The Myth of the Extraordinary Teacher

From Ellie Herman, at Los Angeles Times:

The kid in the back wants me to define "logic." The girl next to him looks bewildered. The boy in front of me dutifully takes notes even though he has severe auditory processing issues and doesn't understand a word I'm saying. Eight kids forgot their essays, but one has a good excuse because she had another epileptic seizure last night. The shy, quiet girl next to me hasn't done homework for weeks, ever since she was jumped by a knife-wielding gangbanger as she walked to school. The boy next to her is asleep with his head on the desk because he works nights at a factory to support his family. Across the room, a girl weeps quietly for reasons I'll never know. I'm trying to explain to a student what I meant when I wrote "clarify your thinking" on his essay, but he's still confused.

It's 8:15 a.m. and already I'm behind my scheduled lesson. A kid with dyslexia, ADD and anger-management problems walks in late, throws his books on the desk and swears at me when I tell him to take off his hood.

The class, one of five I teach each day, has 31 students, including two with learning disabilities, one who just moved here from Mexico, one with serious behavior problems, 10 who flunked this class last year and are repeating, seven who test below grade level, three who show up halfway through class every day, one who almost never comes. I need to reach all 31 of them, including the brainiac who's so bored she's reading "Lolita" under her desk.

I just can't do it.

Keep reading to get to the myth of extraordinary teachers, although I'll add this part:

I understand that we need to get rid of bad teachers, who will be just as bad in small classes, but we can't demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.

Actually, I'm not even sold on the idea of "really bad" teachers. Some aren't that great and probably shouldn't be teaching. I can think of a couple of professors at my college who have absolutely no social skills, and hence have a hard time reaching a comfortable or appropriate level of interaction with their students. But I also often hear reports about how such-and-such teacher changed some student's life. It's that level of interaction that gives meaning. The students I'm able to help most are generally those who take the time to break from the routine of just showing up. I'll be there to help students, inside the class and out. I'm especially thankful when students make an effort to attend office hours and share with me their own challenges or difficulties. That's when I can assess what needs to be done, and I can design some kind of extra program of help or attention, from either myself or other resources on campus. But all those stories Ms. Herman shares about her students, well, I have some as well. It's the inside of education that's not always known or understood. A lot of this is economic disadvantage, but a lot is just the way things are, that not every student who comes to us turns out as a Ph.D. candidate to Harvard. You make a difference where you can, helping students to learn and move forward. And hopefully you get a little recognition in return, even if it's just a well-needed thank you for your efforts.

Republicans Have a Shot at Winning the Youth Vote

According to Marget Hoover, at Wall Street Journal, "How the GOP Can Win Young Voters":

As the Republican field jockeys for position in the 2012 presidential primaries, it is no surprise to hear the candidates trying to bolster their authority by invoking the name of Ronald Reagan. Yet one critical demographic group will not automatically respond to Reagan's name: Young voters of the millennial generation, so named because they are the first to come of age in the new millennium.

The oldest members of this generation were just 8 years old when Reagan left office, so Republican candidates can't assume that invoking his name will win them over. But the eventual Republican nominee should strive to emulate the Gipper by finding a way to connect conservatism to this rising generation of voters.

Reagan brought an entire generation to the Republican Party in 1980, and in 1984 he won the youth vote by 20%. The GOP needs this kind of revolution again if it hopes to recapture the White House and create a sustained majority.

RTWT.

I think she makes a good case. And youth recruitment should be toward conservative values more generally, which are under assault by the armies of progressive pop culture nihilism.

And Hoover, who is the great-granddaugher of former President Herbert Hoover, has a new book out, which makes the case for capturing young people for the right: American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party.

Santa Ana Enclave Tops Orange County In Proportion of Single-Parent Households

I visited Census Tract 750.03 in Santa Ana last week. The Los Angeles Times reported that the area's Willard neighborhood has the highest proportion of single-parent households in Orange County. See: "A community of single parents."

