Speakeasy
Log in to comment or register to create your own blog
Crossposted on Tikkun Daily
By David Harris-Gershon (@David_EHG)
According to a new poll published by Pew Research, U.S. citizens are more concerned about the potential violations of their civil liberties from anti-terrorism measures (such as NSA surveillance) than the threats such measures supposedly aim to stop.
As seen in the graph below, a significantly larger percentage of Americans (47 percent) feel as though government anti-terror policies have “gone too far in restricting civil liberties” in contrast to those (37 percent) who feel such policies have not gone far enough.
As Pew’s data shows, what’s remarkable about this shift in public opinion is that it holds true across the political spectrum, as both Republicans and Democrats show greater concern about their privacy rights than about terror threats.
The effect Edward Snowden’s revelations is having on public opinion in America cannot be understated, for since the infancy of the ‘War on Terror’ and its resulting military and intelligence efforts, Americans now see government intrusion as a greater threat than terrorism itself.
In fact, Pew reports that 56 percent of Americans don’t feel that there are appropriate checks on NSA surveillance, and a whopping 70 percent think the government uses surveillance data collected on U.S. citizens for things other than investigating terrorism.
While Americans narrowly approve of anti-terrorism surveillance (50-44), the data indicates that this is due to a view that, if applied correctly and with the public’s civil liberties in mind, such surveillance is a positive and necessary thing.
However, just like the Google engineer who recently won an NSA award, and then expressed that he’d rather see the NSA “abolished than persist in its current form,” a growing number of Americans are expressing opposition to the current state of U.S. intelligence activities.
Follow David Harris-Gershon on Twitter @David_EHG
To read more pieces like this, sign up for Tikkun Daily’s free newsletter , sign up for Tikkun Magazine emails or visit us online. You can also like Tikkun on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Written by Anthea Butler for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
I was not surprised when I viewed Amanda Marcotte's presentation on online feminism at this year's Netroots Nation conference, in which she pointed mostly to young, hip, white female bloggers writing today. While there are many women of color blogging at sites like the Crunk Feminist Collective, women of color were represented in Marcotte's PowerPoint presentation by one stock photo of a Black woman holding car keys, with a statement about how online feminists are "driving the movement forward." The PowerPoint slide is indicative of a larger problem in feminism: the inability to see or identify with women of color who are feminists. It's not a good look, but then again, this slight is not unexpected given the history between white women and feminists of color.
My purpose in this piece is not to bash Amanda Marcotte—a contributor here at RH Reality Check—but to illuminate some of the long history of tension between the feminist movement and women of color. Writing this piece in the wake of the George Zimmerman trial has not been easy. Is it always going to be this way? Will it always be this difficult to come together with white feminists, as women of color, to work on the many pressing issues in this country, including the rollback of women's rights, specifically reproductive rights?
The tension between white feminists and feminists of color has existed for a long time, in part because of race, class, and positionality. It is fair to ask, "Why is it so hard for white feminists to embrace, celebrate, and partner with their sisters of color?" Is intersectionality just a dream, or can we work past this conundrum?
It is time for white feminists to become more aware of their internalized compliance to the "isms" that threaten to divide us all, from historical and contemporary perspectives. How can we come together without being torn apart by the other "ism" that threatens feminism: racism? A brief look at the history of the feminist movement and women of color, and a prescription for our future together, is long overdue.
A History of Privileged Positions
Women of color have never had the luxury of simply focusing on women's issues. Considerations of race, racism, and economic and social injustices have always intertwined with issues of patriarchy and sexism. Women of color who also hold feminist beliefs are also acutely aware of how their communities, broadly defined, are affected by outside forces. One classic standoff in the history of the women's movement and feminism was between journalist and civil rights leader Ida B. Wells and women's suffragist Frances Willard. Wells wanted Willard to recognize the problem of lynching in the South, but Willard believed that Black men were drinkers and responsible for the rape of white women. It's reprehensible, yes, but Willard's privileged position kept her from seeing the issues that were important for the Black community and Ida B. Wells. It also showed how she bought into the narrative of stereotypes about African-American men, accepting the trumped-up notion that African-American men, presumed to be more alcoholic than white men, were a sexual menace to white women and were being properly targeted. Wells fought against this strenuously, and their battle strained relationships between African-American and white women in the suffrage and temperance movements.
