July 16, 2012

Matt Taibbi "wants conservatives to conceal their views for fear of being seen as racist — to act as if they are guilty."

"But that would reinforce, not reduce, racial tension."
If white conservatives in the presence of black people act as if their worldview is a shameful secret, of course black people will think conservatism is racist. Which, of course, would suit lefties like Taibbi just fine.

47 comments:

Rose said...

Remember Matt Taibbi - ◼ Bachmann Porno is on Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi's bigoted mind - femisex

This is pathetic viewing: Matt Taibbi and Don Imus --two of the most repugnant bigoted sexists out in media land--yoke it up over Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann...Don wanting to see them make out and Matt wanting to get some good Bachmann porn made in the fashion of Palin porn.

From his interview: “Actually, yeah, I’m actually kind of rooting for her to win the nomination, because I can’t wait to see the porn movies that they make,” Taibbi said. “Bachmann-inspired films are going to be great.”

Aside from the pornography angle and his liberal bias against Bachmann, Taibbi explained why the Minnesota congresswoman should be taken seriously.

“I mean, who didn’t see ‘Nailin’ Palin’ – that was classic cinema,” he continued. “And so this is basically sort of a big profile on Michele Bachmann and spent about a month kind of following her around a little bit and the basic thesis is that, you know, she is — everybody laughs at her, she’s hilariously funny, but she’s got a shot.

Rolling Stone’s Taibbi rooting for Bachmann to see what porn films she inspires - Daily Caller

Carol said...

A "racist" is a liberal mugged by reality.

traditionalguy said...

Taibbi is the final test on the Great Racism Guilt Load. He throws out the meme that whites who act polite and subdued in face of difficult black people are still Blackophobics.

He is upping the the bar from being fair to blacks to being Negro comfortable with blacks.


What is surprizing is how few whites fail even this new higher standard. His skills are outdated.

Maybe he can get a new job spotting Islamaphobics.

chickelit said...

@Rose: I see little difference between Taibbi fantasizing about Bachmann and Palin and women fantasizing about Barack Obama, but there is the ickiness of writing about it. I want Taibbi to conceal his views for fear of being seen as sexist.

wyo sis said...

There's the old stereotype that if you act differently around black people than you do around white people you're automatically a racist.
I act differently around the kids at school than I do around adults. Is that being ageist? If I act differently when I'm in Europe am I jingoistic? If I act differently when I'm at church am I prejudiced toward religious people? My beliefs are the same and I'm not afraid to state them, but I don't say everything to everybody is that a sign that I'm ashamed of them?

YoungHegelian said...

It's important to understand what racism is for the post-Marxist left: it is their replacement for Marxism's class consciousness. It is the heuristic prism through which they see social history, especially American history (see, e.g. Howard Zinn's works).

Since many of the post-Marxist left are not as well educated as their Marxist forebears, they, of course, have no idea that they are seeing social history through one of many prisms. They think, well, that's the way it was, and they have had no role in the creation of "a history".

In the history of European philosophy, there were Marxist thinkers who, because of their educations, knew that Marxist class consciousness was just one prism of many. They didn't like to admit it in public, but they knew it. These authors (e.g. B. Croce, G. Lukacs, A. Kojeve) are still worth a read. The Soviet Union was full of Marxist philosophers who thought that they dealt in Marxist "science". No one reads them, except as historical curiosities.

I think history will view our lefty thinkers like we view the Soviet ones.

chickelit said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Cedarford said...

In other news, on Bachmann and Palin, the two self-proclaimed "Queen leaders of the Tea Party" are chafing that neither has been asked to give speech at the Rep Convention yet.

There are people that the "Image and Message" Meisters and Meistresses do not want - due to their high capacity to embarass the candidate, sour swing voters, and go off message.
Palin leads that list.

The Condis and Cheneys, despite their Bush ties...can be expected to speak because though the Left hates them - they have gravitas and foreign policy expertise that should bolster Romney in that area.
McCain will speak, guaranteed.

Ron Paul will either get a late, late night spot or finagle a primetime spot instead for Rand Paul.

Bush understands, I think, that he bests serves by a minimal presence and not drawing attention to his Noble Freedom Lover nation-building bungles and the inattention by him to economic matters after "9/11 Changed Everything"!

I do expect a huge massively sentimental marquee spot for HW Bush. He is getting on in years and he is looking good in hindsight for most of his decisions other than Souter (and Reagan gave us the woman that enshrined abortion and affirmative action - so Reagan had his own foulups)/

edutcher said...

Anybody ever seen Hatman and Taibbi together at the same time?

campy said...

Who says Taibbi wants to reduce racial tension?

chickelit said...