I grew up in Orange, the city next door, and spent a lot of time in this part of Santa Ana as a kid. There's a street graphic at the Times' article. Here's the intersection at Main and 17th Street. My buddies and I used to skateboard at that building across the street, where that blue "for lease" sign is located. The flowerbeds are banked (or they were banked, until the property owners installed a brick perimeter around the flowers to thwart the skaters):

Here's a shot looking back at the corner where I was standing in the picture above. That's an illegal immigration law office. The fruit vendor, with the ice cooler, was selling cantalopes and mango slices to customers in their cars:

More pictures. At the top of the stairs a sign is printed in both English and Spanish:

Climbing back in the van to cruise around the neighborhood, I see a man walking north on Main Street with a sleeping back and personal belongings:

Turning right, I head South on Main Street. A couple of blocks up a see throngs of people congregating, near a bus stop and in front of an insurance office. Traffic slowed and I rolled down the window to snap a photo. A Latino man was working as a sign-spinner. He ducked down when I raised my camera. Probably an illegal alien making some money under the table:

Driving West now, across Broadway, an accountant's office:

The neighborhood is a migrant enclave, which helps explain the large number of single-parent households:

Although Orange County has the lowest proportion of single-parent households in Southern California, Santa Ana stands as the highest in that category, with 12,023, or 16%. Laguna Woods, a small city in South County, has the fewest, 21, or 0.2%.

The roots of this anomaly can be found in Santa Ana's decades-long history as a magnet for immigrants.

This part of the county was converted from orange groves to single-family housing to apartments, said G.U. Krueger, a housing expert in the area. Now, Santa Ana is one of the most densely populated cities in the country.

Michael Ruane, director of the OC Community Indicators Project, which studies trends in the county, said Santa Ana has always stood out statistically because of residential overcrowding, high school dropout rates and the educational level of adults.

But it's also one of the least expensive areas in the county.

"That's why you would live there, or have to, or be unable to move from there," he said.

There's a lot of poverty here as well. At the corner of Durant and Washington, a local Head Start center:

Heading East, Willard Intermediate School (discussed at the Times) and across the street a Mexican civil rights history mural:

Back over at the Los Angeles Times:

Laura Arreola, 43, may be one of those people. She's lived in various apartments off Parton Street for 14 years. All of her four children have attended schools in the area, where empty strollers sit on overgrown lawns and dusty toys spill onto the sidewalk.

Merchants hawk fried pork bellies and produce from white trucks that serve as gathering points for children. In this tract, more than three-quarters of the households include children.

But the only open space in the neighborhood is the local school, Willard Intermediate, which serves as the de facto park. Children also play in alleyways and the church's patio [nearby St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church].

Another mural, on Washington across from the school. This one records the promise of education to lift kids out of what looks like is some kind of desolation:

A couple of kids and either their grandmother or another older caregiver. It was about 4:00pm. School's out for summer and a lot of parents were still out working. The woman was speaking Spanish:

Food trucks on just about every corner. The second one was covered with graffiti, which was unusual. The food vendors were clean and organized, a part of the neighborhood. Reminds me of Mexico:

Despite the glum statistics at the Times, I didn't see a lot of social disorganization. There was very little graffiti on the walls. This batch below was few and far between:

Frankly, I found people to be enterprising. The food trucks are totally cool. And the food's tasty:

It's a Spanish-speaking enclave, however. People spoke Spanish in their interactions with each other and the woman spoke Spanish when she served me.

Santa Ana is the county seat and prides itself as an all-American city. It's a mostly Latino/Mexican-American city, and for whatever reasons --- language, low educational attainment, poverty and family breakup --- many in the community remain economically and socially distant from the larger economic mainstream of the society. That's not to say it's not a nice place. Just a lot different from what more demographically stable communities would exhibit.

Census Data Reveal Strong Increase in Nontraditional Households

A fascinating report, but the way the Times sought to spin it is, well, a little weird.

See Los Angeles Times, "California families are changing, U.S. Census data show":

On a leafy drive in west Los Angeles, at a newly renovated home with cathedral ceilings and a backyard pool, 4-year-old Kate Eisenpresser-Davis' friends have been known to pose an intriguing question: "Why does Kate have three mommies?"

Lisa Eisenpresser, 44, and her partner, Angela Courtin, 38, share custody of Kate with Eisenpresser's ex-partner.

When asked to describe their life, Eisenpresser and Courtin respond with the same word: "Normal." Days are spent searching for the right balance between work and home, and zigzagging through Mar Vista to meetings, school and gymnastics.

