As a writer, I have always been opposed to joining up with the Republicans or the Democrats. Independence is important for a writer. Vile odors and vile intentions can come from every side. One should not be duped into intellectual self-abuse by making things seem too simple.
Part of the reason I came to this conclusion is that growing up in the 1950s meant that you learned to see human inconsistency ever more clearly. Back then, the Democrats could be proudly racist in the South and liberal in the North.
A similar trend exists in today’s Republican Party with the advent of the far right. We see all of its ugliness in the attacks on the Democrats and even some in the ranks of the GOP, where a few sane minds still exist. David Frum, Joe Scarborough, Jon Huntsman and Peggy Noonan are disrespected because they do not get down on their knees among the lowest and the most manipulated.
The fever dreams of willful lightweights like John Sununu, Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump are right there. They call President Barack Obama lazy, they question his integrity and his motives — not to mention his birth certificate and college transcript.
This becomes another kind of contemporary horror when taken up by the more serious likes of Arizona Sen. John McCain, who ran against Obama with honor and would not descend into the cesspool of paranoia and bigotry. The inherent tragedy of politics is that with some, one is only what you get when able. We are now no longer able to see that glorious version of the senator. Now he debases himself with totally fraudulent attacks on U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.
The truth is, there have been glaring race problems with Republicans since the presidency of Richard Nixon. In the first six decades of the 20th century, undisguised racists were bubonic rats riding high on the Democratic hog — until Lyndon B. Johnson took bloodstained office after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Though a former segregationist, Johnson moved in such support of civil rights — forcing through passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act — that he ran the redneck vermin out of the Democrats and into the street.
They became Republicans, and Democrats lost power in the South until Bill Clinton took office. With his Arkansas charm and warm but easy brilliance, Clinton led Americans to listen as well as look.
While pretending to have as much mud between his toes as the next country boy, Clinton made Americans rethink the subtle race prejudices that had for so long lingered because of the sound of the evening news. He was not to be doomed by his sound. That was one of the biggest cultural changes since the civil-rights movement itself.
Clinton brought individual freedom to Southern whites who were far too accustomed to Northern condescension because of the way they spoke. Unlike previous assumptions, Northern liberals would not be allowed to close the door on him, or his kind. His accent was not so different than what one heard from the Ku Klux Klan; but what he said with his Southern drawl could not be further away from the KKK’s base bigotry. Clinton brought a sophistication to the sound of American politics that was equal to what William Faulkner brought to our literature. Putting an end to any assumptions about crudity and prejudice, he was the Lincoln who freed the many white Southerners living under the slavery imposed by the sound made by men like George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and Mitch McConnell, the last making no automatic impact.
Today, the Democrats are powerful again, while the Republicans are stuck with the Southern whites who constitute their base. Thus the attacks on Rice, the highly accomplished and respected U.N. ambassador whom Obama might want to serve as his next secretary of state.
No one has swung harder at her than McCain, still smarting from how she attacked him during the 2008 campaign. Some remembered wounds turn men into what used to be called heels, and women on paid assignments become attack poodles, as James Wolcott dubs them. All of those so supposedly flummoxed by Rice’s inadequacies have been told all top-flight information from the Secret Service, and they know it. Instead of being willing to melt away with imminent time, McCain now imitates Trump the hairdo guy: Anything for as much attention as possible — including missing closed meetings for press conferences.
This is how The Huffington Post describes the attacks on Rice by McCain and his South Carolina muck buddy, Sen. Lindsey Graham: “In numerous media appearances, the two senators have called Rice everything from ‘incompetent’ to ‘not very bright’ to ‘deeply troubling.’ Even White House press secretary Jay Carney couldn’t resist pointing out their ‘obsession’ at Tuesday’s press briefing.”
This “not very bright” woman is an American classic, with degrees from Stanford and Oxford, neither of which guarantees anything. Action usually tells us what one knows and what one can do. This one is not only respected throughout her profession but knows how to put up or shut up. That atmosphere comes with her presence. She has won jousts with leaders the world over, none care to claim otherwise. Many men, however, regardless of whatever their color may be, are not ready for her kind of black woman.
But McCain, Graham and all the rest seem to know exactly what their base would like to hear. They know the rabble has a deep love for rotten meat. Throw it on the ground, and they will growl and gobble. Susan Rice neither hurls rot nor qualifies as an incompetent.
The rendering of colored women as human beings rather than walking and talking causes, weakens our literature and always has. They have been here for over a century or more. Such women have been present and are very familiar in the real world where flesh and blood is well-known.
I do not know her personally, but I am very familiar with her type, each one armed with her own individuality and her own set of responses to each context.
Susan Rice reminds me of all the neighborhood girls who went into education, medicine, business and politics. None would fit in on Fox News, but what brilliant modern-day woman would?
This all adds up to the dues that Fox News has extracted from the Republican Party, which has gotten it where it is today: a puppet swinging in a foul wind.
Stanley Crouch can be reached by email at crouch.stanley@gmail.com.
Here's a paragraph by paragraph critique.
Paragraph 1) The idea of Stanley Crouch being an Independent is laughable. He's a dyed in the wool Liberal Progressive Democrat Socialist. But that's the problem. People on the Left like him are constantly relabeling themselves after Americans catch on to how un-American their views and positions are. They've alternated between Socialist, Liberal, and Progressive so much that now all three labels are tainted, and now they claim to be Independent in an effort to retain credibility and give themselves the appearance of being above the fray.
Paragraphs 3 & 4) Crouch unsurprisingly praises random people who are Democrat-lite and/or not even politicians. Then he randomly slams John Sununu (When was the last time he was relevant?) as well as a couple of his favorite targets of dislike Limbaugh and Trump. Neither are politicians, so of what consequence are they to the GOP whom Crouch is criticizing?
