Posted on 01/27/2005 12:03:46 PM PST by pissant
In those rare moments where I’m actually embarrassed, I have a standard quip that eases the burden: “I’m used to being embarrassed. I’m a black conservative.”
Well, it’s pull-the-paper-bag-down-over-my-head time again, courtesy of Ann Coulter, who for the purposes of this column is Miss Ann Coulter, and I give not a tinker’s dam whether she pardons the pun.
Coulter is the conservative author and columnist who can match wits and words with the best of them. She’s fairly good-looking, but she’s no Halle Berry (More on that later.)
I pondered whether I should pick up Coulter’s latest work — How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must) — when I saw it in a local bookstore recently. I’ll have to admit, I hesitated. As a black conservative, I do indeed have trouble talking to liberals. It’s almost as vexing as talking to white conservatives who are totally clueless on the matter of race.
In How To Talk To A Liberal, Coulter unleashes her inner clueless white girl, and lets her run buck wild for well over 300 pages. Oh, it’s not all bad. Her pieces on the 2000 presidential election, and how the U.S. Supreme Court got it right while the Florida Supreme Court got it wrong, are classic. So much for President George W. Bush “stealing” that election.
But on matters of race, Coulter couldn’t get a clue if it pimp slapped her.
“(Halle) Berry successfully mau-maued her way to a Best Actress Award … ” Coulter wrote of Berry’s winning the Oscar in 2002 for Monster’s Ball. Then, after that gratuitous bit of race-baiting, Coulter accused Berry of some race-baiting of her own to win the Oscar when the sultry actress pointed out — correctly — that black actors and actresses still have trouble getting some roles.
You see what’s going on here, don’t you? Coulter had no problem with Denzel Washington winning an Oscar the same year. His was “deserved,” according to Coulter. It was Berry — despite a near unanimous consensus that she did indeed turn in the best performance by an actress that year — who “mau-maued” her way to an Academy Award.
This is nothing but catty hater-ation. What bothers Coulter is not Berry’s “mau-mauing,” but the knowledge that she’ll never even come close to being as fine as Berry is. Memo to Miss Ann: put your claws back in, dear.
Coulter really got buck wild on the issue of the Confederate battle flag, which still bugs a lot of black folks. It doesn’t bug me as much. I’m more concerned that Coulter all but accused Berry of terrorism, probably the better to increase her street cred with the David Duke wing of American conservatives (How this slight escaped those black folks who vigilantly ferret out every offense to the race is beyond me.). But Coulter said enough things wrong in defending the Confederate battle flag that are worthy of correction.
“Man for man,” Coulter wrote, “the Confederate army was the greatest army the world had ever seen.”
That would actually be the Zulus under Shaka, and any military historian worthy of being called one would tell Coulter that.
Southerners fly the Confederate battle flag, Coulter contended, to commemorate their glorious military heritage, not because of racism. But then she slipped and let in a little truth.
“The Ku Klux Klan did not begin using the Confederate flag until the fifties,” Coulter wrote. That’s true, but the total truth is that it wasn’t just the KKK. Southern state legislatures, schools and plenty of non-KKK folks found new love for the Confederate battle flag in the 1950s. If Coulter wanted to be honest, she could have given the precise date.
May 17, 1954.
Yes, the Confederate battle flag flew highly and proudly after the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional. Wherever the forces of integration clashed with those of segregation there were good ol’ Bubbas waving the Confederate flag and yelling about how they’d die before they let nigger boys into their schools and rub up against white gals like, well, like Ann Coulter, for example.
That was the battle the neo-Confederates wanted to wage when their precious flag made its reappearance in the 1950s. It would be refreshingly honest if they — and Coulter — would simply admit that.
The "mau mau" refered to here is a African gangster term.
Jomo Kenyetta was arrested for being a leader of that movement, served some jail time, and released.
The writers of modern history claim he was framed by the despicable British, and now he is a lauded, "honorable", though a very much deceased, hero of Kenya.
What exactly does the verb 'mau-mau' mean? I googled it, and found a card game and the name of a Kenya tribe. But how that could be race-baiting is a mystery.
See my post #117.
He was also present at Kerry's election night celeb party. He was quoted saying something to the effect that there is a 99.9% chance that GWB would get at least one vote (He was probably referring to KG).
I can appreciate his musical talent but ultimately he's just another "Useful Idiot".
"Beavers and ducks!" LOL
Seems like all you liberal fat chicks have a problem with Ann, lol.
Thanks, MisterKnowItAll.
So accusing her of racism is race bating. Still seems odd to me, but I get lost on a lot of race issues.
My first thought exactly.
So accusing her of racism is race bating. Still seems odd to me, but I get lost on a lot of race issues.
Here's what I understood it to mean. When Ann says Halle Berry 'mau-maued' her way to the Oscar (oops, 'scuse me: 'Academy Award (TM)'), she means that Berry or someone, applied race-based pressure against whites to give the award to a 'black actress' even though (in Ann's opinion) the actress in question didn't really deserve it (unlike Denzel Washington, who did). As nearly as I can make sense of it, this Kane fellow is saying that Ann is 'all but' accusing Berry of terrorism, because the Mau Mau's intimidation techniques were not unlike the KKK's.
If that ain't what's going on, then your guess is as good as mine and maybe better. Kane isn't the clearest writer ever born.
Bingo bump.
Also, Kweisi Mfume used the issue like a towtruck, to pull the NAACP out of the ditch 10 years ago after they went through all their woes and scandals. He rallied the faithful and went out and "repped" to the black community, especially during election years, using the Confederate flag as a hate-puppet.
Mfume was very successful in turning out the vote, spiking black turnout by (according to some numbers I saw four or five years ago) as much as 60% in some elections -- one of the important ones being the Congressional elections of 1998, when Mfume tried to get Clinton off the impeachment hook by turning control of the House of Representatives back to the Democrats before an impeachment trial could begin. He came very close to doing it, and he did succeed in driving Newt Gingrich into retirement, which was an important victory in itself.
We're still finding artifacts... they're cutting
into the limestone now... so much rain that the
hillsides have slidden in some sections. Just
yesterday I was looking at the machinery working
along Washington Street and the crews were sifting
thru the dirt.
I'd LOVE to see and talk to that ghost.
I talk to my Capt and Colonel all the time.
Even have a bottle of Old Charter 10 year old
and a box of expensive cigars upstairs in their
armoire. Husband told me tonight, to go buy
them a wooden rocking chair each from Cracker Barrel tomorrow.
He has commissioned an oil painting from
the old photograph of both men we obtained
from the historian/curator of the Military Park.
Once finished and framed, it shall hang on
the wall of the foyer next to the grandfather clock.
I am so dang thrilled and honored to be here.
Maybe you can tell?
Burning feathers!!!!
Thanks, now I understand the accusation. I wonder if there's any basis to it. (Neither ann nor Kane were clear, I'm afraid.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau
Most of this was new to me, so I guess I didn't literally know it all ;-).
Willis and Thorton made a great pair in that movie. I'd like to see another featuring them like this.
Thank you - - you probably nailed what the too-clever-by-half (obtuse) "pun" was supposed to be.
Those paintings are a very good idea.
I look forward to seeing them myself one day.
mulatto
If being a black conservative is embarrassing to this guy, he should become a liberal.
Maybe I got the wrong actress, but wasn't Blanchett in LotR? Her miscasting as the Eleven Queen (or whatever) was the single glaring misstep in the whole awesome movie trilogy, imo. I'm not that familiar with her work, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and presume that she's done a lot of good work, as well.
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