Courtin is pregnant. Kate will soon have a sister, Phoebe, conceived from Eisenpresser's egg and sperm from a donor — the same 6-foot-1 Harvard grad, who scored a 1580 on the SAT, who served as Kate's donor.

"It's almost like I'm too busy to be thinking too deeply about being gay and different," Eisenpresser said.

Maybe she shouldn't bother. According to a Times analysis of new U.S. Census figures, the Eisenpresser-Courtin-Davises are on the leading edge of change — of a steady evolution in the meaning of "family" and "home" in California.

It's not "evolution" but "erosion," but read on:

New census figures show that the percentage of Californians who live in "nuclear family" households — a married man and a woman raising their children — has dropped again over the last decade, to 23.4% of all households. That represents a 10% decline in 10 years, measured as a percentage of the state's households.

Those households, the Times analysis shows, are being supplanted by a striking spectrum of postmodern living arrangements: same-sex households, unmarried opposite-sex partners, married couples who have no children. Some forms of households that were rare just a generation ago are becoming common; the number of single-father households in California, for instance, grew by 36% between 2000 and 2010.

For centuries, "family" connoted a sprawling, messy, almost tribal identity. Industrialization, wealth and mobility allowed, even encouraged, the family unit to shrink. The term "nuclear family" didn't enter the lexicon until the boom after World War II — a suggestion that the immediate family, built on a foundation of marriage and traditional gender roles, was the nucleus of social structure, even of American morality.

That paradigm, though, began to fray even before "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" went off the air in 1966. Today, California is a stark reflection of a new dynamic: the traditional Hallmark card image is hardly obsolete, but it is the minority. And new sorts of households — blended families; bands of middle-class singles who live and vacation together; families that were once called "broken" — are increasingly the standard.

More at the link, but that's a shamefully exhuberant report. What's so great about less than one-quarter of California's households being "traditional nuclear"? Well, not so much, as the Times grudgingly concedes:

The preservation of what is viewed by many as the traditional family has long been a hot-button political issue. There is little dispute that some modern living arrangements, particularly the growth of single-parent households, often result in financial burdens and other challenges.

Ron Haskins, the co-director of the Brookings Center on Children and Families who once served as President Bush's senior advisor for welfare policy, said that children born to unmarried parents or raised in a single-family household, in particular, are more likely to be poor and to commit crimes. He said there is a national movement to promote marriage, such as marriage education requirements in some high schools.

It's interesting that the Times dropped that information so far down below the fold. But it's the key bit of information most important for social policy. Unless someone's a fanatical bigot, folks ought not disagree too much with a family like the Eisenpresser-Courtin-Davises --- they look happy, their kid loved and well cared for, and their household is apparently financially stable. (And the Eisenpresser-Courtin-Davises aren't the model for same-sex families in California, in any case. The extremist gay radical rim-station freaks are, the ones constantly in the news, ramming their gay rights agenda down the throats of average Californians, at the expense of poor and minority communities. Gay progressives are a violently selfish demographic disgrace.) The fact is almost half of households headed by a single parent live in poverty, and that's based in 2009 data. It's no doubt higher now, amid the Obama Depression. Society needs to find a way to promote healthy stable families, all around. We shouldn't downplay or ignore the worst family tragedies and denigrate the historic nuclear model by glorifying nontraditional structures with non-representative images of "cutting-edge" same-sex households.

Pew Research Center: Fathers and the Modern American Family

See: "A Tale of Two Fathers: More Are Active, but More Are Absent."

If readers can remember back to 2008, one of things I'd hoped about Barack Obama, if he were elected, is that he'd help restore stable family values to the black community. He has not. While President Obama is a model family man, he's rarely spoken out in any direct, sustained way that would bring his moral authority to bear on the cultural pathologies of the race. He needs to be out speaking like this, often, and sincerely, like Father's Day comes more than once a year.

According to Pew, "... more than one-in-four fathers with children 18 or younger now live apart from their children ..."

And especially:

Fathers’ living arrangements are strongly correlated with race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status as measured by educational attainment. Black fathers are more than twice as likely as white fathers to live apart from their children (44% vs. 21%), while Hispanic fathers fall in the middle (35%). Among fathers who never completed high school, 40% live apart from their children. This compares with only 7% of fathers who graduated from college.

