I’m completely down with DennisG’s post below on the return (did it ever go away) of Romney/Republican racism. The only signs of progress I can detect are first, as we have seen a lot lately, the Romney team just isn’t that competent as racist scum — and the campaign’s attack on the changes in welfare rules the Obama administration has advanced at the request (inter alia) of GOP governors has been relatively easily countered. No vicious virtuousity here — just imagine Lee Atwater sitting down and having lunch: he would have been spitting out the Romney team’s metacarpals by 12:45.
And second, as DennisG rightly points out, it does seem that slowly, slowly, the Village is beginning to recognize the actual evil that lies within the choices the Romney campaign is making here. One swallow does not make a spring and all that — but when, as Dennis notes, ur-Villager Dana Milbank chides Romney for overt racism. Here’s a passage that is, frankly, more blunt than I’d thought I’d see this election season from this particular pen:
What makes Romney’s welfare gambit dispiriting is that, as a member of one of the most persecuted groups in American history, he knows more than most the dangers of fanning bigotry. Yet now he has injected into the campaign what has for decades been a standard device for race-baiting — a suspect move because welfare hadn’t been on the radar screen.
Good on you, Dana! Romney=Race Baiter. Simple, clear, true.
But then there’s this line:
This is my problem with Romney: He is a decent man, but he’s too weak to stand up to the minority on his own side who are not.
Crap. Just a steaming pile of that which emerges from the south end of a north facing horse.* How would you define a decent person? For me, it’s pretty simple: that would be someone who does decent things.**
That is to say: I can’t know, and nor can MIllbank, the true nature of Romney’s heart.
I’m not privy to how he thinks and feels in the long dark teatime of his soul. And it doesn’t matter. Who cares if a slug believes himself to be St. Francis? It’s what happens when he or she actually does stuff in the world that defines their moral valence. In case you were wondering, the residue of my religious training leaves me an acts not grace kind of person; whether or not that floats your boat as a doctrine of your faith, it seems to me that it is the only possible stance from which to weigh civic life. No amount of predestination can turn, say, Dick Cheney into a good man.
And so it is with Mitt:
With the welfare attack, he is encouraging them [the indecent minority***]. After releasing the ad claiming Obama would “just send you your welfare check,” Romney made the racial component official when his Republican National Committee hosted a conference call the next day with Gingrich, who, sure enough, reprised his food-stamp assault, telling reporters that “an honest discussion about dependency doesn’t mean you’re a racist.” But what about a dishonest discussion?
Thursday, the RNC hosted a call with Santorum, who did everything but revive the “welfare queen” attack of the 1980s.
“What the president wants to do is turn back the clock and do what he has done with every single other entitlement program in this country, which is increase the number of people on it, increase dependency,” Santorum charged.
To be fair to the He Iz Lerning Milbank, by the end of his column he does seem to get that when someone makes the same choice over and over again, eventually, you have to realize that it is what it is:
The week before launching his welfare attack, Romney told a group of donors in Jerusalem that “culture makes all the difference” in the “dramatic, stark” disparity between Israeli wealth and Palestinian poverty.
Saeb Erekat, an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, called the statement “racist.”
Romney may not have meant it to be — but, as Santorum likes to say, this is a pattern.
Again, good on Milbank here for this save after the stumble above. That’s as close as I think it possible for a headliner at Kaplan Daily to out-and-out say that Romney is so desperate for power that he’s perfectly OK with trading on hate to get there.
But it is really, really time to stop giving Mitt — or Santorum, or Gingrich, or anyone on the GOP side who does not explicitly condemn this nonsense (Paul Ryan….I’m looking at you) — the benefit of the doubt.
You use bigotry as a campaign tactic? Then you’re a hater…and not to be trusted anywhere near the levers of government.
Factio Grandaeva Delenda Est.
Bonus soundtrack:
<div align=”center”><iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/adT9TCA0DZw” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
*Horse HoHos as we used to refer to the stuff as kids. Just thought I’d share that with you.
