention to an injustice. Well, they're entitled to their feelings! Moving on..."
White conservatives and "moderates' always need reassurance that there will be no slave revolts, no accountability, and no justice for people they and their ancestors have treated like shit for centuries. That white conservatives and the moderates that enable them will always have their precious racial hierarchy and white people (men specifically) will always be on top and the leaders will always say 'tut tut language' when Those people complain bitterly about the injustice. Motherfucker, if you were trapped in systemic poverty, you would complain too.
This shit pisses me off to no end. "Justice" and "Jubilee" should be the cry of the day. Justice for fucking all. We haven't tried it yet despite making kids say it every day. Maybe we ought to give it a go. And Jubilee. How about we reckon with the sins of our fathers and our national sin and invest in people? People of color and Native Americans primarily, people whose lands we've let get poisoned and polluted, people who were victimized by our government's policies. Lift them up to the fucking table and let them eat. Build a better, more just society. Demolish the hierarchy. Buy a round fucking table and give everyone a fucking chair.
I concur with the previous commenter that these political performative moments are primarily to reassure certain uneasy White Democratic voters (coded as "working class" or "heartland" voters but they really just mean White) with a exhaled smoke puff of good old pre-Southern Strategy Dixiecrat racism. (And I fucking hated that people back in the day actually called Bill Clinton our "first Black President"., because, a saxophone badly played by a middle-aged White guy wearing sunglasses at night does not a "Black person" make.) White people like me, but especially White politicians, need to be really careful in their "criticism" of Black culture which we are not a part of and we do not understand. We feel excluded? We actually are because we made it that way. (See: "code switching", "Jim Crow", "segregation".) Oh, boo effing hoo, my fellow melanin-challenged White people. Want to learn more? Google "How can I learn about White racism and Black culture/history without pestering actual Black people? and go check out some books from the library or better yet BUY them from a BLACK-OWNED BOOKSTORE AND READ THEM. Or just watch Black TV shows or movies with lead Black characters that tell Black stories or subversively stand White narratives/genres on their heads. Go see plays by Black playwrights. Read Black "newspapers" and bloggers. Listen to Black podcasts. Don't understand what you see/read/hear? (Do you have any idea how long it took me to "understand" August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson"? A very long time.) These stories don't speak to you? You don't see/hear yourself in them? That is correct. (See also: "White Savior Complex" - you can google that, too, and those don't count. And, White friends, "Driving Miss Daisy", however charming the lead actors, is NOT a Black play/movie.) I am an old White lady with two Black grandbabies and I still catch myself making about five White-privileged assumptions a day. Still learning, still trying to do better. So worth it.
As I mentioned before, I went to one of Jesse Jackson’s events in Northern California in 1988. I thought then, and I still think that the “Sister Soulja” was absolute bullshit, and that was even without Stephen’s added context.
I voted for Jackson in the primary and Clinton in the general.
I refused to vote for Clinton in the next election because his “Sister Soulja moment” during his first term was denying clemency for Ricky Ray Rector, a Black, brain-damaged inmate who was convicted of murder.
I was already anti-death penalty and I saw his refusal as naked political grandstanding without humanity or compassion.
That's a very, very good point about the context of why McMorrow and Slotkin aren't succeeding from this.
Well nowadays generally empathy is a bad word. I do think there are a number of Democrats taking the wrong lessons from a lot of Americans enjoying the fruits of sadopopulism. It's the time in my opinion to advocate for the right thing.
Also props to Joe Biden for also not doing the "Sister Souljah moment." Uuuuuugh. I hate that such a concept is still a thing in American politics.
" Brett Stephens wrote that we need “more Sister Souljah moments” and claimed Clinton had courageously broken with his base when publicly scolding a minor Black rapper. His version of events was so ahistorical it could count as fiction."
To be scrupfair, "so ahistorical it could count as fiction" is pretty much the whole of Bretbug's oeuvre.