Cedarford hissed...
In other news, on Bachmann and Palin, the two self-proclaimed "Queen leaders of the Tea Party" are chafing that neither has been asked to give speech at the Rep Convention yet.

In still other news, Cedarford, still buttsore after his strategic alignment with the Sullivanists, regarding Palin, seems to be warming to that faction's slow denigration of Mitt Romney over his reign at Bain.

Rusty said...

As a conservative I'm past the point of caring what anyone thinks of me.

Peter V. Bella said...

Who is Tabbi? Is that a cat owned by a blow dried well coifed news reader?

Portia said...

If Rose hadn't posted we'd all think Taibbi works for the NYT or something. Rolling Stone is as out of touch.

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone? I guess all this Tiger Beat columnists were tied up this month?

Tim said...

Rusty said...

"As a conservative I'm past the point of caring what anyone thinks of me."

Exactly.

You can be right, and self-confident of your being right, or you can care what others think of you.

Pick one.

rehajm said...

Who is Tabbi? Is that a cat owned by a blow dried well coifed news reader?

By analogy: If you ever worked for a family business and the owner had a bratty, immature son who showed up every day because the owner wanted him to 'learn the ropes', but the kid had no interest in learning, so he walked around unsupervised and poisoned the workday with antics, yet nobody said or did anything about it because, well, he's the owner's son.

Taibbi is the son.

Unknown said...

Taranto is an intellectual lightweight.

n.n said...

Anyone who values individual dignity will reject Taibbi's advice... with prejudice. At the very least, he is exceedingly ignorant of the principles which define American conservatism.

Taibbi's kind have long ago left projection for displacement. He seems quite incapable of comprehending that it is the principles of his philosophy which engender involuntary exploitation and a progressive constraint of liberty.

If he intends to degrade American conservatives, he would do well to, at minimum, properly characterize American conservatism. His appeal to emotion in order to convey (and convict) a message is pathetic.

Anonymous said...

The more of this sort of pantload I hear, the less I worry that my poor opinion of contemporary black culture has anything to do with my own failings rather than theirs.

Michael K said...

"Taranto is an intellectual lightweight."

The voice of the leftist troll.

I was thinking how clever Taranto is with his columns although I do get overloaded on cuteness sometimes.
The only thing I know about Rolling Stone is from the movie "Almost Famous," which was good and which made the magazine look as lame as Tabbibi does.

chickelit said...

The only thing I know about Rolling Stone is from the movie "Almost Famous," which was good and which made the magazine look as lame as Tabbibi does.

Any magazine that fired Lester Bangs has its head up its ass.

Christopher in MA said...

McCain will speak, guaranteed.

Not if Mitt wants to win, he won't. That near-treasonous douchenozzle is the reason we have a near-as-dammit Marxist thug in the White House. If Mitt thinks he can put that worthless old bastard on stage and not have the entire audience remembering his senile blather of "you have nothing to fear from an Obama presidency, my friends" and not get massive blowback, then he deserves to lose.

Scott said...

I love the way Taranto ripped Taibbi a new asshole. (As if an asshole needed another one.)

Revenant said...

That near-treasonous douchenozzle is the reason we have a near-as-dammit Marxist thug in the White House.

Um, no. You're thinking of George Bush.

Obama won in 2008 for the same reason the Congressional Democrats won in '06 and '08 -- the Republican Party in general, and George Bush in particular, had done an atrocious job of running the government.

Be thankful McCain's inevitable nomination came in a year Republicans had no real chance of winning.

Guildofcannonballs said...

"I’ve been unhealthily obsessed with Thomas Friedman for more than a decade now. For most of that time, I just thought he was funny. And admittedly, what I thought was funniest about him was the kind of stuff that only another writer would really care about—in particular his tortured use of the English language. Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn’t make them up even if you were trying—and when you tried to actually picture the “illustrative” figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors.

Remember Friedman’s take on Bush’s Iraq policy? “It’s OK to throw out your steering wheel,” he wrote, “as long as you remember you’re driving without one.” Picture that for a minute. Or how about Friedman’s analysis of America’s foreign policy outlook last May:

The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging.When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels.”

First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you’re supposed to stop digging when you’re in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How does that even begin to make sense? It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder if the editors over at the New York Times editorial page spend their afternoons dropping acid or drinking rubbing alcohol. Sending a line like that into print is the journalism equivalent of a security guard at a nuke plant waving a pair of mullahs in explosive vests through the front gate. It should never, ever happen." - M. Taibai in the piece linked by Taranto

ricpic said...

Black people think?

Carnifex said...

Yes ricpic some do think... exceedingly well in fact. My nieces and nephews are a testament to that fact.

