Diary

Hitchens so drunk he thinks he's black?

port1080.

Posted to Diary on Tue May 06, 2008 at 08:29:17 AM EST. RSS.

Liberal comment on Wright, and on the incredible damage that this conceited old fanatic has done to the Obama campaign, tends to dwell on the negative effect that black chauvinist rhetoric has on white working-class voters. Fair enough, I suppose. But why should a thinking black member of the working class want any truck with a Farrakhan fan or with a moral idiot who thinks that the drugs and disease in the black community are imposed by an outside conspiracy?  I don't need any condescending liberal to explain to me why black Americans are inclined to be touchy about the way their forebears were treated any more than I require a patronizing former Harvard law student to guide me through the anxieties of the gun-owning and hunting community...

...and later:

I direct your attention to Mrs. Obama's 1985 thesis at Princeton University. Its title (rather limited in scope, given the author and the campus) is "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community." To describe it as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be "read" at all, in the strict sense of the verb. This is because it wasn't written in any known language. Anyway, at quite an early stage in the text, Michelle Obama announces that she's much influenced by the definition of black "separationism" offered by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in their 1967 screed Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. I remember poor Stokely Carmichael quite well. After a hideous series of political and personal fiascos, he fled to Africa, renamed himself Kwame Toure after two of West Africa's most repellently failed dictators, and then came briefly back to the United States before electing to die in exile. I last saw him as the warm-up speaker for Louis Farrakhan in Madison Square Garden in 1985, on the evening when Farrakhan made himself famous by warning Jews, "You can't say 'Never Again' to God, because when he puts you in the ovens, you're there forever." I have the distinct feeling that the Obama campaign can't go on much longer without an answer to the question: "Are we getting two for one?" And don't be giving me any grief about asking this. Black Americans used to think that the Clinton twosome was their best friend, too. This time we should find out before it's too late to ask.


Okay, so its probably just sloppy writing, but still...Oh, and the point of the article?  Does Hitch need a point?

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1

Perhaps his point is so brilliant ...

MayorBob.

Tue May 06, 2008 at 08:58:00 AM EST

4.50 (funny)

... that it blinds us to his message.  His point might be penetrating and thought-provoking, in a Chauncey Gardiner sort of way.  After all, he is one of the 100 greatest public intellectuals alive, according to Foreign Policy.  And who are we to argue with Foreign Policy?

Illegitimi non carborundum.

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Re: Hitchens so drunk he thinks he's black?

Steve Urkel.

Tue May 06, 2008 at 01:42:05 PM EST

none

"But why should a thinking black member of the working class want any truck with a Farrakhan fan or with a moral idiot who thinks that the drugs and disease in the black community are imposed by an outside conspiracy? "

The view that white doctors invented AIDS and that the CIA sells drugs in the inner cities are quite popular among blacks.

"I direct your attention to Mrs. Obama's 1985 thesis at Princeton University"

That thesis is amusing, and I think Mrs. Obama is angrier than her husband, but he sought out Wright before he met her, and he praised Wright extensively, see the book Barack wrote titled after one of Wrights sermons. Hitchens trying place all this on Michelle is weird.

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Re: Hitchens so drunk he thinks he's black?

thefadd.

Tue May 06, 2008 at 02:05:14 PM EST

5.00 (astute)

The view that white doctors invented AIDS and that the CIA sells drugs in the inner cities are quite popular among blacks.

The view that CIA members ran drugs into Oakland in the 80s is also popular among the congressional committees that found it to be true...

That thesis is amusing, and I think Mrs. Obama is angrier than her husband, but he sought out Wright before he met her, and he praised Wright extensively, see the book Barack wrote titled after one of Wrights sermons. Hitchens trying place all this on Michelle is weird.

Agreed. I think he thinks he's being nuanced when he's engaging in nothing more than a good old strawman bait and switch.

I don't need any condescending liberal to explain to me why black Americans are inclined to be touchy

Then I suppose he's doing what the rest of us should do...not paying any attention to what Christopher Hitchens has to say.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

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Re: Hitchens so drunk he thinks he's black?

gerrymander.

Tue May 06, 2008 at 04:10:55 PM EST

none

The view that CIA members ran drugs into Oakland in the 80s is also popular among the congressional committees that found it to be true...

Really? The Wiki article notes that the investigative committees found payouts to the Nicaraguan Contras, but no evidence of drug importing. Perhaps you have another source?

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Another source

Steve Urkel.

Tue May 06, 2008 at 04:26:44 PM EST

5.00

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Re: Hitchens so drunk he thinks he's black?

thefadd.

Tue May 06, 2008 at 05:31:25 PM EST

5.00 (informative)

The San Jose Mercury News expose from the mid-90's.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

9

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Re: Hitchens so drunk he thinks he's black?

gerrymander.

Tue May 06, 2008 at 05:56:20 PM EST

none

Yes, that would be the report which opened a government investigation in 1996, culminating in a report which found no evidence of the CIA importing drugs. The chief investigator, Frederick Hitz, testified before the Senate, stating "we have found no evidence in the course of this lengthy investigation of any conspiracy by CIA or its employees to bring drugs into the United States." Just like it says in the link.

Is that sufficient enough to disprove your assertion, or would you like to expound on why the CIA under Bill Clinton would carry water for the Reagan administration's misdeeds?

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Re: Hitchens so drunk he thinks he's black?

thefadd.

Tue May 06, 2008 at 06:27:14 PM EST

none

Sure, whatever you say.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

5

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Re: Hitchens so drunk he thinks he's black?

Steve Urkel.

Tue May 06, 2008 at 04:23:34 PM EST

none

Why would the CIA care about Oakland?

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Re: Hitchens so drunk he thinks he's black?

thefadd.

Tue May 06, 2008 at 05:33:52 PM EST

5.00 (astute)

Right next to Berkeley. Nice fall back customer base.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

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