Herman Cain is poetry in motion and a life riot...again. I never thought I would see an upright walking human race card playing the race card as he complains about his detractors. Having witnessed the absurd, I can now say that I have lived a full life.
Herman Cain, Grand High Vizier of the black garbage pail kids black conservatives, gospel singer, and political coprophagist is upset that John Stewart mocked him. Apparently, when he gets called out for flubbing the Constitution, rank bigotry against Muslim Americans, or silly talk about a 3 page maximum limit on all Congressional bills, it is an act of racism. The critical self-reflection rule would seem not to apply, as Cain, in an act of self-delusion that is enabled by his white populist fan base, quite literally "has the complexion for the protection."
Ironically, just as Conservatives wield the race card as a crude cudgel to beat liberals, blacks, and others over the head with charges that they slavishly and dishonestly play the victim, in the Age of Obama it is Herman Cain and the Right who are masters of race puppetry and identity politics.
Herman Cain, as a self-described "American Black Conservative"--God forbid someone call him an African-American--is race obsessed, all the while calling for a colorblind campaign. On the flip side, the race card is also used by the Right to transform pride by intelligent, link-fate aware, and historically grounded people of color into an act of prejudice.
To point: When black folks overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for example, many of the bloviators on the Right called this reasoned choice an act of anti-white racism and a priori evidence of automaton-like group think.Thus, a basic question: Who gets to dictate how the "race card " is played?
Here, Colin Powell's explanation of his Age of Obama moment springs to the forefront of my memory as a great counterpoint to Herman Cain's race card paraphilia. Both are black conservatives: the former is a black man who happens to be a Republican; the latter is a race mascot token for the Right.
Colin Powell seems to have a fully integrated personality where his racial self is not maladjusted and rooted in shame at being a black man, an African-American, in America. A victim of racial Stockholm syndrome and a proof of concept for Frantz Fanon's theories, Herman Cain appears disjointed in this regard, where his appeals to being an "American Black Conservative" are plaintive musings for acceptance by his white Tea Party followers, for Cain (unlike "those blacks") is one of "the good ones."
Are Cain and Powell more alike than different? Are both playing the race card, albeit in quite different ways? More specifically, when does pride and joy transcend into unseemly race pandering and race fixation?
12 comments:
Are CDV and Cain more alike than different?
In much the same way that Tea Party GOP Conservatives do with affirmative action and their obsession with "unqualified minorities and women" who are "stealing" opportunities from deserving white men, Herman Cain's race card gambit is a profound act of projection and hypocrisy. Why? The Right constantly and consistently puts unqualified black and brown faces in high places in a game of political tokenism.
The right's entire political line-up is comprised of second-string psychopaths. Name just one genuine white superstar in the frontline constellation of American corporo-fascist shilling?
On the flip side, the race card is also used by the Right to transform pride by intelligent, link-fate aware, and historically grounded people of color into an act of prejudice.
To point: When black folks overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for example, the bloviators on the Right called this reasoned choice an act of anti-white racism and a priori evidence of automaton-like group think.
Thus, a basic question: Who gets to dictate how the "race card " is played?
link-fate aware...,
CDV - faux fierce as you talk, I speck you'll be among the very first one's crying if starkly objective drop squads actually go to work on our linked-fate aware collective fitness.
I can hear it now, "who are you to judge"?
Almost indistinguishable in many regards from Cain....,
@Cnu. I actually am Herman Cain. Riddle you that one.
When the drop squads come I will either be in China or doing the dance and shuffling while I get ready to resist in quiet, infrapolitical, ways until hard bodies like you sort things out.
China don't need you son, errthing they want, they gettin 196 proof straight from the motherland - they sho'doan need no 17.5% American bootleg...,
As for your Cainian fungibility - that's never really been in question with ANY members and or wannabe members of the afrodemic establishment.
Even when tenured, I can't think of a single one-a-y'all bringing any kind of truly disruptive hot-heat criticism or analysis.
Hot-heat and disruptive truth cannot survive the careful, protracted, and systemic screening of the tenure track at any reputable institution of "higher-learning" in the world.
CNu, believe me when I tell you that I respect your point-of-view, your intellect, and your wonderful facility with language, but only those with nothing to lose can bring the true hot-heat. Afrodemics by necessity, and others by inclination, prefer a more subtle approach with an eye to preserving happiness. No sense bringing your own house down around your ears.
And after all, doesn't the very mechanism of "CDV" allow the Professor to simultaneously walk the afrodemic line and throw the high hard one on the side?
but only those with nothing to lose can bring the true hot-heat.
fred, don't velvet-covered manacles bind a man as surely as hard cold ones? Orwellian slavery may be the most profound enslavement of all.
Yes, and depending on one's temperament, they can be just as painful. No one has ever offered me the "Golden Handcuffs," but I have observed that once people put them on, they are loathe to take them off.
But about Mr. Cain and Mr. Powell. Should we not forget that Colin Powell's parentage is Jamaican? He's one of those really pale Jamaicans too, like every president in the history of Jamaica. It alters one's world view, I'm given to believe.
I like the guy, the whole fixing-Volvos thing, even though I probably don't agree with him on any political point, or rarely. He came to his views organically, and I'm sure that he understands his views and holds them advisedly. Herman Cain, on the other hand, has collected a system of bullshit and lies that seems to work for him, and that's a horse of a different color.
What specifically is "less organic" about Cain's oeuvre than Powell's?
Herman Cain, on the other hand, has collected a system of bullshit and lies that seems to work for him, and that's a horse of a different color.
As best I can gather, Cain has no complicity in any of the unspeakable's murderous lies like those in which Powell made his bones in the aftermath of the My Lai massacre or the yet more well-known and infamous WMD fiasco before the U.N. in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.
About the general, I only mean that he chose a path, the army, and his public views, reactions and behavior grew upon that choice like green on a Chia Pet. Once on the path, he kept to it and was consistent. Often wrong, and a tool of evil, but consistent.
Mr. Cain, on the other hand, is in the midst of a mid-life crisis, recreating himself in a desperate, ego-driven lunge at fame, and probably cash. In this effort he has chosen political and ideological positions from column "A" and column "B" as though from a Chinese menu. Positions that he believes his target audience will like, and chosen for that reason. That's the bullshit and lies part.
It is true that both men are objectionable, but Gen. Powell deserves some credit for dancing with the one he brung for his entire adult life, the undisputed evils that you mention notwithstanding.
In playing the race card like that, falsely claiming to be a victim of racism because a comedian mocked him . . . on account of what he said more than his voice, Cain is furthering the Right Wing agenda. They want to muddy the waters on things like racism and sexism and all that. The more muddy and vague the national understanding of such thigs get, the more obsure the meanings become, the more likely it is that their racist members are to get by.
No Mr. Cain. We do not make fun of you for being black and conservative, so much. The conservative part's enough, thank you very much.
If anyone did an "Amos and Andy" parody, it was Cain, when he quoted his grandfather as supposedly saying "I does not care", which is apparently part of his stump speech. He used the same line in the CPAC speech that CDV posted about and got a lot of right-wing attention for.
Check out what Colin says about Mr. Herman Cain..interesting indeed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dVmwoR24rc
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