Ann Althouse, via Sully, on criticism of Bobby Jindal:
Expressed by Josh Marshall (“absolutely cringeworthy”), Andrew Sullivan (“Jindal’s entrance reminded one of Mr Burns gamboling toward a table of ointments”), and others.
Why are all these people so confident that they are not manifesting racism? There’s just something about this man that doesn’t seem right, that you don’t care to examine exactly what it is, but you know it deep down in your gut somehow. Seriously. How do you know this is not racism?
ADDED: Andrew Sullivan proffers an answer to my question: “Maybe because there is not a trace of evidence of any kind that we are. Unless comparing Jindal to Kenneth the Page or Mr Burns taps unknown wells of racist hate in my heart. I mean, seriously.” I think deeper reflection is needed. Why the urge to paint him as a white white man? Where did that come from? Of course, there are unknown wells inside us all. When you have an instinctive response to a person of another race, why not seek knowledge?
Is it some stereotype that Indian-Americans are like “white white” people? I thought the stereotype was that they drove cabs, owned 7-11’s, and made their kids win spelling bees. This is so dumb on so many levels. It reminds me a bit of this exchange on Ali G:
Andy Rooney: Ok, that’s enough.I can’t do this. I can’t do this.
Ali G: Why not?
Andy Rooney: It’s not going good.
Ali G: Is it because I is black?
Andy Rooney: You’re black?
Ali G: For real.
Andy Rooney: Who’s black?
Ali G: Yo, I is.
AhabTRuler
Who the hell is Andy Runey?
And I still think the best clip is the one with the Mr. Rogers music.
joe from Lowell
Ann Althouse is the rather creative individual who saw the Hillary Clinton "3AM ads," noticed that the little boy was wearing jammies that read "Nighty night," noticed that the jammies were wrinkled in one location in one shot so that only the first three letters of "Nighty night" were visible, and proclaimed that the Clinton campaign was engaging in subliminal racism.
joe from Lowell
You think I’m kidding. You think I just made that up.
I wish I was that creative, but I’m not.
That actually happened.
DougJ
@joe
Oh my God.
Bubblegum Tate
The title of this post is a Syl Johnson reference, yes?
DougJ
No, it’s just a reference to Ali G asking “Is it because I is black?”
jenniebee
I think Ann Althouse needs to seek knowledge vis a vis her instinctive reactions to wine and big tits.
John Cole
You do know that if you mock Althouse, it will never end. Best to just ignore her. I am serious.
Andrew
Jesus. She needs to lay off the wine blogging for a little while.
Ben JB
That’s pretty magnificently dumb–I like how Ann paints people’s reactions as "instinctive," as if lib/dems were showing their true colors before they got their PC masks back in place. Or when she notes that we all must be feeling that there’s "something" about him that gets to us.
I’ll tell you what that "something" is, Ann–it’s his politics.
Bubblegum Tate
@DougJ:
Ah, I see. At any rate, Syl Johnson’s "Is It Because I’m Black?" is phenomenal.
bago
Is it coz I is a volcano?
Ash Can
I suppose I should have seen the "RACISM!1!11"::flail:: counterpoint to the Sarah Palin "SEXISM!1!11"::flail:: coming a mile away.
Graeme
I’ve long thought Althouse was a moron, but… The only person I’ve seen refer to Jindal as brown was an Indian friend of mine on Facebook. He said he was an embarrassment to brown people everywhere, and some of his brown friends agreed. I told him he should think how I feel, being white, after 8 years of W…
The reason people are interested is because Jindal was touted as the great GOP hope. Everyone was interested how he’d fare, and he fell just as flat as anyone else they’ve thrown at the public.
Look: I’d love to see the GOP recover, because I’m not all that comfortable voting Donk. But right now the Donks are so vastly superior to the GOP that it’s not even worth discussing.
Not unlike Ann Althouse.
bobbo
This is just so Althouse. "Sure, you think you’re not racist, but isn’t the very fact that you think that you’re not racist proof that you are, in fact, racist? After all, people who are insane think they are sane. Think about it."
aimai
Still, one has to marvel at la althouse’s ability to always, always, come up with a new take on crazy. Discovering it is racist to fail to make racist jokes, or to discover that it is racist to compare a non white person to two white people, is a piece of performance art in and of itself.
aimai
DougJ
I have to agree. There’s a real genius to it.