This is not to dismiss other ethnic groupings, for example, the Hispanic population, but I once taught Black Politics, and I continue to see the poorest academic and social performance of young black men than any other other demographic. I used to be sympathetic, if not a little sad about it. Now I just get mad, and if I can, I'll get in your face if you're not performing up to standards. Of course, I'm only a professor, so my role is limited, but if I can model some achievement or direction, that will count for a bit. It's not just a problem on television or in the movies. I see it up close. I personally grieve. Perhaps I can do more later, when I have some changes in my own family. Time. Time to give back.

Now, closer to home, I'm not teaching this summer, and so I'll have the next two months to spend with my family, for some quality time and recreation. No big trips are planned. My youngest son will be the challenge while school's out, though. He needs to be active and needs a lot of direction. Just last week I was taking him skateboarding two times a day, but we'll need to read and study as well. My older son is going on 10th grade and he's very independent. He's got a young lady friend (kinda girlfriend) who he spends most of his time with, and he doesn't like me tagging along too much. But I need to get on him to do more chores around the house, and hopefully I can get him to do some reading instead of downloading music all the time.

At the Pew study it notes that 63 percent of dad's today say that being a father is harder now than it was a generation ago. And, "Only about one-in-four adults say fathers today are doing a better job as parents than their own fathers did." Yeah. Okay. But what's the measurement? If it's economically, things have been pretty spotty these last few years, and we'd have to go back two or three generations to find a time when there was less economic dynamism (and dislocation). But culturally, the dads of today are way more hands-on than when I was a kid, and that's good. My dad was perhaps more involved than some other fathers in my neighborhood growing up, but he was just as emotionally distant as any I can think of. I never wanted to be a father like that, and thank goodness. Sure, there's more we can do, as men and fathers, and no one measures up perfectly to their own expectations and those of their children. But keeping it all together is the primary responsibility, and giving equal support to the spouse so everyone can grow and be happy. In that way men have a greater responsibility as parents than in earlier generations. I think when we have a booming economy again, some of the load will ease, and successful fatherhood might increase (increased togetherness, less family breakdown).

Anyway, at top, I'm taking a break from cleaning house yesterday morning. We have a realtor. He showed the house at 10:00am and my wife and I were both up detailing everything. My youngest boy slept until about 9:00am, and my oldest is out of town until later today. I might shave. I've just been chillin' since school got out at the end of May.

More later.

Have a good Father's Day everyone.

ROBAMA!! President Uses Autopen to Sign Patriot Act Extension

Glenn Reynolds disapproves (as does Jonathan Turley at the clip).

And see NYT, "Making Legislative History, With Nod From Obama and Stroke of an Autopen":

WASHINGTON — Generations of children learned the basics of the American legislative process from a “Schoolhouse Rock” cartoon, in which “Bill” sings, “If he signs me, then I’ll be a law.”

But now, apparently for the first time in United States history, a bill has been signed into law by autopen, at the direction of President Obama, who is in Europe on a weeklong trip.

Congress on Thursday passed legislation extending the Patriot Act for four years. With the existing terror-fighting authorities set to expire at midnight Thursday, the White House concluded that a mechanical signature would have to do.

With that, Mr. Obama turned the autopen, a machine that reproduces signatures and is ubiquitous in government and business for routine transactions — letters, photos, promotional materials — into the ultimate stand-in.

He and his lawyers also found a way around a routine but costly tradition, in which White House staff members fly, unsigned legislation in hand, to wherever the president happens to be.

That tradition dates back decades.

Well, ROBAMA wouldn't want to preserve tradition, especially something traditional dealing with the Constitution. No surprise here at all.

BONUS FAIL: Asshat No More Mr. Nice Guy cries foul, but comes up short anyway. That said, Xeni Jardin concludes with the appropriate skepticism.

Change! Share of Americans Working Near 30-Year Low

At USA Today, "More Americans Leaving Workforce":

The share of the population that is working fell to its lowest level last year since women started entering the workforce in large numbers three decades ago, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Only 45.4% of Americans had jobs in 2010, the lowest rate since 1983 and down from a peak of 49.3% in 2000. Last year, just 66.8% of men had jobs, the lowest on record.

