“The Sagebrush Provocateur”: Racist Liberal Media Invent More White Racism
Wouldn’t you figure it would be Adam Nagourney of the New York Times who would ruin the splendid living theater of patriotism being acted out in Nevada by quoting everybody’s hero Cliven Bundy as having views about black folks that might embarrass your local Grand Dragon:
[I]f the federal government has moved on, Mr. Bundy — a father of 14 and a registered Republican — has not.
He said he would continue holding a daily news conference; on Saturday, it drew one reporter and one photographer, so Mr. Bundy used the time to officiate at what was in effect a town meeting with supporters, discussing, in a long, loping discourse, the prevalence of abortion, the abuses of welfare and his views on race.
“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.
“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
Since Nagourney’s story came out late yesterday, you can imagine the consternation in conservative-land, which has for the most part adopted Bundy as a sort of sage-brush counterpart to Duck Dynasty‘s Phil Robertson. What to say? Dean Heller’s staff was smart enough to immediately distance The Boss from Bundy’s racist rant. It took Rand Paul a bit longer to get there. Texas GOP gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott’s people also disavowed an earlier effort to link his cause to Bundy’s. It’s probably a matter of moments before someone accuses Nagourney of inventing the quote about “the Negro,” and it’s probably crossed more than a few minds that Bundy is an agent provocateur. Seems to me the old cowboy really, really wanted to say what he said; he had to understand he was blowing up his own game.
All I know for sure is that the next ten or a hundred conservative gabbers who claim the only racists in America are liberals who play the “race card” are going to have to deal with Bundy’s example. They, not liberals, made the man an icon. Let them explain how his racism is unconnected with all the other reactionary features of his world view, which are pure as ever.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, April 24, 2014
“With Cliven Bundy, The Right Is Reaping What It Sows”: He’s Theirs, Down To His Last Ugly Thought
Some great causes achieve their goals and transform the world, while others fizzle out when it’s discovered that their leaders are unadorned racists who think black people were in much better shape when they were slaves. Isn’t that how it goes? At least that’s what some conservatives must have thought today as they learned of the New York Times report on Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who has been grazing his cows on federal land and refusing to pay grazing fees, what you or I might consider “stealing,” but what the folks at Fox News, who have given Bundy hour after hour of glowing coverage, consider a principled stand against federal overreach in the finest American traditions.
Prior to this morning, Bundy’s fans were a limited but influential group, including senators Rand Paul and Dean Heller, the entire Fox network (but especially Sean Hannity), and the National Review, where one writer compared him to Gandhi. Now that Bundy’s fascinating ideas about “the Negro” have come to light, they’ll no doubt pretend they never really liked the guy in the first place, then they’ll stop talking about him. I predict, for instance, that after practically being Sean Hannity’s co-host for the last couple of weeks, Bundy will never be seen on Fox again, and he’ll be wiped out of their future discussions like a disfavored Soviet leader airbrushed out of a photo of the Politburo. But is there anything to learn from this episode? I think so. First though, here are the comments in question:
“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.
“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
Who would have thought that a gun-toting rancher who thinks he can graze on public land for free because “I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing” would also be a racist? So weird.
Now hold on, you might say, that’s just a stereotype based on some things about who he is and what he believes about an entirely separate matter. And yes, it is. Which is why it would have been unfair to assume, before we knew it to be true, that Bundy was a racist. But I didn’t see anybody doing that. The only commentary I saw having to do with race before today came from people like Jamelle Bouie and Ta-Nehisi Coates, who pointed out that if Bundy were black, right-wing figures would not exactly be flocking to his defense, and the government might be dealing with him differently as well.
And the conservatives who embraced Bundy were doing so because of their own stereotypes about him. It wasn’t as though he had some kind of compelling case to make. It was clear from the outset that the guy was a nut (see the above comment about not recognizing the existence of the United States government). His only cause was that he shouldn’t have to pay fees to graze his cattle on land he doesn’t own. To most people he looked like a crazy old man with a sense of entitlement that would put any “welfare queen” to shame.
But to his advocates, he was an avatar of freedom. Why? Well, he does ride a horse and wear a cowboy hat, and he loves guns and hates the government. What else did they need to know?
As I noted today over at the Washington Post, there are more than a few parallels with the case of “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson. Robertson too was someone conservatives knew they loved, since he was their kind of guy, even before they heard his views on gay and black people. Robertson’s statement was remarkably similar to Bundy’s, just substituting Jim Crow for slavery (“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues”). Since no black people ever brought their complaints about the terroristic system of Jim Crow directly to Phil Robertson, he’s pretty sure they were all “singing and happy” back then, unlike today with their entitlement and their welfare. Cliven Bundy once drove past a housing project, so he has a deep understanding of how pathological those black folk are.
