Politicize a Dead Woman

I understand your statement, snood.

I can't support anyone's idea to leave the country defenseless and weakened in other areas, but that doesn't detract from my deep respect for many of his other traits and choices.

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That was a good piece; however I do not see Libertarian and Conservative as necessarily being mutually exclusive terms.

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nor do I see Libertarian and Liberal being exclusive.

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Thomas wrote:

Lash wrote:
Yeah. One side. All bad. One side. All good. No thinking, reading or listening necessary.

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Make sure you shut your eyes and put your hands over your ears, if you're a liberal.

In the 1950s, while Republican President Dwight Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce the Supreme Court's school-desegregation ruling, Senator John Sparkman of Alabama (Democrat presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson's former vice-presidential running mate) protested this desegregation decision by signing the congressional "Southern Manifesto" attacking the court's ruling.

I can see what this proves about liberals versus conservatives, but not what it proves about Republicans vs. Democrats. The examples you cite happened 50 years ago -- when many Democrats were conservative, many Republicans were liberal, and Hillary Clinton campaigned to get Goldwater elected president over Johnson. (Okay, that was just 42 years ago.) My point is this: The correlation that Democrats are liberal and Republicans conservative was much weaker then than it is now. (Not that it's perfect today.) Hence, your comparison of Republicans and Democrats of the fifties proves almost nothing about liberals and conservatives.

just what i was thinking, thomas. thanks for bringing it in.

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Foxfyre wrote:

.... I do not see Libertarian and Conservative as necessarily being mutually exclusive terms.

dyslexia wrote:

nor do I see Libertarian and Liberal being exclusive.

being a registered libertarian meself, i find one of the most liberating aspects to be that i can think what i want about individual issues without worrying too much about being attacked by my own party for ideological impurity.

kinda get to have your personal line item veto.

some things i tend to be liberal about, others get a more restrained view.

generally, i'm in favor of people having more rights than fewer. do what ya want, just don't slosh mess all over everybody else. t'ain't cool.

plus, you get to talk about stuff with a wider variety of people. republicans & democrats don't really know where we stand. you'd have to ask every libertarian to find out. so we don't get stereotyped as quickly.

and, to me, that is indicative of what's not working in our country right now.

neither the republican or democratic party has much patience with those who stray from the approved party group think.

doesn't sound much like democracy to me, but hey, what ever floats yer boat.

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Thank you Dys and Thomas re: Goldwater! Very informative.

Two quickie conclusions I draw from that:

- Though Goldwater was a white conservative who did not like King's broader political mission, his disagreement, at least, was not fuelled by the sense that King acted in a way that was improper for a black man that I described in my earlier post; if anything the racial perspective was the one he did agree on.

(Though I note that Walter brought an additional article that might shed a different light.)

- MLK's actual quotes, as brought by Dys, are strikingly removed from the feel-good image of one who merely wanted peace and love for black and white, which is now evoked in official and government-angled commemorations. He was much more fierce than that, which makes me think that Lash is pretty far off in assuming that he "would not have approved of divisive, partisan remarks" at the funeral.

Which brings us right back to the question of what the problem was with this funeral. I'm still thinking, myself, that it should be up to the deceased's family, friends and followers to decide what is or is not "appropriate" or "dignified" at her funeral. If none of them seems to have had a problem with the remarks so criticized by the conservatives here - if none of them seems to feel that what happened would have been considered wrong by Coretta or Martin Luther King - then how do the conservative complainers here argue that they somehow know better what was appropriate or in the King spirit at her funeral than her own loved ones?

At my mother's funeral, the [Town name] Struggle Choir that she long sang in performed a strident song or two as well. Of course they did: that was part of what she was all about! If some right-wingnut had approached me to tell me that, you know, shame on them to deliver something so "divisive, partisan" at a funeral, I woulda told him to f*ck off, I can tell you that.

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The case hasn't been made by their own words and behaviors that either of them would consider a funeral the appropriate venue for political potshots, which is far removed from political statements and appeals.

We know there is a loud gaggle of gigglers, who creamed in their jeans over the remarks; however, I wonder if they really gave a **** how the Kings conducted themselves, and how they would have liked that venue used--if at all--for their causes. I don't for a minute think they would agree with, say my, political views in toto. But, cracks about WMD, when there were so many other issues, and so many better points, with so many better deliveries....? It was beneath her and them.

