Fisking Kathleen Parker

I'm still hospital sitting and will bring you up to speed on all that later.  I brought my laptop with me today because it's easier to blog on it than on the iPad (at least for some posts).  Plus I wanted to work on a letter to the Nursing Director of WK to commend an angelic, wonderful nurse we had on seventh floor last week.

Now that that's done, let's take a moment to fisk Kathleen Parker.  It's a good thing I'm sitting in a hospital because I'm sputtering and hyperventilating as I'm reading her column. 

Let's take a look, shall we?  Her thesis seems to be that the Republican convention was too white.  She opens with the mind boggling question: "What if Barack Obama had been a Republican?"  Have I been hospital-bound too long?  Can anyone even fathom that concept?  I can't.  She contends that if he'd been Republican, i.e., if Republicans had a black nominee, then the delegates on the floor would have been black.  And she gets paid the big bucks for this.

To Parker, it's all about race.  She writes:

 Obama was elected not only because of his attractive eloquence but because we are fundamentally a good people who value fairness and equality. Electing Obama was part of our reward to ourselves. It allowed us to feel that we were this good and this big.

Choke, sputter, gag.  "part of our reward to ourselves"?  Is she kidding?   Is this satire?

More:

He was also a tantalizing candidate with a message of hope that felt like honey after eight bitter years of terrorism and war. He courted our better angels and articulated our best instincts. We were going to become a purple, post-racial nation, never again to be divided. Who wouldn’t fall in love with that?

His "message of hope that felt like honey" never came across to me.  His message from day one was of big government and socialist style programs.   Anyone who fell for his "purple, post-racial nation" bullshit was not listening past the scripted prose to examine the real man.

And by the way: Republicans are racist:

Republicans were certain that Obama was all style over substance, but their criticisms quickly were interpreted in some quarters as racial animus. Certainly some who call themselves Republicans also can be called racist. Anyone who spends time on the Internet is aware of the racist content of some political dialogue. It’s out there, and it’s ugly.

Then Parker asks "Where are the blacks?"   Kathleen Parker, meet just some of the blacks in the Republican party:

Let's start with Rev. C. L. Bryant:

Rev. Bryant gave a brilliant speech at FreePAC in July following on the heels of his brilliant documentary Runaway Slave.  Did you see Runaway Slave, Miss Parker?



Meet Mia B. Love.  Did you see her at the RNC convention?  Wonderful speech!



Meet Mason Weaver, author of It's Okay to Leave the Plantation.

 

Meet Marvin D. Rogers, author of Silence Makes the Loudest Sound, a revealing look at the racist history of the Democratic party.

 Marvin appeared in C. L. Bryant's Runaway Slave documentary and was one of the more powerful segments in the film.

Meet Star Parker, author, activist, and founder of CURE.  She speaks out on a regular circut of conservative appearances:



Meet Deneen Borelli, author and activist.  She spoke on Fox and Friends recently about her new book Blacklash.



Meet K. Carl Smith, a Frederick Douglass Republican:



Mrs. Parker, I'm sure you're familiar with Condoleezza Rice, Herman Cain, Allen West, Alveda King, David Webb, and others.

What about Stephen Broden, Sonja, Schmidt, Kevin Daniels, Jesse Lee Peterson, and Erik Rush.  You ever heard of them?

In Kathleen Parker's article, she does note that there are some minorities in the Republican party, she writes:

Appearances matter, and the GOP simply doesn’t look that friendly. Regardless of what is true, when an arena full of white people cheers jabs aimed at the first African American president, it feels wrong. This may not be a conscious recognition, but the subliminal is powerful. It was with a deep, inner sigh of relief that white Republicans heard Romney say that he had wanted Obama to succeed because he wanted America to succeed. Bless the speechwriters. 

I would suggest that Miss Parker and others get past the appearances and quit worrying so much about surface issues.  Nobody boo'd or jabbed Obama at the RNC because he was black.  It's because his policies are failures. It's not "subliminal" racist code.  His policies are failures.  They'd be failures if he was a white man.  It's not about race here.  Get over it

In all her search for racial code and dog whistles, she concludes with this, which I'm not even going to touch:

There they’ll learn that ecosystems thrive and are most productive when there is biodiversity. The same can be said of political parties. An all-white party will not long survive in a diverse environment.
The strongest and fittest are those who adapt, and that species for now goes by the name Democrat.

Take a look around you, Miss Parker.  The black conservatives are rising.

Trading One Form of Tyranny for Another

I've been busy reading which is why it's been quiet here.  I'm deep into Star Parker's book, Uncle Sam's Plantation:  How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It.  She has a compelling personal story and, like C. L. Bryant and others, makes the case that welfare is the new plantation.  From one set of chains to another.

When I finish Ms. Parker's book, I have Silence Makes the Loudest Sound:  A Conversation Between African-Americans and the Republican Party by Marvin D. Rogers.  

All of this, of course, is inspired by C. L. Bryant's Runaway Slave documentary which I saw this past weekend.  The thesis isn't new:  Democratic entitlement programs have enslaved many black Americans to a dependency on the government, thus the politicians get power and money while the poor get handouts and remain dependent.  The Democratic programs have also decimated the family unit in black communities; to get that welfare check there must be only one parent and the more kids there are, the more money you get.

Rush Limbaugh talked about this very subject today:

We have 48% of the people in this country not paying income tax, and yet all of them... And this is important in trying to assess all this. All of these people are eating. They're not going hungry. And they all have their cell phones. And they all are able to afford to use their cell phones. And they all have their plasma TVs, and they're all able to sign up for cable and use them. Despite all of the economic malaise. Now, the reason for this is that we're $16 trillion in debt. We've got an administration which is happily paying for this result. 

There is no longer a stigma to being unemployed or a stigma to being on welfare.

What will hopefully happen as C. L. Bryant's documentary makes its way across the country at the end of the month is that people will talk about this and raise awareness.  Hopefully more people will be inspired to take Star Parker's route and turn their backs on a life of dependency and poverty and instead dedicate themselves to honest work, renewed self-esteem and prosperity.  C. L. and the participants in this film hope to reach what he calls the "closet conservatives."

Of course, the only way for those on welfare to prosper is to reject the big government programs favored by the Democrats and to elect small government, fiscal conservatives who support small business development and job creation on all levels.  That, and as Parker notes, a strong moral code:  "Although the poor need free enterprise, capital investment, and rising productivity in order to attain better living standards, the lack of a sustainable moral code and value system brings such endeavors to naught."

Nobody ever got rich living on welfare, Parker says.  

Amen to that.

Watch this clip with C. L. Bryant and Deneen Borelli talking with Glenn Beck.  It's 26 minutes but well worth your time: