Cynical Nation

Barry..

The one drop rule traditionally covers people who could pass as white but who have some black "blood" in their ancestry.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, looks black, is married to a woman who looks black and has kids who look black.

So you don't need the one drop rule to say he's black. It isn't like some big secret that's going to be revealed in the third act of a steamship melodrama.

Now you could say that he's biracial, which he is. I don't, however, think it's progressive racism to point out the obvious, that most people see a black person when they see him.

Also, even if you consider him as bi-racial, he still would be the first bi-racial President. (Bi-racial people lived with blacks during the time of segregation.)

There are no distinct races, so he isn't biracial. I actually think he looks more like the man with the yellow hate, only black.

Of course, Obama isn't really black. If you put him on a black backdrop you can see that he is light brown. If you put a "white" person up against a white background they also look decidedly tan.

Black and white are polarizing exaggerations that were created to help promote the idea that slavery was OK, because there was profit to be made.

JMK is all for profit.

Well, if I was a paint color, I'd be "Whisper Pink."

"Barack Obama, on the other hand, looks black, is married to a woman who looks black and has kids who look black."

"So you don't need the one drop rule to say he's black." (PE)


While anonymous may be technically correct (that races are an artificial construct) Barack Obama, like Tiger Woods, Marriah Carey, etc. IS indeed bi-racial in today's parlance.

In fact, one could say, without much, if any exaggeration, that Obama is far MORE white than black, based on the even older standard - "race of the mother = race of the child."

Moreover, he is undeniably culturally white, as that family was abandoned by his black father, so he was raised by his white mother and her family in Kansas, then Hawaii.

The irony of BOTH Barack and Michelle Obama is that they have both "lived as black" as OJ Simpson had, which is to say that they led far more privileged lives than the vast majority of Americans, black, white or other.

At Princeton Michelle Obama's thesis was on the failure of integration and the remaining stigma of blackness. In one portion, she claimed that, as a black woman, she felt "like a visior" at (predominatly white) Princeton.

Two problems with that largely lame observation: (1) When a white or Asian claims to feel isolated and not accepted when they're the only member of their race, THEY'RE derided as being "racist," for feeling that way and (2) Other people DON'T owe us respect or even acceptance...those things are EARNED. You earn respect by earning other people's trust and you earn acceptance by extending YOURSELF and being more accomodating to others, when you're a new arrival in a group.

There are people from ALL backgrounds that are accepted and others that are not...Michelle Obama seems to have taken her own anecdotal references, coupled them with a crude, "unscientific survey" and concluded that her feelings were universal and due to blackness, NOT her own possible personal flaws and failings.

I think that's best termed, as what Ellis Cose called, "the rage of a privileged class."

"JMK is all for profit." (Barely Hanging)


Truer words were never spoken Barely.

PROFIT indeed makes the world go round.

In fact, according to America's Founders the ONLY reason for a government to even exist is to protect our PRIVATE PROPERTY rights, and assure the various and sundry "blessings" of LIBERTY - self ownership and the full and ponderous weight of personal responsibility, NOT the "license" of "doing whatever we want, so long as we don't harm anyone else," America's Founders espoused LIBERTY and reviled license.

Individual Liberty and private property rights are predicated on the Free Market principles espoused by their mentors, Adam Smith and Edmund Burke.

AND, of course the Market-based economy is entirely predicated on PROFIT!

In that sense, I'm also "ALL for FREEDOM," at least "freedom" defined as LIBERTY and not "license," as freedom/Liberty flows from profit!

Pretty cool, right?

Amazing.

The main thrust of Barry's post (racial double standards) gets ignored while folks debate whether Obame is white, black or bi-racial.

Anybody want to address the crux of his post?

I will. You're correct, of course, Barry. But you know that.

You also know that the double standard is alive and well in the media and in politics.

Hell, Obama personally hung Maureen Dowd of the Times out to dry because she had the TEMERITY to point out he has large ears!

As Bob Dole once lamented:

"Where is the outrage?"

Well, there wasn't any.

Now, substitute Bush for Obama - same comments, same personal outrage by the pol.

Think the reporting would have been the same?

As any lawyer worth his salt would say: "Asked and answered."

Corporations didn't exist at the time of the founding fathers, and they certainly never mentioned profit.

You are lying again, JMK. The founding fathers did not base this country on profit and greed. Our current corporate owned government is nothing but a bunch of traitors who hate America (Bush/Cheney).

The founding fathers based this country on freedom, except for slaves of course, because they weren't considered to be fully human.

Don't try to fold in your neocon corporatist bullshit into anything the founding fathers believed.

Mal,

I have never compared Bush to a chimp and have never applauded people who do.