The bad economy, an aging population and a plateau in women working are contributing to changes that pose serious challenges for financing the nation’s social programs.

More at the link above.

This administration has no clue.

Americans Abandon the Heartland

Something that's always fascinating to me, at WSJ, "Population Leaves Heartland Behind: Census Shows Growth Fueled by Increasingly Diverse Metro Areas; in Kansas, a Small Town Tears Down Empty Homes":

Americans continued to abandon the nation's heartland over the past decade, moving into metropolitan areas that have grown less white and less segregated, the 2010 Census showed.

The U.S. population grew by 27 million over the decade, to 308 million. But growth was unevenly distributed. Metropolitan areas, defined as the collection of small cities and suburbs that surround an urban core with at least 50,000 people, accounted for most of the gain, growing 10.8% over the decade to 257.7 million people.

Rural areas, meanwhile, grew just 4.5% to 51 million. Many regions—from the Great Plains to the Mississippi Delta to rural New England—saw population declines. About 46% of rural counties lost population in the decade, including almost 60% of rural counties that aren't adjacent to a metro area, according to an analysis of Census data by Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

Keep reading at the link above.

Small-town life is the repository of traditional values, so it's sometimes sad to see the rural towns declining. I developed a feel for the rural life living in Fresno, and I've noted a couple of times at the blog that I've thought about relocating. It won't be anytime soon, since I'm not near retirement, but I think about it. I know my wife would consider rural Central California north of Fresno, but I'm thinking we might like it out of state. I'll think more about this. Some readers have warned me that I'll get tired of small-town life in no time ...

Obama Plans National Budget Address for Wednesday: Tax Hikes On the Agenda

At Lonely Conservative, "Obama Suddenly Interested in Deficit Reduction, Will Propose Tax." And also Wall Street Journal, "Obama Puts Taxes on Table":

President Barack Obama will lay out his plan for reducing the nation's deficit Wednesday, belatedly entering a fight over the nation's long-term financial future. But in addition to suggesting cuts—the current focus of debate—the White House looks set to aim its firepower on a more divisive topic: taxes.

In a speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama will propose cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and changes to Social Security, a discussion he has largely left to Democrats and Republicans in Congress. He also will call for tax increases for people making over $250,000 a year, a proposal contained in his 2012 budget, and changing parts of the tax code he thinks benefit the wealthy.

More at the link above.

Democrats just don't believe increased taxes on the productive sectors of the economy will harm growth prospects. But the Bush tax cuts had reduced deficits by 2007, as GDP growth accelerated and unemployment declined. The far left-leaning New York Times reported in 2006, "Surprising Jump in Tax Revenues Is Curbing Deficit":

An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year, even though spending has climbed sharply because of the war in Iraq and the cost of hurricane relief.

On Tuesday, White House officials are expected to announce that the tax receipts will be about $250 billion above last year's levels and that the deficit will be about $100 billion less than what they projected six months ago. The rising tide in tax payments has been building for months, but the increased scale is surprising even seasoned budget analysts and making it easier for both the administration and Congress to finesse the big run-up in spending over the past year.

Tax revenues are climbing twice as fast as the administration predicted in February, so fast that the budget deficit could actually decline this year.

The main reason is a big spike in corporate tax receipts, which have nearly tripled since 2003, as well as what appears to be a big increase in individual taxes on stock market profits and executive bonuses.

See also Michael Medved's piece on this from a couple of weeks ago, "Don't Blame Tax Cuts for Catastrophic Deficits."

We need to reduce spending not raise taxes. Both parties are guilty on the spending side, but only the Democrats insist in raising taxes on "high income" earners (people making not much more than my wife and I, and we're by no means "rich"). But when you have an ever-increasing government, with entitlement programs impervious to reform, the inevitable result is uncontrolled demand for new revenues. It's obscene, frankly. But progressives are obscene, not to mention their RINO enablers.

California's Hispanic Challenge

At WSJ, "Hispanics Surge in California":

Latino children for the first time made up a majority of California's under-18 population in 2010, as Hispanics grew to 37.6% of residents in the nation's most populous state.

