Like others, I was struck by Master Brook’s op ed in the NYTs today, especially the kicker:
“It’s not that Egypt doesn’t have a recipe for a democratic transition. It seems to lack even the basic mental ingredients.”
It was classic Bobo. Of course Egypt doesn’t have the tools–they’re not white. His column whitesplains why the Egyptians are doomed–and of course it has something to do with Bobo’s fantasies that there is a White race and that it is the pinnacle of human civilization. In Bobo’s world, great white men created the only institutions and traditions that can lead to success and the only way that the lessor races can improve their lot in life is by following that Anglo-Saxon roadmap. Sadly, in Bobo’s telling, this is a journey that they will never successfully complete without the advice and kindly assistance of their betters.
As always, Bobo skates right up to the line, but leaves just enough ambiguity so that he can claim “who me” if anybody points out his bias for and dedication to white male superiority and privilege.
Which brings me to Paula Deen, a teevee celebrity with none of Brook’s code talkin’ skills. Turns out she uses the word nigger, fantasizes about a slave catered wedding and tries to have a lawsuit thrown out of court because a white person can’t possibly sue her for talkin’ trash about Negroes. Like Brooks, Deen moves though the world with a strong sense of white superiority and privilege. Unlike Brooks, she had no idea about the rules of code talking–and that was her downfall. It seems that using the word “nigger” was the taboo line she crossed, because she had said and done a lot of whack things in the past without any real notice. If Deen had study Bobo, she would have learned not to use that word and the Brookian rules for ways that white folks can talk about their superiority and priviledge without causing blow-back.
Take another example from a couple of weeks ago. Bobo joined E.J. Dionne on NPR for their weekly chat about politics. As they discussed immigration, Bobo whitesplained the concern that all the brown folks were changing America for the worse (emphasis added):
We will have 36 billion new immigrants, 16 – I’m sorry – million additional people. And so the real question is, is this changing our country sociologically and culturally. To me, this has always been the core concern of a lot of opponents and all the other stuff has been window dressing. So now we’re getting down to the core issue.
The notion that immigrants are a threat to fantasies of a white America has been around since before the Nation was founded. The entire notion of race and “whiteness” and white superiority was invented here in America. This myth of white superiority–and not slavery–is the original stain on our Country. Slavery was just a byproduct.
And then there is another recent Bobo column where he triples down on his fear of a brown planet:
Soon, we will no longer be an outpost of Europe, but a nation of mutts, a nation with hundreds of fluid ethnicities from around the world, intermarrying and intermingling. Americans of European descent are already a minority among 5-year-olds. European-Americans will be a minority over all in 30 years at the latest, and probably sooner.
If enacted, the immigration reform bill would accelerate these trends. [snip]
As we stand on the cusp of this New America, it’s understandable to feel some anxiety.
But Bobo being Bobo, he does see a ray of hope–all these new immigrants could join white Americans and embrace their traditional hatred of the blacks:
The most interesting and problematic flashpoint may be between immigrants and African-Americans. We now have this bogus category, “minority,” in which we lump the supposed rainbow coalition of immigrants and blacks. But, in fact, tensions between “minority” groups could soon be more plainly obvious than any solidarity.
The idea that conflicts between non-white folks can be exploited to protect white privilege seems to give Bobo a stiffie. And yet, he is the one who is doomed.
His entire false construction of a superior Anglo-Saxon/Nordic/White/European race and civilization is collapsing under the weight of reality. Deen, Brooks, the Tea Party, the GOP and their fellow travelers are very troubled by this turn of events. They fear living in a world without the benefit of unearned white privilege.
Deen has lost her job for expressing her fear without using code, while Brooks keeps his job because he knows how to use the code as he whitesplains the world.
Cheers
ps: I’ve been on a walk-about as of late (more about that in another post).
sharl
Hey stranger, good to see you again!
OK, now going to read your post…
Snarki, child of Loki
Yeah, well the GOP is great at opposition, crappy at governing, so what does Bobo’s column imply about them?
That they’re religious fundamentalist conservative morons? But I repeat myself…
Eric U.