The conservatives who elevate figures like Robertson and Bundy may not share the full extent of their views on race, but they can’t escape them either. Because those people know which party and which ideology is their natural home. Sure, you may not hear Rush Limbaugh say that black people were better off as slaves, but you’ll hear a lot of other things that make Cliven Bundy nod his head in agreement. You’ll hear him say that Barack Obama’s agenda is “payback” for slavery, a way to stick it to white people. You’ll hear him say that Barack and Michelle Obama’s lavish lifestyle, where they live in a big white house and travel on their own airplanes, isn’t just what presidents do; instead, “they view it as, as an opportunity to live high on the hog without having it cost them a dime. And they justify it by thinking, ‘Well, we deserve this, or we’re owed this because of what’s been done to us and our ancestors all these’ — who knows?” When you watch Fox you’ll see story after story about welfare queens and food stamp cheats and all the other schemers and scammers who are taking your hard-earned money away from you. And you’ll be told, again and again and again, that racism against black people is but a fading memory, while the false accusation of racism is something liberals and blacks use to keep the white man down.
Conservatives didn’t invent Cliven Bundy, but when he rushed to their embrace they encouraged him and applauded him and made him into a national figure. He’s theirs, down to his last ugly thought.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, April 24, 2014
“Deadbeat On The Range”: The Phony Cliven Bundy Event Has Brought Out The Worst Of The Gun-Waving Far Right
Imagine a vendor on the National Mall, selling burgers and dogs, who hasn’t paid his rent in 20 years. He refuses to recognize his landlord, the National Park Service, as a legitimate authority. Every court has ruled against him, and fines have piled up. What’s more, the effluents from his food cart are having a detrimental effect on the spring grass in the capital.
Would an armed posse come to his defense, aiming their guns at the park police? Would the lawbreaker get prime airtime on Fox News, breathless updates in the Drudge Report, a sympathetic ear from Tea Party Republicans? No, of course not.
So what’s the difference between the fictional loser and Cliven Bundy, the rancher in Nevada who owes the government about $1 million and has been grazing his cattle on public land for more than 20 years? Near as I can tell, one wears a cowboy hat. Easterners, especially clueless ones in politics and the press, have always had a soft spot for a defiant white dude in a Stetson.
This phony event has brought out the worst of the gun-waving far right, and the national politicians who are barely one degree of separation from them. Hundreds of heavily armed, camouflaged supporters of the scofflaw turned out Saturday in Nevada, training their rifles on public employees who were trying to do their job. The outsiders looked like snipers ready to shoot the police. If you changed that picture to Black Panthers surrounding a lawful eviction in the inner city, do you think right-wing media would be there cheering the outlaws?
With their assault rifles and threats, the thugs in the desert forced federal officials with the Bureau of Land Management to back down from a court-ordered confiscation of Bundy’s cattle. One of the rancher’s supporters, Richard Mack, a Tea Party leader who is in the National Rifle Association’s Hall of Fame, said he planned to use women as human shields in a violent showdown with law enforcement.
“We were actually strategizing to put all the women up front,” Mack said in a radio interview. “If they were going to start shooting, it’s going to be women that are going to be televised all across the world getting shot.”
That’s who Fox and friends are playing with these days — militia extremists who would sacrifice their wives to make some larger point about a runaway federal government. And what’s more, the Fox host Sean Hannity has all but encouraged a violent confrontation.
At the center of the dispute is the 68-year-old rancher Bundy, who said in a radio interview, “I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing.” A real patriot, this guy. You would think that kind of anarchist would draw a raised eyebrow from the Tea Party establishment that provides Bundy his media oxygen. After all, wasn’t the Tea Party born in a rant by Rick Santelli of CNBC about deadbeat homeowners? He complained about taxpayers’ subsidizing “losers’ mortgages” and he said we should “reward people that can carry the water instead of drinking the water.” Believe me, Bundy’s cattle are drinking an awful lot of our water, and not paying for it.
But instead, people like Ron Paul have only fanned the flames, warning of a Waco-style assault. Paul and his son, Senator Rand Paul, further showed themselves to be stunningly ignorant of the public lands legacy created by forward-thinking Republicans a century ago. “They had virtual ownership of that land because they had been using it,” Ron Paul said on Fox, referring to the Bundy clan. “You need the government out of it, and I think that’s the important point.”
No, the renegade rancher has no more right to 96,000 acres of Nevada public range than a hot dog vendor has to perpetual space on the Mall. Both places belong to the American people. Bundy runs his cattle on our land — that is, turf owned by every citizen. The agency that oversees the range, the Bureau of Land Management, allows 18,000 grazing permits on 157 million acres. Many of those permit holders get a sweet deal, subsidized in a way they could never find on private land.
