"The Liberal Symbol Of Black America".
The Liberal Symbol of Black America
President Obama has come in for a lot of criticism over his comment the other night that the police “acted stupidly” in the Gates incident. But Lloyd Grove of The Daily Beast notes that Republican politicians have not made much effort to capitalize on it:
There was a time--a simpler time, to be sure--when the Republican Party would have known just how to capitalize on the Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. imbroglio and President Barack Obama’s severe critique of the Cambridge, Mass. police department.
Imagine what the late Lee Atwater would have done with it. He masterminded Bush’s racially charged Willie Horton attack against Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. In 1988, it was powerfully effective. Willie Horton, an African American, was a convicted murderer serving a life sentence in Massachusetts for stabbing a teenager 19 times. In 1986, Horton was released on a weekend furlough program that was stubbornly supported by then-Governor Dukakis over widespread opposition. While out on furlough, Horton made his way to Oxon Hill, Maryland, and brutalized a young white couple, pistol-whipping, knifing and gagging the man and twice raping his fiancée.
The GOP’s “muted response,” according to Grove, is evidence of the declining power of “aggrieved white males”: “That group--Atwater’s constituency--is fast becoming a marginalized minority.” This may or may not be true. It strikes us that if there is political hay to be made from Obama’s remark, the reason Republicans are not making it is that Obama is not now in an election campaign. Three years from now, maybe even two years from now, jockeying for electoral advantage will be much more important. At the moment, blessedly, we are between campaigns.
Something bothers us about Grove’s essay, though. Willie Horton was, as Grove notes, already a vicious murderer at the time the Dukakis administration released him from prison and made possible the attack in Maryland. Skip Gates is a Harvard professor who has never even been accused of any crime worse than misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Why in the world would Grove look at Gates and think of Horton? We can think of only one obvious thing that the two men have in common.
One might observe in Grove’s defense that he is stereotyping the GOP, not blacks--that he is not directly linking Gates and Horton, only imputing such a link to Republicans. But to judge by Grove’s own reporting, Republicans who see a link between Gates and Horton do not exist in the real world, only in Grove’s imagination. It wouldn’t be the first time someone trying to portray the GOP as racist ended up casting Willie Horton as a symbol of black America.
President Obama has come in for a lot of criticism over his comment the other night that the police “acted stupidly” in the Gates incident. But Lloyd Grove of The Daily Beast notes that Republican politicians have not made much effort to capitalize on it:
There was a time--a simpler time, to be sure--when the Republican Party would have known just how to capitalize on the Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. imbroglio and President Barack Obama’s severe critique of the Cambridge, Mass. police department.
Imagine what the late Lee Atwater would have done with it. He masterminded Bush’s racially charged Willie Horton attack against Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. In 1988, it was powerfully effective. Willie Horton, an African American, was a convicted murderer serving a life sentence in Massachusetts for stabbing a teenager 19 times. In 1986, Horton was released on a weekend furlough program that was stubbornly supported by then-Governor Dukakis over widespread opposition. While out on furlough, Horton made his way to Oxon Hill, Maryland, and brutalized a young white couple, pistol-whipping, knifing and gagging the man and twice raping his fiancée.
The GOP’s “muted response,” according to Grove, is evidence of the declining power of “aggrieved white males”: “That group--Atwater’s constituency--is fast becoming a marginalized minority.” This may or may not be true. It strikes us that if there is political hay to be made from Obama’s remark, the reason Republicans are not making it is that Obama is not now in an election campaign. Three years from now, maybe even two years from now, jockeying for electoral advantage will be much more important. At the moment, blessedly, we are between campaigns.
Something bothers us about Grove’s essay, though. Willie Horton was, as Grove notes, already a vicious murderer at the time the Dukakis administration released him from prison and made possible the attack in Maryland. Skip Gates is a Harvard professor who has never even been accused of any crime worse than misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Why in the world would Grove look at Gates and think of Horton? We can think of only one obvious thing that the two men have in common.
One might observe in Grove’s defense that he is stereotyping the GOP, not blacks--that he is not directly linking Gates and Horton, only imputing such a link to Republicans. But to judge by Grove’s own reporting, Republicans who see a link between Gates and Horton do not exist in the real world, only in Grove’s imagination. It wouldn’t be the first time someone trying to portray the GOP as racist ended up casting Willie Horton as a symbol of black America.
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posted by KYJurisDoctor at 11:11 PM
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