I never take any time off, and I get a jury summons for the week I was going to take off. Awesome. My wife thought it was funny. She’s taking 2 months off to recover from elective surgery.
Villago Delenda Est
Dennis, to be fair, whites are superior.
Superior assholes.
The Fat Kate Middleton
“… a nation of mutts.” Really?!? Unbelievable. Just … unbelievable. Charlie Pierce, we need you. Right now.
raven
Good to see ya, Athens says hello.
gogol's wife
Great post. You have done to Brooks what Jon Stewart sometimes does to Fox & Friends when he’s on his game.
James E. Powell
This myth of white superiority–and not slavery–is the original stain on our Country. Slavery was just a byproduct.
Although there is a bit of the “chicken & egg” to it, it was slavery and the development of a hugely profitable slave economy that created the demand for a narrative that justified slavery.
There is racism and bigotry all over the world, wherever any “us” meets any “them,” but there are specifically American parts of American racism directed at African-Americans that are not general.
Jewish Steel
In fact, huh? “Could” is doing a lot of work in that sentence too. What a shitheel.
Glad to see you walking hereabouts again, Dennis!
Roy G.
Brooks’ exposure to Those People is limited to his doorman, driver and shoeshine boy. Remember, where he lives, the Upper East Side, is where civilization is ending because NYC Bike Share is begriming Their Sidewalks.
Dennis G.
@raven: And I say hello back.
Gex
Anyone else otice how white ethnicities can mix all they want without being called mutts? One drop rule, again. How dare us browns sully their bloodlines!
Poor David Brooks. First of all, I am already a “mutt” but I was born in 1970. So the cat’s already out of the bag unless he wants to bring back miscegenation laws?
Second of all, my brother is half-Chinese and half-German. His fiance is Jamaican, Cherokee, Irish, and Swedish. Their child is going to be intelligent and amazing, and SHE is going to eat guys like David Brooks for breakfast. No wonder he feels anxious. My “mutt” niece is coming for him.
different-church-lady
And if someone doesn’t get it after that essay, they’re simply not going to. Nice work.
Santa Fe
Rod Dreher had an article in USA Today, um, today, titled “A Reluctant Paula Deen Supporter”. It’s pretty interesting, even where I disagree with it. Sparked another long thread about Deen on his blog.
Gex
@Jewish Steel: Especially if they follow the lead of NOM and deliberately try to incite the hatred where none need exist. (NOM had a lovely strategy memo on how to get Hispanics and blacks to hate on gays.) So don’t think if these tensions come up that they came up naturally on their own. They have people who will instigate.
Narcissus
Good to see you Dennis.
James E. Powell
But there’s no animal that’s more faithful, more loyal, more lovable than the mutt. Here’s proof: his nose is cold.
Eric U.
I grew up in deepest, darkest Appalachia. The only racial minorites I knew as a child were so much more intelligent than the local white people that it’s just not even fair. This has stuck with me, and now I feel like I’m in upside-down world.
James E. Powell
@Roy G.:
Brooks’ exposure to Those People is limited to his doorman, driver and shoeshine boy.
Reminds me of the story from some years back when Bill O’Reilly was shocked to discover black people in a restaurant. Eating food!
Hal
The USA has a long history, either with false invitation or force, of using “foreigners” to help build this country. Whether it was the Chinese helping to build the transcontinental railroad, or slavery, or Hispanic immigrants, this country owes so much to non-whites. It drives me insane that so many people like Brook see this country as some utopia of “European” superiority when people like him can’t even cut their own damn grass.
Reminds me of this joke I read recently. “There’s this stereotype that black people are lazy. I don’t know if that’s true but white people went all the way to Africa to get out of doing work.”
AA+ Bonds
Correct and thank you for putting it so well.
Yatsuno
@Roy G.: I guess Bobo is too good to take cabs like that Man of the People Friedman.
The prophet Nostradumbass
The stuff about the “Sambo burger” reminded me of the infamous Sandra Lee Kwanzaa cake segment.
Dennis G.
@James E. Powell: I think the notion of supremacy came first. It was the chicken. Slavery was the egg. Some ideas supporting white supremacy were carried from Europe, but most were home grown–especially the idea that white power justified slavery.