What’s more, the land is supposed to be managed for stewardship and other users. Wild-horse advocates would like a piece of the same range. The poor desert tortoise, which has been in Nevada a lot longer than Bundy’s Mormon pioneer stock, is disappearing because of abusive grazing on that same 96,000 acres.
Ranching is hard work. Drought and market swings make it a tough go in many years. That’s all the more reason to praise the 18,000 or so ranchers who pay their grazing fees on time and don’t go whining to Fox or summoning a herd of armed thugs when they renege on their contract. You can understand why the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association wants no part of Bundy.
These kinds of showdowns are rare because most ranchers play by the rules, and quietly go about their business. They are heroes, in one sense, preserving a way of life that has an honorable place in American history. The good ones would never wave a gun in the face of a public servant, and likely never draw a camera from Fox.
By: Timothy Egan, Contributing Op-Ed Writer, The New York Times, April 17, 2014
“Jeb Bush’s Optimism School”: “The Only Thing We Have To Offer Is Fear” Is Not Going To Cut It Any Longer For Republicans
The Republican Party faces a long-term challenge in presidential elections because it is defining itself as a gloomy enclave, a collection of pessimists who fear what our country is becoming and where it is going.
The party’s hope deficit helps explain why there’s a boomlet for Jeb Bush, a man who dares to use the word “love” in a paragraph about illegal immigrants.
The flurry doesn’t mean that the former Florida governor is even running for president, let alone that he can win. But Bush is being taken seriously because his approach to politics is so different from what’s on offer from doomsayers who worry that immigrants will undermine the meaning of being American and that the champions of permissiveness will hack away at our moral core.
No wonder Bush’s statement that immigrants entering the country illegally were engaged in “an act of love” was greeted with such disdain by Donald Trump and other Republicans gathered at last weekend’s Freedom Summit in New Hampshire.
Let’s stipulate that people oppose immigration reform for a variety of reasons. Some see any form of amnesty as a reward for breaking the law. Others believe the country would be better off if the flow of future immigrants tilted more toward the affluent and skilled. Still others worry that immigration pushes wages down.
But it’s not just the immigration issue as such that separates Bush from so many in his party. It’s the broader sense of optimism he conveys when he describes an increasingly diverse nation as an asset. He even, on occasion, speaks of active government as a constructive force in American life. And while he is critical of President Obama — he’s a conservative Republican, after all — he does not suggest, as so many in his party do, that because of the 44th president, the United States is on a path to decline and ruin.
Bush is occupying this space because New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has lost it for now. His administration’s role in causing traffic Armageddon on access lanes to the George Washington Bridge last fall and the rapidly multiplying investigations this episode has called forth created Bush’s opportunity.
At least before his immigration comments, Bush seemed to have more appeal than Christie to the party’s right. A Washington Post/ABC News poll last month asked Americans if they would “definitely” vote for, “consider” voting for, or reject various candidates. Among Republicans and independents leaning Republican, Bush drew acceptance across the board from moderate, somewhat conservative and very conservative Republicans. Christie appealed more to moderates. But Christie may be better positioned for a general election contest than Bush in one respect: Christie demonstrates higher levels of minimum consideration among Hispanics and African Americans.
Three Republicans — who, by the way, also manage to convey some optimism — ran close to Bush in acceptability: Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. But all three were much stronger with the “very conservative” group than with the others. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin trailed because they were weaker in the moderate and somewhat conservative camps. (Thanks to Peyton Craighill, The Post’s polling manager, for running these numbers.)
These findings point to Bush’s potential not only with a donor class that clearly likes him but also with rank-and-file Republicans. Still, there are many reasons why he may never be the GOP nominee. He’s not the ideal pick for a party that might more profitably choose a younger, forward-looking candidate who could challenge a Hillary Clinton campaign that would inevitably be cast as a combination of restoration and continuity. A Clinton-Bush choice would necessarily prompt comparisons between the Bill Clinton years and the George W. Bush years. Outside Republican ranks, the Clinton era would win rather handily.
But if Jeb Bush doesn’t make it to the mountaintop, he could usefully offer his party lessons on how to avoid being seen as a convocation of cranky old (and not-so-old) politicians whose most devout wish is to repeal a couple decades of social change.
For there is a rule in American politics: Hope and optimism nearly always defeat fear and pessimism. Franklin Roosevelt understood this. Ronald Reagan stole optimism from the Democrats, Bill Clinton stole it back, and we all remember who had a 2008 poster carrying the single word “Hope.”
Republicans need to realize that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” works better than “the only thing we have to offer is fear.”
By:E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 16, 2014
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