I understand that there is a double standard and that in this country one does have a constitutionally guaranteed right to be offensive. I don't, however, choose to cheer on those who are offensive.

"The main thrust of Barry's post (racial double standards) gets ignored while folks debate whether Obame is white, black or bi-racial.

"Anybody want to address the crux of his post?" (Mal)


Actually, the "racial double standard" is a given...it is virtually universally accepted in America today.

The great Bob Grant, said pretty much all there is to say on that score over 20 years ago, when he noted, "Whenever a white person says something remotely negative about a specific black person, a Jackson, Sharpton, etc., they seem to need to emphasize "I DON'T mean ALL black people ," blacks NEVER do that. They'll call in and say the most odious things, painting people of other races with the broadest of brushes without any apparent self consciousness or concern. The reason that continues to go on is that whites accept it...and you know what, if you accept it, then you deserve it."

The double standard is what it is...if it hasn't been ended over the last thirty years, it's not going to end over the next year or five either. I think most people are at an odd sort of peace with that....not that they like it, they just ignore it.

BUT to suggest that Barry's post DIDN't revolve around the actual race of Barack Obama misses what I see as "the crux of that post": "At the crux of this disparity seems to be the fact that Obama is black -- which to mind, he isn't, since he's as much white as he is black, except for those who'd have us go back to the Mississippi "one drop" rule..." (BNJ)

In fact, it seems that BNJ noted it as "the crux of this disparity/double standard."

"Corporations didn't exist at the time of the founding fathers, and they certainly never mentioned profit.

"You are lying again, JMK. The founding fathers did not base this country on profit and greed. Our current corporate owned government is nothing but a bunch of traitors who hate America (Bush/Cheney)."


WoW! As usual, so much ignorance, so little time to correct it all;

Again, the Dutch East India Company was indeed a CORPORATE entity and it was, in fact, “the Halliburton of its day,” only with far less competition...and YES, George Washington, Ben Franklin and many of America’s Founders were large-scale investors and supporters of the Dutch East India Company.

Moreover, READ the Bible, “In the beginning there was profit and all around it profit saw that it was good and it said, ‘Let there be business,’ and business prospered and THAT was good, and profit said, ‘Let there be government, to protect INDIVIDUALISM and secure the private property earned and accrued by the most productive profit-makers,’ and THAT was good...”

Back around 4000 BC Gilgi anu Meshea (a/k/a GMK), my great (to the 444th) grandfather, on whom the Gilgamesh epic was penned, was one of the earliest Sumerian leaders and a great (to the 39th) grandfather of Alexander the Great, AND one of the earth’s first “shadowy overlords,” built the Sumerian economy on global trade and...YES...PROFIT!

What kind of economy did that ancient civilization enjoy?

“ Trade brought riches to the cities. Traders sailed along the rivers or risked the dangers of desert travel to carry goods to distant regions. (Although the wheel had been invented by some earlier unknown people, the Sumerians made the first wheeled vehicles.) Archaeologists have found goods from as far away as Egypt and India in the rubble of Sumerian cities.”

Every good businessman from antiquity to today and beyond LOVES profit and reviles having to pay others. That’s why ALL good business people continuously seek to find ways to do business without large armies of “worker bees.” The more automation, the more human labor saving technology, the better for business, and likewise, the better for human development and the advancement of civilization.

In fact, profit is the Sun of the economy...everything revolves around that.

Washington and Franklin, among other founding fathers, were big investors in that company? Really? I'd never heard that, and a quick run-through on that topic turned up nothing. If it's true, they must have been pretty displeased with their investment since the VOC was in its decline during much of the 1700s before going belly-up late in that century.

Well Fred, the Dutch East India Company was established in 1602, It was indeed the first multinational corporation in the world and also the first company to issue stock. It remained an important trading concern for almost two centuries, paying an 18% annual divided for almost 200 years. Almost all well-off Colonialists in the Americas had some investments/holdings in the Dutch East India Company, because it was one of the smartest investments one could make at that time, and there weren’t many dumb folks among America’s Founders and none who had problems with the Dutch, who'd assisted and encouraged the American Colonists to pursue their independence from England.

Again Fred, and as always, I’m looking out for your best interests here, as this post seems at odds with your own confessed “deep affection for Conservative views,” for it makes it seem as you take up this minor point, while avoiding the larger Conservative truth (I suppose that’s redundant as ALL truths seem Conservative by their very natures) that INDEED all civilizations are based on profit and yes “greed,” so long as one defines commercial productivity as “greed.”