Most of our founding fathers ranged between those who thought that white male Anglo-Saxons were a superior race that should dominate the lessor races by any means necessary and the “liberals” who thought that white male Anglo-Saxons were a superior race that should take care of the lessor races out of a charitable sense of duty.
White superiority is the stain. Slavery was a symptom as was the Native American ethnic cleansing policy.
Chris
That was my immediate thought. They really want their divide-and-conquer shit. And figure that just because so many poor and middle class white people are dumb enough to fall for it, everyone else will be too.
Roy G.
@James E. Powell: Imagine that! To be fair to Brooks, the salad bar at Applebees is Whites Only, because people of color lack the basic mental ingredients to like salad.
TCG
@The prophet Nostradumbass: That cake was an abomination. Cornnuts as acorns?
Chris
I’d say America’s original sin, or contradiction if you prefer, was the attempt to build a country based on the ideological principle that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights,” while denying that equality and those rights to entire categories. Race (black slaves, non-Anglo immigrants, American Indians, etc) was the most obvious and egregious way to separate Americans, but gender and class fit into it too.
Hal
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
The infamous Kwanzaa cake. The woman who came up with the recipe confessed a couple of years ago. Pretty hilarious. Sandra Lee (otherwise known as Drunken Hines) was not being racist, but according to Denise Vivaldo who created the cake, “she just has incredibly bad food taste.”
Which I agree with because I’ve seen the video on youtube of her making meatloaf. Hilarious stuff.
http://foodnetworkhumor.com/2010/12/origins-of-sandra-lees-horrifying-kwanzaa-cake/
YellowJournalism
Animal breeding analogies. I would expect as much from a pile of dogshit like Brooks.
JGabriel
Dennis G. @ Top:
Honestly, I think Bobo may have failed to achieve the sufficient level of ambiguity this time around. It probably won’t happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Times reprimands Bobo this time, and/or fails to renew his contract the next time it comes up.
Be better if the Times just immediately fired Brooks’ pasty white ass, of course, but, after extensive analysis and calculation, I’ve determnined the odds of that happening are roughly zero to none.
P.S. Dennis, welcome back! Good to see you round these parts again. We’ve missed you.
Xecky Gilchrist
Soon, we will no longer be an outpost of Europe, but a nation of mutts, a nation with hundreds of fluid ethnicities from around the world, intermarrying and intermingling.
Gosh, didn’t we always call this “The Great American Melting Pot?”
And thought that was a good thing?
Lighten up, Bobo.
p.a.
Welcome back.
May be uncouth to compare dogs & humans, but ‘mutts’ are largely healthier than inbred purebreds.
And let’s not forget it was ‘nature’s elite’ that brought about the death of, what, 40 million in the 20th century, just in our 2 big wars. Among non-whites, only Mao can be mentioned in the same breath.
Reluctant Militant
Long time lurker, seldom poster. I read about Bobo’s article elsewhere and was hoping to hear your thoughts.
Yatsuno
@Xecky Gilchrist: Seriously.
JGabriel
@Snarki, child of Loki:
Yes, it’s true that much insult, verbiage, and over-explaining could have been avoided had Brooks’ simply written: The Muslim Brotherhood could not govern because they’re just like American Conservatives.
.
Mnemosyne
@James E. Powell:
I have to link to the longer clip, because the one you found started after my favorite line of that speech: “We’re Americans! Do you know what that means? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world.”
JoyfulA
Well before the Revolution, Ben Franklin ranted about all the people with the wrong skin color, who didn’t walk right, and who didn’t speak English. He was writing about the Germans (long before there was a Germany) from along the Rhine River who were coming to Pennsylvania in great numbers.
He set up immigration controls for the colony that no other port had, which have been most helpful to genealogists.
Dennis G.
