But I don't like to gloat.
You see, a couple of years ago, I started calling out no less than Bill Maher on some remarks, which I thought to be pretty racist, concerning the President. In fact, I had been more than a little perturbed with Maher for sometime, because more than anyone, Maher continuously pointed to the President's race - not some of the time, but all of the time. Each week, the subject of the President's race entered into the general conversation on Real Time, if only in passing - as if it were an issue, not for the people whom Bill was addressing at the time (his studio and television audience), but moreso for Bill.
In the same way, he never ceased and never ceases to bring Sarah Palin into the discourse as well. Especially when there's never been any real reason to discuss her at all, you can bank on Bill bringing up the topic of Sarah Palin.
But the President's race and Sarah Palin's antics are always mentioned in the context of comedy, as Bill's always been at pains to tell us.
He's a comedian. He tells jokes. So, as far as Bill is concerned, that gives him sufficient right to liken the President of the United States to an ineffectual, bumbling and elderly black man, or to infer that the President doesn't measure up to what Bill's assessment of real blackness means - i.e., one hard gangsta mothafucka with a concealed weapon under his jacket and another natural one down below. Funny haha. Not.
Since a comedian commands the traditional jester's role of speaking truth to power, this status also grants Bill the right of referring to Sarah Palin as a "dumb twat" on his television show, whilst referring to her by the cruder equivalent during his live stand-up.
I'll be the first to acknowledge that my emotions regarding Sarah Palin run the gamut from hatred to abject loathing, but I take more than just a little offence at any man openly referring to any woman by the c-word or even the lesser t-one, whether it's John McCain referring to Cindy or Bill making Sarah Palin jokes.
Because, you see, that's what they are: jokes.
And that excuses everything. Anything goes, as long as it's a joke.
Like Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann sharing a snigger about the women claiming they were raped by Julian Assange. I mean, that was hilarious. In fact, according to Moore, it was "hooey."
Because I've been calling the racist card on Bill Maher since he regularly started referring to the President as "Barry," (something I'd only heard old, white, racist Teabaggers do), I've been subject to some fine and dandy verbal abuse by the self-appointed Billbots. Many even told me that there was no way Bill could ever be racist - first, because Bill regularly dated African American women, and secondly, because ... well, because Progressives just aren't racist. They simply can't be.
Other, less strident, Bill fans just chalk his remarks up as "oh, that's just Bill. You know, he's an equal opportunity offender."
But the key is in the offence. I am a white Southern woman, and I can tell you that almost as much as any African American can hear a racial dogwhistle, a Southerner can as well - and that includes liberal Southerners (yes, Yankess, we do exist) as much as the Haley Barbour variety. And I was offended by those remarks.
I was equally offended by Bill further referring to the President as a "pussy," saying he had no backbone, calling him weak, basically using the most emasculating language possible, apparently not cognizant of the long and tragic tradition in American culture of emasculating the black man, a practice that dates back to slavery, when black males were only counted as basically being 60% of a white man's worth.
Now, either Bill Maher is a racist or he's suffering from the worst case of white privilege I have yet to see.
Probably both, I'd say.
But you can imagine my feeling of vindication when the super-blogger Angry Black Lady, whom I read regularly, happened upon Michael Moore (who describes himself as a "comedian") trying a bit of unguarded comedy with the ladies of The View, trying to explain his frequent virulent and just downright mean criticism of the President.
Moore, in that huckster-fuckster-aww-shuckster folksy faux Will Rogers manner, sets the scene for explaining why he's just so disappointed in President Barack Obama's performance thus far. He channels his good buddy Bill Maher, even quotes him, in reasoning that "he voted for the black guy, but the white guy showed up."
So, gee, it's not, you know, Mike's fault. It's the President's faulty genes.
ABL gives a reply to that that's absolutely masterful, and it's the sort of reply we all should be giving these wankspittles who pass their prejudices under the guise of a jolly good laugh:-
So, the black part of Obama is the gangster part, and there’s some internal struggle going on and the white side is winning?
I’m sick of this shit. I’m the daughter of a mixed-race couple, and I cannot even express how much this infuriates me.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this, but for now I have only one question: What the fuck?
It’s not a joke. AND IT’S NOT FUCKING FUNNY.
You owe black people and President Obama an apology, Mr. Moore.
You know, I've often heard it said that clowns or comedians or whatever you want to call them, are often deeply unhappy and deeply unpleasant people. I also know that comedy, or satire, as they like to describe their particular genre, often is used as a means of the comic getting his true message across - as I said, in a "funny haha" way. But this schtick resonates with some people.