Even with the advent of the fully-formed feminist movement in the post-civil-rights-movement 1970s, Black women and other women of color were regulated to the sidelines, while white women became the face of feminism. As Gloria Steinem's good looks were heralded as the face of feminism, other women of color were partnering together to work for a common cause. The Combahee River Collective Statement from 1977 chronicled the genesis, interests, and issues Black feminists faced, and their statements still resonant today. The statement importantly noted that Black feminists were interested in combating a "range of oppressions." It said, "We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess anyone of these types of privilege have."
The collective nailed why it is easier to be a white feminist than it is to be a feminist of color: Without a position of privilege to call on, it is even harder as a woman of color to fight for issues that are important for every woman, but especially for women of color. Not recognizing that privilege of whiteness or class hampers the ability of feminists across ethnic lines to join together for common causes.
Like many mass shooters in the US, Pedro Vargas, the alleged Florida gunman who killed six before being killed himself, had no criminal history. That means he is the quintessential law abiding citizen whose "rights" the NRA protects by defeating background checks, bans on high capacity magazines, retention of records by dealers beyond 24 hours and most importantly a firearms registry.
With no registry, even if records showed that Vargas had mental health issues--like recent mass shooters who threatened to kill--and even if states fowarded those records, who would know he had lethal weapons? Especially if they were acquired before he melted down? No wonder, the gun lobby supports mental health reporting--it's a joke.
Vargas, if proven to be the gunman, is the third shooter in eight months to use fire as part of his lethal rampage. On Christmas Eve, William Spengler, a felon convicted of killing his own grandmother, set a fire to entice firefighters to his location in Webster, N.Y. and shoot at them. He killed two fire fighters and his own sister. Spengler bought his weapon at Gander Mountain, according to published reports, picking out an AK 15 which a straw buyer bought for him. In April, NRA lacky politicians voted against making such straw purchasing a felony, as well as gun trafficking. Thank you, NRA.
Just weeks later, Kurt Myers set his home ablaze and began a killing spree in Herkimer County, N.Y. Like Spengler and the alleged Florida killer Vargas, Myers was a loner who acted strangely and whose apparent only motive for the murders seems to be being armed-while-angry. Myers shot six and killed four with an unregistered shot gun.
Of course, you can't predict or stop mentally ill people from going on rampages. But, only in the US, with very few exceptions, can the violent mentally ill arm themselves so easily. And only in the US do violent people with actual criminal records have gun rights groups working to keep them armed! Florida NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer has defended the rights of apparent felons to conceal and carry guns, saying we can't deny them their arms just because we don't "like" them. What?
Meanwhile, gun rights activists have fought successfully to allow men to keep their guns even when they are under orders of protection--yes you read that correctly--even though nearly half the women killed every year are murdered by intimate partners, most with a firearm. Thank you NRA.
The three recent arson/mass shooting incidents also show the fallacy of "good guy" armed citizens stopping bad guys, a la George Zimmerman. It took SWAT-like teams to stop these three shooters and even they had a hard time.
Are you DONE ASKING for sane laws? Use your boycott powerhttp://gunvictimsaction.org/
Crossposted on Tikkun Daily
By David Harris-Gershon (@David_EHG)
Since 2008, the Obama administration had made available the President’s original campaign promises at Change.gov, along with a splash screen directing readers to the White House website.
However, as the Sunlight Foundation discovered, the Obama administration removed access to these promises on June 8, two days after Edward Snowden’s first revelation. The likely reason? One of those promises was to protect whistleblowers.
Per the Sunlight Foundation:
While the front splash page for for Change.gov has linked to the main White House website for years, until recently, you could still continue on to see the materials and agenda laid out by the administration. This was a particularly helpful resource for those looking to compare Obama’s performance in office against his vision for reform, laid out in detail on Change.gov.
According to the Internet Archive, the last time that content (beyond the splash page) was available was June 8th – last month.
Why the change? Here’s one possibility, from the administration’s ethics agenda:
Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.
As emptywheel notes, Obama did extend whistleblower protections a bit last year, though he did so in secret.