TR
I’m still convinced Althouse is Doug J pulling an elaborate prank.
No one could seriously be that fucking stupid in real life.
srv
Come Again! ?
Dennis-SGMM
PiyushBobby JindalBarack Obama
BethanyAnne
@bago: Someone linked to a motivational poster site on an earlier thread. I kept browsing around there, and ran across this. Perfect :-)
The Other Steve
Bring on the Noise!
bago
Wow, Tom Delay just told David Brooks to stop calling himself a conservative.
@BethanyAnne: Government small enough to be drowned by a hurricane.
bvac
Chris Matthews said the Republican party "outsourced their speech" in giving it to Jindal.
He meant that they gave it to a governor and not anyone remotely close to the beltway, but fuck, it was pretty funny.
John Cole
@DougJ: Did you see Brick Oven Bill earlier today? He was en fuego:
Top that.
Wile E. Quixote
@Althouse
I agree, Ann Althouse has proven, time and again, that there are unknown wells of stupidity that lie deep within her. Just when you think we’ve found the last of the stupid wells she comes up with something like her contention that Jose Padilla was blindfolded because there was a fear that he might communicate to terrorists by blinking in code or her contention that there was a subtly coded racist message on the PJs the little boy was wearing in the ‘3 AM’ ads.
That’s not an instinctual response on my part. After reading her blog I’m convinced that the only reason she’s managed to achieve anything in her life is because of all of the men who saw little starbursts when they interviewed and hired her, not because of any intellectual ability or rhetorical skill she might possess.
Woodrowfan
Ann is proof that alcoholism can lead to brain damage.
DougJ
Well, I think we all know who BOB is at this point.
DougJ
That’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Dennis-SGMM
@John Cole:
DR. EVIL:
Very well, where should I begin? My
father was a relentlessly self-
improving boulangerie owner from
Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy
and a penchant for buggery. My mother
was a fifteen-year-old French
prostitute named Chloe with webbed
feet. My father would womanize, he
would drink, he would make outrageous
claims, like he invented the question
mark. Sometimes he would accuse
chestnuts of being lazy. A sort of
general malaise that only the genius
possess and the insane lament. My
childhood was typical.
Shygetz
You could really shorten this entire post, DougJ. Witness:
gwangung
When I heard this, my reaction was
"What do you mean WE, white woman?"
John Cole
WIle E. – I edited your comment because of the vulgar and sexist nature of it. This is not the first time I have had to do it. Knock it off. You can comment, but there are lines.
QDC
@bvac:
Okay, now that is how you do implicit racial bias. Thanks for showing us how it’s done Chris!
Incertus
@QDC: Chris Matthews–proving again that there is no foot too big to fit into his piehole.
Farley
@Shygetz: Barack HUSSEIN Obama.
John Harrold
I was talking to some of my Indian co-workers, and they both had bad things to say about Jindal’s speech. One of them couldn’t even sit through the entire things. I told them they were just just Uncle Tom Hindus.
kth
How do you know this is not racism?
Try to imagine Althouse applying such a finely-grained standard to, say, the NY Post cartoonist with the dead chimp cartoon. Quite impossible.
Just Some Fuckhead
@DougJ:
The Lesbian with no front teeth?
Mazacote Yorquest
Let’s not forget– Ann had a major, wine-box draining thing for Sanjaya. Vlogged all about it, while drinking. Methinks there are wells in her own psyche that are crying out for introspection.
And by the way, in responding to Andrew how can she be so sure she isn’t homophobic? I mean, it’s all about self-knowledge, right?
kommrade reproductive vigor
Ms. Althouse’s unknown well happens to be filled with an unknown quantity of booze.
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
The new Jindal video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYfjq3ZYZbA
JWW
You gotta love Ali G. Why? He brings out the truth with a con act. The tears fall when people tell the truth, and don’t know it.
DougJ
My Indian friends don’t like Bobby Jindal. Then again, like the vast majority of non-white people, they are Democrats.
But it could also be that they are racist against other Indians and they just don’t know it.
LaDonne
I once made the mistake of commenting on her blog. It was a post about Australians eating cats as a way of reducing their number. She accused me of "catism" or something like that.