My head's all over the place with this one. Their remarks offend me as a person, and they conflict me. On the one hand, are they exhibiting so much self-loathing of themselves as to assume ignorantly that a white President would necessarily be lamestream (to quote a well-known sage) whilst a black President would be President Badass by virtue of his melanin tone? Or are they simply pandering in the style of the radical chic? Were they part of the too-cool-for-school bunch who voted for Barack Obama simply because it would enhance their own brand and street cred to be seen to vote for the "black guy," so that now, when the politically fashion-conscious radical chic deem it mete to criticize, whine, moan and complain about anything the President thinks, says or does as inadequate, they do it in order to keep in with the in crowd?
When the Esquire contributor, Charles Pierce, can write his reaction to the 2010 State of the Union speech, with an optional soundtrack to accompany the article, and that soundtrack is the theme from "Shaft," when Pierce can only make pejorative references to this President in terms of his being an over-priced and underperforming basketball star, it's easy to see beyond what their ilk might describe as clever wit and glimpse the soupcon of racism in the tone.
There are so many ways you can dogwhistle.
And to prove I'm not alone, and just another batshit crazy Southern lady assailing the liberal icons that are Moore and Maher, Kevin Drum, writing in Mother Jones, hears those selfsame dogwhistles. Bless him, he even goes as far as (rightly) linking these men to another fat man with an attitude, Rush Limbaugh, yet another who draws a skewed analogy between the President and the fictitious detective, John Shaft.
"Did they think they were voting for Shaft?" Maher and Moore wish they had, and Limbaugh thinks they did. The difference is that Limbaugh doesn't seem capable of discerning between Obama and the black monsters of his own fevered imagination, while Maher and Moore are depressed that Obama doesn't embody the stereotype.
What Limbaugh, Moore and Maher all have in common is a common, reductive expectation of what a "black man" is supposed to be—aggressive, belligerent, intimidating—and Obama doesn't fit the bill. All three are embracing a paternalistic social tyranny of trying to define the acceptable limits of people's behavior based on their racial background, something that still happens even in America even if you end up being president of the United States. If you're president, though, it's much easier to just brush your shoulders off—dealing with those kind of expectations when you're an average person is considerably more difficult. Especially when the "liberals" are the ones saying stuff like this.
Drum alludes to the paticular type of patronising racism (easier to disguise) prevalent amongst certain parts of the Left and described by the anti-racist activist and writer Tim Wise. It's the same sort of concern troll behaviour so many knee-jerk liberals espoused when dealing with 1970s Affirmative Action appointees. I lived through that era and I not only saw that behaviour, I experienced it. (Being female often meant you were an Affirmative Action appointee too).
TaNehisi Coates, writing about Moore's faux pas in The Atlantic, drives the message home with a hammer (and well, he should):-
If you paid more attention to Obama's skin color, than to his speeches, the voluminous amounts of journalism noting his moderation, his two books which are, themselves, exercises in moderation, then you have chosen to be ignorant.
You are now being punished for that ignorance. No one should feel sorry for you. Try not being racist.
But this is exactly what these men, and many like them, did. They voted for the black guy for no other reason than it was cool to do so. It validated their self-worth and their own credentials as liberals or Progressives or whatever they want to call themselves. Never mind the fact that Maher favours the death penalty and Moore refuses to employ union labour on his film crews (despite showing up at the fashionable protest gigs to present himself as a union supporter). Supporting the first black Presidential candidate from a major political party, enhanced their own particular brand. And now that it's most fashionable for the radical chic to denigrate anything and everything about this President, Moore and Maher are lending their loud voices too.
Moore could show up with his cameras and his platitudes to the Wisconsin union protest, but he didn't show up in Detroit on Labor Day, like Jimmy Hoffa, imploring, urging, demanding that union members get their asses to the polls in 2012 to take their America back from the Tea Party corporate tools. And I never expected Maher to mention Troy Davis on his program Friday evening.
It's the basest sort of racism which assumes a person's behaviour is determined by his racial or ethnic background. Limbaugh is Limbaugh, and he's been getting away with this crap for twenty years. Hell, it's expected that he behave this way; but as Kevin Drum said, it's pretty shocking to encounter this sort of attitude coming from the Left, especially when the Left, collectively, holds itself to a higher moral standard and never ceases to remind the Right that they are better educated - and, therefore, better behaved - than their brethren on the Right.
Whether it's Moore longing for a black man's black man, or Maher whining about President Sanford and Son or Charlie Pierce assigning the President the role of the stereotypical "bad mothafucka" big D dick (as in detective) or even poor Joan Walsh's resentment of black people even considering themselves to be part of the Democratic race, it would be all too easy for me to assign such exhibitions of racism as indicative of the common ethnic background shared by all these people.
But I won't.
I just think it's time that we all start doing what ABL, TaNehisi Coates and Kevin Drum have done: call out the racism we see on our own side of the political spectrum. Racism doesn't recognise Right or Left, and there's no rule - not even an unwritten one and certainly not a Bill Maher New Rule - which says that racism isn't existent on the political Left.
All of the people listed above are living proof that it does.
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