**We are all human, and hence fallible, so this isn’t a sainthood standard: good folks will act in a range of ways, not all of them exemplary. The issues are what do they strive to do as a default impulse to action…and much more importantly, on balance, how their actions tote up.
***How does Milbank know that those to whom Romney panders are the minority in the Republican party? Could be, I guess — but given the decades-long series of choices to anchor the party in white Southern resentment, I’d say that’s an assumption not in evidence. Were I Milbank’s editor I would have corrected that line to Romney’s “too weak to stand up to those in his party who are.” This is a quibble — except it’s not. One of the most damaging tropes in elite journalism these days is the lazy and/or unconscious weave of “knowledge” that is in fact unknown into the fabric of a piece. Once assumed, it requires no interrogation by the writer…and bullshit takes on just that little bit of added authority by having become a “fact” within some MSM journal of record.
Image: Michiel Jansz. van MIerevelt, Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Willem van der Meer, 1617
TenguPhule
The Village. That’s who.
SATSQ.
The Bearded Blogger
The only reason I can ythink for Dana Milbank to condiser Romney inwardly decent is that he is handsome.
NotMax
Ryan is also a rabid climate change denier, so Mitt implicitly now publicly endorses that stance.
TenguPhule
I understand this excuse sounds much better in the original German.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
This is who they are. Full stop. Will the Village cease to endorse them? Sucker bet.
one two seven
Sorry if this seems too OT so early in the thread but I’ve been traveling over the weekend and hadn’t seen this covered here yet on the main page:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/08/11/paul-ryan-cracks-joke-as-71-year-old-citizen-is-forced-to-the-ground-videos/
srv
How can Romney be racist if he’s white? And when he talks about strapping young bucks, he means Ryan’s welfare years.
SatanicPanic
@TenguPhule: Just taking orders
Suffern ACE
What I actually find interesting is that the Dutch were so confident in their whitening techniques, that they would wear their white collars, even to an autopsy.
jibeaux
@Suffern ACE: This is really what I need to learn. I have some spaghetti stains that have resisted the Tide Stick and Oxydol thus far.
Anya
I wonder would the teabaggers still be in love with granny starver even after they find out his high school sweetheart was blah and his brother is married to a blah?
Beatrice
I love Nanci Griffith and this is a great song.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m torn between wanting to give Millbank props for acknowledging the dog-whistle of the welfare ad, and the doubling down on it by sending Gingrich out to hammer the point (that surprises me– it’s almost like Fernstrom et al are all but daring The Village to call them out on this, confident that they’re too weak to do so, and it looks like he’s right). But how can Milbank possibly type this sentence:
This ad doesn’t even have the plausible deniability of Pappy Bush and the Floyd Brown/Willie Horton ad. This isn’t some ‘independent’ ad being run with a wink and a nod. He’s Mitt Romney and he approved that message, then sent Gingrich out.
I turned on The Lovely Alex Wagner Show and turned it right off when I saw that Michael Steele was “balanced” by Mark Dick Halperin, Maggie “Elizabeth Warren is a dangerous radical” Haberman and a guy from the Globe who seemed to be an aspiring Broderist. Did anyone happen to see if TLAW asked Steele about this?
MattF
Milbank apparently hasn’t quite made the connection– there’s a level of cowardice and dishonesty that rules out ‘decent.’ But really, the problem is not that that Mitt is unempathic or awkward or weak. He’s a creepy, bad person.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Anya: I did not know that. Now the Village has all the evidence it needs to say it’s simply madness to suggest that the Romney-Ryan campaign is engaging in behavior that some on the left might suggest is racially insensitive.
jl
Sadly I do not believe that Mitt Romney is a decent man, and Ryan is worse.
But I will take what I can get from our failed corporate media experiment.
If it has become OK to call the GOP and Romney ticket on their BS, then that is good.
