Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 203 Editor's Choice: 13
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Believing That Racism Line About White Feminists Again
[Read the article: Why Clinton voters say they won't support Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Kelly," I know those women's studies textbooks tell you "Second-Wave White Feminists" were racist.
Sorry, it just isn't true. Someone's just going for tenure in the only acceptable way -- loathing white females. Do some real research into the movement, look at all the black leadership, all the advocacy priorities, the actual institutional structures, the actual publications, and votes, and campaigns, and directed resources, and internal representation, and outreach, and (sigh) enforced quotas, and look at how long ago all these concerns were made predominant. From the very beginning, not from the moment the "thirdies" decided that the only purpose of feminism was to berate older white women, be pissed at their mothers in public, and talk dirty.
You will discover that the feminist movement has always put a great deal of effort, an inordinate amount, given its purported job of promoting equality for women, towards black issues, black leadership, black empowerment. In fact, it's a bit of a fetish, which is precisely how they expose themselves to never-ending attacks from fools who do not believe anything could be enough and refuse to acknowledge quantifiable facts. Of course, you won't learn this in school (or Salon), where the status quo view of feminism involves white female self-loathing and endless accusation by people who claim the title of "other" or "minority" when in fact, in those settings, there are rarely either. Someday, feminists will stop pandering to those who accuse them of racism without being able to back up their claims with an iota of evidence except other groundless complaining. Until then, they're going to keep getting smeared. Maybe the fracture points of this election will signal a new, non-masochistic feminism. It would not be a moment too soon for every one of us.
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Telling the Truth About Alinsky, et. al.
[Read the article: Barack by the books]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Community Development" projects have long been a morass of corruption, waste and graft. I doubt one dollar was ever spent as it was intended, an enormous waste and exploitation of taxpayers' generosity squandered. I never met a person involved in those projects who wasn't lining his pockets. Not one, and I've known many. The Mafia has more scruples.
Harsh? Sorry. Google the term and look at the corruption, lost money and broken promises -- in city after city after city. Payoffs, kickbacks, blackmailing -- the most one could hope for was mere incompetence. Look at the real (frankly, pathetic, self-indulgent and impressively ineffectual) record of ACORN "organizing" (mainly a disintegrating series of lawsuits in the discredited "welfare rights" mode), the real record and life of Saul Alinsky, including his prejudices, the real record of Community Development. Fancy words, ugly deeds, divisive politics for politics' sake, and a disgraceful record of reinforcing self-destructive behaviors on the public dime among those who could afford it the least. Many of the most vocal advocates for this activism have been living fat off promoting it for years, with no discernible effect on anything but their own bottom line. Don't romanticism this corrosive behavior.
What's really, really sad is that the need is extreme in those communities. But once Alinsky's starry-eyed disciples get done pillaging resources on the most ludicrous crap, adults inevitably have to step in and clean up their messes. At more cost, in dollars and lives. Is this really what we can afford in a President Obama? Well, maybe the starry-eyed idealists can afford it. But the people they're "helping" can't.
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Dead On Mark
[Read the article: Jesse Helms is not dead]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A damningly accurate appraisal, more damning if you consider the implication of "little effective push back from progressives." Why is there so little? Because those who claim the mantle of progressivism have spent the past forty years indulging in a politics that all but denies class, alienating and attacking natural allies among blue collar workers. They valorize pathological behaviors instead of condemning them, which may be fun if you can go back home to a better neighborhood, but it's hell on those who can't. They foster a thoughtlessly elite, self-indulgent superiority, gathering to watch the latest episode of The Wire while sneering about the values of those "little people" the Republicans manages to snare with their own creepy traps.
This should be required reading for anyone who presumes to act -- politically.
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It's Not the Pink Tiaras, It's the Cop Killers
[Read the article: Cracking Code Pink]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nice to give Code Pink credit where credit is due, which is substantial in terms of the anti-war platform.
But ever since the "professionalization" of activism, a committee mentality dedicated to promoting issues that most Americans don't agree with has marginalized the anti-war movement itself.
It's not the pink tiaras, it's the cop killers who drive me away from participating in anti-war protests. This isn't simple distaste: you can't organize a constructive and effective critique of this war when you're knee-deep in Mumia fetishists and haggy, earth shoe-wearing Weatherman supporters -- because these causes become the message. Sane, decent people don't want to associated with it, and by the time you hit the streets, it's naive to pretend it's about anything but promoting and (importantly) subsidizing such pet causes anyway.
Why do we permit the fringe to hijack this important issue? As with most things, follow the money. A class of professional "activists" who reinforce each others' extremism and expel those who won't be "re-educated" needs to justify its bottom line by organizing rallies and gaining media face-time. They have nothing but time and money to glom onto anti-war activism, and since they're highly trained in the creepier aspects of Mao/Alinsky-style politicking, it's very difficult for ordinary, otherwise-employed people to stand up to them organizationally and create an anti-war movement that keeps its focus on the war itself.
What a shame that so few voices can derail such an important cause. Everybody loses, expect those whose goal is precisely the sort of agitprop disruption-in-the-name-of-revolution that has destroyed every other reasonable social movement of the last forty years.