Paragraph 5) He then moves on to a somewhat relevant politician, McCain, while breaking out the race card. He claims other politicians during the 2008 campaign were paranoid and bigots. Any examples? Some claims of what to expect during an Obama administration may have been overstated, but where was the bigotry?
Paragraph 6) Crouch admits the Democrats are the party of racism, but he tries to limit the scope by only mentioning the first 60 years of the 20th century. The truth is that their racism predates the Civil War and continues today.
Paragraph 7) Crouch quickly forgives LBJ for being a racist because of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He gives credit to LBJ for forcing through passage of the Civil Rights Act, but who was he struggling against? Democrats. Republicans voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act in greater percentages than Dems. Without the Repubs, it never would have passed. He claims the passage of this law forced racists out of the Democrat party. More on that fallacy in the next paragraph.
Paragraph 8) Crouch perpetuates the fictitious belief that there was a party switch - that all of the racist Dems became Repubs after the Civil Rights Act was passed. This lie is joke, but it has been so oft repeated that most (especially the gullible that the Left depend upon) people believe it. The problem is that it makes no sense. As I previously mentioned, Repubs voted for the CRA in greater percentages than Dems. Why would racists join the party that supported the CRA the most? The other problem for Crouch and other promoters of this myth is that they cannot name any Dems that became Repubs following the CRA outside of Strom Thurmond.
Crouch claims that Dems lost power in the South until Clinton came along. Is he looking solely at Presidential electoral college maps? Many Southern states had and still have Dem governors, Dem controlled state legislatures, and many Dem Congressmen and Senators. Look at NC. The state legislature was controlled by Dems from Reconstruction-2010. Since 1901, NC has had only three Repub governors. NC also has several Dem Congressmen and Dem Senator Kay Hagan. Where is the loss of power Crouch claims?
Paragraph 9) Crouch then begins projecting his own prejudices as most intellectually dishonest Dems do. He claims Clinton only pretended to be a country boy. Proof? Then he says Clinton made people rethink their subtle race prejudices because although Clinton has a Southern drawl, he’s smart and stuff. Whose subtle race prejudices is he talking about? His own. He’s the one who gladly labels people rednecks (as he does in this very column) and proceeds to subtly insult country and Southern folks throughout the rest of this article. I mean, after all, Clinton was just pretending to be a country boy because unlike a real country boy he’s smart and not a racist, right, Mr. Crouch? Your projection is showing.
Paragraph 10) Crouch continues to talk about how most people think Southerners are stupid, racist, rednecks because that’s what he himself thinks, but Clinton was a rarity – a smart, non-racist, pretend redneck. According to Crouch, he allowed other white people in the South to stop pretending to be racist just to get along with all the other white racist Repubs in the South… or something.
At the end, he name drops the poster boy of the party switch myth – Thurmond. He also name drops segregationist Dem George Wallace, Jesse Helms (a racist for sure), and Mtich McConnell who is mentioned because he needed to mention someone who has been relevant in the last decade and because being a white, Repub from Kentucky means he’s racist. I really don’t know what Crouch’s intentions for mentioning this motley crew are. To say any political party is free of racists would be ignorant, so I guess Crouch was reminding us of that while trying to libel Mitch McConnell?
Paragraph 11) He makes some throwaway line about Repubs being stuck with Southern whites (which is his code word for racists). I guess he’s abandoning the Presidential electoral college map to make this point? He previously used the map to claim that Dems lost power in the South after the CRA 1964, but now ignores that Repubs typically win the entire middle of the country in Presidential elections. I’d love for Crouch to explain how North Dakota is full of Southern whites.
Paragraph 12) Finally, Crouch gets to what is supposedly the point of this column: white people are criticizing Susan Rice because they are racists. How novel.
Paragraphs 13 & 14) He quotes the impartial website, HuffPo, and the worst her critics have said is that she’s unintelligent and not good at her job. How evil and unprecedented. No politicians have ever called another politician or person in a politically appointed position dumb or incompetent. What reason could her critics have for referring to her in such an unheard of way? Mr. Crouch knows! They’re racists who “are not ready for her kind of black woman.” Whatever that means.
Paragraph 15) They’re also apparently motivated because they know all of their supporters are racists like them. No one could have any problems with her blaming the death of Americans on a YouTube video unless they hated her for having a shade of skin they do not approve of. I guess.
Paragraph 16) This line by Crouch utterly confused me: “The rendering of colored women as human beings rather than walking and talking causes, weakens our literature and always has.” I honestly don’t know what this means. He seems to be saying that regarding “colored” women as humans the same as everyone else regardless of their shade of skin is a bad thing. He divides and categorizes everyone (primarily by skin color), so I can see how this is a negative to him.
Paragraphs 17, 18, & 19) Crouch says he doesn’t know Rice, but he’s sure she’s like all the other “neighborhood girls” he does know that became educated. See how he sees everything through a prism of skin color and divides people accordingly?
He then finishes up with some random digs at Fox News that are baseless as usual. No Crouch column would be complete without bashing Fox News. See my comment on his last column for more Crouchisms.
I hope this critique isn’t too long to run in the comments section, and if it is, I wouldn’t mine for it to be re-printed separately on robesonian.com.
Very well explained, still had to have my dictionary for a few of them words. Everytime I look up a word, it's a new word that i've learned.
This is so blantently obvious.
This man doesn't remember when the democrats called Codaleeza Rice "aunt jemama", and a house-you know what. The democrats own racism, those of us smart enough, know.
ps. And I really could care less what someone calls me. You Republicans may as well start calling them stupid when they call you a name. Don't even waste time arguing with them, can't change a stupid persons mind, so just laugh at em, call em ignorant and walk away.
Ross (R)