That was an ugly thought, let alone statement. You might want to look in a mirror sometime.

ricpic said...

Ugly or not it's not been my experience that they do think and experience trumps the expression of taboo thoughts, at least for me.

ricpic said...

trumps the non-expression of taboo thoughts

Eric said...

Who says Taibbi wants to reduce racial tension?

This. Race baiting is a business, which is why people are always looking at clouds trying to see the racist.

Synova said...

Toranto quotes Romney's "horrible" Montana speech and it's not even just far less awful than garage had insisted it was (which was sort of a given) it wasn't even remotely unfortunate. It was obviously respectful of both of his audiences. Laudable, even. It also clearly applies "want free stuff" to his Montana audience's presumably white friends.

How many Pinocchioes do the Dem spinners get for lying?

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

ricpic,

I should like to see you debate Condoleezza Rice, on any subject of your own choosing. Failing that, anyone from Allen West to Herman Cain to Ta-Nehesi Coates to the Black supervisors I had in two retail jobs and the Black conductor I played under and the Black fellow-violist I played beside for years in an opera company. I am confident that every one of them would whup your sorry ass.

I except Jesse Jackson, Jr.

wv: divarity 20

jeff said...

"There's the old stereotype that if you act differently around black people than you do around white people you're automatically a racist."

I have to assume that wasnt a serious question.

"Taranto is an intellectual lightweight."
Well who can argue with such a well reasoned and supported statement. Wait....maybe intellectual lightweights can sense each other. Like immortals on Highlander used to do. Maybe Jake is onto something, we KNOW he's an intellectual lightweight....

Isn't Taibbi the guy that calls black republicans Oreos? Or is that ok, cause he's a leftist and can pass judgement on who is an authentic black guy?

Synova said...

"Taranto is an intellectual lightweight."

Some things are so easy even a lightweight can do them.

;-)

Actually, I sort of get a chuckle out of the way that the left fetishizes intellectual ability. Someone doesn't have to be right, they just have to be really smart. The accusation against the Republican candidate is always that they're dumb. Bush was dumb. Palin is dumb. Romney, too, is some version of dumb, somehow. Bachmann is *really* dumb. Blah, blah, dumb.

So instead of explaining how Taranto is wrong, because that would be difficult to do since he's not wrong, the comeback is that Taranto is an intellectual lightweight.

It's so predictable it hits my funny bone.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Synova,

Taranto quotes Romney's "horrible" Montana speech and it's not even just far less awful than garage had insisted it was (which was sort of a given) it wasn't even remotely unfortunate. It was obviously respectful of both of his audiences. Laudable, even. It also clearly applies "want free stuff" to his Montana audience's presumably white friends.

Yes, this. The impression I got was that Romney wasn't saying different things to different audiences. He said things at the NAACP conference that he knew were going to be unpopular, and stuck it out. And the only way Taibbi can make "free stuff" be about Black people is by completely ignoring the free-birth-control controversy that has been in the news for months. Does "free tubal ligations" suggest Black people to you? Me neither.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Synova,

Actually, I sort of get a chuckle out of the way that the left fetishizes intellectual ability. Someone doesn't have to be right, they just have to be really smart. The accusation against the Republican candidate is always that they're dumb. Bush was dumb. Palin is dumb. Romney, too, is some version of dumb, somehow. Bachmann is *really* dumb. Blah, blah, dumb.

Yup. And "fetishization" is not too strong a word. The idea that the "best and brightest" are the natural masters of everyone else is everywhere.

Cue W.F.Buckley on whom he'd rather be governed by; counter-cue George Lakoff on how the total morons seem inexplicably also to keep winning elections. But that's because the voters are so moronic that they don't vote their own economic self-interest!, pipes in Thomas Frank. Who I rather suspect is not voting his own economic self-interest, as in "who's most likely to lower his taxes."

But that's different. Or so I'm given to understand.

ricpic said...

Snotty Michelle,

Condeleeza Rice and Allen West, those two "conservatives," couldn't help themselves, they had to, they simply had to vote for CommieBama because race trumps all for blacks. In other words they are essentially thoughtless. As to black musicians, what the hell does a musical talent have to do with thinking?

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Dear non-snotty ricpic,

Snotty Michelle,

Condeleeza Rice and Allen West, those two "conservatives," couldn't help themselves, they had to, they simply had to vote for CommieBama because race trumps all for blacks. In other words they are essentially thoughtless. As to black musicians, what the hell does a musical talent have to do with thinking?


And to think that a thread or two up we were in sweet agreement.