Nice moral lesson for our precious youth wrt to GOP and Romney/Ryan ticket: what a tangled web you weave when you practice to deceive. They have spun out so much BS and lies that they are stumbling into stuff, knocking over their own garbage cans full to the brim with their own garbage, running headlong and full speed into people who have far more credibility than they do, such as Bill Clinton, who are ready to call BS.
And also, the danger of going to the well with the same bucket over and over again. Sometimes Romney gives me the impression of someone who got control of the magic political wedgie machine and he is madly pulling levers and twisting nobs. Doesn’t seem to occur to him that the gears are stripped. Every time he pulls a lever that worked 30 years ago, and nothing happens, he gets this look of panicked dismay no his face. Then he pulls the lever again. Then he starts to hector the audience because they are not falling for it, even though any person with any self awareness, situational awareness, any awareness at all would start to think, “Gee maybe the machine don’t work no more.”
Hill Dweller
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: MSNBC’s morning/afternoon block is every bit as bad as CNN and Fox.
Alison
On the whole “what’s in his heart/soul”, “I know this person isn’t a racist” blah blah, I once again turn to this video from Awesome Person Jay Smooth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ti-gkJiXc&feature=plcp
FlipYrWhig
I am thoroughly confused about why the original “welfare” ad uses the second person: “They just send you your welfare check.” Doesn’t that make the viewer, structurally speaking, into the welfare recipient? Why wouldn’t they say “They just send them their welfare checks” or “They just send out the welfare checks”? It’s even badly designed dog-whistle racism.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Hill Dweller: I woudln’t go that far. Wagner is good, frequently has good guests, it’s not her fault MSNBC gave Steele and Ed Rendell and Halperin and too many other contracts, and Martin Bashir is openly contemptuous of Republicans. But yes, eventheliberalMSNBC has a lot of jackasses in its stable.
NotMax
jibeaux
Try soaking the stained items in a diluted solution of 3 parts detergent and 1 part ammonia. Then wash thoroughly in the hottest water appropriate to the garment.
Alternative: Dab the stains with shampoo and then launder them.
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I know. Ryan has his “some of my best friends are black” excuse.
@Alison: Every villager should be forced to watch that video.
Anya
Chris Rock on Mormonism
Beth
@Suffern ACE: Re the white collars at an autopsy:
These are well-to-do educated people wearing extremely expensive starched linen or hand-made lace collars. They wouldn’t think twice about how their clothes were cleaned, as that was a task for poor washerwomen to deal with.
And soaking in lye was quite effective for whitening, yes. http://www.oldandinteresting.com/history-of-laundry.aspx
Hill Dweller
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The block starting with Morning Joke through the start of Bashir’s show is awful, IMO. I can’t sit through five minutes of any of those shows.
I like Bashir, but rarely get to watch it.
scav
@Beth: It’s also not really an action shot. Either that or they seem to have had no sense of personal space or maybe they were huddling together for warmth?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@The Bearded Blogger: @TenguPhule:
There are stages a person goes through when you finally realize that someone you know is not who you thought they were. If you liked them in the first place, there must have been a reason. The “he’s a nice person, so it must have been something external” is one of those stages.
MoeLarryAndJesus
Especially since they’re not.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2011/02/16/poll-birthers-now-make-up-a-majority-of-gop-primary-voters
Emily
Romney is a decent man=He’s able to keep his pants zipped.
FlipYrWhig
@Emily: Also, he doesn’t cuss.
NotMax
@Emily
Which leads into almost mandatory mention of his wife Ann’s statement:
Brandon
@The Bearded Blogger: Uh no. Milbank believes him to be “decent” because he is rich.
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (formerly Horrendo Slapp, Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
This is the most important thing to say, I think. Every time some asshole Republican says or does something so racist that there’s no way to shrug it off as a “misunderstanding” or a “bad choice of words”, the others in the party swarm to the nearest news outlet to tell us that the asshole in question “doesn’t stand for what Republicans believe” or “isn’t representative of Republican positions” or some other such bullshit.