However, I did say previously something to the effect that it is ultimately up to her children--

Not above criticism, tho.

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Sure, it is the right of people not at a funeral to criticize what happens at a funeral. I think every funeral should be held to that standard. Lets make it a new reality TV show. "Criticize that funeral"

Oh, wait. it already is being done on several TV and radio shows.

The ultimate in poor taste in my opinion is to criticize what happens at someone else's funeral. Why don't you go picket it too?

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dyslexia wrote:

Well yeah Martin was a commie no doubt about it, funny though as how so many neocons cereally distort Martin to make him "one of their own".

When I was young and naive -- about 5 years ago to be exact -- I was surprised to learn how many neocons had started out as socialist intellectuals. They have since switched allegiences, but they retained their allegiance to political dogma and their devotion to strategic dishonesty, and the disdain for the intelligence of the regular people they are strategically lying to. That's why I'm not a neoconservative -- or a socialist.

Walter Hinteler wrote:

I remember from the 60's that I've always seen Goldwater as an epitome of southern conservatism.

There has been am essay in the Opinion Journal a month ago: The Goldwater Myth: He didn't become a libertarian until his twilight years.

The Opinion Journal article is inconsistent with what I have read in Goldwater's programmatic book, The Conscience of a Conservative (1960). Goldwater was a hawk on communism. In retrospect, he was right about being a hawk, wrong in taking it as far as supporting McCarthy until the end, but not as wrong as I was in being a dove in the eighties. Anyway, Goldwater was never one of those religious-right holy-rollers that have now highjacked much of the Republican party. The Goldwater of 1960 would have never agreed with the Tom DeLay, the Republican senate leader who said it was the Republicans job to impose a religious worldview on America.

Needless to say, I miss Goldwater's kind of Republicanism a lot.

(And whoever thinks Arizona is `Southern' needs a geography llesson. But that's another story. Wink

)

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Thomas writes

Quote:

Anyway, Goldwater was never one of those religious-right holy-rollers that have now highjacked much of the Republican party.

I accept that this is your perception and belief, but I've been a Republican since 1980 and have been very heavily involved in both political and religious circles. And I have not run across a single one of these religious-right holy rollers at least who was identifiable as having any kind of political agenda.

I'm not saying they don't exist--I know they do--but I think the presumption that they are more than a fringe group of the Republican party with no more clout than PETA has with the Democrat party is a misnomer.

But where all these religious nuts that are purported to have hijacked the Republican party?

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parados wrote:

Sure, it is the right of people not at a funeral to criticize what happens at a funeral. I think every funeral should be held to that standard. Lets make it a new reality TV show. "Criticize that funeral"

Oh, wait. it already is being done on several TV and radio shows.

The ultimate in poor taste in my opinion is to criticize what happens at someone else's funeral. Why don't you go picket it too?

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Thomas wrote:

I agree with Dys that "Goldwater definitely opened the door that Reagan walked through", but not that he was the pioneer of the `currently dominant school of conservatives'.

The latter was my statement, not Dys's - that is, I wrote "I understand that he was .." etc.

Trying to come up with where I got that from; the phrase "the Goldwater revolution" immediately jumped into mind. Some article about how the current set of politically or intellectually dominant conservatives largely stem from a 'Goldwater revolution' generation. People who came of age just in or after that time and took inspiration from how Goldwater had the Republicans ditch the centrist Eisenhower tradition (with its 80+% top tax rates, for example) for a much more principled/dogmatic stance. Leading to an electoral disaster defeat, but eventually to the resurgence of conservatism in the Reagan years. Something like that.

That ring a bell?

I did a search on articles in The New Republic, and did not find any analysis of exactly that, but the general meme does come up in asides time and again. For example:

Quote:

With the conservative takeover of the party, instigated by Barry Goldwater and completed by Newt Gingrich, the old elites lost their stranglehold on power

What It Takes, an article that actually is about the transformation of the Republican Party

Quote:

Many in the Dean circle will see a Kerry defeat the way populist conservatives saw Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964--an opportunity to remake their party in their own image as the first step to moving the national political consensus in their direction.