My point is that I am surrounded by Black folk who sure as hell do "think." If you doubt that classical musicians need to exercise their brains to do their work, I suggest trying it. I don't mean learning an instrument, just learning to read music notation. Bear in mind that this is something you're supposed to be able to do without being able to "think."

I'd start with Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle. A nice little number more than a century old, so it shouldn't expend much energy, especially as "thinking" is unnecessary. You don't need to learn the whole score (as a conductor, even a Black conductor, does); just sound out, oh, ten or twenty bars of the vocal lines. You are a "thinking person," as opposed to some who played in this production. It should be dead easy for you.

Here. Go for it.

chickelit said...

@ricpic: Lots of thoughtful people like Althouse voted for Obama (I actually didn't know that Rice and West did-do they announce such things these days?). So even smart intelligent people fell for charlatans. Plus how do you know that, like Althouse, they weren't actually voting for Obama but rather against McCain and Palin. I suspect (but cannot prove) that many such votes against McCain and Palin were actually litmus test votes based on abortion and gay rights. I can't state it anymore clearly because I don't know any more details. Economics were not on their minds in 2008--everything looked honky-dory.

AlanKH said...

Isn't The Left ™ always telling us we need a dialogue on race? Now Tabbibi is telling conservatives not to be part of any dialogue on ideology, whether it pertains to race or not, because it might hint at race?

rcommal said...

Flipping around channels quite a bit earlier this evening, I happened upon "What Black Men Think" on the Documentary Channel (we use satellite) about a third of the way into it. That documentary is quite a remarkable thing in many respects. Until I get to watch the whole thing (from what I can tell, from Googling a few hours ago, it is available via Netflix, but I haven't verified that yet--busy evening) and verify certain things therein for myself, I won't recommend it without reserving for myself (in the context of recommending, specifically) potential qualification. But I sure as hell am willing to recommend it right here, right now, and pretty strongly, with the proviso that I get to, if necessary, later revise my uncommented-upon recommendation with specific comments, if I 1) deem that necessary and 2) want to.

Kirk Parker said...

MDT,

"...the Black conductor I played under..."

That wouldn't have been with the Oregon Symphony, would it?

Bruce Hayden said...

Obama won in 2008 for the same reason the Congressional Democrats won in '06 and '08 -- the Republican Party in general, and George Bush in particular, had done an atrocious job of running the government.

Actually, to be a bit more accurate, it wasn't that they had done an atrocious job of running the government - that is rather, what Obama and his people have done. But, rather, the the MSM spent eight years working to convince the American public of that. Their constant hyper partisan drumbeat over most of that eight years ultimately had an effect on the American people. (Of course, they also traded the long term viability of their own news organizations for this).

But, when you get down to specifics, and compare apples to apples, between the Bush (43) and Obama Administrations, Bush looks better and better every day. But, of course, these same MSM partisan operatives refuse to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges, so you never see unemployment, government spending, debt, military ROE, transparency, corruption, etc. comparisons from them. Wouldn't suit the narrative to highlight the vastly more horrible job that Obama and his Administration have done.

damikesc said...

In other news, on Bachmann and Palin, the two self-proclaimed "Queen leaders of the Tea Party" are chafing that neither has been asked to give speech at the Rep Convention yet.

Bachmann isn't the most compelling speaker out there --- but no Palin is a bad, bad, bad idea. She is one of the best speakers out there presently.

Taranto is an intellectual lightweight.

While I would traditionally bow to your expertise in this field, I gotta say that you are, as usual, wrong.

Anyone who values individual dignity will reject Taibbi's advice... with prejudice.

So...no Progressives then. Clearly.

Obama won in 2008 for the same reason the Congressional Democrats won in '06 and '08 -- the Republican Party in general, and George Bush in particular, had done an atrocious job of running the government.

True. They did. But, damn, who thought the Dems could screw it up several magnitudes worse?

But, the media played a huge role. We had the idiotic "Culture of Corruption" meme they hammered on for months. The WaPo had their "macaca" jihad for months on end. We were told how badly Bush overspent (with a deficit that was several times smaller than what we have right now, when the deficit isn't as big a deal as Democrats being unfamiliar with SEC regulations, apparently).

If Republicans had the media on their side to the extent Dems do, they'd never lose a single election.

heyboom said...

@ricpic

I suppose you presume that only white people post here at Althouse. I appreciate you outing yourself as a racist bigot, though. I would counter that all of the black conservatives in my family would disagree with your assertion that we don't think.

It's a lovely thing to be able to post on the internet anonymously, isn't it?

AlanKH said...

the two self-proclaimed "Queen leaders of the Tea Party"

Nobody has claimed to be the Tea Party's queen. Or king. Or even jack.