Vomit Moment: Lily White Folk Calling Black Folks Slavemasters

I never know whether to laugh or cry, anymore, when the unconsciously white supremacist colors of some folks come out. Clearly, folks not-Black increasingly feel no shame telling Black folks about themselves - even if what they say is 100% bullshit.

Like Ms. Mary Matalin, former "advisor" (read, political mouthpiece) to George W. Bush, who apparently feels that her in-depth knowledge of everything going on in the Black community gives her license to claim, basically, that Black leaders are slavemasters to their own people.

My initial mental response when I saw Ms. Matalin's remarks failed in eloquence. So, my own middle-aged blue-blood vocabulary failing, I was forced to resort to the venacular of the hood:

Bitch, PLEASE. (And yes, she is a bitch, and has been a bitch for a long time, so spare me the "ooh that's a sexist word" bullshit. I could use the pure term, Nigga Please, but I refuse to insult niggas that way, since no Black person is as stupid or as possessed with a death-wish as that right-wing heifer apparently is since she had no problem making the claim in public.)

Here's the exchange that Media Matters reports took place between the outright-fucking-insane Sean Hannity and the plainly-ignorant Ms. Matalin on Wednesday night's Hannity and Colmes show:

MATALIN: Well, when you're -- have no facts -- you know, there's no facts, there's no vision. Therefore, there's no hope, it's all hate, and it's all anger. So it's -- I'll say again, it's sad. Look, this -- we're at a time in our nation's history where we need all the best brains involved in the process, and one whole party has taken itself out of the game here.

SEAN HANNITY (co-host): Yeah.

MATALIN: And the reason that -- it's not their face. It's not their message. There's no policy, there's no facts. I mean, the attacks on the president yesterday completely missed the progress that's been made in the African-American community, which can be credited to President Bush. African-American homeownership at an all-time high --

HANNITY: Well --

MATALIN: -- the achievement gap between the white and black students at a high, closing, narrowing. I mean, you know, I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists. And they're keeping constituency, they're keeping their neighborhoods and their African-American brothers enslaved, if you will, by continuing to let them think that they're -- or forced to think that they're victims, that the whole system is against them. Articulate it better, Sean; it's so sad to me.

Let's deconstruct how many self-serving lies are uttered by Ms. Matalin in just this itty bitty dialogue:

"there's no facts".

What the hell is she talking about? Assuming that she was referring to the eulogistic statements that presently have Republican panties in a bunch - the statements of the Reverend Joseph Lowery and President Jimmy Carter (since she didn't identify anyone specific) - there is nothing that they said that *wasn't* fact.

Reverend Lowery said that Mrs. King "carr[ied] her grief with dignity", "declared humanity's worth", "opposed discrimination based on race", "frowned on homophobia and gender bias" "deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions." . He also said that there were "Millions without health insurance, poverty abound[s]" and "We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there." Is there something about these statements that isn't true? Perhaps Mary Matalin can let us in on what, exactly, was false? Hell, even Ron Christie, cross-eyed Bush water-carrier extraordinaire on Fox News wasn't stupid enough to claim that Joseph Lowery was saying something improperly political, saying only that it somehow "overshadowed" Mrs. and Dr. King's legacy. (He knows he has to go home someday.)

How about President Carter? He said that "the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the targets of secret government wiretapping, other surveillance, and, as you know, harassment from the FBI.". Again, is there someting about this that *wasn't* true? I didn't think so.

Respectfully, Ms. Matalin and all the other Republican folks who can't hear straight and found something in this to be untrue need to clean the wax out of their ears.

"there's no hope".

Setting aside the heartfelt hope that most Black folks (and a good many other folks) carry around that God will somehow spare us from the remaining 2 years of the reign of Emperor George W. Bush, what in God's name is she talking about?

All many Black people have is hope, these days, since Lord knows increasingly we have little else. Our official unemployment rate is 8.9% last month but, due to the magic known as "lies, lies and damned statistics", that number is a measure of reality only if you (a) ignore the jerryrigged definition of "unemployed" (which excludes discouraged workers, part time workers, and a few others) and (b) fail to do some basic math using that little-talked about number in the unemployment situation reports called "Not in the Labor Force". If you do not choose to ignore, you will quickly confirm that the government admits at this point officially that 36.6% of working-age Black folks simply ain't -- a percentage is steadily going UP. and the urban unemployment rate for our men is 50%. Where working class wages have plummeted, such that folks who have jobs make on average 9,000 less per year than they did in 2000. The fact that Black folks are still out there trying to make it, that a number of places have not been burned to the ground and we saw no riots in the streets post-Katrina, in light of our people's continued high participation in church life, is about as much evidence of an overabundance of HOPE (some would say, irrational hope) as any rational person could find. If Ms. Matalin has some actual *fact* to contradict that (i.e. some study of all 39,000,000 of us saying "fuck, we give up", then let's talk. Otherwise, her rhetoric is both self-serving and beyond ignant (i.e. worse than ignorant)

"attacks on the President."

$50 to anyone who points to any statement attacking George W. Bush (or even mentioning him other than when he was introduced to speak) that occurred at Coretta Scott King's funeral.

Ahh, but you want to focus on the fact that a couple of people pointed out issues relating to Coretta Scott King's life, like spying and war, that just happen to be causing some controversy in the nation as a whole right now? Well, OK, as soon as you explain to me why that is an attack on George W. Bush - as opposed to criticism about policies that George W. Bush has advanced during his administration.

In plain non-ignorant English: a complaint about *partisan policies* that a president supports is not the same thing as "an attack on the President." It's not personal - indeed, if George Bush woke up tomorrow and decided to see the error of his policy ways and commit to trying to undo some of the incalculable damage he's done to the country during his tenure as President, I bet a whole lot of folks would be singing "Free at Last!" with no further grudge of any kind. Hell, I'd buy him a drink (non-alchy, of course, for him!) myself!

Folks really need to learn the difference between a statement of fact that might upset some partisans and an attack. Here is an example of the former: "The Administration's policies are resulting in more drop outs, more hungry people, more government spying, more homophobia and more stress on the nation's already shaky budget." Here is an example of the latter: "George Bush is a megalomaniacal ignoramus whose residency in White House is a shame on the nation and everyone who voted for him".

See the difference?

Unless this complaint means to say that you cannot separate a President from his policies? If so, given the ongoing failure of most of his policies, foreign and domestic, that would be a sorry statement indeed about George W. Bush.