What I’m pointing out, for your benefit of course, is that such a strategy unwittingly makes it appear as though you support the inane viewpoint that “There remains some debate over whether or not Liberty (as defined as “very restricted government, coupled with sacrosanct protections for private property rights and self-ownership/responsibility”) provides the most prosperity for the most people.” Of course, as an educated person, I’m certain you don’t intend any such support to such an incredibly naïve and pernicious idea.

Perhaps one could argue for EVEN MORE individual (fend-for-yourself) LIBERTY and EVEN LESS government action/intervention, but when you continually ignore such inanities as “The founding fathers did not base this country on profit and greed,” to focus on when the Dutch East India Company was dissolved (1800)...George Washington died in 1797, well, it makes it look as though your sympathies lie with those enemies of LIBERTY ("grinding self-reliance and individual responsibility"), which I’m certain is not your intent.

If I have misjudged your views and you actually believe that my own views (which are in complete simpatico with the likes of Jefferson, Franklin, et al, I assure you) are, in some way, “troubling,” please, by all means, don’t hesitate to come right out and say that, though I DON'T believe that to be the case.

You certainly have a knack at times for making grand assumptions. What caught my eye was your writing that Washington and Franklin and some of the others were large-scale investors in and supporters of the VOC and I wondered where that assertion, made to bolster your argument rebutting the anti-corporation stance taken by others, came from.
How you took my simple request for some proof of that claim as some sneaky anti-corporatist rant is beyond me.
I don't believe I was making a 'minor point,' but simply fact-checking a little on a claim that I doubt is very common knowledge. If you wrote that "Ronald Reagan won the cold war because of A, B, C and D--and also because he secretly implanted a chip in Gorby's red stain that allowed the US to control Gorby," I'd agree with the thrust and most points but that last one would make me sit up and take notice.

During most of the 18th Century, the Dutch East India Company paid annual dividends of 18% and two separate professors of history that I’ve had claimed that most of the wealthy founders of America – ALL of whom were of the “landed gentry,” had some holdings in that concern.

The Dutch supplied weapons to the Americans during the revolution and operated a “free port” at St. Eustatius (“Statia”) in the leeward group of the West Indies, so there’d be no reason why the Colonists would have had a problem investing in that entity.

You seem to suggest that I mis-perceive, that I am perhaps overly testy at mere questions, but what I object to...and what I’ve long objected to is your...(how can I put this as diplomatically as I can)...the consistent one-sidedness of your queries.

Now, are you claiming you don’t see that?

Well, as Samuel L Jackson famously said, “Allow me to retort,” you have never, so far as I know (and I believe I’m right on that score), queried any of the more Left-leaning or, how’d you put it, “anti-corporation” folks in a similar matter, and for the record, the Barely’s and BW’s make a plethora of unsubstantiated and inexplicable statements around here, and do so on a regular basis.

You can see where that might lead a neutral observer to conclude your sympathies lie more Leftward...or “anti-corporate,” can’t you? But you now claim that apparently only some of my own postings raise such questions with you and not, say Barely’s claim that his maternal grandpa “fought with Georgie Wash.”

OK, I'll take your word on that.

I also understand where many around here simply refuse to acknowledge barely hanging (BH), and I can understand why, as well. I haven’t done that because (1) I think it’s cruel to shun someone for something (inarticulateness, coupled with a decided nasty attitude) that’s clearly not his fault, (2) dangerous to let batshit crazy ideas like his go unchallenged into the ether and (3) yes, it’s a “guilty pleasure,” but I find his and BW’s patent inability to make a coherent argument both comforting (you know, “If that’s the future of Leftism, the Left is doomed”) and a real source of amusement (especially barely posting documents that contradict his stated views).

You have every right to avoid engaging either or both those posters, as does anyone else. All I’m remarking on, is the way it appears to a new reader or neutral observer.

So, that is the gist of my occasional consternation with yourself.

I’m not saying any of this out of any animus, quite the reverse (I think you're a likable and intelligent fellow) and I really am, in the parlance of a popular radio/TV commentator, “Looking out for you” here, as well as trying to figure out this for myself.

I almost never respond or comment on the BW or whoever's postings because I find them more amusing or eye-rolling at times--although sometimes I can see their points once in a while (although I might not say it the same way).
Your postings on the other hand, and this is a compliment (I think) are usually loaded with factual references (or sometimes supposedly factual references) and citations, etc etc. Except for the Washington and Franklin being heavy investors in the VOC. I still will need to see their stock certificates or something similar on that one!