Precriminations, Part II

Quote:

Ever since the rise of the conservative counterestablishment out of the ashes of Barry Goldwater's failed candidacy, the right has had at its disposal a constellation of think tanks and media organs to supplement campaigns

False Dawn

And as an example of that generation, the new SC Justice Alito:

Quote:

His biography reads like a parody of a conservative foot soldier. "When I first became interested in government and politics during the 1960s," he wrote in 1985, "the greatest influences on my views were the writings of William F. Buckley, Jr., the National Review, and Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign."

Alito v. Alito on abortion

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Thomas wrote:

When I was young and naive -- about 5 years ago to be exact -- I was surprised to learn how many neocons had started out as socialist intellectuals.

devotees of trotsky and strauss

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Thomas wrote:

(And whoever thinks Arizona is `Southern' needs a geography llesson. But that's another story. )

I know it occupies the extreme south-western portion of the USA.
What I wanted to say and obviously failed to do is that during my time in the (now called) 'Mittelstufe' I just connected him with "southern conversatism".

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Foxfyre wrote:

But where all these religious nuts that are purported to have hijacked the Republican party?

For example, one of them was the Senate majority leader. His name is Tom DeLay, and I mentioned him in the post you answered to.

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Lash wrote:

nimh wrote:
Lash wrote:
I am finding she was quite respectable.

Is that kinda like how a white person might remark that black person A or B is actually "quite articulate"?

I guess that would be true if you begin from a point of operation that finds all blacks unrespectable and all whites respectable. Just as the articulate point, for some, begins with an obvious surprise that a black could be articulate--hence my disfavor for the sentiment.

Otherwise, it's just stupid.

Right. Note that I wouldnt even have dreamt of remarking on your word choice, however unfortunate in context, if there hadnt been that pesky affair about your going on ad nauseam about somebody calling a black person "articulate".

It was your inference at the time, from pretty much nothing more substantial than said use and your prejudice about the poster in question, that the use of the word "articulate" did indeed reveal "an obvious surprise that a black could be articulate" - a conclusion that, I remember, was met with wide perplexion and derision among the other posters.

Now, the irony here was that you put yourself wide open for exactly the same kind of inference by writing that you read about King and were actually "finding she was quite respectable" - ouch. I know that you dont particularly assume that blacks in general are not respectable, but the unfortunate word choice of course made the sentence come across as extremely condescending - hence BPB's "how migthy white of you" riposte - plus, it made it all too easy a bait for anyone who'd be as hell-bent as you were at the time to ascribe all sorts of subconscious racist sentiments to his opponent.

Thats basically what I pointed out, there. It was a re: to your fit about the "articulate" thing back then, rather than about your use of "respectable" here.

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Lash wrote:

Not above criticism, tho.

parados wrote:

Sure, it is the right of people not at a funeral to criticize what happens at a funeral. [But] the ultimate in poor taste in my opinion is to criticize what happens at someone else's funeral. Why don't you go picket it too?

Right.

It's fully legal to criticize someone else's funeral.

That one chooses to do so, however, is probably the illustration of that "difference in class" between conservatives and liberals that Ticomaya e.a. were postulating about in the Bush Supporters thread.

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nimh wrote:

Note that I wouldnt even have dreamt of remarking on your word choice, however unfortunate in context, if there hadnt been that pesky affair about your going on ad nauseam about somebody calling a black person "articulate".

It was your inference at the time, from pretty much nothing more substantial than said use and your prejudice about the poster in question, that the use of the word "articulate" did indeed reveal "an obvious surprise that a black could be articulate" - a conclusion that, I remember, was met with wide perplexion and derision among the other posters.

This was ad nauseum and widespread derision?

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Lash wrote:

Quote:

I am praying for the day when we don't describe black people as articulate.

Frank Apisa wrote:

Quote:

Yeah..."praying" should do a lot of good. The young man was articulate....one hell of a lot more articulate than our president.

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Lash wrote:

Quote:

[OK,] I'm fuming for the day we don't describe black people as articulate.

It's the new put down.

black + ability to speak coherently = articulate

LOL!!

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I was reasonable assured the LOL (with TWO exclamation points, no less) would denote my level of seriousness re the dreaded 'articulate' issue, but by all means continue to work tirelessly to mischaracterize my comments. It's obviously of critical importance to you. However, I must warn you that all future jokes, tongue in cheek comments and sarcasm by you will not no over well in this vector.

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I dont think anything I say is sure to go over well in your vector; chances that it will be either met with clamoring enthusiasm or vituperous anger seem to be about 50/50 - and rather unpredictably so.

