Wingnut Media Fails Once Again

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By now, we’ve all heard of the egregiously racist things spouted by L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling to his trophy girlfriend in a recorded phone conversation that was recently released to every media outlet, with the possible exception of the “Sesame Street News Flash.”

Immediately, right-wing media leapt into action, their crack investigative teams digging hard for the answer to the most important question of all: How do we turn this into an attack on the Democrats?

“Racist Clippers Owner Donald Sterling Is a Democrat,” blared a blog post on the National Review website. “Report: Clippers Owner Caught In Racist Rant Is a Democratic Donor,” said Fox Nation. Right-wing icon Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report told us that “NBA Sterling is a Democrat,” while Tucker Carlson’s vanity project The Daily Caller claimed “Race Hate Spewing Clippers Owner Is Democratic Donor.”

All of this, it seems, was based on the fact that, as The Daily Caller put it, “Between 1990 and 1992 Donald Sterling made a $2,000 donation to former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, a $1,000 donation to current Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, as well as a $1,000 donation to the recalled former governor of California, Gray Davis.”

Got that? A multibillionaire makes donations of his pocket change to three Democrats 22 years ago, and suddenly he’s a “Democratic donor,” for purposes of right-wing smear campaigns.

I suppose they were desperate for something to latch onto after the debacle in which rising star Cliven Bundy turned out to be not only a freeloading welfare rancher and domestic terrorist, but a racist nutball as well — but only after he was embraced by the likes of Sean Hannity and Rand Paul.

Now, of course, they’re backpedaling on their support for Bundy faster than Wile E. Coyote when he realizes he’s gone over the edge of the cliff, while the wingnut media scramble desperately to find someone to take the heat off. I guess Donald Sterling looked like the perfect target.

Problem with the Sterling-as-Democrat charge is that, according to California’s voter registration rolls, it turns out that the creepy old dude’s a registered Republican and has been since 1998. Oops. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to make an issue of Sterling’s party affiliation — huh, guys?

Once again, members of the right-wing media have fallen flat on their faces in their desperate attempt to support one of the most absurd Republican tropes: “We’re not racist. Democrats are the real racists, because of Robert Byrd. So there.”

Apparently, the party whose supporters wave signs showing President Obama as an African witch doctor with a bone through his nose, a party that courts the support of a washed-up rock star who calls that president a “subhuman mongrel,” a party that has no problem with its most prominent talk show host referring to the first lady as “uppity” and playing songs about “Barack the Magic Negro,” a party that embraced a candidate who told Iowa primary voters, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money” (even though there are more white than black welfare recipients) — apparently it’s very important to that party to distract from the pervasive racism in its own current ranks by convincing the American people that it’s the Democrats who are the real racists because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, Southern Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act 50 years ago (although most Northern Democrats supported it), and Sen. Robert Byrd was in the KKK before most of us were born.

Forgive me if I don’t find this argument convincing, especially after the years since 1964 — those years that brought us the GOP’s race-baiting “Southern Strategy,” giving us gems like Bush the Elder’s Willie Horton ad (AHHH! SCARY BLACK MAN!) and Jesse Helms’ infamous “White Hands” spot (“You needed that job, but the government said it had to go to a minority”).

I’m not saying that all Republicans are racists or that there are no racists in the Democratic Party. Clearly neither of those is true. I’m saying that an awful lot more racists seem to find a welcoming home in the GOP, and that the first step to solving your problem is to admit that you have one. It’s a simple truth the Raging Republican Right doesn’t seem to have learned.

Donald Sterling is now banned from the NBA for life. It’s a pity that the GOP doesn’t have the same backbone to deal with its virulent racist wing.

White Crime: Where's the Celebrity Outrage?

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George Zimmerman was acquitted of the charge of murdering unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin by a jury of his peers. You would think that, for at least a little while, that verdict might calm the resentment and incessant claims of victimhood by some of my fellow white Americans.

You’d think that. But you’d be wrong.

Certain members of the most privileged race in the most privileged society on this planet just don’t seem to be happy unless they’re pretending to be members of an oppressed class.

The most recent and most noxious manifestation of this is the way they’ve begun treating every crime involving an African-American or Latino. “Why doesn’t President Obama (or Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson) comment on (insert name of crime here)?” they grouse. “He talked about the Trayvon Martin case!” — as if the fact that the president commented on one case that had an emotional effect on him now requires him, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to form a Special Black Flying Squad to jet to the scene of literally every murder in the country and deplore it.

Take, for instance, the tragic case of Chris Lane, the college student and baseball star from Australia who was gunned down Aug. 16 by three teenagers in Oklahoma. This was a horrific and senseless act, made even more so by one of the shooters’ flippant “explanation” that they did it because they were “bored” and “didn’t have anything to do.”

Sadly, just as they did with the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens, the American right wing didn’t even wait till the body was cold before they began making hay of the tragedy for political points.

“Where is Obama’s statement about Chris Lane?” asked an Aug. 26 front page article on the conservative website Real Clear Politics. Also on Aug. 26, both Sean Hannity and Fox News hostess Martha MacCallum of “America’s Newsroom” questioned why Obama had “failed to speak out” and accused him of a “double standard” since he’d dared to comment on the Martin case. Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said on “Fox News Sunday” that it would be a “nice gesture” if Obama would express condolences.

Well, as it turned out, he already had. “As the president has expressed on too many tragic occasions,” an official White House statement released Aug. 24 said, “there is an extra measure of evil in an act of violence that cuts a young life short. The president and first lady’s thoughts and prayers are with Chris Lane’s family and friends in these trying times.”