Xanthippas
Believe it or not, she’s well regarded in her field, or so I was told by a professor at my law school (who probably-I guess-does not know about her blogging exploits.) This is the thing that puzzles me about some people, that they can be such experts in a field that would seem to require some amount of brains and logical thinking, but then so obviously stupid in other respects. Maybe the medium brings her down.
YellowJournalism
The only thing that I think people are going overboard on is making fun of Jindal for going by the name of Bobby. Most Indians that I know have their formal, usually traditional Indian name that is on their birth certificate and then they have their family nickname, which is often an English name. It’s a practice that’s even common in India. My husband is East Indian, and for years he went by a very "white" or "English" name because his parents called him that. His friends and family still call him by that name, even though anyone who met him after a certain year call him by a shortened version of his traditional Indian name.
Basically, Jindal goes by Bobby probably because that’s who he knows himself to be. To go by Piyush would probably be a bigger headache than most people realize. And Bobby is a pretty common nickname to have. In fact, I think we have three or four relatives who go by Bob or Bobby whose names have absolutely no realation to a Bob or Bobby-type sound.
But he’s still a tool who makes Kenneth the Page sound wisened and intelligent. And no, it’s not racist to say such a thing.
AnneLaurie
Not ‘crazy’ per se, but neurotic. Althouse’s blogging career (don’t know anything about her non-intertoobz credentials) charts a pretty skillful course of Higher Victimology, aka WATBism as an artform. When her old reliable ‘teh Clintons r sexists’ spiel started to draw more mockery than earnest attention, she switched to ‘Hilary haterz is durty pr0nbois’. When the "true" PUMA ran lockstep over the cliff into sheer ratfvcking irrelevancy, she switched to finding ‘racist undertones’ in kiddy pajamas and failing to call Gov. Jindal ‘black’. The professional Rethuglican mouthpieces would do well to study Althouse’s seemingly effortless blame-shifting performances, because she’s the political-blogger equivalent of a figure skater whose airy ‘ice ballet’ conceals a genius level of hard work & practice.
Wile E. Quixote
@John Cole.
Sorry, it was probably caused by the psychic trauma I suffered one night at this Chinese restaurant. Not only was the food terrible, but this lesbian with no teeth started fighting with a very large woman, who ended up getting her bra and shirt ripped off. That was bad enough, but then the lounge act started, which was apparently some sort of performance art piece about squirrels, railroad electrification and shale oil. I’m not sure if it was the lounge act, or the excessive quantities of MSG in the food that caused me to have a seizure and black out. All I know is that when I came to I was up in a clock tower on a hot afternoon holding a rifle and I could hear screams and sirens in the distance.
gnomedad
All this after Rush called Obama "the affirmative action candidate". Republicans trying to play the race card = comedy gold.
Phoebe
When I read that Althouse thing, the first thing I thought of was, "no, you’re racist, for shoehorning his race into a conversation that has nothing at all to do with it, and also implying that his race might be what is making us think he is a creepy moron."
If I said "John Yoo’s legal theories justifying torture are pure garbage" and then, some white woman said to me, "Are you sure you’re not racist?" How is that not a dis to all Asians?
Bret
I knew the delivery of Jindal’s speech reminded me of another. Must be something in that Louisiana water. (Heck, I lived there and trust me – do really didn’t want to know what was in the water!)
Cain
I always thought people thought indians were some kind of super smart folks or something. Certainly I got that impression even though I’m dumb as an ox, people seem to think I’m smart. I knew it was because of my race.
Fucking racism.
cain
Mike in NC
@Wile E. Quixote
Holy shit, that was a hilarious comeback.
Mike in NC
@ Bret
We spent a week in New Orleans about ten years ago and it was a frickin’ nightmare. What a hellhole. Not to say we don’t despise Dubya and his asshat crony Brown who was running FEMA at the time of Katrina. I worked at FEMA a couple of years ago and it’s still a clusterfuck.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Cain: You’ve always seemed pretty dumb to me, Cain. Hope that makes you feel better.
Cain
@DougJ:
I don’t either. Traitorous asshole, turned his back on the only true religion on this planet and went for some crappy ass pagan religion.
cain
Cain
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It does. I thank you. It’s about time someone recognized my potential.
cain
Cain
@YellowJournalism:
Shit, piyush is easy. They might call it "PIE-yoosh" or something. Try having a name like "Sriram". I love the deer in the headlights look when people read my name. I’ve shortened it down to "sri". People inserts all kinds of consonants into that word. K sounds, z sounds.. It’s like they just give up and it’s open season with whatever their mouth can generate in terms of sound.