And, well, yeah, if this kind of thing happened once every 5 years, or if the people saying this shit were random nobodies posting on a blog somewhere, then maybe they’d have a point. But it doesn’t happen every 5 years, it happens once a month. And it isn’t just caz or whatever the turd’s name is who shows up here to fling shit, these are high party officials and people in elected office and writers the party looks to as its “intellectuals” and the most listened-to radio and television blowhards.
And that’s the thing. It happens so often, and it comes from such influential people, that you can’t just say, “Well, people say dumb things now and then, but youo can’t judge us all by what one wacko said.” When it happens as often as it does, it isn’t some fluke thing; it’s a pattern. And when you establish a clear pattern of bad behavior, you can’t whine that nobody’s giving you a fair shake, nobody’s willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. That’s horseshit.
These are the people who tell us how big they are on “personal responsibility”. I just saw Rmoney talking about that, that people have to choose their way in life and live with it if they choose badly. Oh, but not Republicans, I guess.
Or look at it this way. When some young kid does something dumb and boosts his neighbor’s car for a joyride or something, but he’s never done anything like that at all ever before, then, yes, I can see you’d want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But when it’s some guy who has beaten up girlfriend after girlfriend, and beaten 3 wives before, and this time he loses it and kills his fourth wife, how much sense does it make to give that guy the benefot of the doubt?
The problem with Republicans is that they don’t believe the way people live should have any bearing on how you judge them–unless it’s somebody they don’t like. Republicans, well, we should only judge them by how they think of themselves, and they know they’re good people. Anybody else, well, the first mistake they make, that’s what defines them.
But the hell with that. These people have chosen over and over how they want to live and what they want to say. It’s safe to assume that we know what they believe after all this time, and it’s ugly. They don’t warrant any benefit of the doubt. I only pray that our top-flight press might someday get this through their thick skulls.
Matt
Nice post Tom. For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure that Mormonism is a ‘works not grace’ religion, so you are right to hold Romney’s feet to that fire. No deathbed salvation for him.
NotMax
Maybe Milbank’s spellcheck program changed ‘pissant‘ to ‘decent.’
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (formerly Horrendo Slapp, Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@NotMax:
That’s something I’d really rather not see. I don’t even want to think about it…
Raven Overhill
“He is a decent man”
This is something that I have often heard when a speaker or writer wants to make excuses for someone.
cckids
@Emily: Also, he loves/spends time with his own family. Why so many R’s seem to find this an extraordinary virtue is beyond me. Isn’t that how most of the world works?
Ruckus
@Raven Overhill:
That’s because that is exactly what they are doing, making an excuse.
It’s OK he really didn’t mean it.
It’s OK he’s rich.
It’s OK he’s good looking.
It’s OK he’s a decent person.
It’s OK he’s religious.
It’s OK he’s an asshole.
It’s OK he’s a racist.
At the end of the sentence they all convey exactly the same meaning.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Is any Villager other than Milbank talking about this?
Wag
@Suffern ACE:
Well the key to getting blood stains out of cloth is to avoid breaking open the red blood cells. As long as the cells remain intact, the hemoglobin is contained in nice little microscopic packages, and rinses off easily. Once the cells burst, the hemoglobin can bind to the cloth, and its a bear to get out.
Red blood cells stay whole if you use salt water to rinse the cloth. Using salt water, the blood stain wash away quickly and easily.
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Tweety, Howard Fineman and Joe Kline.
Calouste
@Brandon:
Al Capone was also rich.
NCSteve
Okay, so Mitt sucks dead donkey ass. We knew that. Here’s the really important thing I need to get off my chest, which is, of course, this thing that’s always bugged me about that painting. That guy they’re dicing? In those days, there was no embalming or preservation, the guy was almost certainly either an executed criminal or someone a resurrection man dropped on their doorstep overnight. Bound to be a couple of days ripe at a minimum and likely more like a week. The stench would have been unbearable and even in the days of formaldehyde, until you’ve been through an awful lot of autopsies, they’re really hard to take under the most antiseptic circumstances.