However, the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other administrations combined, and Obama’s institution of Insider Threat, making it a crime for federal employees to not report suspicious colleagues while strongly discouraging workers from engaging in whistleblowing, hardly inspires confidence.
So is it a surprise that the Obama administration would remove access to its promise to protect whistleblowers, if that was indeed the motivation for removing access to all of Obama’s campaign promises? No.
Is it a jarring symbolic act?
Yes.
Follow David Harris-Gershon on Twitter @David_EHG
To read more pieces like this, sign up for Tikkun Daily’s free newsletter , sign up for Tikkun Magazine emails or visit us online. You can also like Tikkun on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Crossposted on Tikkun Daily
By David Harris-Gershon (@David_EHG)
Last week, Dr. Joseph Bonneau learned that he had won the NSA’s first annual Science of Security (SoS) Competition. The competition, which aims to honor the best “scientific papers about national security” as a way to strengthen NSA collaboration with researchers in academia, honored Bonneau for his paper on the nature of passwords.
And how did Bonneau respond to being honored by the NSA? By expressing, in an honest and bittersweet blog post, his revulsion at what the NSA has become:
On a personal note, I’d be remiss not to mention my conflicted feelings about winning the award given what we know about the NSA’s widespread collection of private communications and what remains unknown about oversight over the agency’s operations. Like many in the community of cryptographers and security engineers, I’m sad that we haven’t better informed the public about the inherent dangers and questionable utility of mass surveillance. And like many American citizens I’m ashamed we’ve let our politicians sneak the country down this path.
In accepting the award I don’t condone the NSA’s surveillance. Simply put, I don’t think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form.
In an interview with Andy Cush at Animal, Bonneau went even farther in his critiques of the NSA:
I’d rather have it abolished than persist in its current form. I think there’s a question about whether it’s possible to reform the NSA into something that’s more reasonable…But my feeling based on what I’ve read is that I don’t want to live in a country with an organization like the NSA is right now.
When Bonneau learned that he has won the award from the NSA, he considered turning it down. However, he ultimately decided upon accepting as a way to potentially bridge academic gaps with the NSA, as a means of opening up at least one avenue into the organization that has been mostly closed.
That said, the winner of the NSA award wants, like many privacy rights activists and citizens concerned with the government’s Fourth Amendment violations, for the NSA to be reformed by a political process (like the one which narrowly failed in the House yesterday).
Either that, or have it abolished altogether.
Follow David Harris-Gershon on Twitter @David_EHG
To read more pieces like this, sign up for Tikkun Daily’s free newsletter , sign up for Tikkun Magazine emails or visit us online. You can also like Tikkun on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Written by Imani Gandy for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
Last week, a federal judge in Wisconsin extended a temporary restraining order that prevented Wisconsin's latest legislative attempt to reduce women's access to safe abortion care—by requiring abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges from a local hospital—from going into effect.
Section 1 of Wisconsin Act 37 (SB 206), which was proposed by the Wisconsin legislature on June 4 and hastily signed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker on July 5, requires that physicians who provide abortion services have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the location where the abortion is performed. The law was enacted ostensibly to reduce the risk to patients who suffer serious complications during an abortion, and to prevent abortion providers from abdicating their duty of care and leaving such women to fend for themselves. In reality, however, these laws place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion and contravene the constitutional principles set forth in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
At first blush, these laws may seem sensible enough, especially if you believe that abortion is a dangerous procedure and providers should have hospital admitting privileges in case something goes horribly awry. Such is the concern of anti-choicers pushing for the Wisconsin law, as Susan Armacost, legislative director of Wisconsin Right to Life, noted in a July 5 statement. "Apparently, Wisconsin's abortion clinics don't believe their abortionists need to have hospital privileges at a hospital located within 30 miles of their clinic ... or anywhere at all," she said. "Currently, when a woman experiences hemorrhaging or other life-threatening complications after an abortion in Wisconsin, the clinic puts her in an ambulance and sends her to a hospital ALONE where she is left to her own devices to explain her medical issues to the emergency room staff. The abortionist who performed the abortion is nowhere to be seen. This deplorable situation must change."
But documents submitted to the federal court in Wisconsin overseeing the case paint a very different picture of the admitting privileges law. According to Dr. Douglas Laube, a board-certified OB-GYN since 1976, the admitting privileges requirement is "medically unjustified and will have serious consequences for women's health in Wisconsin."
