Letters to the Editor
DCLaw1
Published Letters: 839 Editor's Choice: 2
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casual observer
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't take this as racist, but I do think it's a good example of how so many people segregate "works of God" and "works of Man" along the lines of a cheap comic-book storyline.
I had thought of this possibility, but the particular choice of Flatbush Avenue was just a bit too coincidentally a predominantly black neighborhood. This is how most racism manifests nowadays, in subconscious (sometimes not so subconscious) selection of language and presumptions of thought. It's less obvious, but a whole lot more insidious. Chris Matthews does this quite a bit -- he may think it's just being "folksy," but I definitely detect a subtle pattern.
I even think I heard him describe a black person's viewpoint condescendingly as "not necessarily ethnic. Ethnic?
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casual
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your point is well-taken, then and now, but I definitely think implicit racism animates a lot of these formulations. Setting aside the possibility that an "urban slum" might mean anything other than a "black urban slum," and whether Matthews' particular selection of Flatbush Ave. was itself indicative of anything, part of my point was (like Digby's) the implicit preference in our discourse of country life over city life (Real Mericans vs. The Others), and what animates that preference.
I think it's all tied together, in other words. Anyone can appreciate the beauty and majesty of a Western landscape or a dense Appalachian woodland, sure, but the dichotomy of rural vs. urban preferences in this country points to trends and motivations rooted historically in pretty blatant racism and xenophobia.
So I understand what you're saying -- but even if it's true that Matthews didn't mean that particular remark in a more "obviously" racist way, I do think it's evidence of the bigger picture, lifestyle prejudices, if you will. Many people who have never lived in a city, when they think about a city, immediately think of the crime and violence, not the arts, culture, nightlife, human institutions, and other positive features of a city. As a result, in line with your point, people are more likely to reach for a positive metaphor (God or otherwise) in a feature of rural existence, and use as negative metaphors features of urban existence.
Also, I don't want you to think I'm saying Chris Matthews is outright bigoted or anything. I'm speaking of ingrained, "institutionalized" racist preferences. The type of thing that wouldn't necessarily leave someone offended when it came up in conversation. When it comes to these "soft" incidents, Chris Matthews is a never-ending fountain of implied cultural and racial bias. Then again, he's a never-ending fountain of everything, with that motor mouth of his.
Don't ask why I watch his damn show so much. I still haven't figured it out myself.
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LWM
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
This sort of "code" has been around for quite a long time. The trajectory of this thread got me looking around online about all things Civil War, as a sort of refresher, and I found a very interesting piece of historical information. It essentially validated (again) what I've always thought about the "states rights" argument so often made by people with motives quite apart from empowering states.
Historian William C. Davis:
To the old Union they had said that the Federal power had no authority to interfere with slavery issues in a state. To their new nation they would declare that the state had no power to interfere with a federal protection of slavery. Of all the many testimonials to the fact that slavery, and not states rights, really lay at the heart of their movement, this was the most eloquent of all.
And from abortion to voter rights, it's been the same old song ever since.
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please
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ignore the trolls. Do not even utter their name(s). If and when one says something halfway intelligent, that is not laced with childish insults, respond then. Otherwise, their "points" are not validated by your silence -- however, their petulant presence here is validated by your response.
There really needs to be a pact here (for all regulars, at least) to let idiots die on the vine. Consider it a form of flattery that they waste so much of their lives trying to tell us how much we're wasting ours, and leave it at that. Please.
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Glenn
[Read the article: PBS's "Frontline: Spying on the Home Front"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You mention in your post that you "met with the program's producer, Rick Young, as they were identifying the issues they wanted to cover." Now don't be modest -- are you in/quoted in the documentary?