@JGabriel:
Nicely said…
Ruckus
@JGabriel:
I doubt NYT will fire him. He has an audience and while I bet he doesn’t increase sales I’m sure some would pitch a fit if he was fired. And this is because he writes in the code that he does. Maybe if he stood on the street in front of the Times building naked, screaming racist insults to anyone in the area not pasty white. Maybe.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Yatsuno: That’s right! Schoolhouse Rock! I knew there was a song and everything. Thanks!
burnspbesq
Is a Fig Newton of your imagination. Brooks, as he actually is, is bad enough. There’s no need to create a ridiculous comic-book version out of whole cloth. The only casualty of that effort is your own credibility, which can’t withstand too many more hits before it’s gone for good.
Ruckus
@burnspbesq:
Off your meds and drinking. Wow.
Mezz (fpa Michael2)
While I am in total agreement that Brooks is an utter turd, a good deal of the claims here are really … problematic. And the typos, I can’t tell if they’re intentional (to emphasize the ironic – e.g. “priviledge”) or if your spellchecker just took the day off.
Bobo is bad enough; but to read take downs that are sloppily written and that advance some problematic claims (e.g.: “The entire notion of race and “whiteness” and white superiority was invented here in America. “) is if not worse, than just as bad. [I think I’m gonna need a citation for that, because myself, I would argue that you’re dead wrong. And I do have cites. And a couple smartz.]
Is this what Bobo Screed does to people?!!? The man is a menace!
TCG
@Hal: There was A Hanukkah cake too. With blue icing and giant marshmallows in the middle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj89Ax60DEI
I know she meant well, but damn.
Mezz (fpa Michael2)
While I am in total agreement that Brooks is an utter turd, a good deal of the claims Dennis makes here are really … problematic. And the typos, I can’t tell if they’re intentional (to emphasize the ironic – e.g. “priviledge”) or if your spellchecker just took the day off.
Bobo is bad enough; but to read take downs that are sloppily written and that advance some problematic claims (e.g.: “The entire notion of race and “whiteness” and white superiority was invented here in America. “) is if not worse, then just as bad. [I think I’m gonna need a citation for that.]
Is this what Bobo Screed does to people?!!? The man is a menace!
Jewish Steel
@Gex: Yeah. Wouldn’t it be a shame if everyone who stands to lose in Brooksworld made common cause? In fact?
dollared
@burnspbesq: Shorter Bobo: exterminate the brutes!
AA+ Bonds
In the interests of combating Brooks’s white supremacy and any unnamed enablers/deniers of white supremacy who may be creeping around inside this thread here is a 2012 video from Egyptians about Egypt, with English subtitles, that is funny & cool & angry & sad and will give you a good idea of what was on at least some of the people’s minds in Egypt back in 2012 and what is now again at the forefront of many people’s minds within the NSF and the popular uprising.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=QV0us1ZYgmw
Remember that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi have one thing in common beyond professed Islamist politics: they both accept the IMF pulling the infrastructure out from under the feet of the Egyptian people after “careful study” by their own councils of power-hungry jerks, so they can sell it back piece by piece in return for the subjugation of Egypt’s economy to Western investors.
The Nasserists in the NSF, who have gone from nothing to the leaders at the front of the secular opposition, have different ideas, and the “serious thinkers” in the Western media and their banker friends despise them more than any other group in the country.
I hope it might remind you of what happened in the U.S. very recently and maybe some of your feelings about it.
Lyrebird
Why does Brooks still get paid to spew this stuff? And I’ll sidestep the chicken-egg debates above, tempting as they are…
I’ll disagree on your take on Paula Deen. The major media outlets are trying to make it ALL about the n-word… have you read the deposition? Pretty appalling and yes I’ve lived in the South and visited South Boston. Speaking of South Boston…
Officially speaking, I’m mostly Irish, Scots, & English. Scots, as you may know, have traces of all the Vikings and this-and-that-goths who came and plundered and sometimes settled down to stay. We American Irish types like to talk about the Spanish Armada contributing to the gene pool (It’s the fabled source of the “Black Irish” looks). What blew me away the most was to learn that the Cornish people traded tin (for what I don’t know) to the Phoenicians!!! When the bleep was that?
Brooks is an embarrassment.
I — like most human beings — am a mutt!