Congress must lower student loan rates to reinvigorate the economy, invest in America’s future and foster the American dream. For many students, like my brother about to head to UConn, the interest rates on student loans will determine how long he remains under the burden of debt. For other students, it may decide whether college or graduate school is even a viable option.
Broader access to college, which is made possible by low interest loans is an investment in the future. Recently, the U.S. has begun to graduate fewer students, meaning that in 2018, according to a 2010 report from Georgetown University, the U.S. will be 3 million college graduates short of labor market demands. At the very time when the U.S. needs more graduates, our politicians are making it harder for Americans to get degrees and thereby compete on the international labor market.
The high cost of college shuts many poor and middle class students out of college. A study by Martha Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski found that the college entry gap between wealthy students and poor students had grown from 39 percentage points to 51 between 1979 and 1997, and that gap held even among students with the same cognitive ability. The result is staggering. A recent Century Foundation study found that, “one is twenty-five times as likely to run into a rich student as a poor student at the nation’s top 146 colleges.”
Of course, some college students won’t be affected. Wealthy students rely on parental connections to gain admission to elite universities, gain internship experience and then graduate to a starting job with health care benefits, likely debt-free. For some lucky graduates, like Liz Cheney, daddy makes a new job at the State Department tailor-made for her.
Sadly, most of us don’t have these opportunities and struggle with an uninviting job market, even with a college degree. But, we still have to begin paying off our debts shortly after graduating. In Britain, where my girlfriend lives, students don’t begin paying off their loans until they find stable employment, and the cost is in proportion to their earnings. In Denmark, education is considered a right by the people and an investment by the government, and is therefore free. Some students are even offered a stipend by the government to defray costs. In America, the university is considered a commodity, one that can easily purchased by the wealthy, but not the poor.
Middle class and working class students lucky enough to attend college must often work one or two side jobs, interfering with studies. Is it any wonder that fewer and fewer students invest time in studying or pursue degrees in science and engineering that require intense amounts of work and concentration? Plato noted that students cannot study while exhausted, and yet this is what we demand.
Is it then any wonder that the American dream is dying? Economists like Miles Corak have discovered that upward mobility is now lower in America than a host of other European countries, among them, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, France, Germany, Norway and Finland. Is it, as George Carlin claimed, “called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it?”
Lowering student loans below the rate paid by the big banks who destroyed the economy and the lives of millions Americans would be a good first step. But at all levels our education system is slanted towards reducing upward mobility. For my brother, for my friends who can’t pay for college, Congress needs to think big. Maybe Congress should consider expanding the Pell Grant program which has failed to keep up with the rising cost of college. Maybe Congress could consider zero-interest loans. It would be a start.
Remember that the biggest boom in American innovation came after WWII, when millions of Veterans attended college under the GI bill. Remember that the American dream, as enshrined by James Truslow Adams, was a place where, “each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
This may well be the most short-sighted, ineffective and contemptible Congress in the past fifty years, but can they truly be foolish enough to gamble with the future of America’s children? If they do, we may find ourselves asking us what makes America so great.
Written by Anika Rahman for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
McDonald’s has taken some heat for its Practical Money Skills Budget Journal, a financial planning guide for its low-wage workers that suggests monthly spending on a variety of expenses. That’s pretty ironic since heat was one of the things McDonald’s failed to anticipate in the guide's first iteration—it was later included in the sample budget in response to public pressure.
News coverage has noted the implausible monthly $600 rent (compared with the national average of $1,048). Many people have pointed out the impossibility of spending just $27 a day on gas and groceries, and the absence of a clothing budget. All of these criticisms are completely valid.
McDonald’s has defended the second income required to balance this budget, indicating that it could be representative of a two-person household, with both contributing. Let’s play along with this scenario.
Two-thirds of fast-food workers are women, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The majority are older than 32—in their prime years for raising children. In fact, almost a third of minimum-wage earners are raising children. Thus, there’s a good chance that our theoretical couple has children. But let’s back up.
Assuming that the full-time McDonald’s worker qualifies for the company’s $14 a week health-care plan and that costs already have been deducted from the gross pay in this budgeting scenario, the plan caps coverage at $10,000 a year—a measly amount, particularly for a female employee (or insured female partner of an employee) who gives birth to a child.
