by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Every now and then someone sends me an incoherent blog posting by someone named Conor Friedersdorf, who attacks a column I\u2019ve written \u2014 usually in a way that reveals his inability to follow a simple argument. In the latest case of \u201c\u2018White\u2019 on the Brain,\u201d he\u00a0alleges<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0my piece<\/a>\u00a0was aimed at proving a new sort of racism against whites \u2014 something improbable, he thinks, given the insignificance (e.g., Mia Farrow) of those who employ boilerplate derogatory terms. But that is clearly not the purpose of the essay, which instead suggested that using racially polarizing epithets and charges was part of a pattern to suggest that Romney was as much a bigot as he was allegedly a\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0felon, a tax evader, and a near-killer of cancer victims \u2014 all as part of an overall strategy to paint him as an extremist of the sort with whom an independent voter might not feel comfortable.<\/p>\n In that regard, Friedersdorf also sees no real effort on the part of Obama supporters and surrogates to employ racially divisive tropes and language \u2014 although, well apart from Mia Farrow, I offered a wide variety of news people (an MSNBC host), politicians (the Senate majority leader and members of the Black Caucus), campaign operatives (a self-described Obama Truth Team state legislator), and some well-known celebrities (Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones, Chris Rock, Cher), as well as quoted from the president (e.g., \u201cpunish our enemies\u201d) and the attorney general (e.g., a nation of \u201ccowards\u201d) \u2014 who all have either explicitly evoked race, or who have leveled charges of racism or racial insensitivity against their political opponents (It was, after all, candidate Obama who introduced us to \u201ctypical white person\u201d and the clingers of Pennsylvania). The larger point was that despite Obama\u2019s promises of a new civility and unity, just the opposite has happened.<\/p>\n I filed the final essay with NRO on Monday morning \u2014 and added at the last minute yet another example of an MSNBC host ridiculing Paul Ryan as a \u201cwealthy white man.\u201d Almost immediately after the piece came out, Joe Biden \u2014 the vice president of the United States \u2014 adopted a faux-southern accent in front of a racially-mixed audience in Virginia to claim that the demonic \u201cthey\u201d \u201care going to put y\u2019all back in chains.\u201d<\/p>\n This is not Mia Farrow (e.g., Friedersdorf: \u201cThe notion that stigmatizing Romney voters as white supremacists is a savvy way to win independents may constitute the worst political analysis on offer this decade. On the other hand, I haven\u2019t checked up on Mia Farrow statements or any other celebrity mutterings to divine the thrust of the Barack Obama reelection effort, so what do I know\u201d), but the second-highest ranking public servant in the country, and one who earned no rebuke from the president \u2014 although a number of liberals found Biden\u2019s inflammatory charge that his political opponents wished to return to the spirit of putting people in chains uncouth.<\/p>\n Yesterday yet another MSNBC commentator accused Romney of engaging in the \u201cniggerization\u201d of Obama, for suggesting that Obama\u2019s campaign ads and methods revealed far more anger than analysis. From now on, we should expect a news person, politician (Biden himself has nearly three more months to go), or celebrity to weigh in with something like all of the above about every week until the election \u2014 until either voters tire of the demagoguery, or the slurs successfully cast Mitt Romney as a bigot outside the mainstream.<\/p>\n So when Friedersdorf writes, \u201cSo what do I know?\u201d Answer \u2014 almost nothing at all.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner Every now and then someone sends me an incoherent blog posting by someone named Conor Friedersdorf, who attacks a column I\u2019ve written \u2014 usually in a way that reveals his inability to follow a simple argument. In the latest case of \u201c\u2018White\u2019 on the Brain,\u201d he\u00a0alleges\u00a0that\u00a0my piece\u00a0was aimed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[78,96],"tags":[12,207,1026,1036,32,93],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-82","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":516,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/white-on-the-brain\/","url_meta":{"origin":498,"position":0},"title":"‘White’ on the Brain","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The election of the biracial Barack Obama was supposed to usher in a new era of racial harmony. Instead, that dream is becoming a tribally polarized nightmare \u2014 by design, and intended to assist in the reelection of Barack Obama. Consider the increasing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":602,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-medias-racial-prison\/","url_meta":{"origin":498,"position":1},"title":"The Media’s Racial Prison","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine Two incidents last week suggest once more that our confused, hypocritical, and politicized notions of race and relations will play a huge role in the presidential election. In the first, Virginia state senator L. Louise Lucas, part of Obama\u2019s \u201cTruth Team\u201d campaigning for the president\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":687,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-they-did-it-campaign\/","url_meta":{"origin":498,"position":2},"title":"Obama’s ‘They’-Did-It Campaign","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The next five months should be interesting \u2014 given that Barack Obama is now experiencing something entirely unique in his heretofore stellar career: widespread criticism of his performance and increasing weariness with his boilerplate and his teleprompted eloquence. Starting with his Occidental days,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":464,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/everyones-a-white-male-but-me\/","url_meta":{"origin":498,"position":3},"title":"Everyone’s a White Male–But Me","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media When 40%, not 97%, Is Illiberal One of the legacies of the Obama presidency is that \u201cwhite male\u201d as a term of embarrassment has now transcended the hothouse of the campus and gone mainstream. We are lectured by media figures, celebrities, and politicians\u00a0ad nauseam\u00a0that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Identity Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Identity Politics","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/identity-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":416,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-problem-last-night-was-not-just-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":498,"position":4},"title":"The Problem Last Night Was Not Just Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The problem for Obama is not that his performance was disastrous, but rather that it was his normal workmanlike coasting. But this time, and for the first time, he was pitted against a skilled debater who had both the better argument and the better\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":312,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/learning-from-the-election\/","url_meta":{"origin":498,"position":5},"title":"Learning from the Election","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media 1.\u00a0Populism The Republicans have only won the popular vote since Ronald Reagan\u2019s presidency on two occasions: 1988 and 2004. In both instances, even the patrician Bushes were able to paint their liberal opponents as out-of-touch Massachusetts magnificoes. Lee Atwater turned Michael Dukakis, the helmeted\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":598,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions\/598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}