This is Nolan Finley, editorial-page editor of The Detroit News.
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Mr. Finley has written an op-ed about right-wingers' new flavor of the month -- Dr. Benjamin Carson, an African-American who's retiring as the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, and who gave a wingnut-delighting speech at the National Prayer Breakfast this year. Carsongrew up in Detroit, and Finley thinks Carson would be an interesting candidate for the U.S. Senate seat that's opening up in Michigan in 2014 ... that is, if fascist black people didn't brutally crush him underfoot with their jackboots:
Dr. Ben Carson is a Black History month staple. Each February, schoolchildren hear the story of the impoverished African-American boy from Detroit, a struggling student whose mother made him read two books a week until he bloomed into a scholar.Now that you've declared yourself as an expert on other people's racial membership requirements, please proceed, Mr. Finley.
Leaving Detroit for Yale, Carson eventually found his way to John Hopkins, where he became one of the world's most preeminent neurosurgeons, gaining international acclaim in 1987 for performing the first separation of twins conjoined at the head. He is held as an African-American hero.
But some are calling him a token, an Uncle Tom, a traitor to his race. Why?
Because he came out of the closet. As a conservative. Maybe even a Republican. And African Americans aren't allowed to be Republican and keep full membership in their race.
The furor over Carson's politics began in February, when he was invited to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast.That's because he was parroting right-wing talking points and disrespecting the president. He denounced "PC." He advocated a flat tax. He railed against Obamacare. Not talking-points-y enough for you, Nolan? And he did it at the National Prayer Breakfast, where, a year before, the president himself was denounced for allegedly politicizing the event -- one congressman walked out, and he was attacked by Orrin Hatch on the Senate floor -- merely because he advocated closing certain tax loopholes, invoking Christian principles. (But of course there's a double standard for disrespect in this country, and it runs along ideological, not racial, lines.)
The doctor told an audience that included President Barack Obama that the president's policies are hindering economic growth and opportunity in America.
Liberals screamed that Carson was parroting right-wing talking points and disrespecting the president.
But back to Nolan Finley's notions of black fascism:
Carson said at the prayer breakfast that "in this country, one of the founding principles was freedom of thought and freedom of expression."Yes, Finley actually wrote that. He actually compared black criticism of black right-wingers to slavery and Jim Crow.
Blacks have never fully enjoyed that freedom, first because of slavery, then Jim Crow, and now due to self-imposed sanctions on what African Americans can think and say politically and still keep their street cred.
And finally:
If he got in the Michigan Senate race as a conservative Republican, Carson would test whether blacks are willing to extend to an African-American icon the freedom to think for himself.You know what, Nolan? Dr. Carson has the freedom to think for himself. (Or, for that matter, to let Fox News and talk radio do his thinking for him, like most of his fellow right-wingers in America.) He has freedom of speech -- why, I believe the event that put him on the political map was a speech, that very National Prayer Breakfast speech to which you alluded, which did not result in his arrest and imprisonment. As I recall, he followed that up with another speech at CPAC, which also did not result in the deprivation of his liberty. He has the freedom to write -- he's published quite a few books, one of which, America the Beautiful, was recently on the New York Times hardcover and paperback bestseller lists simultaneously, and none of which, as far as I know, has been legally removed from bookstore shelves by either the fascist Obama government or roving gangs of fascist brownshirt black people.
What Carson does not have is the right to be exempt from criticism if he makes controversial public statements. That is not the same thing as freedom of speech. If you think it is, Mr. Finley, you obviously went to the Sarah Palin School of Constitutional Law.
Wait.
ReplyDeleteWasn't that the liberals telling Carson how to be black?
You don't suppose any were white, I guess.
But I'm confused, here.
I admit it.
Nobody's telling Carson how to be anything. He's free to be exactly what he is. And many of us are free to think that makes him a wingnut idiot.
ReplyDeleteThe poor SOB, he's probably being fed Halal through a feeding-tube at Gitmo as we speak, after being renditioned right out of his Johns Hopkins operating room.
ReplyDeleteThis guy may be brilliant, but we won't be the first person who's brilliant, and a Conservative authoritarian whacko!
Or, sadly, the last...
And this editor is the opposite of brilliant.
"I'm confused here."
ReplyDelete'nuf sed.
Victor demonstrates exactly the sort of racism that Finley addressed- rather than allow a black man to have a conservative thought and conservative values, Victor suggests that instead he must have been brainwashed and forced to think a certain way, because Victor obviously doesn't think that black people can think for themselves and decide to be conservative.
ReplyDeleteThere is no plantation any more, people, and you can't keep people on it. Blacks are not slaves, either for cotton growers in the south or of the state, and they are free thinking people who can choose to be conservative or liberal without having to have some racist accuse them of simply being tools of other people.
Hey, ACT, you apparently think all black people who aren't conservative are brainwashed and/or coerced. Ever consider the possibility that they arrived at their political conclusions freely? Or don't you think they're capable of that (except if they agree with you)?
ReplyDeleteThere used to be an army infantry training course called "Escape and Evasion." They taught us, that if you didn't want to be caught and killed by the enemy, you should go to the deepest part of the swamp and hide.
ReplyDeleteObviously that's where the deep thinkers like Nolan Finley and Dr. Benjamin Carson have gone. That's why it's pointless to criticize them. They're safe – hidden in the murky miasma of their own minds where you, and I, and the rest of us can't get them.
Did I just say that? I wonder what it means.
Very crankily yours,
The New York Crank
ACT,
ReplyDeleteMay I respectfully suggest some liver and kale, for your "irony" deficiency?
Jyazoos H. Keerist, giving his "Sermon On the 'Amount,'" I sure hope you don't teach literature!
But that might explain the number of younger folks who don't get humor, sarcasm, or irony, either.
LOL!!!
PS: ACT, let me LIBERALLY TEACH YOU - the quickest way up the Wingnut Welfare ladder, is to be a member of any minority - and/or, especially, being a female member of a minority.
In other words, someone who isn't old, white, a Jesus-freak, and has a shriveled dick in need of little blue erectile pills.
Sorry, but my guess is, you're in that majority.
You Conservatives be sure to let us all know when a "blah" Muslim is acceptable, especially a female one, and talks about running for political office, won't all y'all?
ACT,
What a dope!
WHAT A MAROON!!!!!
I whole-heartedly encourage "black people" to do as the white dog says. Really, it knows what's best. Afterall, it is its' burden.
ReplyDeleteYes, "It". It, is less than sufficiently evolved. Less than human.
No fear...