The joy of that child would surely be dampened by the realization that no money is left to dedicate to child-care costs—the average of which exceed average rent costs in half of all states for just one child. Using the financial planning guide’s insanely low projection of $600 for rent, this family would likely need at least $600 for child care, leaving merely $200 to feed and clothe a family of three each month.
Ted Nugent is a "race pimp" and "race hustling" bomb thrower for the White Right. He is also a board member for the National Rifle Association. In his latest masterclass in white racism, Nugent told Nick Cannon on the latter's July 23rd podcast that:
I think that typically when you see the, I don't even remember the term they use, but the gangs of blacks lately that have been just been going down the downtown streets and breaking windows on cars. We played the Milwaukee state fair a couple years ago and these black mobs were just attacking white folks coming out of the fair. And over and over again I watch the news and here's a rape and here's a burglary and here's a murder in Chicago. 29 shot. 29 blacks shot by 29 blacks. At some point you got to be afraid of black and white dogs if the Dalmatian's doing the biting.
He also stated how:
Referencing July 19 remarks by President Obama that addressed issues of race in the country, Nugent said that a "little old white lady" who "clutches her purse tightly and shivers" when an African-American man joins her on an elevator has not wrongly "prejudged" in the same sense that "stormy clouds" are accurate predictors of a destructive weather event.Nugent elaborated on this point, saying when "we've witnessed a number of storms that have destroyed homes, and threatened lives, and tipped over cars, I don't think we're prejudging those storm threats. I don't think we are prejudging. I think we are taking evidence, and going, 'uh-oh black clouds coming in, wind is picking up, I think I better head for a shelter.' "
What do you do with a rabid or vicious dog? You shoot them dead. Nugent's implication that black folks should be dealt with in the same manner is so obvious that I am surprised more folks have not pointed it out.
Ted Nugent's comments do not surprise me. I am more interested in the double-standard at work where white conservatives such as Ted Nugent, Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, and a panoply of others can make all manner of incendiary and white supremacist comments about people of color--blacks in particular--and there is no call for other white folks, or groups they are affiliated with such as the NRA, to publicly denounce them.
If a black person of any public standing makes a comment that is perceived as being "racially insensitive", i.e. telling the truth in a manner that hurts the feelings of White America, there is a demand by white opinion leaders that he or she be excommunicated from the black community.
White privilege is the freedom to be an individual and to not have any sense of group accountability. White racists such as Ted Nugent or Pat Buchanan are just "harmless" and "outspoken". The white racial frame transposes white supremacy by white conservatives into something that should be tolerated for the public good in the interest of a noble commitment to free speech and the free expression of ideas. In contrast, when black folks or other people of caller call out white racism it is perceived as being uncivil or somehow a type of "reverse racism".
I mock the white fear of black folks which tries to explain itself through appeals to the rationality of racial profiling, and tired talking points based on a piss poor understanding of the sociology of crime that is fixated on a lazy narrative of white victimhood and black criminality.
However, I do not laugh at Ted Nugent's comments.
Consider the following: he is a national board member for one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the country and whose members have millions of guns. Moreover, gun ownership is correlated with higher rates of anti-black affect and sentiment. The NRA and its current relationship with neo-Confederates and the White Right in the Age of Obama is an eerie parallel to the Southern Gun Clubs of Jim and Jane Crow that were used to commit extrajudicial murders and to practice racial terrorism against the civil rights movement and the African American community.
The NRA has not renounced Ted Nugent for a very good reason: in an era when racism and conservatism are one in the same, he likely speaks for a good number of its members.
The controversy over George Zimmerman's acquittal for murdering Trayvon Martin is Christmas in July for black conservatives. The professional best black friends for white conservatives who defend George Zimmerman--and by extension the White Right--are in high demand.
As such, Allen West has revealed himself to be a black man who would sell himself into chattel slavery and thank his white owners for the privilege. Shelby Steele, a brilliant man, demonstrates once more that he is psychologically damaged.
Even the D-List backbenchers, as seen in this video from Crooks and Liars, and who are the equivalent of a pee wee baseball league team, are getting a chance to show their teeth and gums as they work on their "self-hating black folks who buck-dance for the pleasures of white conservatives that watch Fox News" dance routine.