And yet, not one of those guys standing around him as Dr. van der Meer goes Quincy on him look like they’re about to lose their lunch. He might as well be arranging flowers or giving a calligraphy demonstration as far as you can tell from their expressions, despite the horrible, gruesome thing unfolding before their very eyes.
Which, come to think of it reminds me our Media Titans discussing the Ryan budget.
Maude
@Wag:
You beat me to it.
Mold doesn’t come out of cloth. That’s the fact of the day.
Anya
@cckids: imma let Chris Rock answer that.
HRA
“He is a decent man”
This is what is said when there is nothing else good to say about someone.
I agree with Hill Dweller. I put on MSNBC when Andrea Mitchell was into her program and shut it moments ago.
I stumbled across a Ross Douhat piece on Mormonism last night, skipped over it and read the comments which were very interesting. My question now is are we ready to elect a Bishop of a not so well known faith as a president of the USA? The comments were enlightening and definitely scary.
My reaction is to double my donation to the Obama campaign and to get more active.
BTW that is not my only reason to support President Obama.
Brandon
@Calouste: And if Al Capone were alive today, these Village bellends would be calling him “decent’ too.
Villago Delenda Est
Sorry, dick whisperer, but Romney has demonstrated, conclusively, that he is not a decent man.
Just as you have.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
Does he mean decent as in calling to hubby in the bathroom, are you decent?
Redshift
Eh, to me, “he is a decent man, but…” is the Village equivalent of “no offense, but…” or “no disrespect, but…”* It’s a precursor that says “I don’t have anything personal against the guy” in an effort to make readers take your remarks in that context, whereas if you launch directly into “what a horrible person,” the reaction of Broder-conditioned media consumers is likely to be “well, of course you would interpret things in the worst possible light, you think he’s a horrible person.”
It’s not just the media who are conditioned to “both sides do it,” it’s their audience as well.
*A la Jon Stewart, “no disrespect, but your sister’s a whore”
PurpleGirl
@jibeaux: Try Dreft stain remover and detergent (two products). It’s intended for use on baby diapers and works quite well on many stains. Also, remember to wash using cold water, hot water sets stains.
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift:
“With all due respect, your Honor…” is basically a prelude to saying something disrespectful.
Rmoney has demonstrated, again and again, that he is due no respect whatsoever.
Maude
@PurpleGirl:
Blood has a protein that salt removes. It is a different kind of stain.
Worked in a laundry once.
Xecky Gilchrist
He is a decent man, but he’s too weak to stand up to the minority on his own side who are not.
There they go again, blaming minorities.
Balconesfault
The GOP now reminds me of some completely one-dimensional college football conference, where everyone plays and defends the ground game, and the team best at playing and defending the ground game goes to a BCS bowl … where they get slaughtered by some team that actually knows that football has evolved since 1955.
slag
Bzzzz. Fails the Batman test.
Our soft bigotry of low expectations for rich white dudes hurts them almost as much as it hurts us.
Brantl
ANybody remember the Firesign Theatre doing the bit “Nick Danger, Third Eye”? Somebody should do “Mitt Romney , gutless lying Fuck”.
Gex
It doesn’t matter if it is a minority of the party, if that minority will never compromise. What we’ve seen over and over again is that when the “majority” takes on the “minority” the “minority” wins.
I keep telling all my Libertarian and Republican friends, they vote for anti-gay laws. They say they don’t but the fact is, declaring yourself a fiscal conservative in that coalition is basically stating that you will trade racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia to get $50 more back in taxes each year. You don’t like it? Get involved in the party, caucus, and platform.
Quit voting for them and then refusing to accept the consequences of your votes.
Gex
By the way, I find that when all someone has to say about you is you are decent, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
What it means is, hey, he won’t be mean to you to your face. Big whoop. That’s the entire GOP. They’re decent in public. Rabid hateful creatures in private. But the Village likes the shiny.
mclaren
Counting down to Romney’s first reference to Obama as a “mud person” and “son of Ham” in…3…2…1…
Keep it up, assholes. Racism doesn’t fly among the 35-and-under demographic. They’re gonna lose this election big-time if they keep this up.
mclaren
Where’s the evidence to support that claim?