Not that you saw or heard that on Faux News. Nor is there any chance that such a statement, even with its mention of an “extra level of evil,” will placate the haters. Nothing will. The president could dress in sackcloth, sit in the ashes, and renounce his status as an African-American, and it still wouldn’t be enough self-abasement to satisfy those suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome.

It’s not that they’re racist, you see; it’s just that the fact that the president once mentioned that he’s a black man, too, causes them to lose their freaking minds whenever they think about it.

By the way, I’m sure Chris Lane’s family is deeply moved by the right’s heartfelt concern for them, expressed as it was in their immediate use of their family member as the poster child for white butthurt.

Later, it turned out that one of the three teenagers charged in the killing is white, which raises the question: Which white celebrity is responsible for speaking out against whites killing people? After all, if black politicians and celebrities are required to comment on every murder involving a black suspect, shouldn’t the same apply to white suspects? Who is responsible for deploring them?

I nominate washed-up rocker Ted Nugent. Since Mitt Romney avidly courted the support of the talent who gave us such musical gems as “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” and “Yank Me Crank Me,” and since the Nuge has announced that he himself has considered running for the GOP presidential nomination, I think only he has the gravitas and the Republican street cred to be called upon to weigh in every time a white person is involved in a crime.

After all, like the president, he did comment extensively on the Trayvon Martin case, calling Martin a “gangsta wannabe” who “got justice.”

That’s the criteria, right? Comment on the Martin case, and you become responsible for commenting on every crime committed that involves a member of your race from then on. So c’mon, Nuge. Speak up about the white guy. I mean, fair’s fair. Right?

Obama Derangement Syndrome In Full Glorious Flower

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People sometimes ask me if I have trouble coming up with ideas for columns. The answer is, "sometimes."

But I know that all I have to do is fire up the trusty Web browser, head on over to Fox News or Drudge Report or any of a dozen lesser online right-wing loony bins, where I'll often find the latest outbreak of what's come to be called Obama Derangement Syndrome for our pointing and mocking pleasure.

Take, for example, a recent interview conducted in the Fox News Echo Chamber by Sean Hannity, who indulged in yet another one of those head-wagging rounds of the game "Ain't Obama Awful/Yes, He Sure Is" with syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.

Hannity started with his usual prep-school-bully sneer, complaining about the president of the United States taking a "tropical vacation" during the so-called "fiscal cliff" crisis. By "tropical vacation," of course, Hannity meant "spending Christmas with his family in the American state where he was born." This is something I'm sure quite a few Americans did, Hannity included.

But remember, we're dealing with Fox News here, the Hot Zone for Obama Derangement Syndrome. No activity of this president, no matter how normal or benign, is beyond the ability of a raging ODS sufferer like Hannity to be outraged over.

On to Krauthammer, whom I've found hard to take seriously since a 2010 column in which he inveighed mightily against a value-added tax (VAT) which he predicted was coming. He urged his right-wing readers to "get ready to fight" against the VAT.

Funny thing is, no one in Congress or the administration had proposed any such thing, nor have they since, nor are they likely to. For an ODS sufferer, however, exhorting people to fight against legislation that doesn't exist is a classic symptom of the disease.

Another symptom is a deep paranoia combined with extreme cognitive dissonance, leading the sufferer to ascribe to his imagined antagonist both complete incompetence and fiendish craftiness.

Krauthammer credited Mr. Obama with no less an accomplishment than "shattering" the Republican Party and plunging it into civil war: "He's been using this, and I must say with great skill - and ruthless skill and success - to fracture and basically shatter the Republican opposition. ... His objective from the very beginning was to break the will of the Republicans in the House, and to create an internal civil war. And he's done that."

Wow. Not bad for a mere "community organizer" who was playing golf on vacation. It calls to mind the Honorable John McCain's complaint during his unsuccessful presidential campaign against Mr. Obama that the blame for rising gas prices could be laid at Obama's feet, even though he was, according to other McCain ads, only the inexperienced junior senator from Illinois.

As I observed at the time, you don't want to make someone that powerful angry. Lord knows what he could do if he was really paying attention.

So, what does Krauthammer think the president should do, now that he has crushed his enemies, seen them driven before him, and heard the lamentation of their women?

Simple. He should give up. Accept Mitt Romney's non-plan of closing undefined loopholes to raise revenue, rather than raising tax rates on the wealthy, which was what the president said he was going to do during the election - an election, lest Krauthammer has forgotten, that he won. If Obama doesn't capitulate entirely, Krauthammer predicted, he'll be blamed for the "fiscal cliff" and go down in history as a "failed president."

Of course, Krauthammer also confidently predicted that Romney was going to eke out a win rather than losing in a landslide, because, according to him, Obama already was a "failed president." He also ignored the polls which show that more people will blame Republican intransigence for any failure to reach an agreement than blame the Democrats.

Here we have two more symptoms of ODS: (1) the unshakeable conviction that the consequence of losing an election is that the victorious side is still required to give you everything you want; and (2) the inability to learn from experience.

People like Hannity and Krauthammer never recognize that the last time they made predictions like this, they were wrong and the polls were right, and that maybe this blithe self-assurance is not confidence but delusional thinking.

Can ODS be cured? In the case of people like Krauthammer and Hannity, we may never know, because it's one of the few mental illnesses that's actually profitable for some of its sufferers.

But at least it gives me something to write about.