Best nickname I ever had was ‘Bill’. See, that’s easy. You can’t go wrong with "Bill". Fuckhead would like the one though, the nickname "Reekum Sawyer of the 5th Dimension" I was a bit of a space cadet in high school… :-)
cain
AnneLaurie
Heck, Cain, if it’s any consolation, most people can’t pronounce simple ‘Murkin names right, either. Experience leads me to expect approximately 60% of those seeing/hearing me introduce myself for the first time to call me "Annie", another 10% to use "Ann-Marie", and a few to go with "Laurie-Ann". My last name has 2 syllables and 5 letters, and it’s widely used as both a first and last name, but a significant number of otherwise literate Americans *still* can’t figure out how to pronounce or spell it.
Which didn’t keep me from re-naming our wild-boy rescue dog Zevon, after the songwriter. People just cannot hear those syllables, for some reason. They ask, "What’s your dog’s name?" and I say "Zee-vahn". They say, "Huh?" and I repeat "Zevon, ZEE-VAHN" a little louder. They think about it for a minute and come back with, "Dehvin?"
Mike Toreno
If there are stereotypes about how Indians are supposed to move, wouldn’t they come out of Bollywood, and wouldn’t those relate to the fact that there are so many dance numbers in Bollywood pictures, so that Indians would be expected to be confident and assured in their movements? That ain’t Jindal.
Cain
@Mike Toreno:
From the number of times I keep bumping into things, it ain’t me either. I do break out into song though. :-)
cain
Cain
Jeez, that’s really crazy. Seriously. You’re name sounds fairly easy to understand as well as Zevon.
cain
bob h
My physical reaction to Jindal has nothing to do with his color, but rather with a scruffy, unkempt quality that he has about him. He looks like he would fit in somewhere in "Slumdog Millionaire". He does not have the handsome, wholesome look of Obama.
gil mann
Jesus, compared to what, Jude Law as the gigolo-bot in A.I.?
I do think it’s pretty obnoxious the way some libs are making fun of the name change. You can’t possibly look at this guy without having some sympathy for his younger self—he would’ve had to put up with a lot of bullshit as a kid no matter where he grew up, and he grew up in the south. Plus, who wants a name that doubles as onomatopaiea* anyway? No offense, Israelis.
And the outsourcing jokes are too hacky to be offensive. It’s like a Malkin ping-pong ball reference, a way to concede the argument right at the outset via spectacular lameness.
gil mann
*holy shit, I actually spelled it right
Emma Anne
@John Cole:
May I just say that I like that one of the few lines you have for commenters is vulgar sexism? You are a mensch.
YellowJournalism
Yes, but do you hide behind trees or swing your lover around the desert while doing so?
I think it was something along the lines of wanting to brush his bangs away from his forehead and straighten his tie a little bit.
SFAW
onomatopaiea
.
.
holy shit, I actually spelled it right
It’s onomatopoiea
Another one like that, and we’ll make you intern for Jonah, so straighten up and fly right!
Mr Furious
Ann Althouse never met a pair of pajamas or a carton of orange juice that didn’t have devious psychological implications.
SFAW
Re: Althouse and pajamas:
"The President is a N-***clang!!!***"
"What did he say?"
"I think he said he said the President is near"
gil mann
SFAW, that’s funny, because I typed it into Google to spellcheck, but the extra "o" must’ve snuck in somehow, since I didn’t get a "did you mean…?" So I did get it right, but only via typo.
That fucker’s my nemesis. Right up there with "phoenetically" in the realm of words that, by virtue of their meaning, have no damn business being so hard to spell.
I’m sorry, is the interning-for-Goldberg thing supposed to be some kind of threat? It might be if I were ambitious or some shit, but nah, I think I can handle connecting bad things to other, unrelated bad things. That job would be like the path of least resistance slathered with laxative.
SFAW
gil –
Everybody’s got an excuse these days. I guess I should be glad you didn’t write "The dog ate my spell check".
As far as the Jonah thing goes: rather than a threat, think of it as a cost-saving measure. It’s like having a PFL, but without the expensive (or even the cheap) surgery. Be the first one on your block!