A new U.S. Census report showed the state's non-Hispanic white population fell 5.4% over the past decade, a continuing trend offset by a 27.8% surge in Hispanics and 30.9% increase in non-Hispanic Asians.

Though in decline, white Californians remained the state's largest demographic group at 40.1%. But demographers said Hispanics were poised to take the lead.

Underlying the demographic shifts, California grew at its slowest pace in the past decade in more than a century. The population rose 10% to 37.3 million, an increase in line with the national average.

As in California, Hispanics are gaining ground in many other states, such as North Carolina, as whites are on the verge of becoming a minority among all newborn children in the U.S.

The report released Tuesday is the latest to indicate major shifts in where Americans live. Census figures released earlier this year showed that Chicago's population fell to its lowest level in 90 years.

Other census figures showed that blacks migrated to the faster-growing South from cities in the Northeast and Midwest in the greatest numbers in decades. That boosted North Carolina, whose population rose 18.5% in the decade—compared to the nationwide rate of 9.7%.

In a first, California failed to gain a congressional seat in the latest census count. Los Angeles experienced its lowest numeric increase since the 1890-1900 Census, growing 2.6% to 3.8 million. The state's slower growth reflected tough economic times but also an exodus of Californians to less crowded Western states

"The big story for California is it's now becoming an anchor rather than a magnet in the West," said William Frey, demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "It is still able to disperse its population and culture throughout the West."

Some of the demographic changes could reshape politics in the Golden State.

In the conservative bastion of Orange County, for example, minorities for the first time passed whites to become the majority of the population, according to the census figures. Because many minorities are Democrats, political observers say that trend could dilute the historic strength of the Republican Party there over time.

Yeah. Tell me about it. Now if we could just get a good lot of these folks speaking English.

RELATED: At the Center for Immigration Studies, "A Day in the Life of an Arizona Rancher: Border Fences, Illegal Aliens, and One Man’s Watchtower":

Pam Spaulding Promotes 'Barebacking' Blog Post With '1000 Load F**k (NSFW)' Videos

Call it milestones in gay rights.

First is the news that the Obama administration has chosen the first-ever homosexual man to be the next White House Social Secretary. It's one thing for this to be about appropriate gender roles, but the dude's gay, so that complicates things a bit. Perhaps that's a sop to the radical gay left-wing lobby. Lord knows Obambi's been dealing these folks a cold cucumber since he took offfice. But second is Pam Spaulding's mainstreaming of the radical gay sex culture of "barebacking," which is the practice of condomless homosexual sodomy: "It's Time to Get Angry About the Promotion of Unsafe Sex in the Gay Community." The author claims to be upset by the breakdown of safe sex norms in the radical homosexual community, but what's quite revealing is the depth of this dude's expertise on the gay fringe sexual culture of non-commitment and the extreme left's bareback/rim-station hookup scene. I mean seriously. I'm reading the comments, at Pam's House Blend and at the cross-post to Daily Kos (natch). It turns out for the gay left, non-infected HIV-negative is the new virginity. There's progressive self-loathing for you. Let's just f**k until we're dead, y'all. But again, what really tripped me out is that if the diarist is so angry about the rejection of the healthy norms that followed the gay plague of the 1970s, you think he'd avoid links to the extreme gay porn websites that aggressively extol the culture. Labeling this stuff NSFW is hardly warning enough. Folks would be advised to rethink their kids' Internet usage after this. Just think, young middle school students looking for information on same-sex marriage might just pull this up and then find 1000 loads of cum dumped up some guy's behind. Is this the art and culture that new White House Social Secretary Jeremy Bernard is now going to promote?

“Jeremy shares our vision for the White House as the People’s House, one that celebrates our history and culture in dynamic and inclusive ways,” President Obama said in a statement, “We look forward to Jeremy continuing to showcase America’s arts and culture to our nation and the world through the many events at the White House.”

See that? Inclusive ways. Wouldn't want to alienate the gay radical barebacking community.

And for those who click through to Pam's House Blend, EXTREME RADICAL BUNGHOLE WARNING! TOTALLY NOT SAFE FOR ANYONE, MUCH LESS KIDS.