Meanwhile, I dont think anyone who just the other day managed to turn my

""the Kings became heroes [..] by not behaving like what white conservatives considered proper"

into

"I don't know how in the hell you say they didn't behave in an acceptable way. The nation was quite fortunate for King's influence."

has no right whatsoever to complain about other people mischaracterizing her comments - and that was just one out of many, many examples of the way you've done that.

You may have reappeared here lately as a nice and cheerful poster and I'm sure many of us are glad about it, but all such past twisting and railing are not exactly instantaneously forgotten, you know. Just cant simply erase that; easily enough triggered into memory when you do it once again like in the King 'acceptable' instance.

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Lash wrote:

This was ad nauseum and widespread derision?

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Lash wrote:

Quote:
I am praying for the day when we don't describe black people as articulate.

Frank Apisa wrote:

Quote:
Yeah..."praying" should do a lot of good. The young man was articulate....one hell of a lot more articulate than our president.

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Lash wrote:

Quote:
[OK,] I'm fuming for the day we don't describe black people as articulate.

It's the new put down.

black + ability to speak coherently = articulate

LOL!!

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I was reasonable assured the LOL (with TWO exclamation points, no less) would denote my level of seriousness re the dreaded 'articulate' issue, but by all means continue to work tirelessly to mischaracterize my comments. It's obviously of critical importance to you. However, I must warn you that all future jokes, tongue in cheek comments and sarcasm by you will not no over well in this vector.

And talking of mischaracterisation ... you seem to have left out quite a lot in the quotes above, haven't you?

Shall I try?

Frank Apisa wrote:

There was an interview on Dateline NBC last night that should be mentioned here.

They interview a black youngster of perhaps 10 years of age in a cut-off section of New Orleans...an articulate young man who spoke eloquently and passionately about the circumstances with which he, and the people around him, were confronted.

My emphasis: Frank called a *ten-year old kid* who spoke of what happened "articulate". That was what triggered your reaction, being:

Lash wrote:

I am praying for the day when we don't describe black people as articulate.

Huh? He described a black ten-year old kid as "articulate" and you identified racism in that?

Your remark yielded these responses from others:

Frank Apisa wrote:

The young man was articulate....one hell of a lot more articulate than our president.

sumac wrote:

I am white and articulate, and that is no put down. But I do get the drift of your first statement.

Noddy24 wrote:

Personally, I think articulate ten-year-olds are few and far between. I didn't see the interview--either interview--but in my experience most ten- year-olds have trouble saying "yes" or "no" to carefully-worded leading questions.

Frank Apisa wrote:

Anyone who took the comment I made about the young man as a put down...intentionally or unintentionally...is probably too deep into denial to realize the implications of a 10 year old being more articulate than George Bush.

Thomas wrote:

Lash: I'm not getting it. What if NBC had interviewed a retarded, stuttering, drooling black kid and Frank had reported it that way? Would that not have offended you? Is there any adjective you would permit us to describe any black individual with? Some boys in this world are ten years old. Some of them are articulate. Some of them are black. So why is it a put-down to call an articulate ten year old black boy an articulate ten year old black boy? I am especially mystified because you usually don't strike me as a zealot of political correctness.

Setanta wrote:

Frank may have described the boy as articulate because he was extraordinarily articulare for a ten-year-old of any superficial description. It is only necessary to use the link he provided to demonstrate this to oneself.

Setanta wrote:

There is no question. Lash is typically attempting to preen herself on her tolerance by making others out to be crypto-racists. It's not worth the trouble.

If by not go there, you mean the site she linked, i suggest you might enjoy it. It's really old news online, but it's entertaining.

Noddy24 wrote:

Personally I value people who can say what they mean.

Black, white, yellow, red....

Some trees are far more articulate than others. Shrubs tend to have limited vocabularies.

I've known two Bug Eyed Monsters, but their vocabularies were more severely limited than Shrub's.

edgarblythe wrote:

The towel head debacle was enough for me.

This went on for pages, Lash! What's up with pretending that all that happened was a single post by Frank and a LOL reply by you?

I mean, look at this whole little thread tempest above - and try to tell me again that I was "working tirelessly to mischaracterise you" by calling it "wide perplexion and derision", Lash.

Come ON.

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Politicize a Dead Woman

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