In Defense of Sarah Palin's Honor: Chauncey DeVega is a Racist! At Least Says the Free Republic

A few days ago, one of our greatest hits went viral thanks to the good folks at Balloon Juice.

For the record, We Are Respectable Negroes was playing with the "what if x group were black..." counter-factual long before it became so old school and tired (in fact, for a meta-level take on that question in the 2008 election check out our much overlooked "Nigarro Universe" series if you want to read something fresh that you may have missed out on the first time around). But given that memories don't live like people do, our new/old post is going around these Internets once again.

As folks who write professionally know, one of the fun (and at times disturbing) moments is when you see your work quoted or referenced. While it can be annoying when readers go postmodern and (re)read meaning into your work that was not intended, it is still--at least for me--par for the course. However, what I do find head-shaking is how readers, both ideological allies, but more often foes, attribute things to your personhood and character based on one data point/article/or blog post. That both makes my day because folks are paying attention, but it also makes me want to serve up a big glass of shut the fuck up juice ask those interlocutors to be more reasonable and reflective.

Apparently, the good folks over at the Right-wing mainstay the Free Republic don't like me because I have been "mean" to Sarah Palin. But unlike George Bush, I am happy to be called a racist. In fact, I am going to say "Chauncey DeVega is a racist" three times a day to keep my teeth white (extra points if you get the joke).

But as always and once more I must ask the following: Why aren't good, smart, reasonable conservatives publicly embarrassed by Sarah Palin?

Is the tribal like support of her by the Right some ideological dingleberry of the authoritarian personality where Palin is like Hitler's lover Eva Braun, the idealized whiteness of femininity mated with the herrenvolk, fascist New Right Tea Bagger Conservative imagination? Please help a brother out in finding an answer.

[Random comment: Damn! I do impress myself sometimes: "Ideological dingleberry." I just pulled that out of the ether...or was that my behind? And wasn't that quotable as smooth as frontage and scissoring with a newly waxed Brazilian half-Indonesian Surinamese goddess on a pair of silk sheets covered in bubblewrap and bathed in baby oil? Be prepared. My jade stalk is now ready for sacred union with the most blessed yoni.]

The Vox Right-wing Populi must now be given their chance to speak. Thus, here are some choice reactions to my post "What if Sarah Palin were Black?"

1. People simply have to move beyond tribalism.

2. She would be a credit to blacks.

3. The website is called “We Are Respectable Negroes”? Good grief. The less said, the better. Maybe just, “Get a life!”

4. WOW..........What's that guy been wallowing in to make him so foul and bizarre? If what he was saying had any validity, why would he be saying it? After all, if Palin is so dumb, folksy, baby daddy'd, ignorant, unsophisticated, and not black, yellow, or red, then why waste the ink and narrow thought?

5. If Sarah Palin were black [or if she had a mixed-race husband] she... would have almost exactly the same support on FR. It’s only to the far left that race still matters. Conservative America doesn’t care.

6. Wow! What a racist bastard!

7. If Sarah Palin were black ... She never would have had to endure the massive invasion of her privacy, the daily calumnies, the insults to her intelligence, the questioing of her competence and attacks on the sincerity of her beliefs which she has had to endure every day since being selected as a vice-presidential nominee.

8. If Sarah were Black... she would NOT be reading articles written by a BIGOT named Chauncey.

9. Someone was very niggardly measuring out this guy’s intelligence.

10. Black and conservative? She’d be shat on even worse than she is now. Black and liberal? She’d be president right now.

11. Sarah Palin is also, last time I checked, a WOMAN. Not only is the Left racist, they are also misogynist.

12. **The website is called “We Are Respectable Negroes”?** Read a bunch of the comments after that article... after cleaning off the keyboard, I’ve come to one conclusion..If that’s the way they want to think... I want Nothing to do with any of them.

13. She does have a “mixed-race” husband: Todd (and therefore all of her children, as well) are part Eskimo.

14. Chauncey de Vega is a racist.

15. You must have had to look hard to dig up this obscure blogger who obviously has serious personal problems. I doubt anybody waits breathlessly to hear from him (yes, I looked Chauncey up and was surprised to discover that he was a him, not a her).

16. If Palin were Black and as circumspect as Obama and had Obama's team, she'd be president. She wouldn't need to be that much different than she is in her personal qualities. She'd just have to learn to make the noises the mainstream media wanted to hear and keep quiet the rest of the time and she'd be thought a genius. If Palin were a typical African-American politician, she'd find a constituency, but not get any further than, say, Congresswoman. Certainly, Palin's already shown that she has more on the ball than Maxine Waters or Sheila Jackson-Lee or Carol Moseley Braun or Eddie Bernice Johnson. But even a trashy blogger may hit on something once in a blue moon: If one likes Sarah and Bristol and feels for Bristol's problems, one would probably go easy on the Black illegitimacy thing, right? Say that these things happen in all kinds of families and not go out of one's way to stomp on that?