Roger Moore
@Gex:
The cat’s out of the bag even if he wants to bring back miscegenation laws. Something like 8% of all marriages in the US are mixed by the standards miscegenation laws would try to impose, and the proportion is much higher for recent marriages. Lots of those marriages have already produced multi-racial kids. We’re already a nation of mutts, whether Brooks likes it or not.
Roger Moore
@p.a.:
In fairness, a lot of the people killed in WWII were Chinese and Japanese, and they were busy killing each other without any help from whitey. The US only got pulled into the war in the Pacific because we were trying to stop the Japanese from taking over China.
fuckwit
Keep fucking that chicken, Bobo.
Roger Moore
@Lyrebird:
At least as far back as the 5th Century BC. Herodotus mentions the Phoenicians trading with the Tin Islands beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which have generally been interpreted to mean that the Phoenicians had made it to Cornwall by then.
Botsplainer
Oh doublefuck not cool.
Back bedroom, normally occupied by 18 and a half year old, in Rome right now. Two nights ago, I turned off lights in her room. Noticed they were on tonight, turned them off. Asked 20 year old if she’d been in there, she said no.
We’d had some poultergeist stuff several years ago, and thought I’d gotten a handle on it. I’d gotten an inkling it was coming back with some 20 turmoil, but really am not ready for this shit again.
And on reflection, it fits. Heard a big crash just before dropping off last night, wrote it off to a waking dream.
Last time we dealt with this, it took a shitload of work – assistance for the kid now 20, and a home blessing to mollify everybody else (it helps, even for nonbelievers like me).
SRW1
At least these Mexican hordes are not Mooslims like the ones overrunning Europe. The white man isn’t safe anywhere any longer! Sometimes not even in his own home.
Lyrebird
@Roger Moore: Hey, thanks!
And I could easily forgive the NYT’s management for knowing nothing about the 5th Century. I’m having a harder time with their ostrich-like treatment of the 20th. They probably don’t want to pull their heads out of the sand, since a quick glance at their archives would turn up a few generations of similar prejudiced whingeing. (e.g. mongrelization of the nation w/the influx of Papists, etc etc etc.)
Peace!
AdamK
@Gex: But: “…intermarrying and intermingling. Americans of European descent are already a minority among 5-year-olds. European-Americans will be a minority over all in 30 years at the latest…” because once you get a little brown stuff in your bloodline, all the “European Descent” part disappears entirely! And just the tiniest drop of African, all hell gonna break loose!
Higgs Boson's Mate
My wife is a Latina. I’m an Anglo. That would make our beloved son a “mutt” in Brooks’ eyes. A mutt. If I should ever encounter David Brooks in person I will knock him down and kick him in the junk until his voice goes up two octaves.
LesGS
@Lyrebird: During the Bronze Age. Tin is mixed with copper to make bronze.
ETA: I see Roger Moore got there first…
ruemara
@burnspbesq: You’re a lawyer. Your lack of comprehension on what he is arguing is breathtaking. “Nation of mutts” indeed. The man’s a bigot.
Redshirt
If we’re talking fight, I’d take Deen. I bet Brooks couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag.
some guy
I love it when the tax avoidance lawyers go off their meds. their innate sense that an insult to Brooks’ racism is a an insult to their own is too funny. get help, Burnsie, or at least try upping the dosage.
some guy
@AA+ Bonds:
wow, a nuanced and clear understanding of what’s at stake in Egypt. a rare thing these days.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@ruemara: A couple of days ago he told Elon James White, essentially, “America: Love it or Leave it”, and, verbatim: “You appear, at least superficially, to be a bright, educated guy, Elon.”
Jewish Steel
@Redshirt:
Oh yeah. Deen has always looked like a cruel old cuss to me.
KmCO
@SRW1: Yeah, but they’re still brown, and that’s what counts in Bobo’s pallid world.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I agreed with most of the article, except for:
I give you the British Empire. We’re still paying for their white superiority.
Roger Moore
@AdamK:
This also depends on a definition of Europe that stops at the Pyrenees, since he’s apparently counting only non-Hispanic whites. There are plenty of Hispanics/Latinos who report themselves as white on the census and would be considered white in most of American society, but are being left out because their families migrated to the USA by way of Latin America rather than coming straight from Europe. It really shows just how pathological American ideas of race and ethnicity are.
Yatsuno
@Jewish Steel: Never ever EVER bet against a Southern woman. They may act all sweetness and light on the outside but inside they are really tough old broads.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
And, about Brooks’s “mutt”ing of America. As a full white guy, I always called myself a mutt because my family was unable to distinguish which areas in Europe our ancestories came from. I somehow doubt the citizens in a lot of European countries would really consider themselves to be the same. Brooks, in his need to make whites superior, invented a master race, which he calls European. And we all know who else invented a master race in order to justify his actions.
Redshirt
@Yatsuno: Mrs. Sherman disagrees!
TS
@JGabriel:
“Be better if the Times just immediately fired Brooks’ pasty white ass, of course, but, after extensive analysis and calculation, I’ve determnined the odds of that happening are roughly zero to none.”
Read the comments under the “NYT Picks” on the Brooks column. No-one is going to fire him any time soon.
Ruckus
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Why stop at 2 octaves? Do us all a favor make it 5.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Yatsuno:
‘
That should go up there with “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,” and “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Ruckus:
Deal. Only dogs will be able to hear him.
Jose Arcadio Buendía
White supremacy was invented in America? Wut?
mdblanche
@dollared: The horror, the horror.
Roger Moore
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
He needs the help. His dog whistle was definitely audible to humans this time around.
mdblanche
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: That’s cruelty to animals.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Unless, of course, you’re the Dread Pirate Roberts.
Ruckus
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I Thank you. The world will thank you. Racists might not but fuck them.
gorram
@Chris: White supremacism, hetero-cis-patriarchy, and capitalism.
Sound like the GOP since the Reagan Revolution to anyone else?
Tehanu
Let me tell you my favorite “mutt” story. I used to live in Beverly Hills. One day I was walking our pound hound and a little kid, maybe 5 or 6, came up to me and asked, “What kind of dog is that?”
I said, “Well, she’s a mutt.”
He said, “What’s that?” I thought, jeez, it’s Beverly Hills, the kid’s probably never even seen a dog that didn’t have papers going back to Charlemagne — so I said, “Well, it’s like 2 or 3 different kinds of dog all mixed up together.”
His eyes got real big and round and he looked at her and said, “Cool!” I’d bet on that kid over Bobo any day.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jose Arcadio Buendía:
A certain leader of a right wing political movement in central Europe some 80 years ago took a lot of notes of what was going on in America, and embraced and extended many of those ideas.
Debbie(aussie)
Wonderful, Dennis, welcome back, with a vengeance too.
I personally can’t wait until we become one coffee coloured crowd of people
I am a member of the human race and a citizen of planet earth and very proud to be so. Debs
JGabriel
@Ruckus, @TS: Yes. Thus the zero to none odds.
JGabriel
@Villago Delenda Est:
True, though to be fair, that same leader, according to accounts from his own acquaintances, also borrowed extensively from the Turks.
terben
‘And so the real question is, is this changing our country sociologically and culturally.’ You would fucking hope so!
Bob h
Egypt just has people willing to take to the streets and lay down their lives for democracy, is all.
debbie
I haven’t read enough Brooks to have a sense of his philosophy, but he seems like the kind of guy who feels too much love for his own words to feel the need to step back and see whether his words could be interpreted other than as he intended them.
For this reason, he’s not like Deen. She says what she means.
cmorenc
@Dennis G:
I’m light-years from being a fan of Bobo, and see right through his frequent displays of pop conservative sociological sophistry as well as the rest of you.
NEVERTHELESS, your critique of Bobo’s column on Egypt as being racist because of his observation that Egypt doesn’t have the requisite mental ingredients for democracy is LIGHT-YEARS off-course. He could have equally written a similar column about Russia with different particulars focusing on the gangster authoritarians from the old Communist party rather than the Islamacists. For that matter, right here in BJ we frequently express outrage at the Talibangelicals right here in the U-S-of A who are intent on imposing, if only they could, a theocratic, undemocratic regime upon the rest of us.
