Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), majority whip in the House of Representatives, is in hot water for having spokenin 2002 to a white supremacist group, the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO).
Whatever happens to Scalise, the controversy has occasioned a bunch of right-wing commentators to respond with the defensive argument that Scalise talking to white supremacists is as bad as, or worse than, Obama sitting through sermons by Jeremiah Wright or associating with Al Sharpton.
To be fair to these commentators, partisanship makes it cognitively dissonant to admit that a politician you support has done something stupid and/or unprincipled. The natural response is to make the dissonance go away by downplaying the stupid or unprincipled thing, an exercise that can give rise to hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty. Both sides should stop doing this and strive to be impartial. As an overall Obama supporter, I’m comfortable admitting that Rev. Wright was a poor choice of “spiritual mentor” and that Al Sharpton is a basically sleazy figure from whom Obama would distance himself, if it were up to me.
That said, when conservatives draw these cheap false equivalences every time one of theirs gets caught either making bigoted remarks or, in Scalise’s case, pandering to bigots, they miss an obvious point. There’s a REASON why racists like EURO are more obnoxious to our society than racists like Jeremiah Wright or Al Sharpton. Expressions of white racism exist against a historical backdrop of oppression of African-Americans by whites, beginning with slavery, followed by decades of disenfranchisement, and terror in the form of lynchings and other horrors. They inherently carry a terrible whiff of historical violence and implicitly suggest nostalgia for an era of systematic violent oppression of black people. I’m sorry, but whatever offensive nonsense Jeremiah Wright and Al Sharpton and the like have spouted, it’s just not the same thing.
But go ahead, conservatives. Continue to be baffled that Jeremiah Wright didn’t send everyone’s outrage-o-meter to the same level as the GOP’s #3 leader giving the time of day to a known white supremacist hate group.
I think it’s cute how someone seems to send out a chain email to all the more ridiculous right wing commentators suggesting their talking points for the next week and…presto, Bob’s your uncle.
So you can’t see the difference between punching up and punching down? These people can’t see the difference between the responses of marginalized, oppressed groups, and the actions of a domestic terrorist death-squad that seeks to enforce white supremacy.
Once again, I find myself wishing most of what was said about Obama was actually true. I wish he had taken a cue from Bill Ayers in opposing American imperialism, rather than actively engaging in it. I wish he lived up to the slogan “no justice, no peace”, rather than furthering injustice.
According to Steve Scalise himself, he did and according to your own cite (#1) he apologized. I’ll take his admission and apology over the statements of Kenny Knight and someone Kenny Knight was dating in 2002.
FTR, I have no problem entertaining whatever mitigating circumstances may exist to clear Steve Scalise from blame, particularly if it turned out he didn’t do the deed at all. This thread is really more about the response by conservative commentators than Scalise’s actions per se.
It would be easy to check. Is there such a thing as Jefferson Heights Civic Association? Did it have its meeting at the same place, but before, the European-American Unity and Rights? Did Scalise speak to Jefferson Heights Civic Association?
And yes, Kenny Knight, the head of the Jefferson Heights Civic Association. That Kenny Knight.
Im libertarian right. It’s worth pointing out both sides are hypocritical pieces of shit at the best of times. Yes, I believe liberals are often worse, but both sides are hypocrites. Only the most partisan idealogue would insist otherwise imo.
That is a question. The fact that he showed up to speak to such a group at all (if in fact he did) is damaging independently of whether he was just there to extol our troops and apple pie.