I never strapped a dog in a cage on top of my car and kept driving for 5, 6, 7 hours straight until the dog shat itself.
I never bought out companies and then offshored all their jobs and fired all the workers and walked away as they lost their pensions and health care and livelihood.
I never referred to Obama using racist code phrases.
But Romney does all these things. He’s a textbook sociopath — zero empathy, flattened emotional affect, unable to relate to other people except by manipulating and controlling them, consumed with narcissism and obsessed with the desire for personal power.
Sociopath is as sociopath does. Romney’s actions define him as a classic sociopath. The only reason Romney hasn’t gone on a killing spree with an automatic weapon is that he’s rich and he can fire thousands of people and destroy their lives instead — which he probably finds more satisfying, since it takes them longer to die that way.
mclaren
@Gex:
Not quite. Remember the tail end of the Reagan administration? When they sent up nominees and when the senate demanded to know why they should confirm these shysters and thugs, the Reagan administration proudly retorted “Hasn’t been indicted yet!”
This was after the former Attorney General, Ed Meese, had been indicted on felony charges, and 135 members of the Reagan administration had either been indicted or resigned to avoid indictment.
DFH no.6
@Brantl:
Yeah, I remember Firesign Theater (RIP, Peter Bergman). Remember them well.
Some of the absolute funniest shit I’ve ever heard, from back in the sixties till now. Still cracks me up to this day.
But I wouldn’t want to sully their ridiculously clever and humorous “Nick Danger, Third Eye” parody of old radio shows by using it to jeer at the Romney/Ryan/Republicans-in-general shit-show.
Other than some Tbogg or Charles Pierce-type snark I just can’t find much comedy in where our present-day fascists are taking us.
A hugely militarized (to keep the hordes from getting our water) Handmaid’s Tale is the end-game, I’m afraid.
Tom Levenson
@Brantl: My radio teacher waaaaay back in 1985 was David Ossman…aka Catherwood the butler in the Nick Danger material. Also Porgy Tirebiter, that never-to-be-forgotten spy and girl dee-light-er.
And yes — he was/is that good.
DFH no.6
@Tom Levenson:
You knew one of these brilliant guys?
Damn!
Comedy soundtrack to my misspent youth, they were.
Friends and I would recite whole passages from Nick Danger and Waiting For The Electrician, etc. back and forth from memory, and I can still do a lot of that but sadly don’t have anyone around anymore to do it with.
Never have been able to find some Shakespeare parody I loved that they did back around ’74, but I’ve got a lot of their early album stuff on CD and listen to it now and them (by myself nowadays).
Very bummed to hear about Peter Bergman’s death last April. Too young at 72.
Tom Levenson
@DFH no.6: David and his to-be wife Judith were actually room mates of mine for a few months. David could imitate my voice and that of my other room mate perfectly when he answered our communal phone. You can image the havoc he was capable of wreaking.
El Cid
…but bless his heart…
SF Mom
Palin, like Romney, is a classic sociopath (but with a vicious revengeful streak). McCain, while often falling to the dark side, had empathy. Not sure whether stakes higher in 2012 or 2008; Palin’s sheer incompetence and dangerousness had McCain died makes me lean 2008.
peorgietirebiter
Browsing the comments following Milibank’s post, there doesn’t seem to be much of a downside for Romey and the heirs of Lee Atwater. Apparently, Milbank is a leftist and the real racist. Hard to unblow thirty years worth of dog whistling. Depressing, I may relapse and start poppin’ off at Pop’s sodium shop with yellow and reds and redheads. BTW Peorgie’s upstairs with Porcelain the maid, Porgy’s busy liftin’ and totin’.
DFH – Lord Buckley’s one of my faves for Willie the Shake.