How easy it is to forget that it took HUNDREDS of years for the requisite mindset to support and sustain democracy to evolve in western Europe, and that one of the seminal long struggles in Western civilization itself was civil society’s efforts to get the upper-hand over theocratic, anti-democratic institutions like the Catholic Church. Look how ill-equipped e.g. France was for its initial go at democracy after King Louis XVI was overthrown. United States history would have turned out VERY differently but-for the great fortune of George Washington’s firm disposition against seizing the kind of autocratic control he could easily have exerted.
Bobo’s column is about Egypt being culturally, historically unprepared for democratic institutions to easily take root, especially its fanatical Islamic factions. Can you name a single true Islamic state in the middle east which is freely democratic? Ironically, Iran comes about as close to that as you can find, but of course it’s not all that close, despite the superficial trappings of elections.
SuperHrefna
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): you can blame the British Empire for a lot, but I don’t think y ou can blame it for the concept of whiteness as practiced in America today, which seems to be a sort of pan-European concept. At the most the whiteness expounded by the British Empire stretched to include everyone in Britain. Wogs began at Calais. Most English people at the time believed that all celts were racially inferior ( the liberal ones thought that celts were racially different) and even Englishness was ( and in many minds still is) evaluated on a county by county basis: those from Norfolk were too Saxon too be properly English, those from Somerset too covered in woad. Etc, etc,etc. there is still a vast amount of Intra-British racism. So since we couldn’t ( and in some regrettable cases still can’t) decide if we’re all the same race, I don’t think you can blame a concept that stretches to include both Scandinavians and Mediterraneans on us. That’s an American thing.
Mino
@Dennis G.: Exactly. Wondered if early attempts to civilize/enslave the Indians would be mentioned. That came before the widespread importation of blacks.
Joey Maloney
@Debbie(aussie): I personally can’t wait until we become one coffee coloured crowd of people
Come to Hawaii. Something like 80% of all marriages here are between people of differing ethnicities. Although with the exception of white retirees from the mainland we’re already so extensively scare-quotes mongrelized scare-quotes that it’s difficult to tell.
Mino
@AA+ Bonds: Very interesting. Quite a soup of neocons, fundies, IMF/WB types ready with a plan to do emergency managers on the asses of anyone they get control over. Monetize the social capital and leave town.
Mino
@cmorenc: Lebanon was a Islamic mercantile state until it got chewed up by the Israeli situation.
Mino
And by Brooksie’s measure, the Japanese are vastly superior to the white race as they managed democracy in one generation.
Ksmiami
@Mino: @Mino: ahh Japan and Germany… Lucky beneficiaries of the us smash and reset plan…only took firebombs and nukes to get them to submit
Mike in NC
Is it merely a coincidence that Bobo’s eyeglasses are exactly the same as those worn by Heinrich Himmler? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
JustRuss
@cmorenc: Well crap. Here I was all set to tell you how wrong you were, but I had to go and actually read Brooks’ column. And found it pretty reasonable…especially the specific criticisms of Islamic fundamentalists, which, word for word, could describe a certain segment of our own political landscape.
It’s a pity the Times can’t afford editors, “mental equipment” is extremely poor phrasing that never should have made it to print. But it generated outrage and thus page hits, so perhaps its presence is no accident. Brooks gets to use his dog whistle while arguing, with some justification, that his critics are taking him out of context.
steve
Brooks’s
Brooksian
JustRuss
Since I gave the bastard’s column a hit, might as well get my money’s worth. From consecutive paragraphs:
The mind, it boggles.
Ajaye
@Lyrebird: thank you for explaining the “black irish” thing. My mom always said her dad’s family was “black irish”, and was never quite sure what she meant, though always took it with a grain of salt since she also said her grandfather was a Jewish Cossack. Her brother had black hair & dark brown eyes and could pass as Hispanic if he spoke Spanish which of course he does not aince this is Murica and we speak English here blah blah blah. Right wingnut of the family. Every family seems similarly afflicted.