But, like a palimpsest of long overwritten manuscripts, there's a thread in the Democratic Party that still carries the echo of the time before the Southern Strategy, of the bad old Jim Crow Democrats.
And (to torture the metaphor even more) that thread resonates when the white supremacist Republican heirs of that party are increasingly out, loud, and proud about their white Christian Nationalist supremacy.
(And George Will has ALWAYS been the 'genteel, respected big C Conservative' stone cold racist..he probably has a Klan outfit in his closet a la Don Johnson's dead Sheriff in "The Watchmen".)
I'm not in Michigan so I have no dog in this fight but initially I liked both McMorrow and El-Sayed. But after hearing McMorrow took AIPAC money, I'm team El-Sayed. Centrists need to go.
If those Clinton clips had initially aired today, it would be unacceptable and super cringe...It's like rewatching shows I originally watched in the 60s and seeing how UNBELIEVABLY fucking sexist they were! I had NO memory of how pervasive and fucked that was...The very definition of 'baked in'. you simply cannot see things that are considered baseline normal at the time
Lol, we watch a lot of old movies and TV shows and comment all the time on the jaw dropping sexism and racism that were just part of the fabric back then.
A few weeks ago, Hasan Piker wasn't on my radar. Now he's a litmus test.
However, I was already familiar with those calling for Mr. Piker's immediate removal from polite society.
Therefore, I automatically granted Hasan Piker the benefit of the doubt.
The media loves a good “politician calls out extreme faction of his own party”—they want to see McCain stand up to that dumb lady who said Obama was Muslim, they want Biden to call out the Bernie faction—but it’s not clear moderate voters really react to these things as opposed to just liking an overall image. Clinton called out Souljah, rushed home to watch a brain damaged man get executed, and promised a tax cut, but his southern accent and “aw shucks” country boy image (you had to remind yourself he was a Georgetown and Yale grad) probably had more to do with his moderate image. And what really drive voters that year was be No tired of 12 years of Republicans and a sense that Bush wasn’t handling the recession well.
McMorrow I think would do better to ignore her primary opponents and attack the Republicans with newsworthy viciousness that drives eyeballs and gets voters ranging from left wing drum circle inhabitant to moderate wine mom to martini drinking businessmen to all agree “this lady is the one who speaks to my rage at the GOP.”
Very good piece. And perhaps we can have a "George Will Moment" or a "Brett Stephens Moment," in which a powerful left-centrist says, "It sounds like George/Brett is having uncomfortable feelings about someone else bringing attention to an injustice. Well, they're entitled to their feelings! Moving on..."
Thanks!
White conservatives and "moderates' always need reassurance that there will be no slave revolts, no accountability, and no justice for people they and their ancestors have treated like shit for centuries. That white conservatives and the moderates that enable them will always have their precious racial hierarchy and white people (men specifically) will always be on top and the leaders will always say 'tut tut language' when Those people complain bitterly about the injustice. Motherfucker, if you were trapped in systemic poverty, you would complain too.
This shit pisses me off to no end. "Justice" and "Jubilee" should be the cry of the day. Justice for fucking all. We haven't tried it yet despite making kids say it every day. Maybe we ought to give it a go. And Jubilee. How about we reckon with the sins of our fathers and our national sin and invest in people? People of color and Native Americans primarily, people whose lands we've let get poisoned and polluted, people who were victimized by our government's policies. Lift them up to the fucking table and let them eat. Build a better, more just society. Demolish the hierarchy. Buy a round fucking table and give everyone a fucking chair.