Perhaps my over-analytical and school-marmish way with your stuff is, in a way, because while I disagree with things you may post and opinions you may state--you're an intelligent person who is able to at least research and back up some of your wilder posits. It's like Ron Kuby or Pat Buchanan or some others on the fringes--I may disagree with them but I do believe they are intelligent and very masterful and eloquest at putting their views out there. When it comes to taking a righty seriously, I'll listen to a Buckley-ish egghead any day vs. a douchebag like Hannity or Coulter or O'Reilly, who is only looking out for himself. And as for lefties, I'll listen to Kuby vs. a James Carville.

When I get some time one of these days, I'll have to lay out in some detail why I think myself a somewhat conservative guy (DESPITE your attempts to paint me as a hardened lefty!) -- and why I think today's so-called conservatives are NOT. They are narrow-minded ideologues on many issues, they are big government spenders. They are irresponsible runners up of debt with zero concern for the consequences. They are inept prosecutors of war and dreamy-eyed utopians too willing it seems to jump into foreign adventures. They are too beholden at times, or at least give the perception of being so, to corporations (and YES, corporations have a rightful and prominent place at the economic table, etc etc etc--please, no lectures--but so do others in the economic strata).
Like I said, when I get a chance to think a bit further.....

"When I get some time one of these days, I'll have to lay out in some detail why I think myself a somewhat conservative guy (DESPITE your attempts to paint me as a hardened lefty!)" (Fred)

Fred, only you can define yourself and YOUR views, all can do is let you know how you come across at times. And as I said, I'll take you at your word, on how you choose to define yourself. I don't have a problem with that.

Not EVERY Republican is a "rock-ribbed" Conservative, and not every Democrat is a Liberal...I'm proof of that. I remain a registered Democrat (I say a "Zell Miller Democrat") and I can't say where your exact views lie.....honestly, you rarely offer them, which again, is your right.

I believe that I understand that Rudy, Romney and especially Huckabee were all unacceptable to you and that you tend to revile the so-called "Christian Right."

That's fine, but I'll say this, few people have articulated as many points that run counter to those espoused by Christians and Jews Right & Left (pro-abortion, even requiring birth control and abortion for wards of the state, etc., etc.) and yet, as much as most devoutly religious people may disagree with me, I've always been able to discuss those disagreements civilly, honestly and without rancor with most religious people.

Sadly, I CANNOT say the same for most Liberals. It is THEY who seem to actually believe that disagreement with their orthodoxy is heresy!

Again, I'll take it on faith that you don't feel compelled to post your agreements with the more Conservative posts that you tend to agree with....understandable. Many Conservatives would echo that same kind of sentiment, "I expect MORE from Conservatives."

Like I said, I get that.

But when you couple that with (1) never taking issue with some of the absolutely batshit crazy Leftist posts around here that you don't agree with and (2) seem outraged more when Conservatives get testy &/or feisty than when Liberals do, it amounts to ceding an unwarranted advantage, to those you claim to disagree with.

In other words, it amounts to you saying something like, "I expect extremism from the left, but I can't tolerate that from the Right...we should be above that, we must be better than that."

While I understand that viewpoint and accept it as very high-minded, all I can say in response is that "I'm not that high minded. I am not better than that."

And in that regard, I'm happy to be compared to the others you mentioned as being part of that ilk - Kuby and Buchanan...both of whom I like, despite BOTH agreeing and disagreeing with many things they've each said.

And while Kuby and Buchanan may be extreme, probably neither is as dogmatic about Liberty (both properly defining it and asserting the need for MORE of it) than I am...so in today's climate, I could see where, to anyone with more collectivist...even communal (is that a "fairer" term) leanings, hell even "moderate" (compromising) leanings, might see me as even "more extreme" in some regards than either of those two.

And yes, I am and have always been prone to hyperbole and at times, even to verbal and ideological excess...and this is a medium that is not kind to such traits. Whereas, in person, we often get facial and other cues that make sarcasm, etc much clearer....the print medium here is far more sterile. I've noted that many times before.

I have no problem with a BW or a BH holding to opinions I consider inane, even disastrous in practice, what I DO have a problem with on BOTH those guy's parts, is their seeming inability to articulate affirmative, rational arguments for their views.

The problems I've had with you amount to what appears..."APPEARS" to be your holding Conservative voices to a different/higher standard than you do Liberal ones.

The problem with that, at least from my perspective is that tact cedes a ridiculous advantage to the side you often claim not to agree with and does nothing to advance your own stated views.

I have no problem at all with you or anyone else disagreeing with me over any topic....in your case, and Barry's and some others, I can count on your making a genuine, affirmative case for the things you believe in...and I can't ask any more than that.

I have no animus toward you Fred, none at all. Yes, that trait of holding different voices to differing standards is a frustrating one to me, but I hold no animosity over it at all.

I just feel compelled to bring how that can come across to your attention.