listen

[click picture for video of Democracy Now! interview of Lou Dobbs, 50 minutes]
From personal experience I can tell you that the desire not to be perceived as racist is so intense in so many progressives that we will do almost anything, including ignore justice and well-being itself, to not only avoid it but preëmpt it.

I knew a woman who became permanently estranged from her brother because he referred to the Mexicans who cleaned stalls at his ranch as "Mexicans". No lie.

It is a very serious problem. Here you have seen Amy and Juan try to fall upon Lou like hungry vampires... not quite managing to discredit him despite the clear determination to do so. I do not enjoy watching Lou Dobbs because it raises in me the difficult to resolve dissonance between my loathing for bigotry and my hot desire for a better world. So. It is no wonder that racists are the first to address this problem. That does not mean it is not a problem, and as serious as they allege. But they are far less likely to need to cope with this dissonance that rises so hotly in people who do not begrudge other races their otherness. In short: I know what's making progressives behave this way.

It lives with me in this tiny coastal town.

They do not get to the fact that Hispanic men do harass lone women and girls on the street, and that many of them do in fact take it to the extreme of rape. They do not explore that this is a feature of Latin American culture, like that of Islamic culture, that serves to keep women at home, keep the world for the men, and that it has been imported with them. They do not address the fullness of this very real problem for women in the U.S., whether or not Hispanic -- or Islamic -- women are okay with it.

They skip over the militancy of the Aztlán movement. They downplay how bad the inability to screen for health issues is already and can become. They ignore that the waves of immigrants are driving wages down to an appalling extent, whatever its influence on what they call our "economy". Maybe the answer is in some form of international protection for workers, but ARE we going to get to it while more and more of our living wage jobs are dropping to below subsistence level? While more and more citizens are being pushed out of the labor market entirely? I don't think so. [Right here is where people invoke the history of our resistance to immigrant populations... that we lived through all of them. If you have an ounce of good faith you can debunk that shit for yourself, and I'm leaving you to do it.]

This was an appalling performance! Whatever you think of Lou Dobbs, it is clear to me at least that he wishes to get the real issues addressed, and Amy and Juan get an F- from me on this seriously stupid display of moral cowardice.

I am SICK to death of the kneejerk resort to calling filthy names by liberals. You want to talk objectively about real issues? You get slammed with accusations of racism, homophobia, xenophobia... belittled so loudly that the very real problems themselves are NEVER addressed, let alone affected, let alone resolved.

FUCK!

UPDATE: Sadly, not even dear KO is immune, and Dobbs beats El Torturador for Worst Person In The World?

Yer reachin' here Keith, big time, and did you botox your upper lip or what?

Whenever I speak with righties, their number one gripe is this holier-than-thou shit that progressives never cease to excrete. I think we all can agree that on many fronts Mr. Olbermann has shown himself to be impeccable, but sometimes he really does go for the gratuitous, and fatally misleading, put-downs just as ardently as, say, right wing talking heads....