David "Bobo" Brooks, writing in the alleged Liberal Press icon the New York Times, cites the theories of one Steve Sailer on why white people are good for the Republican Party and vice versa: The New Red-Diaper Babies 12/07/04. (Link also here.)
Who is this Steve Sailer? A far-right advocate of "eugenics," the pseudo-science of breeding better white people and increasing their proportion in relation to other races.
How crackpot is Steve Sailer? According to Garance Franke-Ruta, the rightwing FreeRepublic.com site once refused to run an article of his on the grounds that it was "divisive" and "promoting racism." (See Franke-Ruta link below.) When you're so far off the charts that even the Freepers don't want to be associated with you, that's pretty far over the edge.
But for Bobo Brooks, it's okay. Several bloggers have been discussing this, including:
David Brooks Needs to Do His Homework by Garance Franke-Ruta at TAPPED 12/07/04
Atrios (Duncan Black) Bobo's World 12/08/04
Rising Hegemon Leave It to Bobo 12/08/04
The Southern segregationist wing of the Democratic Party of the 1960s has become the Republican Party of today. Bobo Brooks is one of those "respectable" conservatives who promotes and defends the same poison as his less clean-shaven compatriots but who puts it in a "moderate" tone that sounds reassuring to those who want to be suckered. Or who just want to promote the same thing as the Oxycontin crowd but prefer not to think of themselves as trailer trash.
And, like any good Southern Moderate in 1963 defending segregation in a "respectable" way, Bobo Brooks explains why white people who have a lot of kids are particularly virtuous sorts:
What they cherish, like most Americans, is the self-sacrificial love shown by parents. People who have enough kids for a basketball team are too busy to fight a culture war.
Ah, see how nice us good Republican Values white folks are? All we want is promote "self-sacrificial love." Well, at least among white suburbanites. At least for their own children. (Didn't Jesus once tell his disciples that even the heathen love their own children, as a warning against taking that as any superior virtue?)
Then there's the present-day version of, "The Yankees are a lot more racist than anyone around here" and the closely-related "It's the nigras who are racists." Which is to claim that any Democratic criticism of Condi-Condi Rice for her painfully obvious lack of effectiveness as National Security Advisor or of Clarence Thomas for being an undistinguished and reactionary Justice is motivated by racism.
Sam Rosenfeld takes a look at this particular conservative meme in Conservo-race Card TAPPED 12/07/04. Josh Marshall (12/08/04) comments:
Because I was busy spending time on planet earth I hadn't noticed that there are more than a few conservatives now claiming that Sen. Harry Reid must be a racist because he said on Meet The Press that he would consider voting for Justice Scalia for Chief Justice but not Justice Thomas since the latter had been an "embarrassment" as a member of the court. ...
Perhaps someone can help me out here by sending in a clever witticism noting how those most eager to shape jurisprudence to demand proof of racist intent to justify remedial action are also the quickest to toss around the most risible accusations of racism to cover for their own mediocre Justices.
6 comments:
I have come to the point where I can no longer read Brooks. He makes any sense at all. I have commented on his column several times in my journal, and I have come to the conclusion that he has nothing to say. I don't understand the Times for keeping him around.
Neil
As for Harry Reid's remarks, I found them offensive.
He basically said that Scalia is smarter than Thomas, so although they share positions that Reid disagrees with, Scalia belongs on the bench and Thomas does not. To me, he was implying that Thomas was and remains unqualified -- that he is the supremely undeserving beneficiary of affirmative action at the highest level.
If Thomas were a liberal, and the comment had been made by a conservative Senator from Mississippi, the howls about racism would be much louder than anything Reid is confronting now.
He may not have meant what he said, but that didn't help Trent Lott, and Reid ought to apologize if he mis-spoke.
Neil
I didn't see the Reid segment or read the full transcript. But I think it would be a big mistake for the Democrats to do anything but oppose the appointment of either Scalia or Thomas as Chief Justice. I was dismayed that Reid seemed to be saying he was open to considering Scalia for the post.
Scalia's rank partisanship in the Scalia Five decision on the 2000 election should be enough for every single Democrat in the Senate to vote against his being appointed to anything.
As for Thomas, I can't say that I make a hobby of closely following the ratings of individual Justices. But my impression is that, among legal scholars, he is considered a real lightweight, and the least distinguished among the current set of Justices. It seems that the only people who claim to find his record solid in terms of the quality of his legal reasoning are overt ideologues.
Thomas even has a reputation for dozing off during oral arguments:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/firststone/sleeping_thomas/
- Bruce
Brooks has really lost it. I just about fell off my chair when I read his column quoting Steve Sailer. My bf D. and I were just talking about Sailer a few weeks ago because we have friends in the GLBT community who are very familiar with a Sailer associate, F. Michael Bailey. Bailey is the Chairman of the Psychology Department of Northwestern University,
The guy and his group are total nut jobs. They believe that homosexuality is caused by a "germ" and other such nonsense.
As I've said so many times, the south has cornered the market on bigotry no matter which party they try to hide in. They are on the wrong side of every single moral issue that has confronted this country since its inception. It's just who they are. They idea that white is right is passed on from parents to children there and will continue so for many more years, I'm afraid. But the rest of the country should expose this instead of embracing it.
That Happy Chica,
Marcia Ellen
to continue my point, Bailey is the Chairman of the Psychology Deparment of Northwestern University who, through his book, "The Man Who Would Be Queen" has been pushing suspect theories about transgenders including a highly controversial concept called autogynephilia.
Anyway, Sailer and his fellow eugenicists are nut jobs. I can't believe Brooks legitimized the guy by quoting him in the Times!
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