I concur with the previous commenter that these political performative moments are primarily to reassure certain uneasy White Democratic voters (coded as "working class" or "heartland" voters but they really just mean White) with a exhaled smoke puff of good old pre-Southern Strategy Dixiecrat racism. (And I fucking hated that people back in the day actually called Bill Clinton our "first Black President"., because, a saxophone badly played by a middle-aged White guy wearing sunglasses at night does not a "Black person" make.) White people like me, but especially White politicians, need to be really careful in their "criticism" of Black culture which we are not a part of and we do not understand. We feel excluded? We actually are because we made it that way. (See: "code switching", "Jim Crow", "segregation".) Oh, boo effing hoo, my fellow melanin-challenged White people. Want to learn more? Google "How can I learn about White racism and Black culture/history without pestering actual Black people? and go check out some books from the library or better yet BUY them from a BLACK-OWNED BOOKSTORE AND READ THEM. Or just watch Black TV shows or movies with lead Black characters that tell Black stories or subversively stand White narratives/genres on their heads. Go see plays by Black playwrights. Read Black "newspapers" and bloggers. Listen to Black podcasts. Don't understand what you see/read/hear? (Do you have any idea how long it took me to "understand" August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson"? A very long time.) These stories don't speak to you? You don't see/hear yourself in them? That is correct. (See also: "White Savior Complex" - you can google that, too, and those don't count. And, White friends, "Driving Miss Daisy", however charming the lead actors, is NOT a Black play/movie.) I am an old White lady with two Black grandbabies and I still catch myself making about five White-privileged assumptions a day. Still learning, still trying to do better. So worth it.
Right on. Didn't the article cite the term "temperate voters"? Oy vey.
"Temperate"? LOL.
As I mentioned before, I went to one of Jesse Jackson’s events in Northern California in 1988. I thought then, and I still think that the “Sister Soulja” was absolute bullshit, and that was even without Stephen’s added context.
I voted for Jackson in the primary and Clinton in the general.
I refused to vote for Clinton in the next election because his “Sister Soulja moment” during his first term was denying clemency for Ricky Ray Rector, a Black, brain-damaged inmate who was convicted of murder.
I was already anti-death penalty and I saw his refusal as naked political grandstanding without humanity or compassion.
That's a very, very good point about the context of why McMorrow and Slotkin aren't succeeding from this.
Well nowadays generally empathy is a bad word. I do think there are a number of Democrats taking the wrong lessons from a lot of Americans enjoying the fruits of sadopopulism. It's the time in my opinion to advocate for the right thing.
Also props to Joe Biden for also not doing the "Sister Souljah moment." Uuuuuugh. I hate that such a concept is still a thing in American politics.
" Brett Stephens wrote that we need “more Sister Souljah moments” and claimed Clinton had courageously broken with his base when publicly scolding a minor Black rapper. His version of events was so ahistorical it could count as fiction."
To be scrupfair, "so ahistorical it could count as fiction" is pretty much the whole of Bretbug's oeuvre.
But, like a palimpsest of long overwritten manuscripts, there's a thread in the Democratic Party that still carries the echo of the time before the Southern Strategy, of the bad old Jim Crow Democrats.
And (to torture the metaphor even more) that thread resonates when the white supremacist Republican heirs of that party are increasingly out, loud, and proud about their white Christian Nationalist supremacy.
(And George Will has ALWAYS been the 'genteel, respected big C Conservative' stone cold racist..he probably has a Klan outfit in his closet a la Don Johnson's dead Sheriff in "The Watchmen".)
George Will, like Buckley, is a racist thug with a fancy vocabulary.
I was watching Talk Soup at the time.
Wasn't that the show with Kato Kaelin?
He was one of many, MANY guest hosts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_Soup We watched the show religiously in those happier, more carefree times...
I'm not in Michigan so I have no dog in this fight but initially I liked both McMorrow and El-Sayed. But after hearing McMorrow took AIPAC money, I'm team El-Sayed. Centrists need to go.
I agree.
If those Clinton clips had initially aired today, it would be unacceptable and super cringe...It's like rewatching shows I originally watched in the 60s and seeing how UNBELIEVABLY fucking sexist they were! I had NO memory of how pervasive and fucked that was...The very definition of 'baked in'. you simply cannot see things that are considered baseline normal at the time
Lol, we watch a lot of old movies and TV shows and comment all the time on the jaw dropping sexism and racism that were just part of the fabric back then.
"Jay Leno, who had just replaced Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, was, well, Jay Leno."
I'm not even sure he's THAT