Protesters Disrespect Wisconsin Capitol

I e-mailed Ann last week thanking her for her coverage, and mentioned that I wished I was in Madison. And now this bugs the heck out of me, "At the Capitol today... there were signs taped up everywhere":

More pics at that top link, and video here: "Protesters at the Wisconsin Capitol disrespectfully have taped signs on and piled junk against the Veterans Memorial."

Race Minstrels? My Reply to Chauncey DeVega

I read Chauncey DeVega's sick racist screed earlier: "Black History Month is Herman Cain Playing the Race Minstrel for CPAC." The piece is puerile yet vicious, and while it's tempting to ignore such rants as typical race-baiting of the progressive left, there was something that went above and beyond in this case. Disparaging Herman Cain as a "monkey in the window" is the kind of language one might expect from KKK members in the 1960s. But here this is coming from an author who's bio shows a body of publications in some of the left's most prominent progressive outlets. Thus, DeVega's racism is a perfect window into the deep disturbing psychologies of the Obama-Democrat cult of racial exploitation. It's a spectacle, and the critical reaction has been quite forceful. See David Weigel, for example, "Herman Cain Shall Overcome."

What's especially noteworthy to me is how DeVega's attacks form a broadside against the entire black conservative establishment. Herman Cain was the immediate target, but he served as the initial race "mascot" for DeVega's slurs against the whole GOP infrastructure. The piece was so provocative even Alternet thought a disclaimer was warranted in introducing DeVega's follow up, "On Chauncey DeVega's Herman Cain Post." I doubt this was the editors' intentions, but I appreciate the acknowledgment that a racist screed of this magnitude has nevertheless evinced little outrage on the left:

We understand that some are offended by DeVega's choice of words. We note, however, that most of the consternation generated by DeVega's post has come from right-wing supporters of Cain who have focused on the language of his post and not the substance of his claim that Cain lends cover to reactionary right-wing forces.

One of most widely understood aspects of Obama-era poltics is the left's endless resort to the race card as the last hope of any kind of political viability. Perhaps it serves as a dog whistle to racial victimologists on the left, but progressive racism hasn't served Democrats well over the last couple years. So you'd think Alternet would repudiate its own author. Instead they've doubled-down, as Confederate Yankee snarks: "Alternet Doubles Down on Bigoted Accusation that Black Conservatives are Race Traitors."

The entire concept of a group owing fealty to a specific political party due to their genetic makeup is entirely offensive to any thinking person, but that is precisely the argument Chauncey DeVega made earlier this week, and one that leftist web site AlterNet and its writer continue to support.

In my original post, I referred to Herman Cain and other black conservatives as "race minstrels" and "mascots" for the White conservative imagination. I stand by this observation.

DeVega's vivid bigotry is his own cross to bear. what is less clear is why Alternet is tolerant of such myopic rhetoric.

Confederate Yankee block quotes the precise passage that convinced me to respond to DeVega. I'm not only one of those "other black conservatives," but I stood with both Hermain Cain and Allen West at CPAC. The opportunity to do so was the high point of the conference.



At this point I'm simply in contempt. No doubt DeVega speaks volumes for progressives, given the left's silence in light of these allegations. And the reason is obvious: People like Herman Cain, Allen West and myself stand for conservative principles. We demand both equal opportunity and equal respect. We want a country that values individual initiative and guarantees that people of all backgrounds can pursue their dreams of happiness to the best of their abilities. The nation's founders laid the vision. Herman Cain, Allen West and others are living it. The question for me is how any confident, intelligent and morally upstanding black American could possibly endorse that kind of outrageous racist sentiment in this day and age. Perhaps it's just retail race-card politics. But when folks like DeVega demonstrate an encyclopedic knowledge of Jim Crow stereotypes and attack rhetoric, it's quite revealing of the extent that America has not yet overcome. Progressives are holding this country back. It's the color of your skin that matters, whether you identify with and belong to group consciousness organizations, rather than identify with American individualism and liberty. It's pretty easy for me to choose up sides. The patriotic thing is to stand with those who fight to destroy racial classes and hierarchies. Indeed, the pathologies espoused by the likes of DeVega are beyond revolting, but un-American. I reject the poltics of the progressive plantation, and I join in might with other upstanding blacks working for a better future.