Many folks likely believe that these (and other) black conservatives are sincere. Why make such an assumption? In order for a person of color to so betray their community, serving as a human hose who ejaculates and sprays the befouled and racist talking points birthed from the Right-wing echo chamber out of their mouths, on a basic level one must convince him or herself that what they are saying is true.
Yes, money is an inducement for betrayal and foolishness. But, in keeping with my argument that politics is just like professional wrestling--where the latter is actually more honest--a person has to still sell the performance if they want to get repeat work.
Populist black conservatives in the Tea Party GOP mold have to be themselves "with the volume turned way up". However convincing they may be, said black folks are still playing a role for the pleasures and joys of the White Right. Black conservatives are also great "heels" who attract the boos and condemnation of the African-American community (and those others) who correctly see in them a betrayal of the Black Freedom Struggle.
Working through my politics as professional wrestling analogy, the Jesse Petersons and Pastor Mannings are not skilled mat wrestlers. They are great talkers who do "high spots" that involve the ridiculous and the unbelievable in order to "get over" with the audience. By comparison, Clarence Thomas is a master technician who likes to "stretch out" his opponents and put them in a submission hold that they are powerless to counter. He is silent and deadly; the smart marks and owners of the territory love him for it. Tara Setamayer and Crystal Wright are just jobbers trying to get a shot at a regular gig on the road.
But, what if the black conservatives who are the darlings of the Right-wing media, and that are now shucking and bucking in defense of George Zimmerman, were revealed to be actors?
Politics is ultimately about performance, and the marshaling and manipulation of emotion in order to get "those people", i.e. the public, to do what you want...even when it is against their own interests.
If we destroy the pretense of sincerity in political communication and interpersonal dialogue in the public sphere would anyone really care? Would the "marks" who are being hustled and grifted find a way to rationalize their continued support for the con artist(s) on stage?
Magicians often have confederates in the audience to aid in their performance. Snake oil salesmen would have plants in the crowd that spontaneously testified as to how they heard the magical elixir--now finally available in their little hamlet or burg--cured all ailments. Evangelists fleece their flocks, laying hands on those who pretend to be sick, now magically healed by the touch of the chosen one.
In much the same way that the Right-wing establishment has been using bots and paid operatives to troll social media in order to advance the talking points of the Right-wing corporateocracy and the Tea Party GOP, Right-wing talk radio has actors and actresses on retainer whose job it is to legitimate the lying performances of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.
And yes, some of these professional callers are "black".
In a moment where the United States has a black president, and is in the midst of a tired and moribund national conversation about race in the aftermath of the Zimmerman acquittal, these performers are in high demand.
The "black conservative" listener who calls into Right-wing talk radio is working a minstrel routine. On one hand, there are undoubtedly white conservatives who call into Right-wing talk radio programs and pretend to be the "ignorant" and "uninformed" "black liberal".
Like those who put on the cork, the pleasure for conservatives is that these faux black people are a fantasy projection that legitimates the scurrilous lie that Right-wing Whiteness has about African-Americans being politically naive, hoodwinked, stupid, and stuck on a "Democratic Plantation", where they/we are uniquely addicted to welfare, drugs, and the government tit.
They are complimented by the "real" black conservative who can call in and play the role as a noble defender of the White Right and the Tea Party GOP's racism, or works an angle as being "converted" and "saved" by the good work done by the Great White Fathers, those post racial saviors in Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Savage, or O'Reilly.
Because politics is professional wrestling, these players are working an angle where they are being paid now, hoping to be paid in the future, or are refining their craft as professional "black conservatives", the real "race hustlers" and "race pimps" in the Age of Obama.
The smart marks who follow Right-wing media are fluent in the performance and routine: they can pick out a "good" black caller or a "good" female caller and explain what worked and resonated about the performance. The marks who believe that the Right-wing media are offering up the truth are amateurs. They are moved by the emotions, and how good it makes them feel to be part of the show. If asked, the populist foot soldiers of the Tea Party GOP cannot explain with any level of intelligence or expertise the policies they routinely shill for because all they want to do is cheer and boo on command from their propagandist cult leaders in the Right-wing echo chamber.
This is our America. And what do we do with her?