grandpa john
@JustRuss: That’s what happens when you waste time reading the boring repetitions of the same general ideologic ramblings of a pretend moderate. Always the same basic post with different window dressings
Jay C
@Ajaye:
According to a bunch of theories I have read, the “black Irish” actually exhibit something like the original pigmentation of the “original” – “Celtiberian” to ethnologists – inhabitants of the island, and that the blonde and redheaded Irish now considered “typical” are a result of several centuries (c. 700-1000 AD [??]) of occupation and colonization by Scandinavian vikings who finally got conquered by the locals in the early 11th Century. Who, naturally, kept the blondes and redheads…
PS: Even though, historically, the main relation the Cossacks have had with the Jews is that of “target practice”, there were actually “Jewish Cossacks” who served in cavalry regiments during the Russian Civil War in the early 1920’s. Not many, to be sure, and (IIRC), on the losing side, but they were there!
@SuperHrefna:
While slavery and racism – at least in the New World context – were introduced by the Spanish and Portuguese when they started to get their Western-Hemisphere empires going (and whose “racial” attitudes go back centuries to their experiences with Africa – Moorish Invasions and all that), the more-or-less-absolutist-white-supremacy thing seems to have been a northern-European Protestant (British and Dutch) innovation. Which of course, they took to everywhere they settled. Fun Fact: South Carolina is the only US state to have been settled by colonists from another colony (Barbados)….
Plantsmantx
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Sandra Lee was clueless. Paula Deen was fake-clueless.
Dr. Squid
Feh. Brooks’ ancestors were swinging in trees while Egyptians were inventing civilization.
sherparick
That Brooks is Jewish makes this even more rich, particularly since his friend and mentor specifically decided that Brooks could not be the editor of National Review because of his Jewishness. From Sam Tannehaus’s biography of Buckley, via Brad DeLong.
Athwart History: How William F. Buckley turned against the war–and his own movement: “…To this day, Buckley’s politics are grounded less in democratic values–“Democracy just doesn’t work, much of the time,” he observed in a 2004 column–than in the twin virtues of Catholicism and capitalism…. Gradually, [National Review] became less Catholic than “Christian.” But that was the limit of Buckley’s ecumenicalism. In 1997, when he was scouring the ranks of talented younger conservatives to find a new editor for National Review, Buckley eliminated one prospect, his one time protege David Brooks, a rising star at The Weekly Standard. In a memo to board members, Buckley reported that he had discussed Brooks with NR alum George Will: “I said that I thought it would be wrong for the next editor to be other than a believing Christian. He agreed and added that the next editor should not be a Canadian”–a possible reference to conservative writer David Frum…”
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/09/no-jews-need-apply.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal+%28Brad+DeLong%27s+Semi-Daily+Journal%29
The culturall concept of American “Whiteness” is somewhat elastic, expanding and contracting over time and is affected by external events. For most of the first half of 19th century “White”only meant Anglo-Saxon Protestants from Great Britain and Ireland. Irish Catholics and Germans were excluded, and henced could in certain circumstances be lynched with impunity. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duffy%27s_Cut. During the mid-19th century, White Southerners and Copperheads kicked New England Yankees out of “Whiteness,” but losing the Civil War kind of ended that experiement. Throughout the rest of the 19th and early 20th “White” again expanded to mean Anglo-Saxon/Scotch Irish Protestants across the country, with second and third generation Irish Catholics and Germans getting provisional, junior membership in the club (as in Better than Blacks). With WWI and the Bolshevik revolution Germans, Itallians, and East European immigrants, particularly Jews, were not considered “White.” It was WWII that basically saw the extension of Whiteness to all melanin challeged folks (See standard WWII and post WWII war movie), and even began breaking down the differences between “White” and Asian. But the usefulness of “Black” as a underclass still remains as strong as when it was invented in the late 17th century Virginia and South Carolina.
ricky
So what have we here? In an effort to paint Bobo as an evil agent of “master race” concisousness, you invoke Paula
Deen? Oh, and you also ingore the conclusion of the “Nation of Mutts” column you selectively quote to prove “Deen, Brooks, the Tea Party, the GOP and their fellow travelers are very troubled by this turn of events. They fear living in a world without the benefit of unearned white privilege.”
“On the whole, this future is exciting,” said Bobo the Bad.