More from Matt Welch, "Onward and Upward with Racial Tolerance" (via Mememorandum).

Conservatives in the Crosshairs

At the clip is Ed Driscoll's latest edition of Silicon Graffiti. I scooped the blogosphere on Newsweek's "American Assassins," as folks might recall:

There's more, at any rate. Sultan Knish offers an analysis, "In the Crosshairs of the Speech Police":

The best propaganda is not just accepted by those who hear it, but also by those who tell it. The lie so compelling that even the liar comes to believe in it. But lies are accepted more deeply when they appeal to the emotions and worldview of the hearer. And so when there is a cultural gap, the liar is more often fooled, than the lied to. He believes his own lie, because he wants to believe it. The lie reflects how he thinks the world really works.

....

When the media fails to win on an issue, it will blame the messaging. But if after every effort is exhausted, the public remains unconvinced, it will decide that the public is unreasonable. Dangerously so. In the media narrative, unpersuadability is equivalent to irrationality. And such people are dangerous. Having placed its own worldview at the apex of reason, worldviews that deviate from it are treated as unreasonable to the extent and magnitude of their deviation. Culture gaps that are not based on race or ethnicity, will elicit a violently xenophobic response. While the media celebrates diversity, it is actually profoundly intolerant of differences.

More at the link.

But see the outstanding James Taranto, "The Politics of Bloodlust: Barbara Ehrenreich, Hendrik Hertzberg and the Left's Disturbing Preoccupation With Violence."

I've covered Ehrenreich in detail, and Taranto's discussion is exquisite, but let's scroll down to the discussion of Hertzberg:

Even odder, many on the left have advanced a false narrative in which the Tea Party is violent. The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg did so in a column last week, in which he was still trying to justify the media's falsely blaming the right for the attempted murder of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Hertzberg claims that the shooting "took place amid a two-year eruption of shocking vituperation and hatred, virtually all of it coming from people who call themselves conservatives," and that "these realities, and not the malevolence of liberal opportunists, were why, in the immediate aftermath of the crime, the 'national conversation' focussed on the nation's poisonous political and rhetorical climate."

This is bunk. The "two-year eruption of shocking vituperation and hatred" is a media myth, promulgated in two primary ways:

The first is by seeking out the most extreme expressions by Tea Party activists and sympathetic politicians and portraying them as if they were typical. This is in sharp contrast to the way left-wing political rallies are covered. Extreme and violent rhetoric is at least as easy to find there if you look--Michael Bowers has put together a photo gallery of "Left-Wing Hatred"--but the mainstreamers seldom look. During the Bush years, "antiwar" rallies were routinely depicted as nothing more than forums for wholesome, patriotic dissent.

The second is by presenting innocuous rhetoric from the right as if it were something sinister or dangerous. The most famous example--cited by Hertzberg, naturally--is the SarahPAC map of targeted districts, including Giffords's, which many on the left hoped had incited the man who shot her. Palinoiacs denounced the map as "violent" when it first came out last March, notwithstanding that the visual metaphor of a target is about as common in political campaigns of both parties as cartoons on the pages of Hertzberg's magazine.

Similarly, as we noted Jan. 12, Paul Krugman, the New York Times's most dishonest columnist, characterized as "eliminationist rhetoric" Rep. Michele Bachmann's comment that she wanted her constituents to be "armed and dangerous." In context, it turned out that she wanted them to be "armed" with information--a poor choice of words, but no more eliminationist than Barack Obama's comment in June 2008: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." At the time, the New York Times characterized this as part of "Mr. Obama's efforts to show he can do more than give a good speech."

Hertzberg is saying no more than that liberal journalists like himself are justified in perpetuating the myth of conservative violence because they promulgated it in the first place.

Perhaps he is right that it is not the product of opportunism but rather of sincerely held prejudice. But would it be a defense of, say, Theodore Bilbo or Joseph McCarthy to say that they sincerely believed the prejudices and falsehoods they espoused? What's more, Bilbo and McCarthy were politicians. Why is it so hard for journalists to remember that their job is to tell the truth?

It's hard because most journalists are progressives, and progressives are liars.

Readers here see evidence of that all the time.